The Liberation The Netherlands
During the late summer and early autumn of 1944, as the Allies swept through northern France and Belgium, the liberation of the Netherlands seemed close at hand.
In fact, Dutch liberation was only achieved in May 1945 after a tough and frustrated campaign. When the population was finally freed, the Netherlands emerged from almost exactly five years of Nazi occupation.
German invasion and occupation
On 10 May 1940, the German Army crossed its eastern frontier into the Netherlands using the techniques of blitzkrieg – fast-moving war. The Germans viewed the Netherlands as something of an irritation on their path to France, which they sought to reach as soon as possible. Duly taken by surprise, the Dutch Army fought hard for five days, but a flat country with only rivers to act as natural defences was difficult to defend. On 14 May Rotterdam was subjected to heavy aerial bombardment, and when other cities were threatened with the same treatment the Dutch army capitulated. The following day the surrender was signed and the occupation of the Netherlands began. Queen Wilhelmina, a passionate anti-Nazi, had already left the country for London. When her prime minister, Dirk Jan de Geer, tried to negotiate with Hitler, the queen dismissed him and appointed Pieter Gerbrandy to lead the government-in-exile.
Credit: Getty Images
Liberation Day in the Netherlands
The new Nazi overlords, under the leadership of Reichskommisar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, hoped they would find a sympathetic ally in the Netherlands, which they considered a fellow “Aryan” nation. Day-to-day administration continued under the Dutch civil service, but attempts to Nazify the Dutch population met with almost complete failure. German treatment of the civilian population was relatively mild initially, but occupation became increasingly repressive in the face of Dutch non-cooperation and resistance. Nazi economic exploitation of the country included deporting around 400,000 people to Germany as labourers; those who resisted were met with brutal reprisals.
As an extreme anti-Semite, Seyss-Inquart was quick to implement anti-Jewish measures, forcing Jews to register and removing them from all official positions. Of the 140,000 Jews in the Netherlands – many of whom were refugees from Germany – a total of 107,000 were interned in Camp Westerbork, a transit camp in the country’s northeast. From here they were transported onwards to concentration and extermination camps across Europe, including nearly 35,000 sent to the extermination camp at Sobibór in Poland between March and July 1943. Seventy-five percent of the Dutch Jewish community died in World War II, a far higher figure than almost all other Western European nations.
As the war progressed and the Nazi grip tightened, the Dutch Resistance grew stronger and more active. Made up of diverse groups across the political spectrum, its activities focused on destroying German supplies and munitions, organizing strikes, hiding Nazi “undesirables” and forging identity papers. Military resistance wasn’t easy in a densely populated country with no mountains or large forests to use as hideaways, but there were several successful assassinations, including the death of the collaborationist Dutch officer, General Seyffardt. Unfortunately, the Nazis proved adept at infiltrating resistance movements and by the end of the war around 23,000 resistance fighters had been rounded up and executed, bringing the total Dutch casualties in World War II to at least 200,000.
›› LRE audiospots in the Netherlands
There are almost 200 LRE audiospots in the Netherlands, telling stories – both big and small – relating to the war and the Liberation. Throughout this guide, audiospots are marked with the headphone symbol 
. All the stories can be heard at liberationroute.com; at brabantremembers.com you can view similar experiences online.
Significant sites
Significant sites are marked on the map
Liberation Museum Zeeland, Nieuwdorp.
Airborne Museum “Hartenstein”, Oosterbeek.
Allied forces overran northern France and Belgium in the summer and autumn of 1944, and the Dutch expected they would soon be liberated. There was a mood of optimism in the air: 5 September is still known as “Dolle Dinsdag” (Mad Tuesday) after the premature celebrations that rippled through the Netherlands. It was a false dawn, however, and the Dutch would have to wait until May the following year before their country was entirely free.
The liberation of the Netherlands proved to be a slow and protracted grind, beginning with two campaigns: the ambitious – but only partially successful – Operation Market Garden, close to the German border in the east, and the Battle of the Scheldt in the southwest. As the Germans came closer to losing the war, they became increasingly ruthless. Reprisals against the Resistance and civilians grew more frequent, and in the bitter winter of 1944–1945 thousands died from starvation as the result of a German blockade.
By the late summer of 1944, the Allies desperately needed a substantial harbour for troop supplies in order to continue their advance. Capturing coastal Zeeland, at the Netherlands’ southwestern edge, became vitally important.
The Allies had won the Belgian port of Antwerp, with its docks intact, in early September 1944, but it was of little use while the Nazis still controlled the huge estuary of the River Scheldt in the Netherlands. Taking Zeeland, where the key German defences of the estuary lay, was a strategic necessity.
Despite the importance of the Scheldt estuary, the Allies focused their advance further east, as Operation Market Garden was rolled out – Montgomery’s ambitious plan to strike at Germany via an airborne attack deep within the Netherlands. As a result, the front line around Antwerp remained almost unchanged for a month. It was finally impressed on Montgomery (by Eisenhower and Admiral Ramsay among others) just how vital control of the Scheldt was, and the difficult task of clearing the German defences fell to the First Canadian Army, commanded – in the absence of General Crerar through illness – by Lieutenant General Guy Simonds.
In order to gain control of the Scheldt, the Allies deployed six divisions tasked with taking four key targets: the area north of Antwerp (to gain access to the South Beveland peninsula); the Breskens pocket, north of the Leopold Canal; South Beveland itself; and Walcheren Island. Much of the terrain was made up of “polders”, low-lying fields prone to flooding and protected by dykes, making the movement of men and machines extremely onerous.
The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division set off north from Antwerp on 2 October 1944, heading across the Antwerp-Turnhout canal towards the entrance to South Beveland. Progress was slow and steady, but it came to a halt at the town of Woensdrecht – the key access point at the neck of the peninsula – where the Canadians encountered strong resistance from veteran German defenders, including the elite 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment. One of the bloodiest engagements was fought on 13 October, when the Canadian Black Watch Regiment attacked well-prepared German positions across an open field, incurring heavy losses. Eventually, on 16 October, the Canadians reached a ridge above the town and succeeded in repelling the fierce German counterattacks.
Following in the wake of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division was the 4th Canadian Armoured Division which, on 20 October, liberated Bergen op Zoom before proceeding to Sint Philipsland and sinking several German vessels in Zijpe harbour.
Operation Switchback: the Battle of the Breskens Pocket
On the Scheldt’s southern shore, meanwhile, to the northwest of Antwerp, the 3rd Canadian Division was encountering similarly dogged opposition from the German 64th Infantry Division. On 6 October 1944, the Canadians had launched their attack – codenamed Switchback – with the aim of establishing two bridgeheads on the opposite bank of the Leopold canal and clearing the so-called Breskens Pocket on the other side. Resistance was stiff, and on 9 October an amphibious assault was made at the small village of Hoofdplaat to help relieve pressure. The town of Breskens finally fell on 21 October, and on 2 November the commanding German general, Knut Eberding, was captured. The next day the remaining German forces laid down their weapons.
›› Canada’s role in World War II
As a British dominion and member of the Commonwealth, Canada declared war on Germany in 1939, shortly after Great Britain. This caused some tension between Canadian anglophones, who were generally pro-war, and francophones, who were reluctant to get involved in another conflict on a distant continent so soon after the horrors of World War I.
Canada’s citizens volunteered enthusiastically for army service overseas. Although only one division was initially sent to Europe, the country’s contribution to the war effort increased exponentially, despite the huge financial cost to Canada – a country with a low population which had suffered considerably in the Great Depression.
