Het Parool (Dutch pronunciation: [ɦɛt paːˈroːl]) is an Amsterdam-based daily newspaper. It was first published on 10 February 1941 as a resistance paper during the German occupation of the Netherlands (1940–1945). In English, its name means The Password or The Motto.

The paper was preceded by a stenciled newsletter which was started in May 1940 by Frans Goedhart. In late 1940, Wim van Norden joined the group of producers of the newsletter; Van Norden would later serve as director of the newspaper between 1945 and 1979. Jaap Nunes Vaz also became involved with the newspaper. In 1944, the paper, albeit illegal and vigorously persecuted, reached a circulation of approximately 100,000, and it was distributed by the Dutch resistance. Other important contributors were Simon Carmiggelt and Max Nord, who lived with Van Norden and their families on the Reguliersgracht, in the headquarters of the paper, which was never discovered by the German occupiers.

Numerous staff were apprehended and killed by the Germans and their Dutch collaborators. Alphons Meeuwis who distributed the paper was arrested in 1941 and sent to various camps. Nunes Vaz was arrested by the Gestapo on 25 October 1942 and sent to Sobibor concentration camp.

After the war, Het Parool quickly became one of the largest newspapers in the Netherlands, partly because much of the population appreciated it for being the most prolific resistance paper and partly because newspapers that had collaborated with the German occupier were banned from publication.

Apart from its main publication, Het Parool published magazines and local newspapers in the Netherlands. A string of locally-based newspapers appeared alongside Het Parool, including Het Rotterdamsch Parool (1947–1971), Nieuw Utrechtsch Dagblad, Haagsch Dagblad, and Het Flevoparool (1982–1988). These local publications were all discontinued in the late sixties, early seventies, or (in the case of Het Flevoparool) eighties.

Readership reached its peak in the mid-1960s with a subscription of over 400,000, making it the second-biggest newspaper in the Netherlands at that time. In the latter part of the 1960s, the newspaper, under conservative editor in chief Herman Sandberg, vehemently supported the Vietnam War, which alienated a substantial part of Het Parool's majority liberal and left-wing readership. This started a steady decline in subscriptions and circulation, which persisted for almost four decades.

In 1968 Het Parool started the publishing company Perscombinatie (English: Press Combination) with competitor De Volkskrant, mainly to join investment in new printing presses. In 1973 Trouw, also a former resistance paper, joined the corporation.

At the start of Perscombinatie, Het Parool was the leading paper, but due to its declining circulation, De Volkskrant took over the prime role within the company starting in the early eighties, although the owner of the Het Parool, Stichting Het Parool (English: The Parool Foundation) remained the majority shareholder, with 57% of the shares of Perscombinatie. After Stichting Het Parool merged with book publisher Meulenhoff, the two formed Perscombinatie and Meulenhoff & Company (PCM).