Dear reader of Dutch Crossing, suppose that the review you are about to read were not my own work. Suppose that, sensing something fishy about it, you find out that it has already appeared elsewhere, in substance and even here and there to the letter, under another name. You carefully prepare a two-columned comparison between the two and send this glaring proof of my theft to the editor with a request to investigate the matter and then publicly force this piece of shameless plagiarism to be retracted. The editor rereads my review in the light of its alleged earlier lookalike; concludes that you are perfectly right; pens a pithy statement to that effect for the next issue of Dutch Crossing; sends it to me, and graciously gives me an opportunity to respond in public. I immediately send her a short comment that I acknowledge its truth, that as a first offender I am deeply sorry, and that I shall sin no more.
So much for plagiarism in an ideal world; now for something considerably murkier – plagiarism in everyday practice. That, or rather the illuminating case of one prominent perpetrator, is the subject of the publication here reviewed.
By way of a first step into the practice of plagiarism, suppose that I could afford an expensive lawyer – say, a senior partner of some highly reputable London firm. Then my speedy response to the editor might well be a thunderous threat to sue both her and Dutch Crossing for libel – my good name and fame irreparably damaged, so my lawyer would haughtily assert, by means of the flimsiest possible evidence, nay, by a malicious witchhunt! The editor decides that my comparatively petty sin is not worth the risk of the journal going broke, gives in, and just decides not ever to invite me again to publish in Dutch Crossing – thus leaving plenty of other journals open to me to send my stolen wares to. Admittedly this variation on the theme of plagiarism-in-practice is not part of Dekker’s storyline, but rather a somewhat overblown version of the risks I was once instructed about when, as a journal editor, I decided to pursue a case of obvious intellectual theft.
To get closer to Dekker’s storyline, let us suppose that, rather than rich, I would be famous and well-connected, particularly in the media. A further variation is that I would have plagiarized, not just a measly review, but at least three entire books. Now I have quite different strings to my bow. And before turning to Dekker’s report, let me tell you the outcome first, which is that the present review could not possibly be a case of plagiarism because no other review even exists of this 2020 English translation or of the 2019 Dutch original with its grave, well-documented accusations. Why not? Here is why.
For all its brevity, Dekker’s is a truly shocking story. The journalist Ad van Liempt has for decades been widely regarded, among historians and the lay public alike, as the authoritative historian of the period of the German occupation (10 May 1940–5 May 1945). I leave aside here the overall interpretation of the occupation history van Liempt adheres to (all too crudely: tending a good deal more towards ‘grey’ than towards ‘black vs. white’), as this is rather a side issue in Dekker’s book and also, in my opinion, one where he is on less solid ground. At the heart of Dekker’s book is his case against van Liempt on grounds of egregious plagiarism and how he has persistently managed to get away with it.
Van Liempt, so we learn, prides himself in public on his capacity to spot without fail one fascinating yet curiously neglected topic about the Dutch occupation history after another and then within a year to write a book about it – one that invariably makes a triumphal nation-wide tour with huge sales, raving reviews in our main newspapers, and countless, at times very prestigious, lectures he is frequently invited to deliver.
Some readers may be surprised at this journalist’s apparent ability to do all the meticulous archival research and to write the results up in a way satisfying the exacting standards of the professional historian in just about a year already filled with all those prestigious country-wide performances. If only more people had been so surprised! As Dekker demonstrates with meticulous care, in each case at least one book had already been written (most of them years and years earlier) about the topic in question. Here is a case in point. In 2013 the Dutch Red Cross wanted to have its history written for the occasion of a festive celebration of its 150th anniversary in 2017. Not wishing to ignore in the festive book the less than heroic conduct of the organization during the German occupation, it invited one professional historian, Regina Grüter, to write a book about those five dismal years, while another seasoned professional, Margot van Kooten, who was already at work in the archival collections of the Red Cross, would cover the full period. Publication of the study about the war years would then, of course, precede the other, festive one. At an advanced stage the board of the Red Cross decided to couple van Liempt to van Kooten’s efforts and also to reverse the order of appearance. So that their book would not have to remain silent about her five years’ episode, Grüter had generously shared her archival findings with the two others, only to see in the end her own main findings appear in a book which, unlike what had now been turned into her own inadvertent late-comer, received great nation-wide publicity. In the course of all this van Liempt managed in addition to elbow his nominal co-author (read: archival researcher), van Kooten, out of all public attention.