Canadian soldiers first saw action in Europe in the disastrous Dieppe raid of 1942, which resulted in the deaths of 907 Canadian nationals and a further 1882 being taken as prisoners of war. In July 1943 Canadian troops participated in the invasion and liberation of Sicily and then crossed to the Italian mainland with the British Eighth Army in September. They distinguished themselves in the demanding and bloody battles of the Italian campaign, particularly at Ortona in December 1943, where there were 2339 Canadian casualties. Canadian fighting forces were sustained by a steady stream of volunteers; it wasn’t until 1944 that conscription was introduced to counteract the losses in battle.
On D-Day, Canada was allocated Juno Beach, where the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division secured all its objectives. It went on to fight at the Battle of Normandy, notably in the clearing of the Falaise Pocket. The First Canadian Army formed the left flank of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group as it moved north from France up the Channel coast via Dieppe, Boulogne and Calais into Belgium.
Canadian troops also played a crucial role in the protracted Battle of the Scheldt and contributed three divisions to Operation Veritable, the invasion of the Rhineland. In the final months of the war, the First Canadian Army, commanded by Harry Crerar, was tasked with re-entering the Netherlands from Germany.
Over one million men and women – ten percent of the population – served in the Canadian armed forces during World War II. Of those, around 45,000 died, 54,000 were wounded and nine thousand were taken prisoner.
Operation Vitality, the capture of South Beveland
The 2nd Canadian Division – having captured Woensdrecht – moved up the Beveland peninsula on 24 October. Here they engaged the German 70th Infantry Division, many of whom were weakened by chronic stomach disorders. The first mission of the Canadian division was to cross the Kreekrakdam, which connected South Beveland to the mainland. The difficult terrain resulted in the failure of an initial armoured assault, and it became clear that the infantry would have to capture the dam.
The infantry encountered little resistance before they reached the main German defensive line on the South Beveland canal. Believing a frontal attack would be costly, the Canadian forces were to outflank the German line with the help of the newly arrived Scottish 52nd Lowland Division. On 26 October, the Scots launched a successful amphibious assault across the Scheldt, forcing the German troops to withdraw to their next line of defence on the Sloedam, the 1.5km causeway linking South Beveland to Walcheren.
All that remained for the Allies to do was to take heavily fortified Walcheren Island. To limit German defensive options, RAF bombers breached the dykes on 3 October 1944, flooding most of the island.
The Allies had two ways of attacking Walcheren – by sea or land, although the only overland connection to the island was the Sloedam, which had been fortified at both ends. The causeway was attacked on 31 October by the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, but proved difficult to overcome. To support the stalled offensive, on the night of 2 and 3 November, Scottish soldiers of the 6th Battalion Cameronians crossed the waters 2km south of the causeway in a surprise attack, codenamed Mallard. The successful operation forced a German withdrawal, enabling the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division to gain ground. The causeway finally fell to the Allies on 3 November.
On 1 November, another amphibious landing had taken place at Vlissingen (Flushing), on the southwest of Walcheren. British, French and Dutch commandos were supported by heavy bombardment of the German coastal defences, and within a few hours had captured the centre of Vlissingen – although German resistance continued in the north of the city. A second landing at Westkapelle, northwest of Vlissingen, went less smoothly. Four of the heaviest German batteries were still in operation and engaged a group of 25 British gunboats that had supported the landings. After two hours only five of the Allied boats were operational, but the landing craft survived and the commando forces reached the shore, where they silenced the German guns. Middelburg, the island’s main town and the capital of Zeeland, was captured on 6 November. The Scheldt estuary had been cleared of German forces, but it took another three weeks to clear the area of mines and for the first Allied shipping to reach Antwerp.
The Battle of the Schledt had lasted just over a month, and had cost the Allies dearly. The First Canadian Army suffered nearly 13,000 casualties, around half of which were Canadian nationals.
Zeeland and South Holland sites
Coudorp 41, Nieuwdorp, 
bevrijdingsmuseumzeeland.nl
Located on Walcheren, about 9km east of Middleburg, this ever-expanding museum is dedicated to the story of Zeeland in World War II, with a special focus on the Battle of the Scheldt. The Dutch regard the Scheldt as a “forgotten” battle and compare its significance to the Normandy landings – the only other occasion that the Allies breached the Atlantic Wall. In 2017, a 3-hectare Liberation Park opened on-site, with some fascinating outdoor exhibits including bunkers, a Sherman tank, an original Bailey bridge and a church built from Nissen huts – the replica of an emergency church built at nearby Ellewoutsdijk when the original was hit by a bomb. The museum also draws attention to the Zeeland Battalion, a group of volunteers who, after the liberation of Zeeland, fought alongside the Allied forces to free the rest of the country.
On 2 October 1944, the Allies dropped leaflets over Walcheren urging its civilians to evacuate the island immediately. No explanation was given – the warning was cryptic and only became understood after the events that followed – and the Germans forbade anyone to leave. The next day, the RAF breached the dyke near Westkapelle in a bombardment that cost the lives of more than 150 civilians and destroyed most of the town. Further attacks followed on the dykes at Veere, Vlissingen and Fort Rammekens. Since about eighty percent of Walcheren lay below sea level, the island was almost completely submerged. Thousands of civilians were forced to abandon their possessions and flee to dry land.
The flooding of Walcheren remains controversial. The operation was designed to disrupt the German lines of communication and prevent the movement of German troops, but in practice, the advantages were negligible. By the autumn of 1944, the Germans had no more reserves to bring in and deploy. It may have been that the flooding of Walcheren was ordered as a preventative measure against Hitler treating Walcheren as a Festung – a fortress to be defended at all costs – knowing that if the Germans lost Walcheren then Antwerp would be reopened to Allied shipping.
The damage done to the island was enormous, and it would take until the beginning of 1946 before the dykes were fully closed and the long process of recovery could begin.
Zuidstraat 154–156, Westkapelle, polderhuiswestkapelle.nl
On the west coast of Walcheren at Westkapelle, the Polderhuis Museum covers the history and culture of the area with a special emphasis on the wartime years. Along the dunes around Westkapelle are several monuments relating to the Battle of the Scheldt, including two at the Erika dune where 172 Allied troops lost their lives on 1 November 1944.
Just off the N665 road, heading east from Arnemuiden, is a turning for the Sloedam Memorial, a group of stone monuments that commemorates two wartime operations. The first was a rearguard action by a French Infantry Division after the Dutch surrender in May 1940; the second was the battle for the causeway, Operation Mallard, fought by Scottish and Canadian troops in November 1944.
On the morning of 23 January 1945, German commandos came ashore at Sint Philipsland in an attempted counterattack against the Allied forces. After blowing up a water tower they headed for the town of Anna Jacobapolder but were successfully repelled. In the defence of the town three Poles, two Englishmen and the Dutch section commander, Piet Avontuur, lost their lives. A stone monument with a carved Phoenix commemorates those killed in the attack.
Credit: Adel Csala
Display at Liberation Museum Zeeland
The war memorial in Renesse comprises a stone sculpture of a woman dressed in local costume holding the body of a lifeless man. It commemorates ten captured resistance fighters who, after trying to escape to North Beveland, were hanged by the Germans on 10 December 1944 at the entrance to Moermond Castle. A black stone plaque standing nearby remembers the civilians and soldiers of the area who were killed during World War II and in hostilities that took place in the Dutch East Indies (1945–1962).
Coolhaven 375, Rotterdam, museumrotterdam.nl/en/bezoek
On 14 May 1940, four days into the German invasion of the Netherlands, the Luftwaffe subjected Rotterdam to a major bombardment. A residential area was hit, and the city’s historic centre was largely destroyed. This small museum, located close to the Coolhaven metro stop, relates the devastation and rebirth of Rotterdam, the Netherlands' second-largest city and major port. A film outlines the story of the bombing, while fascinating objects from the period are displayed. Note that individuals can only visit at weekends, as the weekdays are reserved for groups.
