The Dutch Campaign: Fall, 1938
Alas, the tentative launch date for the invasion of the Netherlands was too optimistic, even for a remarkably disciplined and organized force such as the German Army. The date was set back in order to allow time to organize command structures and for the rapidly transported divisions to regroup and prepare logistics lines.
It was the early morning of the 10th of October when they finally moved with energy. Bombers pounded frontier defenses, others reached behind the lines to attack the Dutch air force in the capital. Armies engaged along most of the borderline.
And two fleets set sail. One an invasion force that would attempt to infiltrate past the curtain of Frisian Islands and take Amsterdam from the rear with three infantry divisions and a division of cavalry. The other was meant to screen the invasion fleet, and to accept battle with oncoming forces, delaying any threat which might be posed. It was also meant as an experiment to see if the German Kriegsmarine would have sufficient staying power to survive the Royal Navy and French Navy both.
It was quickly found that the Dutch weren't sufficiently prepared for this surprise onslaught. They had only just mobilized, and most of their units were still at half-strength or less. Granted, the German armies, themselves, had only recently mobilized, and still had some time before they would reach full strength. It was not anticipated that they might be employed against any but the Czechs in the immediate future, but they were far better off because of staged mobilization schedules.
German training was also markedly superior, as was their leadership. The experience of many years of avid study, along with the blooding experience of the Spanish Civil War, meant that the Dutch were immediately overmatched. Would, too, the French be?
By the end of the first day, many of the Dutch border defenders were already falling back to secondary and tertiary defensive lines.
While Gen. Guderian and his 4th Panzer Division hooked south, penetrating early on the 11th at Hoogeveen and already pushing south to cut behind the hapless enemy at Enschede, three light panzer divisions under Gen. Nehring were concentrated at Roermond in the south. A penetration there would not only cut off the troops at Maastricht, but would enable a pincer to connect with Guderian in the north and entrap the whole of the Dutch frontier army.
The Dutch at Roermond had broken and fled by the evening of the 11th in a barely controlled retreat.
Meanwhile, the screening fleet had met the Dutch navy and sunk three cruisers in short order with no loss to themselves. The Dutch pilots seemed more resilient, by comparison, putting up a good fight, but they could not withstand the numbers of German planes.
By the end of the second day of war, Gen. Dietl's motorized infantry division was speeding across the north of the country, racing the invasion fleet for the opportunity to attack Amsterdam from the north.
It was then, in a night action just past midnight on the 12th, when the Royal Navy showed up with three of its finest battleships.
Here the test would play out. Germany had no battleships. Only the relatively lightweight panzerschiffen, intended to carry a great punch in a small body. It was the great cruisers, such as Hipper and Blucher, which would fortify the larger ships, as they were more powerful than an average cruiser themselves.
The battle was confused, and many ships were damaged, on both sides. When the RN withdrew, however, they left the light cruiser Aurora as the only ship sunk on either side. (Editor's Note: While the battle record showed only Aurora as lost, I notice now -- and had at the time, though not so quickly -- that the pocket battleship Deutschland had disappeared from the battle roster).
Then came the French Navy, with another 3 battleships. While the invasion struggled to get underway, this desperate screening battle attempted to hold off all who would disrupt the operation. Assistance was had, in daytime, from the sleek Condor maritime bombers, who added to the ferocity of the defense.
The transports themselves were more closely screened by the obsolete but still potent battleships Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein. When the battleship Courbet got too near, she got a dose of the veteran's 11-inch guns (same as the panzerschiffen).
Only hours remained before the troops were ashore and the mission's first phase complete (the second phase being survival and return to port).
At 0900 on the 13th -- still only the 3rd day of battle -- four divisions had been landed far behind the Dutch lines, followed up closely by Dietl's Waffen-SS Standarte division, which was only briefly distracted by a sudden flanking attack by untrained militia.
The battle at Apeldoorn had also been won, which brought the Germans that much closer to Amsterdam on two sides now, and placed the beleaguered Dutch troops at Enschede even further from safety.
The French had mostly been beaten off, with only skirmishing by cruisers continuing to probe at the vulnerable transports.
Late on the 13th, Gen. von Arnim had taken Utrecht and was hooking south to encircle Amsterdam from the south. If nothing else, these generals who had become students of mobile shock warfare were proving its value quickly. Nehring was being held up at Eindhoven, but not for long.
By daylight on the 14th the Dutch capital was being assaulted from three directions at once, and in all the other capitals of Europe politicians and generals alike were dumbstruck by the contrast of this new type of lightning war, compared to the relative plodding advances of the last war. Such was the shock of this method of warfare -- not merely stunning troops on the battlefield, but causing paralysis to foreign leaders who dared not make decisions when they could not hope to perceive the consequences.
Amsterdam fell to von Manstein's Panzer IIIs on the morning of the 15th, after less than 4 and 1/2 astonishing days of warfare.
The British, powerless to affect events on land, took to the air, attempting to damage German factories with their four-engine bombers. The damage was minimal, considering the scale of the German industrial machine, but it did prove that Germany was not invincible -- that she could be hurt, in places.
The Dutch government fled to Rotterdam and, while the rivers of southern Holland slowed the German trucks and tanks to a relative crawl, the collapse of the homeland was inevitable. On the 18th a British cruiser took the Dutch royal family and government leaders away under cover of early morning twilight, and only then was a declaration made that Queen Wilhelmina would establish a government-in-exile, based out of London, and that she and the Dutch East Indies would fight on against the evils of the German war machine.
The remnants of the Dutch government surrendered on the morning of the 19th October, 1938.
Why it took the Belgian government 9 days to realize she was next is not easily understood. Belgium had mobilized a few days earlier. On the 19th, Belgium declared her allegiance to the Allied powers, and thereby essentially declared war upon Germany.
This began a new phase of the war, in which German troops would come increasingly into direct conflict with better trained French troops. In anticipation Germany ordered a shift to heavy industry to support the military construction projects.
Would Germany be able to hold its own as well against France, widely reputed to be the strongest military in the world?
Japan seemed to have placed its bets with Germany, in that week, as it aligned itself irrevocably with the Axis powers and declared war upon France, Britain and the Netherlands.
The war was well and truly on...
Thanks! Hope it lives up to expectations!
