Frankly at first people were just confused by all that had happened. The Germans had tried their best to capture Wilhelmina but failed. What followed was a slur campaign (with cartoons) led by members of the National Socialist movement (NSB) but also some Socialist (anti-monarchists) factions who criticised Wilhelmina for leaving. But it was mainly the Nazi sympathisers and the German occupiers who tried to convince the population in the nazi controlled media that Wilhelmina was a traitor and fled her country. It never worked. Already a month after the invasion there was a large public outpour of sympathy for the royal family on the birthday of Prince Bernhard (Anjer-dag) who himself was a german born Prince. After that the Nazis banned all portraits of Wilhelmina from public buildings and in response many Dutch household would make sure to have a copy of portrait of Wilhelmina somewhere in their home. The government also went into exile with the Queen and the Queen was thus able to remain the sovereign Head of State of an occupied country. The Dutch population quickly saw the benefit of having a government and a Royal Family in exile. At least they were safe and fight along the Allies to free their country. The risk - as we saw in some other occupied countries - was that the monarch would be constitutionally paralysed, isolated from the population, forced to work with the Nazis to some degree or taken as hostage to Germany. Wilhelmina was able to remain a free beacon of hope albeit from afar. Some historians have argued that was it not for the second world war Wilhelmina would have gone down in history as a rather difficult, ineffective and distant monarch. The war gave her an unwelcome opportunity to make her mark in Dutch national history and she did.