At Plein 1940, a twenty-minute walk eastwards from the museum, is the famous Osip Zadkine sculpture-memorial. The Destroyed City, depicting a bronze man with a hole in his chest, symbolizes a postwar Rotterdam that had lost its historic heart. The piece was donated to the city in 1953.
Pompstationsweg 32, The Hague, oranjehotel.org
Scheveningen, a seaside resort close to The Hague, is where the Gestapo confined and interrogated political prisoners and resistance fighters in a section of the town’s prison. It was given the ironic nickname, the “Oranjehotel” (Orange hotel). Around 25,000 people passed through its gates, of whom 215 were executed. The remainder were sent on to concentration or labour camps. One of the death cells, Cell 601, has been preserved in its original state with messages from prisoners scratched on the walls, a poignant memorial to those who were incarcerated here. The executions are commemorated at the site where they took place, on the dunes at nearby Waalsdorpervlakte.
On 12 September 1944, the Allied armies in Belgium crossed the Dutch border near the village of Mesch in South Limburg, initiating the liberation of the Netherlands. They reached Maastricht two days later.
After the Allies had entered the Netherlands and liberated Maastricht, heavy fighting followed throughout the province, with the Maas (Meuse) river becoming a front line. The division that fought the toughest battles in this area was the 52nd British Lowland Division, which counted 752 casualties. Large swathes of Limburg were liberated during the final months of 1944, but early 1945 witnessed further engagement in which numerous soldiers and civilians lost their lives.
It took the Allied forces until 1 March 1945 to liberate Venlo in the north of Limburg, where hostilities centred on the airport – baptized “Yankee 55” after its capture by American troops. Because the Germans had blown up most of the airport before their retreat, the Americans set up a tented camp they called the “Venlo Hilton”.
Credit: Liberation Route Europe
Symmetrical lines at Margraten American Cemetery and Memorial
A legion of reporters and photographers followed the armies on both sides of the conflict as closely as they could. These unarmed, non-combatants took grave risks – some joined frightened men in landing craft; others jumped out of planes into enemy fire beside seasoned paratroopers. War correspondents often had an ambivalent attitude towards what they saw and experienced. They were attracted by the glamour of war and the number of compelling stories it generated, but were repulsed by the sordid reality of life on the front line.
Truthfulness was always a challenge. Should they tell their readers, listeners and viewers at home what was really happening – including the misjudgments of generals and the substantial deaths by accident and friendly fire – at the risk of undermining commitment to the war effort? Or should they maintain the myths of glory and sacrifice in the interests of patriotism? Even more complicated was the question of whether or not to portray the enemy soldiers as human beings – even the victims of evil leaders – or as two-dimensional villains.
Some correspondents went on to have successfully literary careers; others wrote seminal accounts of the war. A few reporters didn’t survive. Working in a dangerous field, the closer journalists got to the story, the greater the personal risk.
Maastrichterlaan 45, Beek, eyewitnesswo2.nl/informatie
The Eyewitness Museum uses the power of storytelling to bring World War II to life. The “eyewitness” in question is a fictional German paratrooper, August Segel, whose story is told through thirteen dioramas of wartime scenes, peopled by 150 life-sized mannequins and a number of prized objects. Sound effects accompany the battle scenes, and background information is provided throughout.
Margraten American Cemetery and Memorial
Amerikaanse Begraafplaats 1, Margraten, abmc.gov
Just outside the town of Margraten, the American War Cemetery and Memorial is a moving monument to more than eight thousand US servicemen who died in the Dutch and Belgian campaigns of late 1944 and 1945. The centrepiece is a stone quadrangle recording the names of the fallen soldiers, together with a small visitors’ room and a pictorial and narrative description of the ebb and flow of the local campaign. Beyond the quadrangle, white marble crosses stretch into the distance. The cemetery is located near the historic Cologne–Boulogne highway, once trodden by Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Napoleon and Kaiser Wilhelm II.
This cemetery in Ysselsteyn is the only German military cemetery in the whole of the Netherlands. Eighty-five German soldiers from World War I and 32,000 combatants from World War II are buried here across 28 hectares of land.
Most of France and Belgium had been liberated by September 1944, and Eisenhower, Patton and Montgomery were divided about how to progress towards Germany.
Fearing that an orthodox campaign would take many months and cost many lives, Montgomery argued for a pencil thrust north though the Netherlands and then east into the Ruhr, around the back of the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, which he believed offered a good chance of ending the war early.
Despite preferring to advance across a broad front, the cautious Eisenhower eventually agreed to Montgomery’s plan: Operation Market Garden. Montgomery’s offensive would divert resources from the Scheldt estuary, but would bring four immediate benefits: the German army in the western Netherlands would be cut off; V2 rocket launchpads would be overrun and disabled; the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heartland, could be surrounded; and a route to Berlin across north-central Germany would open up. A broad front at the Veluwe, with a deep bridgehead over the Ijssel river, would serve as a springboard for an offensive into the Ruhr. Montgomery (and the Allied planners who supported his idea) had good reason to be confident. The German army had already been pushed back from France and Belgium and was considered a spent force, incapable of mounting a defence against the Allied troops who had the momentum of war with them.
The plan for Market Garden called for the largest airborne operation in the history of warfare (codenamed “Market”). Thousands of British, American and Polish paratroopers would be flown from England and supported by an overland advance (codenamed “Garden”) by Brian G. Horrocks' British XXX Corps, setting out from Belgium. Three major rivers would need crossing, and nine bridges would have to be either captured or rebuilt. Crucial to the whole plan was the seizure of one of the two bridges across the Neder Rijn, a tributary of the Rhine, by Arnhem. Allied command expected the XXX Corps to reach the Veluwe – and Market Garden to succeed – in no more than three days.
Credit: Getty Images
American troops in Nijmegen
On 17 September 1944, three airborne divisions were dropped behind enemy lines, responsible for taking and holding selected bridgeheads until the main army could force their way north to join them. The 1st British Airborne Division parachuted into the fields west of Wolfheze and north of Heelsum, a small village near the most northerly target of the operation. Their principal objective was to seize the bridges at Arnhem and establish a bridgehead between the Westerbouwing and the railway bridge at Westervoort. The 101st American Airborne Division was dropped to secure objectives in the area around Veghel, Sint-Oedenrode and Son. The 82nd Division was dropped around Grave and Nijmegen, for the crossings over the Maas and the Waal, and to secure higher ground at Groesbeek.
The landings around Arnhem ran into serious problems. Allied command believed there was no suitable landing zone near the city, so airborne units were dropped 10–15km away. (In fact, assumptions that German anti-aircraft guns were installed in Arnhem and Deelan were incorrect.) A shortage of transport aircraft also meant the units arrived in three waves. The first units to arrive on 17 September were stretched, being forced to capture the road bridge at Arnhem (the rail bridge had in the meantime been destroyed by the Germans) as well as securing the landing site for the second and third waves. Ginkelse Heide (Ginkel Heath) near Ede was the dropping zone on the second day of the operation; again, troops were overextended and had a long way to walk to the bridge at Arnhem. To compound their problems, General Urquhart lost control of almost his entire division after landing because the tactical radios failed. The flat terrain, divided up by an extraordinary number of canals and ditches, was difficult to traverse and offered little cover for the Allied soldiers.
Credit: Liberation Route Europe
Commemorative event in Arnhem, 2014
Bad luck dogged the operation. Extensive intelligence work had failed to reveal the strength of the enemy. Allied Command had estimated that opposition was unlikely to exceed three thousand troops, but, as it turned out, the entire 2nd SS Panzer Corps was refitting near Arnhem just when the 1st Division landed. Seasoned SS Panzer (armoured) units put up unexpected and heavy resistance against the lightly armed Allied paratroopers.
