On this day during W.W. 2

The situation continued to worsen for the Dutch throughout Monday, May 13th. More than half the country was now in German hands, and any hope of Allied relief dwindled as the French started to pull back from the Breda area, towards the major Belgian port of Antwerp and into the westernmost province of the Netherlands, Zeeland.

At her palace in the Hague, Queen Wilhelmina felt increasingly desperate. And since it was not in her nature to sit by idly and hope for the best, it happened that at a quarter past four that morning, King George VI was woken up by a police sergeant because the Dutch Queen was on the phone. “I did not believe him”, the king wrote in his diary, “but went to the telephone and it was her. She begged me to send aircraft for the defence of Holland. I passed this message on to everyone concerned and went back to bed. It is not often one is rung up at that hour, and especially by a Queen. But in these days anything may happen, and far worse things too.”

Later that day, but still quite early in the morning, the Cabinet decided that it would be best for the Queen to evacuate, following her family who had left for England the day before. But General Winkelman, the Dutch commander in chief, would have none of it, fearing a devastating effect on the morale of the fighting troops once word got out. And the Queen herself, clinging to the example of Albert I of Belgium who continued the fight on the last unoccupied bit of his country during World War I, hoped to reach Zeeland and inspire her soldiers to hold on to a final defense in that province with its broad waterways and scattered islands that make military conquest difficult.
So she traveled to Hoek van Holland by car, and boarded waiting HMS Hereward that left for Zeeland early in the afternoon. But as German planes soared the skies, the entire idea of her playing a role in a national redoubt in the extreme southwest seemed less realistic by the minute. A decision was made, and Hereward sailed for Harwich. Queen Wilhelmina would take nearly five years to return.
The Cabinet left later that day on HMS Windsor, conferring all military and civilian responsibilities upon General Winkelman.

In spite of everything, Winkelman was in no mood to capitulate. The panzers were at the Moerdijk bridge and crossing into Holland, half of Rotterdam was in German hands, and there were were still pockets of Germans remaining from the airborne operation of the 10th. But in the north, the Kornwerderzand Fortress stood firm, and the navy still ruled the IJsselmeer, denying the Germans any attempts to cross it from occupied Frisia. The east…. well, that was difficult, and nobody at headquarters really knew. But the Dutch kept planning counterattacks, which mostly failed, and kept devising one defense line after another based on blowing up bridges and inundating low-lying areas. The water, Holland’s old enemy in times of peace, has always been an old friend in times of war.

Late in the day, the Germans broke the Grebbe line. During the evening and the night, all Dutch forces were pulled back to man the easternmost defense of Holland it self, which was unsurprisingly called the “Water line”.

In the mean time, despite all that, the Germans generals, and Hitler himself, were far from happy. The conquest of Holland just lasted too long, and the thought that British troops might disembark at IJmuiden, a major harbor still firmly in Dutch hands, worried them sincerely.

Today’s instant worldwide news gathering and distribution has created a world that was unimaginable to the people who experienced the reality of World War 2 first hand on Tuesday, May 14th, 1940. The large majority of the Dutch nation, occupied or unoccupied, citizen or soldier, relied on scarce and outdated bulletins from general headquarters, carefully and optimistically worded so as to avoid defeatism. So when the news spread that the Royal Family and the Cabinet had left for England, and was dutifully confirmed by the BBC, the blow to Dutch morale was all the more devastating, precisely what General Winkelman had hoped to avoid. The voice of the few cool-headed people defending the logic of the choice made by the country’s leaders, was drowned out by a massive clamor of anger and despair. Discipline in the ranks was on the verge of collapse as the motivation to fight on gave way to the instinct to survive, be it by capitulation or by desertion.

