Living in the Netherlands | The Country That Has to Be Pumped Dry Every Day | 4K Documentary

A quarter of this country sits below sea level. More than half of it would flood if the machines stopped. The ground the Dutch live on is not natural — it is maintained, every day, by pumps that have been running in some form for eight hundred years. On the last night of January 1953 the sea got through anyway, and 1,836 people died. What the Netherlands built afterwards is one of the largest engineering projects ever attempted. This is what daily life looks like in a country that has to be kept dry: the water boards that were holding elections before the Netherlands was a country, the argument about dead children that gave the world its best cycling infrastructure, a region of glass that makes this the second largest food exporter on earth, and the first euthanasia law ever written. We also cover the parts the tourist brochures leave out: the Hunger Winter of 1944, the V.O.C., and the arguments this country has not finished having. CHAPTERS 0:00 The night the sea came over the wall 2:20 Polder — the land that was made 4:36 The oldest democracy started with water 6:41 Stop de Kindermoord 8:56 The Randstad — a ring of cities with an empty middle 11:00 Rotterdam, 14 May 1940, and the port 13:20 Gezelligheid, and why the curtains stay open 15:28 Chocolate sprinkles for breakfast 17:42 The day the whole country turns orange 19:49 Papadag — the country that works part-time 21:53 The Hunger Winter 23:51 How a country this small feeds the world 26:23 Gedoogbeleid — tolerance instead of legalisation 28:36 The law that lets a doctor say yes 30:36 The V.O.C. and the part nobody enjoys 33:10 One field explains all of it SOURCES AND NOTES 1953 North Sea flood: 1,836 dead in the Netherlands, 200,000 hectares flooded, about 4,500 buildings destroyed (Watersnoodmuseum). 26% of Dutch land lies below sea level and 59% is flood-prone (PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency). Hunger Winter 1944-45: around 20,000 dead; official rations in the western cities fell to about 750 calories a day in November 1944 and 400 by April 1945. In 1971 around 3,000 people died on Dutch roads, more than 400 of them children. Euthanasia was legalised in 2002 under strict due care criteria. The Netherlands is the world's second largest agricultural exporter by value (CBS). All footage licensed from stock libraries. #Netherlands #LivingInTheNetherlands #Documentary