Nevertheless, British forces were able to take the enemy by surprise, and the 2nd Parachute Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel John Frost, did manage to capture the northern end of the road bridge across the Rhine, but it proved impossible to capture the southern end. Frost’s paratroopers were forced to wait for reinforcements and heavy weapons that were due to arrive by road. Surrounded, outgunned and outmanned, the 2nd Battalion held their position from September 17th to the morning of the 21st, a feat of extraordinary courage and determination.
The commander and men of the 1st Airborne Division, meanwhile, were besieged in their headquarters at the Hartenstein Hotel at Oosterbeek, just outside Arnhem, with supplies running low and corpses accumulating in the hotel grounds.
The Battle of Nijmegen and crossing the Waal
American troops were having their own troubles trying to capture the two bridges across the Waal at Nijmegen. The first attempt, made by units of the American 82nd Airborne Division on 17 September, managed to get within 400m of the Waal bridge, only to be repelled by German forces. The next day another attack was initiated, but again the paratroopers were unable to secure the bridge.
On 19 September the ground forces of the XXX Corps established contact with airborne units in Grave. A combined attack to secure the bridges was made, this time with tank support from the Guards Armored Division. Again, the Allied advance was halted just before the bridges. German troops had been reinforced by men from the 10th SS Panzer Division and put up stiff resistance. It was becoming clear that the bridges could not be stormed.
A plan was finally made to infiltrate behind enemy lines and attack the bridges from both sides. In a desperate effort to regain the initiative, US paratroopers crossed the Waal in 26 inadequate, canvas-sided boats. Lacking proper oars, some soldiers had to use their rifle butts to row. Half of the 160 US soldiers involved were killed or wounded before, after and during the crossing. Just half of the dinghies could be used for a second crossing.
After four hours of bloody fighting and heavy losses on both sides, the paratroopers, with the help of the XXX Corps, succeeded in capturing the bridges intact. The city of Nijmegen was liberated.
In 2013, the city of Nijmegen opened a new bridge called the Oversteek (Crossing). Erected close to the place where troops of the US 82nd Airborne Division crossed the River Waal under heavy fire on 20 September 1944, the Oversteek commemorates the soldiers of Operation Market Garden. The bridge is fitted with 48 pairs of specially programmed street lights, which are illuminated at sunset, pair by pair, at the pace of a slow march.
Each evening at dusk, a Dutch military veteran – wearing a beret, insignia and war medals – walks the Sunset March to honour the 48 American soldiers who died trying to cross the river and as a tribute to all Allied personnel who fought for the liberation of the Netherlands. The march takes 12 minutes in total; all are welcome to attend. Any veteran can volunteer to lead the march, although dates get booked up in advance (sunsetmarch.nl).
Operation Market Garden might still have succeeded had the land forces, with the Irish Guards at the front of the column, been able to relieve the paratroopers. But the ground forces were dependent on a single road between Eindhoven and Nijmegen that was vulnerable to constant fire from both sides; it soon became dubbed “Hell’s Highway”. Many lives were lost trying to move supplies northwards to the exposed troops, and matters were only made worse when immobilized tanks blocked the road.
Credit: iStock
Sturmgeschütz III assault gun on display during an event in Overloon
Withdrawal and consequences of Operation Market Garden
By the morning of 25 September it was apparent that reinforcements in sufficient numbers would not be able to get through in support. There was no other option but to abandon the operation and evacuate the troops. Under the cover of darkness (during the night of 25–26 September), a dramatic and supremely well-executed withdrawal saved more than two thousand soldiers out of an original force of 10,000 from the perimeter of the Hartenstein villa in Oosterbeek. Historians generally agree that Operation Market Garden was lost within its first hours with the failure to take the bridge at Arnhem, which became known in popular literature as a “bridge too far”.
There has been controversy about Operation Market Garden ever since. Some argue that it was poorly conceived, others that it might have worked but for a series of military mishaps and miscalculations. Whatever the case, its failure created mistrust between Montgomery and Eisenhower, and tarnished Montgomery’s reputation as an infallible military strategist. Montgomery defended himself by claiming the operation had been “ninety percent successful”. Air Marshal Tedder famously retorted, “one jumps off a cliff with an even higher success rate, until the last few inches.”
For the Dutch, the consequences were severe. After the Battle of Arnhem, 95,000 civilians living in the area were forced to evacuate as the Germans turned the north bank of the Rhine into a heavily fortified line. Arnhem became a ghost town. The failed military operation also revealed to the Germans just how much of the Dutch population reviled them and were willing to “collaborate” with the enemy. This was a prime motivation for the policy that led to the “Hunger Winter”.
Operations Aintree and Veritable
The price had been high, but some benefits were also gleaned from Operation Market Garden. It liberated around one fifth of the Netherlands, including the town of Eindhoven (on 18 September), and gave the Allies a valuable salient from which to launch an offensive into Germany. The salient was vulnerable to German attack, however, by troops operating from a bridgehead over the Maas near Venlo. To deal with this threat, Operation Aintree was devised to clear German troops from Overloon and Venray (which lay en route to Venlo).
The land west of Venlo was marshy and crossed by several canals. At Overloon, Allied forces came up against determined resistance between 30 September and 18 October 1944. In all, 2500 men were killed and a significant number of tanks (mainly American) were lost in what is largely regarded as a forgotten battle in the Netherlands. The Allies were ultimately successful, and managed to drive the Germans back across the Maas.
Not until four months later were the Allies ready to launch an offensive, Operation Veritable, from the Netherlands into northern Germany. British and Canadian troops were assembled in the captured Nijmegen area (Rijk van Nijmegen) and in North Limburg in preparation for Veritable, the opening move in the major Rhineland offensive beginning on 8 February 1945. However, a thaw in the cold weather jeopardized another carefully thought-out plan, as rain and mud made it virtually impossible to push forward. Montgomery was finally able to bypass Arnhem to reach the Rhine.
Arnhem was finally liberated, long after the Allies had crossed the Rhine in other places, by Operation Anger in April 1945, sometimes referred to as the Second Battle of Arnhem. The offensive to seize the city was implemented by the First Canadian Army, which incorporated British units. The attack was led by the artillery, armour and infantry of the 49th British (West Yorkshire) Division, nicknamed the Polar Bears, which had been stationed on Nijmegen Island since the previous December. They were supported by the 5th Canadian Armoured Division. Operation Anger began on 12 April 1945 and Arnhem was entered and liberated on 15 April.
Arnhem’s province, Gelderland, was also the scene of one of the last major battles in the Netherlands. After the breakthrough at the Rhine, the Allied forces where split into three groups. One of these, made up mostly of Canadian forces, swung round and started the liberation of the Netherlands from the east.
On 16 April 1945, the 5th Canadian Armoured Division liberated the village of Otterlo (near Ede) before continuing on to Wekerom and Voorthuizen, leaving the divisional headquarters and an infantry battalion behind in the village. The Germans, meanwhile, were trying to get to safety in the west of the Netherlands, and somewhere between 600 and 900 German soldiers came upon Otterlo on the evening of 16 April. The Canadians fired their guns at short range but were eventually taken out by the German soldiers. The gunners fought on using their hand guns, but groups of German soldiers managed to push through and entrench themselves in the village.
In the early hours of the next morning, the situation had escalated into a serious battle. Canadian tanks had been called in for assistance. Two Wasp flamethrowers fired at the German positions, whereupon the Nazi soldiers panicked and fled. More than three hundred of them were killed, along with twelve Canadians and four civilians.
Noord Brabant and Gelderland sites
World War II left a deep and indelible mark on the community of Putten. On 2 October 1944, in retaliation for a resistance operation, 659 men were arrested here and more than one hundred homes were subsequently set alight. The men were deported first to Camp Amersfoort; on 11 October, 601 were transported on to Neuengamme concentration camp. More than 550 men died as a result of the round-up, almost Putten’s entire male population. Aid was collected from around the Netherlands – and even abroad – to support the women of the village in the following months. On 1 October 1949, Queen Juliana unveiled a memorial to the lost men of Putten – The Widow of Putten, handkerchief in hand, is a moving monument to human grief.
