A considerable share of Amersfoort’s work, even some of his myth-busting, is supported by undersigned and others. Should the introduction have caused the reader to think that all that Amersfoort publishes could be addressed as tendentious or otherwise untrue, this should be corrected here and now. These matters shall be reviewed hereunder, also when yours truly agrees with Amersfoort. In this chapter 11 a quite extended number of so called myths are said to be broken by him and his co-authors. The subject chapter eleven of the book is an illustration of Amersfoort’s highly tendentious way of working, publishing and teaching. The fact that the Dutch Ministry of Defence institutionalizes Amersfoort’s style and research by the explicit support of his work as well as of publishing the first editions of ‘ May 1940 – the Battle of the Netherlands’ as the ‘new standard’ on the May War history, hasn’t improved the unbalance in the Dutch military history recording. This modus operandi of said professor is so aggressively advocated by himself and his (small) inner circle that – within the small country and the subsequent limited research group on WWII history – a very dominant mainstream has been created that caused the military history scene to be partially recalibrated according to Amersfoort’s own questionable standard. This highly controversial approach has caused many of his students to produce papers and dissertations of highly questionable quality with a typical tendency to first create a (non-existent) myth and subsequently demythologize their own creation, meanwhile dismissing or even ridicule existing historical reconstructions. And there where a scientist of reputation would leave it to theses, Amersfoort claims his reconstructions (usually) to be facts. Working in such a manner is the reason why Amersfoort claims that a scientific approach of historical reconstruction should be done by a top-down approach, in stead of constructing an analysis on the comparison of battle-reports of both sides, projected on the main-milestones of an event (bottom-up). By doing so Amersfoort has created his own 'room to manoeuvre', because when sources are disqualified as valuable to the historian, he creates the room to fill in history himself. The fact that veteran accounts are considered biased accounts – which they obviously are (and what source is not?) – causes him to claim that even numerous battle reports on a specific event only represent a collection of biased accounts and as such merely qualify as a marginal source of information. Besides his tendency to claim virtually anything beyond his own acceptation as a myth, he is (ill) reputed for his top-down approach of researches, dismissing the value of battle-reports as to the level of virtually irrelevant biased sources. Aforesaid aim brought him in conflict with many historians outside his limited circle of sympathizers, mainly due to his particular modus operandi of creating self-acclaimed myths in order to get the desired attention for his work. Professor Amersfoort teaches Military History at the Dutch Defence Academy and at the University of Amsterdam, speciality Military History of the 19th and 20th Century.Īmersfoort is a well-known but controversial authority on WWII history in the Netherlands, operating within a select circle of historians aiming for a so called demythologizing of written history. Chapter 11 - Myth and reality IntroductionĬhapter 11 – Myth and Reality – was written by Herman Amersfoort.
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