But the General’s next broadcast held on to the spirit of optimism. And while such was of course his intent, he still had his reasons. The area held by the Dutch had again shrunk, but they had retread to a new defensive perimeter in the east of Holland in good order, and given a few days, inundations would make that line very difficult to pass. In the meantime, the Germans had made no progress in the north and still weren’t past Rotterdam in the south. The core of Holland was still intact and at least for now, seemed well protected. Capitulation was not to be considered - not yet.

Faced with the prospect of ongoing Dutch resistance while the greater battle against the combined Belgian, French and British forces in the south was their main strategic priority, the German high command resorted to new and more brutal measures. In an ultimatum directed at the military and civil authorities of Rotterdam, they demanded the surrender of that city within two hours, under the threat of its ultimate destruction. Breaking the stalemate that had existed between the Dutch to the north and the Germans to the south of the broad Nieuwe Waterweg, would finally allow the tanks of the 9th panzer division to continue their intended drive towards the Hague, ending it all.

Confusing communications between the Dutch and the Germans, the Dutch and the Dutch, and the Germans and the Germans followed, and at some point in time a new ultimatum for a later time that day was drafted. But by then, two waves of Heinkel 111 bombers were already approaching from the south and the east. The southern formation turned away after dropping only a few bombs upon spotting red signal flares from the Germans in the south of the city; but no such signal reached the 54 planes that came from the east, and for fifteen minutes, bombs rained on the center of Rotterdam. The destruction was massive, but death toll was limited to under a thousand because many had already fled the area during the preceding days of heavy fighting and shelling.
It was only after the bombing and under the threat of a repeat that evening, that Rotterdam capitulated. And the exact sequence of events that led to the first attack and the reason why it wasn’t cancelled when the local German commander, General Schmidt, was still negotiating a Dutch surrender and no longer wanted the attack to happen when it did - those circumstances have remained controversial ever since.

My mother, in her early teens at the time, saw the northern sky ablaze at more than thirty miles away as the old city went up in flames.

Still, while the psychological impact of the Rotterdam bombing was tremendous, that by itself did not bring about the Dutch surrender. It was only after the threat that the city of Utrecht, now also in the front line, would share Rotterdam’s fate, that the Dutch high command finally gave in. The capitulation order must have been met with relief by some, but there are also many reports of bitter disappointment, especially from those who were in a position that was defensible from a military point of view. General Winkelman personally phoned several commanders to convince them that the fight was over. The Luftwaffe ruled supreme, and what was the point of risking further destruction when the final outcome of the battle seemed inevitable, and prospects of French of British intervention had all but vanished?

One of the soldiers who laid down his arms that day, was my father. He was stationed relatively far to the east, in an area that was still held by the Dutch after the German attack on the Grebbe line had bypassed it to the north, and the drive through Brabant to the south. He never saw a single German soldier during those five days.

The formal capitulation of the Dutch armed forces took place on Wednesday, May 15th, 1940. The ceremony was held at Rijsoord, a small village south of burning Rotterdam, with General Winkelman and  General Von Kuechler of the 18th German army as the senior officers on either side. The colonies, the Dutchmen who had fled abroad, and the province of Zeeland where the French still fought a rearguard action, were excluded from the capitulation agreement.

In a remarkable contrast to the brutality of the war itself, the occupying German forces were at their best behavior towards the Dutch civilian population during the time that followed. It was made perfectly clear that no resistance or obstruction would be tolerated, but any misbehavior of German soldiers was also severely punished. There was even a short economic boom as individual German soldiers spent their cash at shops and local businesses and the German military provided welcome opportunities to Dutch factories ans shipyards. The Dutch have never been too scrupulous about whom they work for when there’s money to be made.

There was a reason for all this: the Germans saw the Dutch as a kindred nation, historically, racially, and linguistically closely connected to them. And indeed, the border between the east of the Netherlands and neighboring Saxony had been a very open one for centuries, and the Holy Roman Empire had once encompassed all those lands. So their long term plans were not so much an occupation, but an absorption of the Netherlands into the Third Reich. Their hope that the Dutch would eventually feel the same vanished only in later years, when the occupation took a grim and eventually violent and oppressive turn. But that is another story.