More than 3900 war victims are buried at Loenen Field of Honour. The graves belong to men and women who died in various campaigns around the world, including military personnel, members of the resistance, victims of reprisal and forced labour, and those who escaped the Netherlands in the first years of the war to join the Allies in England (the “Engelandvaarders”). Casualties from the Indonesian War of Independence and New Guinea, as well as victims of peacekeeping missions in Korea, Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Mali, are also buried here.
Airborne at the Bridge Information Centre
Rijnkade 150, Arnhem, airborneatthebridge.nl
With a view of the famous – if unspectacular – John Frost Bridge (the “bridge too far” that was so bloodily contested in September 1944), the Airborne at the Bridge Information Centre explains the story of Operation Market Garden and Arnhem’s pivotal role in it. The centre also tells the personal stories of some of the people involved, including British lieutenant John Grayburn, German Hauptsturmführer Viktor Eberhard Gräbner and the Dutch captain Jacob Groenewoud, who fought and died at Arnhem. The town’s tourist information office is also located here.
›› German capitulation in the Netherlands
In the first week of May 1945, negotiations were started between the German forces occupying the northern parts of the Netherlands and Germany and the Allies. The end of the war seemed imminent – especially after the forces defending Germany had been divided in two by Eisenhower. On 4 May, Field Marshal Montgomery accepted the official and unconditional surrender of the German army in northwest Europe at his headquarters on Lüneburg Heath in Germany.
In the Netherlands, General Foulkes, commander of the I Canadian Corps, feared that the German Twenty-fifth Army might hold out despite the official surrender. Foulkes drew up a separate surrender document and on 5 May summoned his German counterpart, General Blaskowitz, to the Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen to sign his capitulation. Prince Bernhard, acting as commander-in-chief of the Dutch Interior Forces, was also present, along with reporters and cameramen.
A detailed document of surrender was passed to Blaskowitz, who asked for 24 hours to assess whether he could meet the Allied demands and to inform his troops of the capitulation. He returned the next day to sign the official surrender of all German forces in the Netherlands.
Today, Wageningen calls itself the “City of Liberation”, and is marked by an LRE audiospot. Every year on 4–5 May, it hosts a parade and freedom festival, while the historic Hotel de Wereld (hoteldewereld.nl) remains open for business.
Utrechtseweg 232, Oosterbeek, airbornemuseum.nl
Given the intensity of the battle that raged here in September 1944, it’s surprising that the Hotel Hartenstein, just outside Arnhem and the villa-headquarters of the British First Airborne Division during the assault, wasn’t razed to the ground. The building, which lies just to the west of the village centre, survived the war; afterwards, it was restored and adapted to house the Airborne Museum.
The museum experience begins with a first-rate battle film, making skilful use of original footage – including a chilling scene in which German machine gunners blaze away at paratroopers dropping from the sky. Ensuing rooms hold a series of small exhibitions on some of the individuals who took part in Operation Market Garden, perhaps most memorably Private Albert Willingham, who died protecting a Dutch woman from a German grenade. There’s also a piece of wallpaper salvaged from the hotel, where British snipers marked up the score of their hits and inscribed the words, “Fuck the Gerrys”. A further display in the basement (the “Airborne experience”) recreates the scene in the hotel as the Germans closed in – the British were besieged at Hartenstein for a week before finally retreating across the river.
The Army Film and Photographic Unit landed with the British forces, and it’s their photographs that stick in the memory most of all: grimly cheerful soldiers hauling in their parachutes; tense, tired faces during the fighting; and shattered Dutch villages.
This Commonwealth war cemetery contains the graves of 1754 Allied troops, including most of the soldiers who were killed during Operation Market Garden. American remains, meanwhile, were either repatriated or interred in the cemetery of the American Battle Monuments Commission in Margraten. The “Cross of Sacrifice”, the cemetery’s main monument, supports a bronze sword and is a symbol for all the soldiers who died in the Netherlands during World War II.
Information Centre: The Poles of Driel
Kerkstraat 27, Driel, driel-polen.nl
The Information Centre: The Poles of Driel provides valuable insight into the battle fought by the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade in the village of Driel during Operation Market Garden. Interesting exhibits trace how the brigade was formed, the dishonourable way the Poles were treated after the failure of Operation Market Garden, and the friendship that subsequently developed between the people of Driel and the Polish parachutists.
Ridderstraat 27, Nijmegen, infocentreww2.com
Opened in February 2019, this brand-new information centre in Nijmegen is designed to introduce visitors to the wartime history of the region, with an overview of the stories, heritage and museums on offer.
The largest Commonwealth war cemetery in the Netherlands, the Canadian War Cemetery contains the graves of hundreds of men killed in neighbouring regions in the closing months of the war, mostly after Operation Market Garden. Many of the dead were brought here from Germany – General Crerar, commander of Canadian forces in Europe, ordered that no Canadian should be buried on German soil. All the Canadians who lost their lives during Operation Veritable – except for one man – were buried or reburied here.
The cemetery also contains the graves of 267 soldiers from Britain, as well as a few from Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, Russia, New Zealand and Yugoslavia. Just inside the entrance to the cemetery is a memorial wall bearing the names of 1047 military personnel missing in action.
The National Liberation Museum 1944–1945
Wylerbaan 4, Groesbeek, liberationmuseum.com
During Operation Market Garden, paratroopers from the 82nd US Airborne Division landed in the area where the National Liberation Museum is now located. From here, they started their advance towards the bridges at Grave and Nijmegen; the capture of these would open up the region between the Maas, Waal and Rhine rivers to the Allied advance.
This area, around Groesbeek and Nijmegen, was also the stepping stone from which Operation Veritable, aimed at clearing the Reichswald Forest, was launched in February 1945. By then, the road leading to the museum had become the front line separating the Allied and German forces. Operation Veritable opened with the heaviest artillery bombardment seen on the Western Front during World War II – more than half a million shells were fired at the German front line.
The National Liberation Museum 1944–1945 has recently emerged from a comprehensive rebuild, reopening in mid-2019 to mark the start of the commemorative 75 Years of Freedom programme. A striking new building houses its excellent collection relating to Operation Market Garden, the battle for the Reichswald and World War II more generally. Its new incarnation has been developed with a strong international outlook and a specific focus on Germany.
Lunettenlaan 600, Vught, nmkampvught.nl
Opened in January 1943, Camp Vught was the only official SS concentration camp in the Netherlands. Modelled on camps in Germany, it was divided into two sections, one for political prisoners brought here from Belgium and the Netherlands, the other for Jews.
Most of the Jewish inmates were subsequently moved to Westerbork before being transported to the death camps further east. Predictably, many people died here in the cruellest of circumstances or were executed in the woods nearby. Although it’s a reconstruction, and only a fraction of the size it used to be, Camp Vught still makes a vivid impression.
After the overall failure of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, several front lines were established on the floodplain between the Waal and Rhine rivers. The Betuwe, as this region is known, had suffered little during the initial German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940. During the years of occupation that followed the population had faced hardship, but this was nothing compared to what they had to endure from September 1944 onwards.
Having become the new front line on the Western Front, fighting overwhelmed parts of the Betuwe, with heavy shelling from both sides. The civilian population was caught up in the violence, and the area was soon evacuated. By December 1944, only about 1000 men remained to farm the land and take care of their cattle. The pocket of the region they inhabited, around Lent, Oosterhout and Ressen, became known as “Men’s Island”.
