What is Holland's civilization like?

Answer 1

Holland after World War II was in ruins. Most of the end of the 40s and the beginning of the 50s was spend rebuilding the country and it's economy. Holland received support from the Marshall Plan. This and the liberation of Holland by the Allied forced made it a pro-western society. Communism never managed to get a good foothold within the country and their contribution to the resistance was largely ignored. In contrast to the United States left wing parties have always been a big part of dutch society. It's perhaps because of this that people found a revolution unneccesary and rather wanted to reach a comprimise.

Dutch society split itself up in different so called collums, largely based around their beliefs, such as catholicism or Protestantism. These groups would keep to themselves and create their own schools, sportclubs, newspapers etc. This was felt in day to day life, where interaction between groups was frowned upon. Especially relationships were a taboo. It created the saying: "Two religions sleeping in the same bed, means the devil sleeps in the middle."

The ending of the World War marked the beginning of the so called baby boom. A disproportionate amount of babies got born. In the 60-70s this generation started to reach adult age and started to rebel agains the old morals. This led into a sharp rise of student demostrations, who sympathised with left wing atheist orginisations. Their message was anti-American, based on all the interventions America tried and failed at in the years before. This greatly clashed with the generation of their parents, who still saw America as the great liberator from World War 2 and believed in the war against communism. Some riots started in the bigger cities which eventually led to the contriversial deployment of the army in Amsterdam, capital of Holland. In the later years this generation kept his distrust towards America.

World War II proved that the isolation policy Holland had was not effective in keeping it out of trouble. During the Cold War Holland saw working together with his neigboors as the way to prevent any future conflict. Holland was therefore always actively involved in projects of European coöperation and was part of the predessecors of the European Union.

Economy wise the Dutch mainly focused on services. Industrial development was halted and their influence on the country's economy was greatly reduced. All dutch mines got closed down in the Cold War era. Most of these were in the southern provences of Hollland. Especially Limburg suffered greatly because of this, with it's economical dependence on said mines. Only the steel industry in Rotterdam remained, thanking his existence to the port of Rotterdam. This port becamee the biggest in the world and remains one of the biggest ports today. Bank and insurance companies florished. Most of the dutch internationals nowadays managed to get a foothold in the financial world in this period.