J.B. Charles (1910–1983)

Volg het spoor terug is a book that is no longer of this time. The sentiment it describes is alien to modern readers. A bestseller in the 1950s, Volg het spoor terug accurately portrays how the author's generation felt about the Second World War, but that feeling can no longer be traced by readers belonging to a younger generation, nor are anger and suspicion the type of sentiment that modern historians would foster in relation to a modern reception and view of the past, and the then-enemy, Germany.

Volg het spoor terug was written by J.B. Charles, a pseudonym for Willem Hendrik Nagel. During the 1930s Nagel studied Law and was keenly aware of the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany. After the war, Nagel was appointed the chair to lecture Law and Criminology at Leiden University, in the Netherlands. Publications in the field of Law are published under his own name, while other work, prose and poetry, is published under the pseudonym, which was derived from the code name "Charles" which the author used during the war.

Volg het spoor terug was originally published in 1953. In 1976, it was revised and extended from 358 to 372 pages. This review refers to the last edition, the twelfth impression of 1994.

Although in reading Volg het spoor terug seems to be written as a memoir, the central catalog of the Dutch National Library lists Volg het spoor terug as a novels. Structurally, the book consists of 58 essays, each exploring aspects of the resistance.

Contemporary historicism shows that the occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War and the deportation of Dutch Jews were easy for the Nazis because of the high degree of collaboration on the part of many Dutch citizens. However, after the war it was obvious that all the many people who claimed ever to have been part of the resistance, could never have been. Volg het spoor terug describes the revulsion over this phenomenon. It exposes the type of people and their motives for collaboration. Volg het spoor terug also provides a legal justification for the resistance, referring to conventions under international law which were violated by the Nazis in their occupation of the Netherlands.

Overall, the tone of Volg het spoor terug is that of anger and disillusionment, in view of the war period, and suspicion during the postwar era.

The work of J. B. Charles is now no longer in print, and he is all but forgotten. Nonetheless, a biography was published in 2010, with the title Het spoor terug. J.B. Charles / W.H. Nagel 1910-1983 by Kees Schuyt. While, as the biography suggests, J. B. Charles may see a revival of interest in his work in the future, that interest will more likely be for his poetry, as Volg het spoor terug seems definitely outdated, and possibly only of interest to a specialist readership.… (mere)