May days 1940

On 10 May 1940, the German army invaded the Netherlands without a declaration of war. It was an unequal battle. The defensive lines of the fortress Holland were breached by the Germans from both the east and the south within a few days. After the bombing of Rotterdam on 14 May, the Dutch army leadership decided to cease the defence. The surrender was signed on 15 May 1940. On the Dutch side, approximately 2,300 soldiers and 1,500 civilians were killed, on the German side almost 2,000 soldiers were killed.

A short battle

The fact that the Dutch army was defeated within five days was a huge shock and trauma. Since then, a profound and emotional controversy has played out in Dutch military historiography about the causes of this unexpectedly rapid defeat. Was it the poor quality of the Dutch army, the pre-war cutbacks in defence, the lack of training, bravery and determination of the Dutch soldier? Or were there external factors at play, such as the German material, technical and tactical superiority, the unfair and illegal German methods of combat or the actions of a fifth column, in short, treason and deceit? A lively historical debate has been held on this issue over the decades. Ultimately, it has resulted in a real controversy between, on the one hand, reflective and relativizing military historians and, on the other hand, directly involved veterans and patriotic historians.

In accordance with good military practice, Dutch officers, organised around the trade journal De Militaire Spectator, began evaluating the battle immediately after the defeat. From the summer of 1940, they interviewed officers directly involved in the military operations and published about them in De Militaire Spectator. This lasted until the spring of 1942, when all Dutch officers were again taken into German captivity. After the liberation, the work was immediately resumed. The many publications in De Militaire Spectator led from 1950 to the multi-volume work De strijd op Nederlandse terrein tijdens Wereldoorlog II, also known as the Groene Serie because of the colour of the binding. The driving force behind this series was Lieutenant Colonel V.E. Nierstrasz.

In 1970, part 3 of Dr. Lou de Jong's life's work, The Kingdom of the Netherlands in the Second World War, was published. It dealt with the May days of 1940 and was strongly based on the Green Series. The Green Series was aimed at professional soldiers, while Lou de Jong's work reached a large audience. The Green Series was evaluative in nature and put his finger on everything that had gone wrong. In part 3, De Jong gave a disillusioning picture of the equipment, training and actions of the Dutch armed forces in May 1940.

Myth-making, debunking and controversy

This highly critical description by Lou de Jong caused a shock in the Netherlands. For years, the defeat had been largely explained by mythical stories about the actions of a fifth column, German violations of the law of war and other improprieties, entirely in keeping with the image of Nazi Germany. Now it turned out that the poor state of the Dutch defence and the often lousy performance of the armed forces were mainly responsible for the rapid defeat. This was particularly painful for former soldiers who had often behaved courageously and martially and had indeed successfully resisted the Germans in a number of places. The repulsed attack on Kornwerderzand, the successful defence at Scherpenzeel and the clearing of the German airborne troops around The Hague are examples of this.

Lou de Jong's work initiated a counter-movement in the historiography of the May days of 1940, which placed more emphasis on the heroic actions of individual soldiers and small units. E.H. Brongers, himself a soldier and lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, is the most important exponent of this. The Green Series was based mainly on the reports and statements of officers, on the general course of the battle and on the command. Brongers uses eyewitness accounts and interviews with soldiers and non-commissioned officers. He wrote a series of books about the various battlefields in the Netherlands in May 1940, in which the intense experiences of the ordinary soldier in battle are impressively expressed. What Brongers wants to demonstrate is that the Dutch army, despite its material limitations and mediocre training, defended itself vigorously against an overwhelming opponent. In a number of places and at times more vigorously than one might reasonably have expected. If a European power like France was forced to its knees by the German army within a few weeks, the Netherlands, according to Brongers, defended itself relatively well.

