A Responsibility of the State?: Social Security, the German Occupation and the Introduction of Compulsory Social Health Insurance in the Netherlands, 1939-1949 In historiography the Sickness Funds Decree (1941) has always been portrayed as either being a Dutch or a German product. The author argues it was both. The German occupier was able to break through the political stalemate that had delayed the introduction of social health insurance during the previous decades. However the German authorities could not completely bypass Dutch ideas. The initial farreaching proposal was blocked by combined resistance from Dutch civil servants and ‘Berlin’. After the war, the restored Dutch government proposed a Beveridgemodel of social security, with the state at the centre of power. This proposal was rejected since the general feeling was against the state controlling health insurance. The Sickness Funds Decree seemed to be better suited to this mood. By establishing the Sickness Fund Council the power over social health insurance shifted from the state to the civil society.