Dutch Resistance - German Invasion

German Invasion

On 10 May 1940, German troops started their surprise attack on the Netherlands without a declaration of war. The day before, small groups of German troops wearing Dutch uniforms had entered the country. Many of them wore 'Dutch' helmets, some made of cardboard as there were not enough originals. The Germans employed about 750.000 men, three times the Dutch army, and some 1100 planes (Dutch army: 125) and six armored trains, managed to destroy 80% of the Dutch military aircraft on the ground in one morning mostly by bombing. Although the Dutch army was inferior in nearly every way, consisting mostly of conscripts, poorly led, poorly outfitted and with poor communications, the Germans lost over 500 planes in the three days of the attack, a loss they would never replenish. Also the first large scale paratroop-attack in history failed, the Dutch managing to recapture the three German-conquered airfields near the Hague within the day. Remarkable was the existence of privately-owned anti-aircraft guns. Not less amazing may be the fact that the Dutch army owned only 1 tank.

Major areas of intensive military resistance were

• the Grebbelinie, a north-south line some 50 km east of the capital Amsterdam, from Amersfoort to the Waal, fortified, with field guns, with extensive inundations; the Dutch had to surrender after heavy losses
• Kornwerderzand, with a bunker-complex that defended the east end of the Afsluitdijk connecting Friesland to North Holland and was successfully defended until the capitulation
• Rotterdam, the bridges over the Waal, successfully defended until the capitulation by the Dutch Marines.

After four days it seemed as if the Dutch had stopped the German advance, although at that time, the Germans had already invaded some 70% of the country, excluding only the urban areas in the west. Adolf Hitler, who had expected the occupation to be completed in two days (in Denmark in April 1940 it had taken only one day), ordered Rotterdam to be annihilated, leading to the Rotterdam Blitz on 14 May that destroyed much of the city center and killed about 800 people and left some 85,000 homeless, to be followed by every other major Dutch city if the Dutch refused to surrender. The Dutch, having lost the bulk of their air force, realized they could not stop the German bombers and surrendered.

The 2,000 Dutch soldiers who died defending their country, together with at least 800 civilians who perished in the flames of Rotterdam, were the first victims of a Nazi occupation which was to last five years.