The affected parts of the Betuwe were liberated in April 1945, just weeks before the German surrender. By then, the inhabitants of this unfortunate region had suffered greatly. Their houses had been damaged or destroyed, their land flooded, and many loved ones lost. For the population of the Betuwe, the Liberation was a bitter-sweet experience.
Museumpark 1, Overloon, oorlogsmuseum.nl
The affluent little town of Overloon in Noord Brabant was rebuilt after the war, having been devastated in the eponymous battle. The final stages of the Battle of Overloon took place in the woods to the east of town, where hand-to-hand combat eventually secured the area.
The result of a proposal by local resident Harry van Daal, the Overloon War Museum was developed on a section of the former battlefield to commemorate the fighting that took place here. Founded using military hardware left behind in the wake of World War II, this excellent museum is openly didactic, intended as “an admonition and warning, a denouncement of war and violence.” The collection is particularly strong on military machinery, with tanks, rocket launchers, armoured cars, a Bailey bridge and a V1 flying bomb on display.
Sonseweg 39, Best, en.bevrijdendevleugels.com
This museum just outside Eindhoven, located on “Hell’s Highway”, explores what life was like under German occupation and the final liberation. Expect authentic military equipment, including vehicles, and beautiful dioramas.
Ruytershoveweg 1, Bergen op Zoom, cwgc.org
Bergen op Zoom is located in Noord Brabant, close to Zeeland and the “neck” of South Beveland. Some 3km east of the town are two adjacent Commonwealth cemeteries: Bergen op Zoom British War Cemetery and Bergen op Zoom Canadian War Cemetery, separated by a thick screen of trees. Many of the dead interred here died in the Battle of the Scheldt and other actions in the southwest Netherlands.
Along with the rest of the country, Amsterdam was occupied in May 1940. It was liberated by the German capitulation that ended the war in the Netherlands on 5 May 1945.
Even after the war was officially over, incidents of violence still occurred. Some German forces simply refused to lay down their arms, and clashed with members of the Dutch Interior Forces or resistance fighters. These incidents led to the death of 19 civilians in Amsterdam.
Unlike Rotterdam, Amsterdam was spared physical damage during the war, but its people still suffered, living in constant fear of attracting the attention of the authorities. As a largely open, tolerant, mercantile community, Amsterdam had attracted many foreign Jews who sought safety here before the war. Nazi Germany’s virulent anti-Semitism dealt a devastating blow to the city. After the war, the fate of teenager Anne Frank provided a human face to the impersonal cruelty of the Holocaust, and Amsterdam has several monuments related to its Jewish past.
Several other sites connected to the war and the Liberation, near Utrecht and Amersfoort, are within easy reach of Amsterdam.
Westermarkt 20, Amsterdam, annefrank.org
A poignant memorial to the Holocaust, Anne Frank House is one of Amsterdam’s most visited sights. Since the publication of her diaries, Anne Frank has become extraordinarily famous, in the first instance for recording the iniquities of the Holocaust, and latterly as a symbol of the fight against oppression in general and racism in particular.
Anne Frank House is in the premises on Prinsengracht where the Frank and Van Daan families lived in secrecy for two years before being discovered by the Nazis. Well-chosen displays, old offices and filmed interviews with some of the leading characters, including Anne’s friend Hanneli Goslar and Anne Frank’s father, Otto, fill out the background. There are also displays on the persecution of the Jews – from arrest and deportation through to the concentration camps. Further sections are devoted to Anne as a writer/diarist; information on the Franks’ Dutch helpers; and the importance of Anne’s diary to other prisoners, most notably Nelson Mandela.
Behind a hinged bookcase are the secret rooms that were occupied in 1942–44 by eight people – only one of whom, Otto Frank, would survive the war. Anne Frank was among 100,000 Dutch Jews who died during World War II, but this, her final home, provides one of the most enduring testaments to its horrors and, despite the number of visitors, most people find a visit very moving.
Verzetsmuseum (Dutch Resistance Museum)
Plantage Kerklaan 61, Amsterdam, verzetsmuseum.org
The excellent Dutch Resistance Museum, located in a former synagogue, tells the story of the 25,000 Dutch men and women who risked their lives to oppose the Nazi regime. Thoughtfully presented, the main gangway examines the experience of the majority of the population, dealing honestly with the fine balance between cooperation and collaboration. Side rooms are devoted to different aspects of the resistance, from the brave determination of the Communist Party to more ad hoc responses like the so-called Melkstaking (Milk Strike) of 1943, when hundreds of milk producers refused to deliver in protest at the Germans’ threatened deportation of 300,000 former (demobilized) Dutch soldiers to labour camps in Germany. A range of ingenious objects – forging tools, a hollow chessboard to hide false documents and a “broadcasting suitcase” containing a radio – depict the challenges of operating undercover. Other poignant exhibits include a farewell letter written by a condemned prisoner and a tiny box of potatoes sent from the country to the city – a godsend to anyone trying to survive the Hunger Winter that the Nazis inflicted from November 1944 until the country was liberated in May 1945.
Biography
Anne Frank
Credit: Getty Images
Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, was a Jewish businessman who fled Germany in December 1933 after Hitler came to power, moving to Amsterdam, where he established a successful spice-trading business on the Prinsengracht. After the German occupation of the Netherlands, Jewish refugees thought they could avoid trouble by keeping their heads down. However, by 1942 Amsterdam’s Jews were isolated and conspicuous, being confined to certain parts of the city and forced to wear a yellow star. Round-ups were increasingly common. In desperation, Otto Frank decided to move the family into the unused back rooms of their Prinsengracht premises.
The Franks went into hiding in July 1942, along with a Jewish business partner and his wife and son, the Van Pels (renamed the Van Daans in the Diary). Their new “home” was separated from the rest of the building by a bookcase that doubled as a door. As far as everyone else was concerned, they had fled to Switzerland. So began a two-year incarceration in the achterhuis, or Secret Annexe, and the two families were joined in November 1942 by a dentist friend, Fritz Pfeffer (the Diary’s Albert Dussel), bringing the number of occupants to eight. Otto’s trusted Dutch office staff continued working in the front part of the building, regularly bringing supplies and news of the outside world. In her diary Anne Frank describes the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants of the annexe: the quarrels, frequent in such a claustrophobic environment, the celebrations of birthdays, or of a piece of good news from the Allied Front; and of her own, slightly unreal, adolescence.
In the summer of 1944, the atmosphere was optimistic; liberation seemed within reach – but it wasn’t to happen soon enough. A Dutch collaborator betrayed the Franks, and the Gestapo arrived and forced open the bookcase. The occupants of the annexe were arrested and dispatched to Westerbork – the transit camp in the north of the country where all Dutch Jews were processed before being moved to Belsen, Auschwitz or Sobibór. Of the eight who had lived in the annexe, only Otto Frank survived. Anne and her sister died of typhus within a short time of each other in Belsen, just one week before the German surrender. Remarkably, Anne’s diary survived the raid, with one of the family’s Dutch helpers handing it to Otto on his return from Auschwitz. In 1947, Otto decided to publish his daughter’s diary and, since its appearance, The Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into over sixty languages and sold millions of copies worldwide.
Credit: Shutterstock
Printing press used by the Dutch Resistance, Verzetsmuseum
Plantage Middenlaan 24, Amsterdam, jck.nl
Originally a Jewish theatre, in 1942 this building was commandeered by the Nazis for use as a holding centre for Amsterdam Jews. An estimated 60,000 Jews passed through here on their way to concentration and extermination camps. After the war, the building was left unused for many years before being turned into a national memorial to the Holocaust. The front of the edifice has been refurbished to display a list of the dead and an eternal flame along with a small exhibition on the plight of the city’s Jews, but the old auditorium out at the back has been left as an empty, roofless shell. A memorial column of basalt on a Star of David base stands where the stage once was, an intensely mournful monument to suffering of unfathomable proportions.
