The Oil Man

A documentary on perhaps the most important figure in the Dutch Resistance during the Second World War, Walraven van Hall. The story of an enigmatic man whose charm and powers of persuasion brought order to the crumbling Resistance movement. He was an inexhaustible source of inventive support and help, especially in the last and most decisive year of the Resistance, during the Winter of Hunger that almost brought life in the northern regions of Netherlands to a standstill. Walraven van Hall was nicknamed ‘the oil man’ for good reason. The German occupation forces knew that such a person was active in the resistance. At the end of the war, in the Amsterdam headquarters of the ‘Sicherheitsdienst’, a profile of the unknown individual at the centre of the resistance web was even committed to paper. But the Germans never discovered his identity. This is the story of Walraven van Hall and the full story of the biggest bank robbery in Dutch history.