Jonge, Bonifacius Cornelis de.

Jonge, Bonifacius Cornelis de, born 22-01-1875 in Den Haque, was a Dutch nobleman and conservative aristocrat, who was in favour of a strong authority, both in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. A son of mr. Bonifacius Cornelis de Jonge (1834-1907), president of the Hague district court and then a judge in the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, and his wife Elisabeth Henrietta Maria Philipse (1839-1927). Bonifacius had one sister and one brother, Johan Clasina de Jonge (1864–1927) and Maria Clasina de Jonge (1868–1946).
On 05-07-1904 he married Anna Cornelia baroness van Wassenaer (1883-1959), founder and chairman of the General Support Fund for Indigenous Needy Persons; from this marriage four children were born. De Jonge began his career as a civil servant. He was in 1910 under the confessional Heemskerk Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Legal Department. Then in May 1917, at the height of the First World War as the War Minister Nicolaas Bosboom resigned, Queen Wilhelmina   fetched back on Hendrik Colijn,

  Colijn died age 75 on 18-09-1944.    Colijn, however served out a ten-year contract with the Royal Batavian Petroleum Company and pushed his kindred spirit De Jonge forward. Thus the Christian nobleman was one years minister of war in the liberal Cabinet Cort van der Linden. Cort van der Linden died old age 89 on 15-07-1935. After the first World War he came at the hands of Colijn employed by the BPM and in 1931 Governor General. In that capacity he received the Dutch NSB, National Socialist Movement, leader Anton Mussert,

 two times in Indie and performed strongly against the indigenous opposition. Jan De Quay wished him in 1940 as ‘strong man’ of the Dutch Union.  After the war, Mussert was convicted and executed for high treason. On 07-05-1946, 4 days before his 52^nd birthday, Mussert was executed by a firing squad on the Waalsdorpervlakte, a site near The Hague, where hundreds of Dutch citizens had been put to death by the Nazi regime.  His eldest son got the same name as his father and grandfather, his second son was called Johan Antonie and they got also two daughters. His father was Cornelis Bonice de Jonge.  In September 1936 De Jonge was succeeded by Tjarda van Starkenborgh- Stachouwer, he died old age 90, on 16-08-1978, in Wassenaar, and after his repatriation de Jonge lived on his country seat “De Beele” in Voorst and retired from politics. Shortly after the occupation of the Netherlands by the German forces in Mai 1940, he in July 1940 he was recruited as the chairman of the Comity of National Unanimity, by Jan de Quay, Louis Einthoven  and Johannes “Hans” Linthorst Looman, but this Comity soon fell apart. De Jonge kept a low profile since and retired to the country seat Denneoord  in Oosterbeek, the town would become famous and destroyed in September 1944 as Operation Market Garden took place there. “A bridge too far” He was not involved in any political business anymore but always kept interested in the developments in the East Indies.

September 1944. More than four months after D-Day, the German army is being pushed back everywhere in Western Europe by advancing Allied armies and the front is a few kilometers from the Dutch border. The English Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery   wants to deliver the final blow to the Germans with a daring plan: Operation Market Garden. In a combined attack by air (Market) and by land (Garden), English and American armies must advance over Dutch soil to the Ruhr area and possibly even to Berlin. According to Montgomery, this attack would have ended the war in favor of the Allies before Christmas 1944. The Market part means that tens of thousands of paratroopers will be dropped deep into enemy territory. They must take control of all bridges over rivers, streams and streams from Eindhoven to Arnhem and hold them until the overland reinforcements, the Garden part, are relieved.However, Operation Market Garden ended in failure. The Rhine Bridge near Arnhem never falls into Allied hands, which brings the advance to a standstill. More soldiers are killed in the nine-day fighting than in the Normandy invasion. Montgomery’s plan proved too daring, or as one of his officers put it, “It was a bridge too far.” The last eight months of the war are among the bloodiest of the entire Second World War. Millions die on the battlefield, in prisons, concentration camps or starve to death.

Death and burial ground of Jonge, Bonifacius Cornelis de.

Living quiet in Zeist since 1946, De Jonge died age 79, in Zeist on 24-06-1954 and is buried with his wife Anna Cornelia van Wassenear van Rosande on the Cemetery Oud Eik en Duinen  in Den Haque and close by the graves of Louis Einthoven another Dutch Union member, former minister president in World War II, Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy and the brother of Prins Bernhard, Aschwin zur Lippe Biesterveld

  who would die age 73, on 14-05-1988 in Den Haag. .\

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