For now, the fight was over. And so is my retelling of it, which of course touched only on some of the highlights. I hope you enjoyed it.

Very grateful. Thank you for your time and passion.

22nd May 1939:  Germany and Italy signed the Pact of Steel.
It was signed by the two Foreign Ministers, Ciano and Ribbentrop.
It should have had a third signature, but Japan, unhappy at Germany’s and Italy’s refusal to put Russia properly on the agenda, refused to sign.
It was Mussolini who first called it the Pact of Steel.

23rd May 1945: Heinrich Himmler, former Reichsf�hrer-SS, committed suicide.
He had been one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany’s heirachy and probably the lost hated. He was born in Bavaria and went to university there. He was a member of a Reservist Infantry Battalion, but never saw active service in WW1.
Like many other Nazi officials, he built himself an empire. His Waffen SS numbered 38 Divisions by war’s end(some only Regiment sized) and were known for their ferocity and fervour.
More than anyone else, he implemented Hitler’s Final Solution.
Himmler craved a military position and was given one in 45; he failed abysmally.
He was sacked by Hitler on the 29th April when he realised the war was lost and tried to negotiate terms with the Western Allies and Hitler found out.
He committed suicide, aged 44, while a prisoner of the British and once his identity was discovered.

@wittmann:

He committed suicide, aged 44, while a prisoner of the British and once his identity was discovered.

When he was on the run, he had tried to avoid recognition by shaving off his mustache and disguising himself in (as I recall) an army private’s jacket, which was quite a climb-down for someone who had been one of the most powerful people in the Third Reich and whose Waffen-SS had such a competitive relationship with the regular army.  He killed himself by biting a capsule of cyanide which he had concealed in his gums, thereby ironically dying from the same general type of poison the SS had used in the death camps.

D-day?
midway?

On the 7th June the advance elements of 12SS Panzer Division, Hitler Jugend, saw their first combat. The 3 Battalion 25th Pzg Regiment was ordered to attack and push back the 3rd Canadian Inf Division which had pushed inland from Juno. In support the Regiment’s, soon to be infamous, commander, Kurt Meyer had the 2nd Battalion of the 12SS Pz Regiment, about 50 Mk IVs and a Battalion of Art. The attack was a success, but despite hopes of further gains, not the push to the sea that some expected.
During the attack a few hundred prisoners were captured and the SS Inf illegally shot 18 later today and tomorrow. 
The Canadian 3rd and the German 12SS were to be locked in combat as antagonists for a long time and both grew to respect the other. The atrocities were not an acceptable part of this rivalry, however. The 18 men and 2 others have a memorial at the Ardennes Abbey.

Kreuzfeld: I would have loved to have posted yesterday.
But what can I say and when do you stop?
It is a day we all know so well.
Sorry to have disappointed.
Midway, well, again a massive battle. Maybe I could have put up a few words. There are others who know more about the Pacific though.

Just watched Tora Tora, so I will watch the film Midway soon.
Also Surprise Attack’s thread is now over a year old. I would hate to repeat things.
Or is that allowed?
I love reading history and glad you and others read what I can dredge up.

On the 12th June 1944 Carentan was captured by Paras from the 101 Division. 
They had been fighting Von der Heydte’s 6th Para Regiment and some poorly equipped Coastal Battalions since the 10th, in an attempt to unite the two US landing beaches.
The Germans had pulled out late on the 11th.
They returned in force on the 13th when the 37th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment and Stugs(turret less tanks) from the 17th SS Panzer Battalion eventually reached the forward assembly areas. The Germans knew the importance of Carentan and put their best unit into the fight. They did gain ground against the Paras, forcing most of the 2nd Battalion of the 106 to run(Easy held its ground). By  the 14th the Germans abandoned any hope of recapturing the town. Bradley, commanding 1st US Army, had thrown the 2nd Armour’s Combat Command A at them, stabilising the situation.
There is not much to see in Carentan these days.

