The Dutch Army, May 1940
A 'Strange Defeat' Variant
By David Meyler
July 2006

The modern Dutch monarchy dates back to 1814, after the first fall of Napoleon. The kingdom established included most of what are now the independent states of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In the previous two centuries, however, the seven Dutch provinces north of the Rhine-Maas estuary had formed the main power in the region, while the southern Belgian provinces remained largely as colonial backwaters of the Spanish and then Austrian empires — a contested zone between the major powers of Europe. This political disconnect between the north and the south would be reinforced by religious, economic and linguistic divisions.

Troops of the new state fought against Napoleon's attempted comeback in 1815, culminating in the famous battle of Waterloo. Dutch troops acquitted themselves well in the battle, despite the disparaging comments on Dutch-Belgian units in later British histories.

But the north-south tensions could not be masked, and in 1830 an unlikely alliance of Catholic conservatives and political liberals in Belgium led a revolution —with the important backing of a resurgent France. The Belgian revolution in 1830 was the last time the Dutch state attempted to play an independent, major-power role in Europe.

Although the rebel forces were defeated by the royal army, King William found himself without an ally. The dispute went to international arbitration, and talks dragged on into 1832, but Britain gave its backing to France and the Prussians remained aloof.

Late in the year, the French, seeking to regain their lost influence in the region, sent an army of 70,000 across the frontier to settle the matter by force. The isolated Dutch pulled their field army back but left a 4,000-man garrison in Antwerp. Grimly holding out against the entire French field army for a month, the battered garrison finally surrendered shortly before Christmas. The opposing commanders, Chassé for the Dutch and Gérard for the French, were old comrades and enemies from the Napoleonic days. A new Belgian kingdom was established under French influence, but with an uncle of Queen Victoria, Léopold, as king.

The final withdrawal of the garrison from Antwerp also marked the retreat of the now truncated Dutch kingdom into isolationist neutrality. Aside from endemic warfare in the East Indies, the army began to take on an increasingly reduced role. Still, with tensions rising between the great powers after 1900, the Dutch army underwent a major modernization program. In July 1914 the Dutch army was the first in Western Europe to mobilize, and it remained in a state of emergency until 1918.

The modernization program around 1914 would, in fact, be the last comprehensive re-equipment of the Dutch armed forces before the Second World War. Although anticipating a German invasion, the Dutch avoided open hostilities and the horrible casualties that entailed, but flocks of Belgian refugees brought the Dutch face to face with at least one aspect of modern total war. Beginning in 1917, losses from German submarines and the Allied blockade of Dutch ports caused economic hardship and food shortages only a little less severe than in Germany itself.

Peace and War

All of this provided the fuel for a rejuvenated pacifist movement. The economic collapse of the 1930s, which hit a trading nation like the Dutch particularly hard, further affected military spending. After the Munich Crisis in 1938, a belated, one might say desperate, re-armament program was launched. The Netherlands had a modest domestic arms industry with the Hemsbrug plant providing small arms and ammunition, the Siderius foundries (a subsidiary of Krupp) heavy guns, and the Fokker and Koolhoven factories producing military aircraft.

Dutch mobile troops, May 1940.

There was still a great need for imports. Germany was a traditional supplier of heavy weapons but, not mysteriously, the Germans proved reluctant to deliver on the orders they received. Britain and France were major exporters, but with their resources going into rebuilding their own armies, there was little but obsolete material for sale. The primary neutral arms suppliers, Switzerland and Sweden, had their order books full, and when war broke out in 1939, most of their arms shipments halted. Austria and Czechoslovakia had also been important arms exporters, but with the Germans in control shipments from these sources also dried up by 1940.

Small amounts of modern weapons were acquired, including Danish Madsen machine guns, Austrian Bohler anti-tank guns (proving effective against the thin-skinned German tanks in the street battles in Dordrecht), two dozen Swedish Landsverk armored cars (which wreaked havoc among the lightly armed German paratroopers), a few dozen modern Swedish Bofors 105mm field guns, and a few hundred anti-aircraft guns (40mm Bofors and 20mm Oerlikon from Switzerland) which were to play a critical role in defeating the German airborne assault. The Dutch Fokker concern produced some good aircraft designs, notably the D21 and G1 fighters, but they were few in number. There had been discussion about buying 60 French tanks, but nothing was done before the outbreak of the war. Forty light British tanks had been ordered but none were delivered in time.

