The Clandestine Mission of the Dutch Prince Consort

In the middle of the 1950s, Prince Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld, husband of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, was caught in the maelstrom of a heated affair that might potentially ignite a national and international scandal. Those close to Prime Minister Willem J. Drees suspected that the prince was involved in a plot devised by Captain Raymond Westerling to overthrow President Sukarno on January 23, 1950, barely a month after the Netherlands formally transferred sovereignty to the Republik Indonesia Serikat (Federal Republic of Indonesia). If the suspicion was proven true, the scandal could rock the world, even threaten the survival of the Orange Dynasty of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Archives regarding the scheme sparked controversy for years in the Netherlands. What were the intentions of the Dutch prince in cooperating with Westerling?

Until the late 1950s, Westerling was an admired name in the Netherlands. This patriotic commander of elite troops became an icon of the times. In secondary schools in Hilversum, for example, students praised him and held prayers for his safety every morning. This public sentiment reflected the deep emotional ties and political interests of the Dutch people at that time with their colony, Indonesia. Clearly, it was hard for them to imagine that their country, the Netherlands, had actually lost its precious Asian colony.

Westerling was well aware of the zeitgeist, and so was Prince Bernhard, who was raised by a mother, Princess Armgard, who also disliked Sukarno. However, few people in the Netherlands at the time, or even today, realized that Bernhard had a very good relationship with Westerling, the officer whose name would later be tarnished by his record as commander of the unit that carried out standrechtelijke executies, now commonly called extralegal killings, against inhabitants of several villages in South Sulawesi in December 1946-February 1947.

Three years later, in early 1950, Westerling appeared as an important player in the APRA (the Legion of the Just Ruler) coup attempt in Bandung. All that, according to historian Harry Veenendal and journalist Jort Kelder who wrote the book ZKH, Hoog Spel aan het hof van Zijne Koninkelijke Hoogheid (His Majesty, the High Game of His Majesty the Prince) and senior historian-researcher Gerard Aalders, author of Bernhard, Zakenprins (Bernhard, the Business Prince), could only happen thanks to the secret role of Prince Bernhard and his political and business networks.

A number of Dutch archives such as the Koninklijke Marechaussee archive, foreign intelligence reports, and especially the diary of the Queen's Secretary Gerrie van Maasdijk show how Prince Bernhard effectively utilized his status as a member of the royal family and his friendship with Prof. A Jan Willem Duyff to manage his political, diplomatic, and business interests.

Duyff, a physiology professor at Leiden University and a former fighter against the Nazi occupation, was known as "an ambitious figure who wants to keep the Dutch East Indies as part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands". Since the 1940s, Duyff had been in close contact with the Commander of the Dutch Army in Batavia, General Simon Spoor. Through this intensive contact with the general, Duyff established links with Westerling, Sirdar Iqbal Ali Shah (code name: Ali Baba), a Pakistani diplomat of Afghan origin, who was an arms supplier and the liaison with Darul Islam in West Java, and with Max Alkadrie or Sultan Hamid II of Pontianak, whom they nominated as President Sukarno's successor.

It was this group that planned an armed attack on the government of the Federal Republic of Indonesia (RIS) when the cabinet convened in Jakarta on January 23, 1950 to arrest Sukarno-Hatta, and then to "execute them immediately". To ensure the success of the operation, Bernhard wrote a letter dated May 13, 1948 to US President Dwight Eisenhower, which was delivered through his envoy, Duyff. The letter appealed to President Eisenhower to ask General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded US warships in the waters around Surabaya, to help maintain security in case a "civil war" broke out in Java if the "coup" failed. Eisenhower, however, never replied to Bernhard's letter.

A Viceroy

Westerling's military operation on January 23, 1950, called the APRA action, still took place and was carried out carelessly, not even worthy of being called a coup d'etat, despite it being bloody. Both Sukarno, who was abroad at the time, and Hatta survived. Following the failure, Sultan Hamid II was detained by the RIS government, while Westerling escaped.

Nevertheless, the treason plan sparked great controversy in the Netherlands. The reason was that Gerrie van Maasdijk, the royal secretary and a former journalist, detected Duyff's networks and plans, then reported it to Prime Minister Willem Drees who was responsible for the behavior of the royal members. Drees panicked and ordered an investigation while trying to cover up the case.

According to Marechaussee archives and intelligence reports, Bernhard-Duyff-Westerling organized the smuggling of weapons from London, or Paris, through Pakistan to Yogyakarta. Luckily for Westerling, the Marechaussee investigation didn't find the smoking gun that proved his key role. Neither for Bernhard, except for his role in writing a letter to President Eisenhower.

