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Walraven van Hall was born into an old Amsterdam banking family. When Hitler invaded the neutral Netherlands in 1940, Walraven joined the anti-Nazi party. When that was banned, he joined the Resistance. He collected money, then borrowed money, and finally, in desperation, he stole money from the Dutch State Bank, which was under Nazi Occupation control. His largest source of income was from forging Dutch Treasury bills, which were exchanged for real ones in the Dutch State Bank vaults, under Nazi noses. It was the biggest bank fraud in Dutch history. Walraven was betrayed, caught by his Nazi Sicherheitsdienst pursuer for something else, and executed. But the Nazis never figured out how Walraven raised a billion dollars in 2024 money. The full story is told here for the first time, for a non-Dutch English-speaking audience. It is translated and annotated with more than 750 endnotes that explain Dutch terms and historical references.
About the author
Erik Schaap is a Dutch journalist and political scientist. He lives in Zaandam, a north-of-Amsterdam suburb that played a central role in the Resistance during the Nazi Occupation, 1940-1945. His Dutch biography of Walraven van Hall was first published in 2006. Schaap's book is based primarily on archives in Zaandam (where Van Hall lived during the Occupation years) and in Amsterdam. He attended the School of Journalism in Utrecht and studied political science at the University of Amsterdam.
