The Dutch Veterans Interview Project: recognition and attention in exchange for valuable information

Abstract

Accounts from people who have been actively involved in warfare, which are then told in a peaceful and safe environment, are excellent resources for studying the shifts in norms and values between the military and the civilian realm. It is with this contention that the Netherlands Veterans Institute (VI) decided to engage, in an extensive oral history project consisting of 1.000 collected biographical interviews with a representative number of veterans from all recent conflicts and military missions involving the Netherlands. The oldest interviewees were conscripts in the defence of the Netherlands during the German invasion in May 1940; the youngest are professional military, trained for international operations such as those recently deployed in Afghanistan in the context of the International Stabilisation Force Afghanistan. The project’s aim was to make this oral data accessible to the general public, media, educators, as well as the academic community.