To one side of Amsterdam’s main square is the country’s National Monument, where two sculpted lions commemorate the Dutch people who were killed during World War II. Every year on 4 May, the day before the war ended in the Netherlands, a ceremony called Dodneherdenking (Remembrance of the Dead) is held here.
Soesterberg Verlengde Paltzerweg 1, Soest, nmm.nl/en
The National Military Museum, situated in a former airbase between Amersfoort and Utrecht (southeast of Amsterdam), deals with all wars – including World War II. Its main purpose is to demonstrate the importance of the armed forces to modern societies.
Northern Netherlands, western Netherlands and the islands
Most of the Netherlands’ south was liberated in September 1944 during Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Scheldt, but the north remained in German hands for months to come.
After the ultimate failure of Operation Market Garden, Allied commanders decided that the liberation of the Netherlands would require the dispersal of their forces. This would stretch the Allies’ limited resources, so priority was first afforded to thrusting eastwards towards the Rhine and into the German heartland. This resulted in a strange situation. When the final drive came to clear the north and west of the Netherlands, it was launched from the east – from Germany.
In March 1945 the Allies breached the German defences and crossed the Rhine. The Allied forces were now divided into three groups: two headed deeper into Germany, while the third swung round to liberate the Netherlands. They found a country in the depths of the so-called Hunger Winter that claimed 20,000 lives.
The task of clearing the northern part of the Netherlands was given to the I Canadian Corps. They were assisted by units from the British XXX Corps, the Polish 1st Armoured Division and the Belgian 5th SAS.
Combat at this stage of the war was sporadic and depended on whether individual German commanders chose to keep fighting. In certain areas, the German forces put up stiff opposition (the terrain, with its many streams, canals and waterways, favoured the defenders); elsewhere they chose to surrender. Many ordinary soldiers laid down their arms in the final weeks of the war.
The 822nd Queen Tamar infantry battalion, stationed on the island of Texel, was made up of 800 Georgian and 400 German soldiers. The Georgians had been taken prisoner on the Eastern Front earlier in the war and chose to join the German army rather than go to prisoner of war camps. In early April, the battalion received orders to transfer to the mainland to fight the Allies. The Georgians became worried that if Germany lost the war, as seemed likely, they would fall into Soviet hands and be dealt with as traitors. In the early hours of 6 April, they staged an uprising, led by their commander Shalva Loladze and assisted by the Dutch resistance. On the first morning some 400 German soldiers on Texel were slaughtered, mostly in their sleep. The Georgians were unable to take control of two gun batteries at the north and south of the island, however, and the Germans sent reinforcements from the mainland. It still took five weeks to put the rebellion down. During that time, 565 Georgians, 800 Germans and 120 Texel residents were killed. Fighting continued even as Germany was signing its Instrument of Surrender in Berlin on 8 May; the violence was only stopped by the arrival of Canadian troops on 20 May.
In support of Operation Market Garden in September 1944, and in anticipation of imminent liberation, the exiled Dutch prime minister, Pieter Gerbrandy, instructed the resistance to organize a national railway strike that would cripple Dutch infrastructure and hamper German troop movements. When Market Garden failed to achieve its aims, the country was effectively divided into an occupied northern section and a largely liberated southern one. Incensed by what they regarded as Dutch “betrayal”, the Germans decided to wreak a slow and cruel revenge by minimizing the already meagre food supplies available to Dutch citizens.
By early October, Gerbrandy was having desperate meetings with Churchill, during which he predicted a humanitarian disaster and suggested that the Swedish government be allowed to intervene with deliveries of food. Churchill was reluctant to comply, believing that relief supplies would simply be consumed by the Germans, but by the end of the month Eisenhower had agreed in principle to such an operation. By this point winter was approaching, and it would turn out to be one of the harshest on record. To make matters worse, transport of coal from the south had stopped and gas and electricity were being cut off. People were resorting to chopping down trees and ransacking abandoned houses – some belonging to deported Jewish families – for fuel.
Throughout the winter the situation worsened, especially in the major towns where people were trying to survive on as little as 400–800 calories per day. There was no meat or milk available, only small quantities of flour and potatoes, forcing people to fall back on sugar beets and tulip bulbs as staples. Many town dwellers headed into the country seeking food, bartering their possessions with farmers for whatever they could get. The agreed relief convoys from Sweden finally began at the end of January 1945, but they only scratched the surface of what was required. People were now starving in large numbers, making them more susceptible to disease, with the elderly and very young particularly vulnerable.
Following negotiations with the Germans not to shoot down relief planes, the Allies began a series of air drops at the end of April: nearly 7000 tons of food were dropped by the RAF and the Canadian Air Force between the 29 April and 8 May, and a further 4000 tons by the USAAF between 1–8 May. But it wasn’t until the German surrender on 6 May that a full-scale and systematic relief operation could begin, by which time an estimated 20,000 Dutch citizens had died from starvation.
Northern Netherlands, western Netherlands and the islands sites
Canadian troops were principally responsible for the liberation of the northern and eastern Netherlands in the spring of 1945. Nearly 1400 soldiers who lost their lives in the campaign are buried here – the headstones belonging to teenagers are especially moving. Adjacent to the cemetery is a visitor information centre, which explains the events of the war through films, personal memoirs and photographs.
Grotestraat 13, Nijverdal, memorymuseum.nl
As its name suggests, the Memory Museum exists to preserve information about World War II, from the rise of National Socialism to the Liberation.
Objects, photographs, film fragments and documents retell the World War II stories that have been passed down from generation to generation in Friesland. One of the most spectacular acts of the resistance in the area was a raid on the Huis van Bewaring prison in Leeuwarden on 8 December 1944 by members of the armed group known as the Knokploegen (“Strong-arm Boys”). They managed to free 51 captive resistance fighters within half an hour, without a shot being fired.
Camp Westerbork National Memorial Centre
Westerbork Oosthalen 8, Hooghalen, kampwesterbork.nl
Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the Dutch government built a camp near the town of Hooghalen to accommodate (mainly Jewish) German refugees. Camp KZ Westerbork was later used by the German occupiers as a transit camp. Many Dutch Jews, Sinti, Roma, resistance combatants and political adversaries were imprisoned here before being transferred to concentration and extermination camps in Germany and occupied Poland. Anne Frank was deported on the last train leaving Camp Westerbork on 3 September 1944.
›› Flying bombs over Overijssel
In the winter of 1944–1945, everyone living in the area between Almelo, Nijverdal, Deventer and Zutphen was used to the sound of sputtering rockets. These were flying bombs, equipped with jet engines, popularly known as the V1 and V2. The Germans called them “weapons of revenge” – launched as retaliation for the invasion of Normandy and the death of German troops.
German engineers developed these weapons under considerable pressure from Hitler. They were built using slave labour, first in Peenemünde on the German north coast and later in abandoned mines in northern France. Working under inhumane conditions, many slave labourers took the opportunity to sabotage production, and many rockets malfunctioned.
On the night of 25–26 March 1945, a week before its liberation, things went terribly wrong above Rijssen in Overijssel, when a V1 fired from Almelo crashed in the town centre. Then, as the flames were being extinguished, a British plane nosedived towards the conflagration and dropped its high-explosive bombs. That night, 23 people were killed, and many more were wounded.
The National Memorial Centre Westerbork explains the history of the camp.
Hoge Berg, Texel, texel.net
This cemetery on the island of Texel, which made up part of the Atlantic Wall, contains the remains of Georgian soldiers killed in a mutiny within the German army, the Texel Uprising.
For all its savagery, modern warfare is underpinned by strict rules. Nevertheless, a string of atrocities was committed by both sides during World War II.