As a seasoned plagiarist, so Dekker also shows, van Liempt knows perfectly well how to hide his traces the safest way. Here is the recipe: quote the title of the robbed book in say, footnote 258, for the rest ignore it and meanwhile steal not only the core idea but also its principal contents, paraphrase or quote many of its lines and sources, even use many of the same illustrations. And lo, it works, year after year after year.
The plagiarism issue first came to the fore in 2012, when a few newspaper stories appeared about van Liempt’s citation habits – the effect was zero, with one exception, as van Liempt quickly hit upon an effective way to retaliate: on the rare occasions he is asked to justify himself, he dismisses the accusations as untrue and part of a witchhunt which he will not deign to respond to. Only one well-placed radio journalist dared ask (in spite of explicit instructions received from above) a further question in that dangerous direction, but backed off when van Liempt inserted an underhand threat in his next response.
Dekker is not a conspiracy thinker, and neither is your reviewer. And yet, it is hard to reach the end of his account without drawing the conclusion that a conspiracy of silence is going on here. Journalists in newspapers, radio and tv where van Liempt occupies highly influential positions have wittingly or unwittingly made themselves his accomplices. So, in a different manner, did several history professors at the University of Groningen, where in 2019 he gained a PhD with another largely plagiarized piece of work.
Two attentive outside readers of the nationally celebrated thesis made their findings known, on a website (Lodewijk Brunt) or by sending a lengthy, two-columned complaint to the University Board (Bart Droog). The most compelling piece of evidence was that van Liempt mentioned in his thesis the name of a person who does not appear in the sources he cites, therefore he cannot but have lifted the name from a book by one of his predecessors whose very existence he had, as so often, failed to acknowledge. The University Board appointed a committee, made up of three professors of the same university, none of them a historian. The committee managed in an almost hilarious report to whitewash every piece of evidence as just a matter of ‘regrettable inaccuracy’ and such like – any BA thesis with similar ‘inaccuracies’ would see its student author kicked out without more ado. But not the new doctor. Apparently, so we may fairly surmise, the university’s reputation had to be guarded by just about any means. Even so, van Liempt was most unusually invited in the end to add a list of post factum ‘errata’ to his PhD thesis. A careful reader of the committee’s report, Hugo Röling, has taken the trouble to examine the list. It proved to be a shoddy piece in which about half the points raised by the committee are simply being treated as non-existent, thus demonstrating once again the probable correctness of Dekker’s main thesis – van Liempt knows that he has just about all of writing and publicly speaking Holland safely in his pocket and can afford to treat with almost demonstrative negligence even so modest an obligation as these whitewashers have dared impose on him.
What does the professional association of Dutch historians think of all this? The answer can be short: it doesn’t.
What lessons can be drawn from Dekker’s story beyond the obvious one about societal ways of dealing with plagiarism generally? One major lesson concerns the numerous victims of van Liempt’s citation habits, and it runs thus: if you want to investigate and then write something original about the history of the German occupation in the Netherlands, then don’t (unless, of course, you are happy to see the fruit of your efforts end anonymously in somebody else’s latest bestseller).Footnote1
This, dear reader, is the only substantial review of Dekker’s book yet to appear.Footnote2 As a professor emeritus I can afford to consider writing it a low-risk undertaking. Dekker’s book covers 86 modestly-sized pages plus 11 pages of even more instructive small-print documentation. It is easily read in a few hours: may I humbly urge you to do so?
Notes
1. It seems only fitting to list here the names of the (judging by Dekker’s copious footnotes) most significant authors whose original work on aspects of the German occupation of the Netherlands has been unfairly eclipsed by Ad van Liempt’s manoeuvers: Frits Barend, Lotte Bergen, Koert Broersma, Wout Buitelaar, Max Dohle, Regina Grüter, Margot van Kooten, Eva Moraal, Frank van Riet, Gerard Rossing, and Nanda van der Zee.
2. At my request Rudolf Dekker has kindly provided me with a list of the five tiny reviews in specialized Dutch outlets that have so far seen the light of day.