De Waarheid

De Waarheid (literally 'The Truth') was the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Netherlands.

History

It originated in 1940 under the German occupation as a resistance paper, the day after general H.G. Winkelman had forbidden publication of the earlier Communist Volksdagblad. The party decided on May 15, 1940, to continue the Volksdagblad illegally under the name De Waarheid. The first months were spent setting up a nationwide network of 'handout points' ('stencilposten'), the main articles would be written centrally, whereas the different 'handout points' added localized articles. These local versions sometimes were published under different names as 'De vonk' ('The spark') and 'Het noorderlicht' ('The northern light').

In the last decades it became a more independent left wing newspaper but circulation continued to drop and the paper was discontinued on 28 April 1990.^[2]

Circulation figures

1945 (September): 341.550
1947: 150.000
1948: 135.000
1950: 113.000
1955: 50.000
1960: 29.000
1966: 22.000
1968: 21.200
1970: 20.000
1975: 22.000
1980: 26.000
1985: 12.000
1988: 9.000
1990: 6.000^[3]

Editors

Anthoon Johan Koejemans	1945–1948
Fred Schoonenberg Paul de Groot	1948–1949
Fred Schoonenberg Friedl Baruch	1949–1953
Marcus Bakker	1953–1958
Joop Wolff	1958–1978
Gijs Schreuders	1978–1982
Bart Schmidt	1982–1983
Constant Vecht	1983–1986
Paul Wouters	1986–1988
Frank Biesboer	1988–1990

References

^ Post in response to a competition by De Waarheid (newspaper)
^ Dutch Communist Daily Newspaper, De Waarheid 1945-1990 from MMF publications. Retrieved 14 April 2008.
^ nl:Jan van der Plasse, Kroniek van de Nederlandse dagblad- en opiniepers (Amsterdam, 2005) ISBN 90-757-27-771