The German invasion of the Netherlands, otherwise known as the Battle of the Netherlands, was a military campaign, part of Case Yellow (German: Fall Gelb), the Nazi German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) and France during World War II. The battle lasted from 10 May 1940 until the surrender of the main Dutch forces on 14 May. Dutch troops under French command in the far southwestern province of Zealand continued to resist the Wehrmacht until 17 May, when Germany completed its occupation of the whole country.
The invasion of the Netherlands saw some of the earliest mass paratroop drops, to occupy tactical points and assist the advance of ground troops. The German Luftwaffe used paratroopers in the capture of several airfields in the vicinity of Rotterdam and The Hague, helping to quickly overrun the country and immobilise Dutch forces.
After the devastating Nazi bombing of Rotterdam by the Luftwaffe on 14 May, the Germans threatened to bomb other Dutch cities if the Dutch forces refused to surrender. The General Staff knew it could not stop the bombers, and ordered the Royal Netherlands Army to cease hostilities. The last occupied parts of the Netherlands were liberated in 1945.
Background
Prelude
On 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany began the Invasion of Poland. On 3 September, France and the UK declared war on Germany, but no major land operations occurred in Western Europe during the period known as the Phoney War in the winter of 1939–1940. During this time, the British and French built up their forces in expectation of a long war.
Nazi Germany and the Stalin regime had signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and completed their conquest of Poland in September 1939.
On 9 October 1939, Adolf Hitler ordered plans to be made for an invasion of the Low Countries, to use them as a base against Great Britain and to pre-empt a similar attack by Western Allied forces, which could threaten the vital Ruhr Area. A joint Dutch-Belgian peace offer between the two sides was rejected on 7 November.
The Netherlands Armed Forces were ill-prepared to resist such an invasion. When the Hitler regime came to power, the Dutch had begun to re-arm, but more slowly than France or Belgium; only in 1936 did the defence budget start to be gradually increased. Successive Dutch governments tended to avoid openly identifying Nazi Germany as an acute military threat. Partly this was caused by a wish not to antagonise a vital trade partner, even to the point of repressing criticism of Nazi policies; partly it was made inevitable by a policy of strict budgetary limits with which the conservative Dutch governments tried in vain to fight the Great Depression, which hit Dutch society particularly hard.
Hendrikus Colijn, Prime Minister of the Netherlands between 1933 and 1939, was personally convinced that Germany would not violate Dutch neutrality; senior officers made no effort to mobilise public opinion in favour of improving military defence.
International tensions grew since 1936: crises were caused by the German occupation of the Rhineland in March 1936; the Anschluss in March 1938, the Sudeten crisis in autumn 1938; the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in March 1939 and the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939. These events forced the Dutch government to exercise greater vigilance, but they limited their reaction as much as they could. The most important measure was a partial mobilisation of 100,000 men in April 1939.
After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the ensuing outbreak of the Second World War, the Netherlands hoped to remain neutral, as it had done during World War I 25 years earlier. To ensure this neutrality, the Dutch army was mobilised from 24 August and entrenched. Large sums (almost 900 million guilders) were spent on defence. It proved very difficult to obtain new matériel in wartime, however, especially as the Dutch had ordered some of their new equipment from Germany, which deliberately delayed deliveries. Moreover, a considerable part of the funds were intended for the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), much of it related to a plan to build three battlecruisers.
The strategic position of the Low Countries, located between France and Germany on the flanks of their fortification lines, made the area a logical route for an offensive by either side. In a 20 January 1940 radio speech, Winston Churchill tried to convince them not to wait for an inevitable German attack, but to join the Anglo-French Entente.
The governments of Belgium (Hubert Pierlot was PM since 22. February 1939) and the Netherlands (Second De Geer cabinet) refused, even though the German attack plans had fallen into Belgian hands after a German aircraft crash in January 1940, in what became known as the Mechelen Incident.
The French supreme command considered violating the neutrality of the Low Countries if they had not joined the Anglo-French coalition before the planned large Entente offensive in the summer of 1941, but the French Cabinet, fearing a negative public reaction, vetoed the idea. Kept in consideration was a plan to invade if Germany attacked the Netherlands alone, necessitating an Entente advance through Belgium, or if the Netherlands assisted the enemy by tolerating a German advance into Belgium through the southern part of their territory, both possibilities discussed as part of the hypothèse Hollande. The Dutch government never officially formulated a policy on how to act in case of either contingency; the majority of ministers preferred to resist an attack, while a minority and Queen Wilhelmina refused to become a German ally whatever the circumstances. The Dutch tried on several occasions to act as an intermediary to reach a negotiated peace settlement between the Entente and Germany.
After the German invasions of Denmark and of Norway, followed by a warning by the new Japanese naval attaché Captain Tadashi Maeda that a German attack on the Netherlands was certain, it became clear to the Dutch military that staying out of the conflict might prove impossible. They started to fully prepare for war, both mentally and physically. Dutch border troops were put on greater alert. Reports of the presumed actions of a fifth column in Scandinavia caused widespread fears that the Netherlands too had been infiltrated by German agents assisted by traitors. Countermeasures were taken against a possible assault on airfields and ports. A state of emergency was declared on 19 April. However, most civilians still cherished the illusion that their country might be spared, an attitude that has since been described as a state of denial. The Dutch hoped that the restrained policy of the Entente and Central Powers during the First World War might be repeated and tried to avoid the attention of the Great Powers and a war in which they feared a loss of human life comparable to that of the previous conflict. On 10 April, Britain and France repeated their request that the Dutch enter the war on their side, but were again refused.
