In the early hours of May 10th, 1940, a large formation of German bombers overflew the Netherlands, and disappeared into the west, giving the impression of an operation against Britain. But their true intent became clear before too long: the planes turned around above the North Sea and closed in on the Dutch coast at 3:55 AM to attack the already outnumbered Dutch air force on the ground. At the same time, German forces crossed the border on a 300 mile front into the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
The Dutch were not well prepared for war. Numerically, their army of 280,000 was a force to be reckoned with; but years of neglect and budget cuts had left the soldiers with a severe lack of modern equipment and adequate training. An effort had been made in recent years to repair these defects, but it had been too little and too late.
Still, some optimism prevailed at headquarters. It was assumed that the Dutch army could stand its ground for at least a fortnight, and that strong French and British units would arrive in time to save the country. In the mean time, the natural defense lines, based on the many rivers and waterways that cross the land, and the possibility of inundations, would stall the enemy.
Reality was very different, however. Negotiations with the Belgians, French and British had been going on for months, in secret so as not to compromise the semblance of neutrality. But there was no agreement, and the failure to set up a joint defense line with Belgium resulted in a forty mile gap in what was supposed to be the Allied front line. It was precisely there that the strongest German forces would strike.
The north and the east were quickly overrun. That was no surprise, as it had been strategically impossible to hold these areas that share a long border with Germany. The defense focused on keeping the enemy out of the west of the country, where the big cities are - the part of the Netherlands that is actually called “Holland”.
But the situation in the south looked grim from the very beginning. The Germans captured a single railway bridge that allowed them to quickly send an armored train across the Meuse river, soon broke the defense line that was supposed to protect the province of Noord-Brabant, and drove west without meeting too much resistance.
Further south, the great Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael had succumbed to a daring airborne raid.
The French seventh army dashed north in an attempt to plug the gap, but when they found that most of the Dutch forces had already withdrawn into “Fortress Holland”, their effort petered out. This lack of coordination between the Allied armies probably saved the day for the Germans, because actually, not everything had gone quite according to plan for them.
Germany had hoped to overwhelm the Netherlands in a single day, by combining an overland invasion from the east with an large airborne attack aimed at capturing the city of the Hague, where the government, the Queen, and the military headquarters were. Paratroopers were dropped at airfields near the city, with the intent to capture those, and allow transport planes to land more troops. But the entire effort succumbed to a Dutch counterattack, and the surviving Germans had to withdraw south, to link up with other forces that had landed near Rotterdam. But all Germans in the west were relatively lightly armed and facing numerically superior opposition. Their survival would ultimately depend on the arrival of the 9th panzer division from the south, across the bridges that separate Holland from Noord-Brabant.
The Dutch and the French may well have missed an opportunity there. They had a few hours to deny the Germans the use of those bridges. If they had, Germany could have lost most of its Fallschirmjaeger, including their overall commander, General Kurt Student.