The bulk of the available weapons dated from 1914 or earlier. Reserve artillery battalions had to make do with literal museum pieces, guns from the 1870s and 1880s. Basic small arms were the Austrian Mannlicher rifle from 1891, and the standard HMG was the Schwarzlose, another Austrian relic of the First World War. These were not necessarily obsolete or ineffective designs, but the aging weapons meant worn parts and a greater liability to break down. Anti-tank and anti-aircraft capabilities were woefully inadequate.

Communications too were primitive, although the Dutch firm Philips was a world leader in electronics (even producing a prototype radar). Only artillery batteries were usually equipped with radios for inter-battery fire control. Transport was largely horse drawn, but that was still typical for most other armies, including the French and German; only the relatively small British regular army was completely motorized. The Dutch mobile reserve was the Light Division. In total, the Dutch army used 9,000 motorcycles, 2,800 personnel transports, 12,000 freight trucks and 30,000 horses.

During the campaign Dutch units would prove unexpectedly tough, but performance overall was inconsistent. Where junior or reserve leaders often showed unexpected initiative, there were also cases where hesitancy or lack of initiative, many times from senior levels, had detrimental results. The German advantage was in consistency of performance and greater depth in both quality and numbers. A Dutch division (about 10,000) was outnumbered 1.7:1 in manpower and 3:1 in firepower.

Germany Invades

The German invasion of the Netherlands began shortly after midnight on May 10, 1940. In keeping with its strict policy of neutrality, Dutch defenses faced in all directions, but three of the four army corps faced east towards Germany where the main threat obviously lay. The Dutch had mobilized about 120,000 men for the field army with another 150,000 regular forces dispersed in forward posts or in garrisons. The field army was organized into four army corps, each with two divisions and supporting arms, in total 24 infantry and 16 artillery regiments. Another 24 reserve infantry and seven artillery regiments were formed into independent frontier or garrison units. Mobile forces included the Light Division, the motorized horse-artillery regiment and five hussar regiments.

A Dutch regiment had conventional organization with three battalions. Each infantry battalion had three rifle companies and a heavy machine gun company. The Light Division had a unique organization with two cyclist regiments, two motorcycle combat groups (nominally regiments, but the size of a reinforced battalion) and a motorized artillery regiment. It had been planned to strengthen this division with an armoured unit with British and/or French light tanks.

The overall plan was for a gradual withdrawal into the so-called Fortress Holland. This was a defensive box comprising the province of North Holland plus parts of South Holland and Utrecht. This formed a virtual island bounded by the North Sea, the Maas-Waal-Rhine river systems and the Ijssel Lake. The most open route was directly from the east over the Veluwe, a relatively wild area covered in rolling heaths and woodlands. This region was guarded by the Grebbe Line, first fortified in the 17th century but modernized with trenches and small bunkers and covered by broad swathes of inundated fields. Plans had also been made to re-fortify another zone of inundations, the Water Line, covering Amsterdam and Utrecht, but funds were lacking and it remained incomplete.

Responsible for holding these positions were II and IV Corps with Brigades A, B and G, and other supporting units. III Corps, originally posted in North Brabant, would fall back to hold the southern front which was screened by a number of ad hoc groups. I Corps remained in reserve around The Hague and Amsterdam.

The German 18th Army, of General Georg von Küchler, led the invasion of the Netherlands. Unlike the forces moving into Belgium, which had the goal of engaging and holding the Allied forces there, Küchler's goal was to occupy the Netherlands before any Allied units had a chance to intervene. As well as freeing 18th Army for use on the main front, this would secure the right flank of the German push into Belgium, protect the Ruhr industrial zone and give the Luftwaffe advanced bases for the further campaign in northern France and Britain.

Five Days

While flat, the Netherlands made a poor area for mechanized warfare, criss-crossed with numerous marshes, canals and rivers. Enemy attacks could be easily channeled into a few narrow corridors. To bypass these obstacles the Germans committed two whole divisions of airborne troops, 7th Flieger (parachute) and 22nd Airlanding, some 14,500 men. (Due to the early loss of more than 200 transport aircraft, however, 5,000 men could not be air-transported.)

