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Reason: Prince Bernhard zu Lippe-Biesterfeld was rumored to want played at his wedding the song of his native Lippe-Biesterfeld, a rustic German ditty with the hearty chorus: "Lippe-Detmold is a wonderful town, boom, boom, BOOM!" According to the Nazis, the Prince ought to have "demanded" that the Nazi Horst Wessel song or at the very least Deutschland Über Alles should boom at his wedding—particularly since Lippe-Biesterfeld was abolished as a principality by the German Republic. While the whole German press roared its wrath, the Nazi Political Police rushed around to the homes of three German princesses who had been slated to attend Juliana as bridesmaids, confiscated their German passports, so that they could not go to The Netherlands.
Exasperated ex-Storm Trooper Prince Bernhard then wrote a personal letter to Supreme Storm Troop Leader Adolf Hitler and two of the princesses were soon on their way to The Hague. The third sent word that she was "prevented from coming," presumably because the police were still holding her passport. Like all Germans, the two princesses who got through to The Netherlands were forbidden to take out of their country more than 10 marks ($4.02). They were promptly supplied with pocket money by Queen Wilhelmina, and Her Majesty, with motherly solicitude, saw to it that all twelve bridesmaids were supplied with special, quick-action woolen underdrawers. These garments were ingeniously arranged so that the bridesmaids, without disturbing their dresses, could slip on their woollies underneath for the cold, draughty drive in royal coaches, slip them off again as soon as they got out of the chill Groote Kerk (Great Church) and back to the warm little Royal Palace for lunch.
On the night before the wedding Dutch prudence caused both Deutschland Über Alles and the Horst Wessel song to be played at a gala theatrical evening for the royal couple, while Dutch indignation sent speeding to Berlin an extremely stiff note in which Her Majesty's Government demanded that the German Government make its press mind its manners. Scheduled to appear at the gala were some broad Dutch comedians famed for an act in which the chief funster appears as Kaiser Wilhelm II, then strips off gold lace, upturned mustaches and so forth until he finally ends in a plain uniform and smudge mustache as Adolf Hitler. At the last minute this political Dutch clowning was killed off the program and substituted were some harmless non-political British buffoons.
At the last moment, Prince Friedrich zu Wied, an ardent German Nazi who was to have acted as one of the bridegroom's witnesses, failed to come to The Hague, giving the excuse of "illness" which was known to be a fib. This so incensed Queen Wilhelmina that Her Majesty named to act as a witness in his place Professor Jan Huizinga, a Dutch writer of tart anti-Nazi tracts, under whom the Crown Princess once studied history. German correspondents who had come to cover the wedding promptly left The Hague in a huff, all except one.