Count Julius von Zech-Burkersroda was a German diplomat. He read law in Leipzig, Heidelberg, Berlin and Halle, gained his doctorate in 1906 and joined the Prussian diplomatic corps in 1909. In 1928 he was placed in charge of the German Legation in The Hague, a position which he held until the Nazi occupation. At the end of World War II he was arrested by the Soviet occupying forces. He died aged sixty in the Untersuchungs prison in Bautzen in the winter of 1946.

Zech, Hitler’s delegate in The Hague from 1933, was a likeable person with a strong attachment to the Netherlands. Though he represented the new national-socialist Germany, he did not appear to feel a deep affinity with it. In September 1939 the SD advised Von Ribbentrop to replace Zech, but its advice was ignored. On 10 May 1940 Zech handed a statement on the German invasion of the Netherlands to the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs E.N. van Kleffens. This statement had been telegraphed to him shortly before and said that the Netherlands had been attacked because of its alleged involvement in a pending French-British strike on the Ruhr. Van Kleffens reportedly said that Zech was thunderstruck and that he had to read the German message himself. He also said that Zech bore no blame whatsoever for the German action. Zech was pensioned off on 7 June 1940.

After 1945 Zech’s image of impeccability and political impartiality proved impossible to maintain. An investigation revealed that in 1938 he was the instigator of an article in the Völkischer Beobachter saying that the ‘marxist press’ in the Netherlands was spreading lies and rumours of atrocities during the Anschluss. It reflected the demands from Berlin that governments of neutral countries were responsible for neutral reporting in the press. It is open to question whether Zech’s anti-Semitic comments in internal documents of the Auswärtige Amt were incidental, as suggested by historian L. de Jong, or the expression of a deeper conviction.

• H.J. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich. Diplomatie im Schatten der ‘Endlösung’ (Berlijn 1987) 150 e.v.
• L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog Deel I Voorspel (Den Haag 1969) 509.
• L. de Jong, Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog Deel III Mei ’40 (Den Haag 1970) 40-42.
• E.N. van Kleffens, Belevenissen 2 dl (Alphen aan de Rijn 1980-83)
• P. Stoop, ‘ Hitlers gezant in Den Haag. Julius Graf Zech’, Intermediair 23-46 (1987) 41-45.