In 1990, fifty years after the German invasion, the standard work May 1940, the battle on Dutch soil was published, edited by Piet Kamphuis and Herman Amersfoort of the Military History Section of the Royal Netherlands Army. This work is not a military-technical evaluation, but a work written for a broad audience that provides a sound overview of the military operations in May 1940 according to the latest insights. May 1940 nuances the sharp evaluation of the battle in the Green Series, and thus the work of De Jong, but is also critical of Brongers' rehabilitation-oriented historiography. The conclusions of this new overview work were soon disputed. The criticism focused on two points that have to do with German violations of the law of war.

Violations of the laws of war

May 1940 argues that the bombing of Rotterdam, however terrible, was permissible under the law of war because it concerned a defended city on the front line. However, M. Kneepkens states in his book The realm of demons. The bombardment of Rotterdam and the standards (1993) that it was indeed a criminal terror bombing, intended to hit the civilian population. May 1940 downplayed other German violations of the law of war, such as the execution of Dutch soldiers after their surrender and the use of Dutch soldiers as human shields. According to May 1940 these violations did occur, but they were incidents that occurred more often in the extreme circumstances of the battlefield.

A number of veterans led by W.D. Jagtenberg fiercely opposed these conclusions. In their experience, these types of violations formed a structural part of German actions. A heated debate arose about this, which in 1995 led to Jagtenberg publishing a book with the explosive title Geschiedvervalsing over de Meidagen van 1940. Kiest Defensie voor de SS en tégen het veteranen? Jagtenberg even filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Defense, which includes the Military History Section, to have the content of May 1940 changed. The court ruled that it did not get involved in assessing scientific publications and that the book had also been printed and distributed for a long time, so that there was not much left to correct. The lawsuit did not provide a solution, but it did spoil the relationship. In response to the accusation that the Military History Section was not prepared for open dialogue, Herman Amersfoort replied that initiating legal proceedings would in any case be the end of the dialogue.

The Military History Section continued the research. In 2000, Herman Amersfoort published ‘I had taken off my Red Cross band’. War law and conduct of Dutch and German soldiers in combat, May 1940. This book reinforced the picture that had already been sketched in May 1940. The German army had indeed violated the law of war in a number of cases, but this was not structural and mainly occurred in the heat of battle. It was striking that Amersfoort had also brought a number of Dutch violations of the law of war to light, thereby painfully demonstrating that such things simply happen in times of war and are not necessarily the result of a preconceived plan or instruction from above. Nevertheless, it is clear that Amersfoort wrote this book as a defence against the allegations made by Jagtenberg et al. and that these had nevertheless struck a sensitive chord. In the second, revised reprint of May 1940 (2005), a number of the offending passages have been adjusted or deleted. It is unclear whether this is the result of advancing scientific insight or of political motives.

The debate had long since ceased to be about the content, but about the way in which both parties, the Military History Section and the Ministry of Defence on the one hand and Jagtenberg supported by Brongers and a number of veterans on the other, dealt with each other. In 2010, Jagtenberg and Brongers published Ik beschuldig - Vijftien jaar strijd tegen het Ministerie van Defensie (I Accuse - Fifteen Years of Struggle Against the Ministry of Defence) about her book Mei 1940 - de strijd op Nederlandse terrein (May 1940 - the Battle on Dutch Territory), in which they describe the entire course of the conflict from their perspective. Followers of the polemic argue that Jagtenberg waged a personal battle that was sacred to him, ultimately losing sight of reality and falling into exaggeration. However, the Military History Section and Defence are said to be to blame for approaching the difference of opinion in an institutional, arrogant and condescending manner, and for not really engaging in a substantive debate. It is clear that at a certain point both parties had lost their sense of nuance and a good discussion was no longer possible. Wim Jagtenberg passed away in 2011 at the age of 95, which means that this subject has been temporarily put to rest.

References

• Mei 1940 De strijd op Nederlands grondgebied. (2e herziene druk, 2005).
• Website De slag om de Grebbeberg
• Website Zuidfront Holland