On the 13th June 1944 the first V1 was launched at London.
These terror attacks were Hitler’s way of detracting from the D-Day landings and worsening situation on all fronts. The attacks on England, sometimes of 100 rockets a day, continued until the launching sites in the Pas de Calais and Holland where overrun in  September and October of 44. The remaining rockets were fired on Antwerp and other continental targets.
The rocket was the precursor to the Cruise Missile and could fly at between 350-400 mph.
The Allies soon discovered means to lessen their impact, but considerable resources were needed to do so. A total of  9521 were launched at England, causing over 22000 casualties in the first three months.

On the 16th June 1940 Marechal de France Henri Philippe Petain became France’s Prime Minister, replacing Reynaud. He was 84 years old. He had been a great soldier of France; in WW1 he had excelled in defence and at counterattacking.
Now with no reserve to speak of, he decided that France must surrender to Germany and did so on the 22nd. At the time he was a very popular man and much loved by the French people.
He would live to the age of 95, having been imprisoned for treason for collaboration.

@wittmann:

Now with no reserve to speak of, he decided that France must surrender to Germany and did so on the 22nd. At the time he was a very popular man and much loved by the French people. He would live to the age of 95, having been imprisoned for treason for collaboration.

He got off lightly: he had been sentenced to death in a post-war trial, but de Gaulle commuted the sentence to life in prison in view of his advanced age (unlike Pierre Laval, who was executed for treason).  I’ve seen some of the annual messages to the French people that Petain recorded when he was head of the Vichy regime, and I doubt that they endeared him to his fellow citizens.  In them, he talks to the population in the reprimanding tone of a stern father, saying that their memory is poor (an odd thing to say for an eighty-something-year-old whose own mental powers were fading) and that they will only acquire the virtues they ought to have “through the discipline that I impose upon you.”

Very interesting CWO Marc, didn’t know about that.

@aequitas:

Very interesting CWO Marc, didn’t know about that.

Extracts from Petain’s annual speeches can be seen (with English subtitles) in the documentary The Eye of Vichy, which is available on DVD.  One of the creepiest things about Petain during the Vichy years was the way he fostered around himself a personality cult worthy of North Korea: pictures of “le Marechal Petain” handed out to schoolchildren, newsreel narrators enthusiastically describing his public appearances and private functions (including his notorious handshake with Hitler at Montoire), crowds of (presumably picked) admirers assembled in public squares to cheer him, an ocean liner named after him – the whole works.  The ocean liner, by the way, was given a new name when Petain fell from power.

At 3.30am on Sunday the 22nd June 1941 7 Infantry armies and 4 Panzer Groups rolled into Russia. From Notlrthern to South the frontier was about 1000 miles, this distance grew the further the Germans advanced.
3 million soldiers, 600000 vehicles, 3580 Panzers, 7184 guns and over 1800 aircraft were employed. Nearly every Panxer Division was involved(17 of 20). We forget the Hermans relied on horses for much of their towing and 3/4 million were used.
The invasion force was divided into 3 Armu Groups: North under Leeb, Centre under Bock and South under Von Rundstedt. They were to follow the three traditional invasion routes, heading for Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev. AG Centre was led by two Panzer Groups under the successful and experienced Guderian and Hoth.
The Russians, despite warnings, were totally surprised.

@wittmann:

At 3.30am on Sunday the 22nd June 1941 7 Infantry armies and 4 Panzer Groups rolled into Russia.

Operation Barbarossa was launched just two days short of the anniversary of Napoleon’s own invasion of Russia.  In fairness, Barbarossa had been delayed some five weeks owing to Germany’s invasion of the Balkans…but still, the June 22 date wasn’t a good omen.

I had no idea Napoleon’s invasion was in June too.
Thank you.