The Dutch police report seemed to protect the prince by not elaborating on who the leaders of the APRA "coup" were. The attempt to cover up the key roles of Bernhard, Duyff, and Westerling was also evident in a recent article written by a historian familiar with the "Orange Family", Prof. Dr. C. Fasseur in 2009.

What is certain, according to other historians, is that the "coup" was the result of a high-level plot. "Duyff never, and could never, acted alone," concluded Veenendal. "He needed full support from the Prince (Bernhard)," he continued. 

Duyff, Aalders wrote, acted as an “intermediair (intermediary) on Bernhard's behalf" who arranged contacts with arms dealers and other businessmen. It was this role that linked Bernhard through Duyff and Ali Shah, both frequent visitors to Soestdijk Palace, to Westerling's APRA "coup", while Bernhard himself, according to "Orange biographer" Fasseur, was "always outside the scene". As a result, Westerling's "coup" and the smuggling of weapons were essentially part of Bernhard's move.

Not coincidentally, the "coup", or more accurately Westerling's military action, took place in the period between the recognition of sovereignty on December 27, 1949 and the dissolution of the RIS in August 1950. It was a crucial short period not only for the RIS but also for the Netherlands. According to Aalders, Westerling's actions were aimed at paralyzing the Indonesian army and replacing the Sukarno-Hatta government with a new government that supported a federal state.

Aalders, as well as historian Frederik Willems (De Volkskrant, August 6, 2012) confirmed that the government in The Hague knew about Westerling's actions. On February 22, 1950, Westerling, which was nicknamed "the Turk", was finally rescued by a Catalina albatros plane belonging to the Dutch marines by smuggling him to Singapore. The Netherlands didn't want Westerling to fall into Indonesian hands and disrupt the relations between the two countries. Previously, on August 23, 1948, Bernhard himself had written to General Simon Spoor in Jakarta for Westerling to receive a koninklijke onderscheiding (royal award), which, according to Aalders, showed how much the prince “admired” the controversial officer who was also a former member of his personal staff.

Bernhard clearly had its own political and financial motives. The arms smuggling must have brought in a lot of money, and later on, in the 1970s, the Dutch prince was involved in the US Lockheed bribery scandals. The prince was unlikely to become the king of the Netherlands, so his ambition was to become an onderkoning or viceroy that ruled the Dutch East Indies in the name of his wife, Queen Juliana. That way, Bernhard would be on an equal footing with his British friend Lord Mountbatten who, with great prestige, was a viceroy in charge of British India on behalf of the Queen of England.

Bernhard-Duyff-Westerling's plot shows how narrow-minded the Dutch political establishment, especially the conspirators, were about the dynamics of the Indonesian independence struggle. From an Indonesian perspective, it seems strange that the conspirators staged a "coup" at a time when the Netherlands' diplomatic position in the eyes of the world after two military aggressions in 1947 and 1948 was very weak. It is even stranger that the plotters seemed to rely on the role of and collaboration with Darul Islam, to which Westerling had been supplying weapons and assistance since S.M. Kartosoewirjo rebelled in disappointment with the Renville Agreement.

The Connection with Darul Islam

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which observed developments in West Java wrote in its report that Darul Islam was working with Westerling against the Sukarno-Hatta government, and there is a suspicion that the Netherlands was involved. Ali Shah, a Pakistani diplomat who partnered closely with Duyff, was tasked with attracting Darul Islam leaders to the role of the Dutch, in this case Westerling, to fight Sukarno-Hatta. Westerling apparently was willing to cooperate with anyone for this purpose, and so was Darul Islam.

There are many indications pointing to Prince Bernhard's involvement, but his various roles during those crucial five years in the 1950s, along with those of Duyff, arms dealer Ali Shah and Westerling, have never been fully and completely revealed. All the material and facts were "indicative"; there was never a smoking gun. The reason was simple: several investigations by Marechaussee state officials, marines, and the Royal Dutch historian C. Fasseur against him always stopped or were stopped halfway.

Bernhard's cases, both with Westerling and the Lockheed scandal later on in the 1970s, were too sensitive and could have threatened the reputation of the Orange Royal family.

As a result, in the Netherlands, Prince Bernhard was hailed as an icon of the times or helden (hero) in the 1950s–just like, or perhaps even more than Westerling. But starting from the 1970s, both have often been labeled as schurken or bandits.