[Hanno Spoelstra]

Recent post in another thread by Lang Kidby which gives some context to Operation Faust:

Originally Posted by Lang

Just reading a book "Countdown to Victory" by Barry Turner about the last year of the war particularly in the North Europe/Montgomery area.

The Dutch blokes will be able to tell us more but I always thought the northern front was one continuous sweeping curve along the North Sea coast through Belgium/Holland/Germany, but not so.

The entire aim was the Rhine and Germany so Holland was bypassed with no immediate intention of wasting troops to liberate it. Both Holland and Denmark were occupied in the main by low class units with reserve type soldiers including many old men and boys so posed little threat to the British left flank. Any "A" grade troops had been moved to the main battle front to defend the German border.

The allies stopped in the south because they had outrun their supply lines and could not easily continue north without access to the German occupied ports. The French and Belgian ports were fully occupied supplying the entire American and British main offensives directly towards the Rhine and Germany. If the Arnhem drops had come off it would have been a different matter.

As a result of the delay during a terrible winter, the Dutch quickly went into a famine situation. Several months went by and by the time the (mainly) Canadians were tasked with liberation (after negotiations for a peaceful take-over with the German authorities) over 20,000 people had starved to death. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt wanted to supply food to Holland. The former saying they were having enough trouble feeding their own people and Roosevelt fearing this would be the start of USA having to feed the entire hungry European population. They caved in to pressure from the international community and Red Cross.

The political situation in Holland did not make it easy with many Dutch pro-German and tens of thousands voluntarily either fighting or working for the Germans. The Dutch resistance never got off the ground properly because it was infiltrated by the Gestapo from day one and many brave people died, betrayed by their countrymen. It took the British SOE a very long time to realise that the whole system was compromised. The very useful large scale internal disruption caused by the French Resistance behind the lines after D-Day was not available to help in Holland.

Interestingly enough the German administration of Holland was a civilian administration, not military, and as such was arguably legal after the Dutch royal family and government fled to UK leaving a vacuum. The Geneva Convention requires an occupying power to create a working administration in such circumstances. The Germans were just "administering" Holland, with many Dutch in senior positions although the SS commander Hanns Rauter battled for supremacy with the very capable Governor Seyss Inquart who had no control (but sympathized with) their excesses, particularly with Jews, without any way of blocking their direct SS command line to Himmler. More than half the entire Dutch casualties of the war consisted of Jews (100,000+) deported by the SS. The Dutch workers went on strike in 1941 to protest the deportations but this was quickly suppressed. Seyss Inquart approved the execution of 800 strikers for which he himself was executed in 1946.

In 1944, because all the nearby ports except badly damaged and limited capacity, Antwerp, were held by the Germans, relief supplies could not be brought in after the worst winter for decades.

Several starving months passed before there were two face to face meetings between the German Reich's Commissar for Holland, Seyss Inquart (blindfolded to drive to the meeting), firstly with General de Guingard (British Army Chief of Staff) then a few days later with General Bedell Smith (Eisenhower's Chief of Staff)

As a result, in the 10 days from 28 April British and American aircraft dropped 14.5 million individual ration packages. On 30 April the Germans allowed convoys of British and American vehicles to pass through the lines to bring food supplies so long as they agreed to halt any military ground operations north of the "Grebbe Line" near Utrecht. This suited the allies fine because they immediately transferred troops to the main Rhine battles.

On 5 May General Blaskowitz surrendered all German forces in Holland without any major battles occurring.

It was a humanitarian disaster on a huge scale but it is debated whether more civilians would have been killed in full-scale fighting if the allies had continued their main push up the coast against a defence by the high quality German units they had to confront on their push more easterly to the Rhine. The delay certainly saved thousands of soldiers and, although there was damage, it saved the total destruction of the beautiful Dutch cities.

Lang