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Old August 23rd, 2008, 07:28 PM

narwan narwan is offline
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Default Re: New Campaigns

Couldn't help myself there.

Funny thing is though, I've not heard the engagement described like that before. I assume you have references that go back to german sources?
German battle accounts in the Netherlands and those by the SS in particular are very unreliable. It's not that a national thing about our dutch troops being much better than depicted but more about the german accounts being full of battles and firefights that never happened.

The dutch were deployed defensively with nothing more than very weak static blocking forces in the eastern half of the country. The positions and armaments of these troops are well known and documented. On numerous occasions the germans report heavy resistance, heavy mg fire, artillery fire or heavy AT-fire in regions where those types of weapons were not available at all (the blocking forces rarely had more than small arms with the occassional lmg) and also where there were no dutch troops at all. Not even stragglers the german could have run into, etc.

There is a huge discrepancy between german battle accounts and dutch battle accounts (the SS accounts are worst closely followed by the reports of the para/airlanding corps).

I think the reason is mainly political. The german plan called for the dutch to either give in within hours like the danish or be militairily beaten in two days max. In fact in most places the germans failed to reach the main dutch defensive lines on day one. The bulk of the SS division even failed to reach it on day 2. And between the german/dutch border and these main defence lines were just these very weak blocking forces.
So resistance was invented where none had existed and heavy fighting reported where light skirmishes had taken place. Similarly the SS in particular reported many 'heroic' feats by it's mean in such 'battles'. That too was political as at this points the SS consisted of barely trained nazi fanatics. They were brave, but on the whole still bad soldiers (they'd learn fast though). Himmler wanted them to be elite so their performance got 'polished'. The same is seen with the SS forces operating against belgium and france during the 40's campaign.

Here's a link to the fight in the Netherlands in may '40 btw. This page refers tot he battles you mention here:

http://www.waroverholland.nl/

(pick may 10; "Part III: the Maas-Waalline" for a description of the battles you mention).

I can find some more material in dutch for reference if you want.
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