Dutch soldiers with one of those 200 missing German transports.

The rest of Küchler's forces, XXVI Corps, led by 9th Panzer, would puncture the Dutch defenses in North Brabant and race through the corridor held open by the paratroops and airlanded infantry. A secondary force, X Corps, spearheaded by the motorized SS Verfügungs Division, was to pin down II and IV Corps. The entire operation was expected to be wrapped up in less than two days.

The airborne operation targeted against the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina proved to be a fiasco. The operation around Rotterdam had better success, but the target bridges were only held against determined counter-attacks over four days. The 9th Panzer arrived two days behind schedule, late May 13, held up by tougher-than-expected resistance. The attack by the SS and X Corps against the Grebbe Line defenses had bogged down and failed to capture Amsterdam. A German assault into Rotterdam was planned for May 14. A heavy Luftwaffe bombardment of the city and the departure of the royal family for England led to the capitulation of Dutch ground forces in Fortress Holland, but final Dutch resistance, mostly in the Schelde estuary, was not cleared up until May 18.

The five-day campaign cost the Dutch about 2,200 men killed (including 75 air crew and 125 navy personnel). A further 2,700 were seriously wounded and 4,189 lightly wounded. At almost 1,800 casualties per day during the first five days, they had one of the highest loss rates of the whole war. There is only fragmentary evidence of German losses. Of the 4,000 paratroops and 14,500 air-landing infantry, some 11,075 were eventually sent into The Netherlands. Of these about 800 were killed and 1,600 wounded. Some 1,600 were captured, 1,200 of whom were quickly sent to England.

The total German losses, including Luftwaffe personnel, likely exceeded 2,000 killed and 8,000 wounded. The most critical losses came in the elite airborne and air transport corps. The transport wings lost 280 aircraft out of 450. Many of the crews were senior pilots drawn from the training schools for bomber crews. These could not be replaced in the short term, and shortages of adequately trained bomber crews were felt as early as the Battle of Britain. Losses in missing airborne personnel were thought so high that the Germans sealed off the area around The Hague and searched again and again. News of the air landing was censored by the high command, so sensitive were the Germans to the high losses sustained.

Taking into account the resources that the elite airborne units represented, the airborne assault in the Netherlands has to be considered an operational defeat. But the debacle of the French collapse and deliberate German cover-up has tended to obscure what the Dutch army actually did accomplish. The German goal was to use the airborne in conjunction with an armoured assault to win a quick victory at little cost. In this it failed. The net result of the airborne assault was to distract some Dutch reserves, but at the cost of crippling losses this was hardly a worthwhile exchange.

German Airborne Option

There is nothing wrong with the Order of Battle as presented in Strange Defeat, but this option adds a little more detail. The German 22nd Glider Division starts the game at full strength and may make a parachute drop. It must drop with one of the parachute units and shares the result of the landing die roll of that parachute unit (1 or less: both units eliminated; 2-4: no effect on the parachute unit but the 22nd Division takes a step loss; 5-6: both units land at full strength).

The VT Division is increased to a strength of 2-6 (use the 1-6 unit if the VT Division takes a step loss).

With this option, the following Dutch units replace all those in the game (except the 1-6 Wilhelmina unit):

• 1 Corps (3-3/1-3), which sets up in any Fortress Holland hex.
   
• 3 Corps (3-3/1-3), which sets up on its reduced 1-3 side in hexes 0818 or 0919 (Fortress Holland South Front).
   
• The field army: 2 and 4 Corps, each 2-3/1-3, and the single step L (Lichte or Light) Division, 1-5, which may set up in an non-Fortress Holland hex in the Netherlands.

If the Netherlands Armed option is picked, replace the L Division with the P (pantser or armored) Armor Division (single step, 2-5), and start 3 Corps at full strength (3-3).

These changes give the Dutch at start forces two additional strength points, but the German get three new strength points (1 SS and 2 glider). The Netherlands Armed option adds a new unit and 3 strength points, as in the usual game, but with the addition of an armored unit, assuming that shipments of British and French light tanks have arrived (it operates as if it were a French armored unit: no exploitation movement).

You can download the new pieces here.

And click here to buy Strange Defeat now!