Dutch forces
Royal Netherlands Army
In the Netherlands, all the objective conditions were present for a successful defence: a dense population, wealthy, young, disciplined and well-educated; a geography favouring the defender; and a strong technological and industrial base including an armaments industry. However, these had not been exploited: while the Wehrmacht at the time still had many shortcomings in equipment and training, the Dutch army, by comparison, was far less prepared for war. The myth of the general German equipment advantage over the opposing armies in the Battle of France was in fact a reality in the case of the Battle of the Netherlands. Germany had a modern army with tanks and dive bombers (such as the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka), while the Netherlands had an army whose armoured forces comprised only 39 armoured cars and five tankettes, and an air force in large part consisting of biplanes. The Dutch government's attitude towards war was reflected in the state of the country's armed forces, which had not significantly expanded their equipment since before the First World War, and were inadequately armed even by the standards of 1918. An economic recession lasting from 1920 until 1927 and the general détente in international relations caused a limitation of the defence budget. In that decade, only 1.5 million guilders per annum was spent on equipment. Both in 1931 and 1933, commissions appointed to economise even further failed, because they concluded that the acceptable minimum had been reached and advised that a spending increase was urgently needed. Only in February 1936 was a bill passed creating a special 53.4 million guilder defence fund.
The lack of a trained manpower base, a large professional organisation, or sufficient matériel reserves precluded a swift expansion of Dutch forces. There was just enough artillery to equip the larger units: eight infantry divisions (combined in four Army Corps), one Light (i.e. motorised) Division and two independent brigades (Brigade A and Brigade B), each with the strength of half a division or five battalions. All other infantry combat unit troops were raised as light infantry battalions that were dispersed all over the territory to delay enemy movement. About two thousand pillboxes had been constructed, but in lines without any depth. Modern large fortresses like the Belgian stronghold of Eben Emael were nonexistent; the only modern fortification complex was that at Kornwerderzand, guarding the Afsluitdijk. Total Dutch forces equalled 48 regiments of infantry as well as 22 infantry battalions for strategic border defence. In comparison, Belgium, despite a smaller and more aged male population, fielded 22 full divisions and the equivalent of 30 divisions when smaller units were included.
After September 1939, desperate efforts were made to improve the situation, but with very little result. Germany, for obvious reasons, delayed its deliveries; France was hesitant to equip an army that would not unequivocally take its side. The one abundant source of readily available weaponry, the Soviet Union, was inaccessible because the Dutch, contrary to most other nations, did not recognise the communist regime. An attempt in 1940 to procure Soviet armour captured by Finland failed.
On 10 May, the most conspicuous deficiency of the Dutch Army lay in its shortage of armour. Whereas the other major participants all had a considerable armoured force, the Netherlands had not been able to obtain the minimum of 146 modern tanks (110 light, 36 medium) they had already considered necessary in 1937. A single Renault FT tank, for which just one driver had been trained and which had the sole task of testing antitank obstacles, had remained the only example of its kind and was no longer in service by 1940. There were two squadrons of armoured cars, each with a dozen Landsverk M36 or M38 vehicles. Another dozen DAF M39 cars were in the process of being taken into service, some still having to be fitted with their main armament. A single platoon of five Carden-Loyd Mark VI tankettes used by the Artillery completed the list of Dutch armour.
The Dutch Artillery had available a total of 676 howitzers and field guns: 310 Krupp 75 mm field guns, partly produced in licence; 52 105 mm Bofors howitzers, the only really modern pieces; 144 obsolete Krupp 125 mm guns; 40 150 mm sFH13's; 72 Krupp 150 mm L/24 howitzers and 28 Vickers 152 mm L/15 howitzers. As antitank-guns 386 Böhler 47 mm L/39s were available, which were effective weapons but too few in number, being only at a third of the planned strength; another three hundred antiquated 6 Veld (57 mm) and 8 cm staal (84 mm) field guns performed the same role for the covering forces. Only eight of the 120 modern 105 mm pieces ordered from Germany had been delivered at the time of the invasion. Most artillery was horse-drawn. Volunteers were equipped with Oerlikon 20 mm cannons for air defence.
The Dutch Infantry used about 2,200 7.92 mm Schwarzlose M.08 machine guns, partly licence produced, and eight hundred Vickers machine guns. Many of these were fitted in the pillboxes; each battalion had a heavy machine gun company of twelve. The Dutch infantry squads were equipped with an organic light machine gun, the M.20 Lewis machine gun, of which about eight thousand were available. Most Dutch infantry were equipped with the Geweer M.95 rifle, adopted in 1895. There were but six 80 mm mortars for each regiment. This lack of firepower seriously impaired the fighting performance of the Dutch infantry.
Despite the Netherlands being the seat of Philips, one of Europe's largest producers of radio equipment, the Dutch army mostly used telephone connections; only the Artillery had been equipped with the modest number of 225 radio sets.