The rules laid down by the Hague conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Convention of 1929 governed World War II. These international agreements were designed to be heeded as law, but there was no single body capable of enforcing them. Obeying the rubric of the Hague and Geneva conventions was up to the honour and ethics of each country, commander, division and individual.
Credit: Getty Images
Military chemists don gas masks while purifying mustard gas
Throughout the Liberation, and especially at Nuremberg, the Western Allies sought to keep the moral high ground by adhering to the rule of law, but they played a close game. Mustard gas was strictly prohibited by the Geneva protocol on chemical weapons of 1925, but the Allies surreptitiously shipped large quantities of it to Italy. While they claimed the gas was intended only as a “plan B” in case the Germans used it first, the secret was revealed when a ship loaded with mustard gas blew up in an air raid in December 1943 – inadvertently poisoning anyone who came into contact with it.
The behaviour of war was not easily regulated. On the battlefield, conduct was judged by the upper echelons of the military hierarchy – with minimum political involvement. Atrocities, in contravention of international law and moral codes, occurred on both sides of the conflict throughout the Liberation.
On the Eastern Front, in particular, the German and Soviet armies were locked in a savage fight that paid little heed to any international regulations. In many cases, respect for the enemy was condemned outright and all forms of brutality condoned.
The common soldier, on the front line, was forced to make many of the hardest moral decisions. Combatants were expected to kill to help secure victory, but no more than was necessary. The job of the army was to mentally equip its cadets to kill. Military training was – and still is today – designed to ease its recruits through the taboo against taking human life, to motivate them to do their duty under a temporary moral code that tips to the other extreme. At the same time, motivation for action must be born of noble reasons, of moral superiority and justified hatred of a corrupt enemy.
In reality, the majority of soldiers were young men with strong emotions who were pushed to the extreme. War demanded difficult choices in complicating and confusing circumstances. None of this condones the atrocities that occurred during World War II and the Liberation; nevertheless, it helps to understand the context in which they took place.
Atrocities against prisoners of war
Taking prisoners in World War II was particularly complex. The conventions related to prisoners of war seemed clear when written down: an enemy soldier with his hands in the air or waving a white flag was not to be harmed. On the battlefield, it was harder for a young recruit – conditioned to loathe the enemy – to switch from murderous hatred to compassion and responsibility in an instant. In addition, some commanders discouraged their men from taking captives because of the inconvenience they caused. In many cases, unarmed men died as the result of split-second decisions in which soldiers were forced to calculate whether taking a prisoner would affect the outcome of a battle. There is no way of knowing exactly how many men were killed in dubious circumstances on either side of the conflict.
On isolated occasions, soldiers took a step beyond the grey area of surrender. In two separate incidents near Biscari in southern Sicily, on 14 July 1943, American infantrymen lined up and killed a total of 73 German and Italian prisoners of war. “Battle fatigue” was cited as one of the principal causes of the massacres. The German armed forces committed numerous atrocities during the war, too. Most took place on the Eastern Front, but the Western Front was not exempt. On 17 December 1944, an SS unit took 84 US prisoners at a crossroads near Malmédy in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. Treating the prisoners properly would have handicapped the German offensive, which relied on speed. Instead, as the Americans stood in lines with their hands raised, the Nazi troops opened fire with machine guns and pistols.
Credit: Getty Images
German POWs watch newsreels of atrocities committed at Buchenwald, Mittelbau-Dora and other Nazi concentration camps
A number of other atrocities were committed in World War II. The German state was responsible for a great number of them as it sought to eliminate its political opponents and anyone who fell foul of its racial policies. The fate of the Jews and other concentration and extermination camp victims, of course, constitutes a category of atrocity apart. The liberators of the camps were stunned by what they found: by the depths of depravity human beings in uniforms could sink to when given the upper hand.
Atrocities on the Western Front were more often investigated and documented than those on the Eastern Front, because they were comparatively less frequent. In France, cold-blooded massacres were carried out by German troops at Tulle, Maillé and Oradour-sur-Glane; and in Italy at Sant’Anna di Stazema and Monte Sole. The Wola massacre during the Warsaw Rising, however, dwarfs them all – with 50,000 victims.
Individual atrocities occurred almost everywhere that soldiers went. Civilians were defenceless against under-disciplined troops who sought relief and reward for the miseries they were forced to endure by exploiting the weak and vulnerable. Rape was particularly prevalent: it was difficult to prevent and all too often went unpunished.
Credit: Alamy
Lines of corpses after the Wola Massacre
Some mass killings are harder to classify as atrocities. Should the premeditated firebombing of German cities harbouring tens of thousands of civilians be considered an atrocity or a legitimate military strategy? What are we to make of the generals who ordered their troops to advance towards certain death in battles that could not be won? Can the bombing of the Cap Arcona, loaded with prisoners, be excused as an understandable mistake? It is worth considering, too, whether extenuating circumstances can ever turn would-be atrocities into tragedies in which no one is to blame. Wartime killings and calamities frequently inhabit a moral grey area.
Within the context of war, an atrocity is defined as excessive cruelty or violence without justification. Atrocities are carried out in situations of unequal power and serve no military or political objective, other than inducing terror and despair. Usually perpetuated for selfish reasons, these acts are executed with complete disregard for the victims. Atrocities violate both the law and common ethical codes.
The committal of atrocities is usually accompanied by a lack of remorse and responsibility, and the perpetrators in World War II often could not understand what they had done wrong. A frequent justification was the “Nuremberg Defence”: that they were carrying out orders – implied, verbal, precise or printed. Many perpetrators claimed they were just complying with broad orders from above, and some high-ranking German army commanders escaped prosecution for war crimes in this way.
Other atrocities were justified by necessity. It was claimed, for example, that the bombing of Monte Cassino Abbey in Italy in February 1944 was crucial to the Allied campaign – even if there were civilians sheltered inside. Self-defence was also a common response. “If I hadn’t killed him first”, a soldier claimed, “he would have killed me.”
With the benefit of distance and hindsight, it is easy to condemn individual events of the war as atrocities. But it’s important to consider whether it’s fair to apply the same moral codes that govern modern European society today to a front-line soldier in World War II.
Eisenhower was said to have been mortified when troops under his command went on a killing spree after the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. The soldiers were so appalled and incensed by what they saw that they executed at least 28 SS guards who had already surrendered. Eisenhower understood that the entire rationale of the Liberation was that the Allies – the western democracies at least – would founder if American soldiers sank to the same level as their Nazi foe. He called for “criminal conduct” to be fully investigated and punished accordingly, but it rarely was. It was difficult for a commander to ask his troops – his brothers in arms – to fight shoulder to shoulder and then discipline them for killing an enemy who had committed barbarous acts but later surrendered.
Long after the war, there were attempts to relativize atrocities and their consequences – to judge the liberators by the same standards with which they judged the defeated Nazis. The results were stark. If the Americans in charge of Biscari were tried in the same way as the Nazi officers who had allowed Malmédy to occur, General Bradley would have received a sentence of ten years' imprisonment; General Patton would have been sentenced to life.
It would be a sad conclusion to concede that every war has its share of atrocities; that the combination of lethal weapons and the stress of battle inevitably leads to appalling acts of carnage. The Liberation certainly witnessed terrible massacres and atrocities by both the Allied and the Nazi armies, which caused immense suffering and loss of life. On the Eastern Front, the Soviets exacted terrible reprisals for the genocidal campaign Nazi Germany had waged there.
At the same time, most soldiers active in World War II – and many with the opportunity to do so – did not engage in atrocities of any kind. On both sides, the vast majority of individuals adhered to the rules of the Hague and Geneva conventions and their own moral codes, despite finding themselves in extreme circumstances. Maybe there’s more to learn from the ordinary men and women who held their heads above water than those who drowned in the mire of war.
Credit: Getty Images
Skeletal camp prisoners
Credit: Getty Images