When the Germans attacked the Netherlands in may 1940, the common opinion is that the Netherlands caved in pretty quickly (just 5 days) and without much fighting. Well, it was 5 days, but it would 've taken them more time if they hadn't bombed the center of Rotterdam to crisp cinders.
It isn't that well-known that "we" demolished fully 2/3th of the German air transport fleet (280 out of 430 airplanes if my memory serves me). And the elite paratroopers that landed near The Hague got a mauling.
Colonel Morzik commands 430 transport planes at the beginning of the offensive. On the evening of the 10th of May, 280 are lying burned out between the coast and the German border.
What brings me to this: I just discovered (while googling for PhD-related stuff...) a website about the battle of the Grebbeberg which might be interesting for (mainly) Dutch readers. There's an English summary .
The Grebbeberg was the most normal battleground in the Netherlands. In the other places the Germans had rivers etc. to cross, this was just ground. So (apart from the "berg", a "mountain" some 50 meters high or so...) nothing special to stop them. They tried getting through for 3 days or so and finally started to manage in the end.
I'll stop. Just read the summary for today's history lesson :-) I just wanted to store that link for future reference... :-)
My name is Reinout van Rees and I work a lot with Python (programming language) and Django (website framework). I live in The Netherlands and I'm happily married to Annie van Rees-Kooiman.
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