Anton Mussert  Anton Adriaan Mussert (; 11 May 1894 – 7 May 1946) was one of the founders of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (NSB) and its formal leader. As such, he was the most prominent Dutch fascist before and during World War II. During the war, he was able to keep this position, due to the support he received from the Germans. After the war, he was convicted and executed for high treason. Mussert was born in 1894 in Werkendam, in the northern part of the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. From an early age he showed talent in technical matters and after graduating from school he chose to study civil engineering at the Delft University of Technology. He married his aunt Maria Witlam, his mother's sister, in 1917 despite opposition from his mother. In the 1920s, he became active in several far right organisations, such as the "Dietsche Bond" which advocated a Greater Netherlands including Flanders (Dutch-speaking Belgium). On 14 December 1931, he, Cornelis van Geelkerken, and ten others founded the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (Dutch: "Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging in Nederland"), a Dutch counterpart to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In its early years, the NSB boasted that its membership included several hundred Jews, until the German party directed a more anti-Semitic course. A 1933 demonstration in Utrecht attracted only 600 supporters. A year later, the NSB rallied 25,000 demonstrators in Amsterdam. The NSB received 300,000 votes in the 1935 parliamentary elections, almost 8% of the national vote. In the 1937 voting, it polled a little more than half as much. Thereafter, Mussert worked toward preventing resistance to a German invasion. A state of siege was declared by the Dutch government in April 1940 after the foreign correspondent for "The New York Times", Vladimir Poliakov, reported that Mussert's followers were preparing to kidnap Queen Wilhelmina as part of a coup. On 10 May, German troops invaded the Netherlands and Mussert was permitted to suppress all political parties other than the NSB. Mussert was not appointed prime minister of the occupied nation. Instead, Austrian Nazi Artur Seyss-Inquart was appointed as the Reichskommissar, while Berlin summoned Mussert to control his uncooperative countrymen. Mussert responded by working with the Gestapo in stopping resistance to the German occupation.