Qualla: Doetinchem

Doetinchem: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Doetinchem made it through most of the Second World War in remarkable quiet. The German occupying force was small. The Hunger Winter that starved the western Netherlands largely passed the Achterhoek by. Then, in March and April 1945, with liberation only weeks away, Allied bombers flattened the center of the town. The official story, for decades, was that the bombs had been meant for nearby German targets, or perhaps for German defensive positions inside Doetinchem itself. In 2018 a writer named Karel Berkhuysen pieced together a more pointed answer. The Germans, he found, had been quietly running nuclear-fission research inside a converted schoolhouse. Someone had told the Allies. The bombs fell on a town that had been, until that moment, nobody's strategic priority.

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Doetinchem: Villa Duetinghem

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first written mention of Doetinchem comes from a Carolingian document of 838, which calls it villa Duetinghem - a small settlement around a church. By 887 it was a Deutinkem, a fortress with a church, gifted to the Bishop of Utrecht. The spelling kept slipping: Duttichem, Dui...

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Doetinchem: Walls That Came Down

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

By 1226 the defenses had been raised by another meter. Four city gates - the Hamburgerpoort built in 1302, the Waterpoort, the Gruitpoort, the Hezenpoort - replaced the original timber barriers. A moat was dug, a rampart raised in front of the wall, and a windmill called the Walm...

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Doetinchem: Plague, Fire, and the Reliable Disasters

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Long before war came in earnest, Doetinchem suffered the usual catastrophes of a medieval European town with admirable consistency. In 1527 a great fire destroyed most of the city, including the archives - which is why earlier dates in Doetinchem's history are slightly slippery. ...

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Doetinchem: The Schoolhouse Secret

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What Karel Berkhuysen's 2018 research surfaced was that the Germans had converted a school in Doetinchem into a research facility working on nuclear fission. The information found its way to the Allies. In late March and April 1945, with the war days from ending in the Netherland...

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Doetinchem: Achterhoek's Loud Quiet

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Achterhoek has a reputation, in the Netherlands, for being quiet, agricultural, and slightly out of step with the rest of the country - which celebrates Carnival mostly in the Catholic south but somehow also celebrates it, unusually, here in the east. Doetinchem grew steadily...

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