This week, seventy years ago, the City of Rotterdam became the second major European city to capitulate as a result of attacks by the German Luftwaffe.
     Rotterdam is a city in the Dutch Province of South Holland in the west of the Netherlands. It is the second largest city in that Country. Its port is the largest and busiest in Europe.  From 1962 to 2004 it was the World’s busiest port when it was superceded by Shanghai. The present population of 590,000 is about 40,000 more than lived there 70 years ago.
    The Dutch hoped that, as in World War I, they would be able to sit this one out.  The Allies tried to convince them that a German attack was inevitable - especially after the German plans fell into Belgian hands and revealed plans for attacks on Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. It became increasingly obvious that a German attack was certain.  Warnings came from: (1) Colonel Hans Oster of the German intelligence service, Abwehr, through his friend Major Gijsbertus J. Sas, the Dutch Military Attaché in Berlin; (2) the Japanese Naval Attaché in Amsterdam, Captain Tadashi Meada; (3) and even Pope Pius XII.  
    Despite these warnings, the Dutch were unprepared for what was coming.  They specifically refused to cooperate with France and Great Britain, in a mutual defensive plan, for fear of provoking their German neighbor. The Dutch Army was small, poorly equipped and poorly trained.  It had no armor. The air force was almost nonexistent. The Germans expected the Country to fall within three to five days.
    The German assault on France and the Low Countries was launched on May 10, 1940. It included airborne assaults against The Hague and Rotterdam. The assault against The Hague was an attempt to capture the royal family, the government, and the military command and force the Dutch to surrender quickly. However, it was defeated. The assault against Rotterdam was also unsuccessful, although the paratroopers did establish a toehold and the Dutch were unable to dislodge them.            
    While The Hague was being assaulted, the German Ambassador to The Netherlands, Graf Zech von Burkensroda made his way to the Dutch government building to deliver the German ultimatum to Dutch Foreign Minister Eelco van Kleffens. It was a demand, in essence, to accept a German protectorate, with a guarantee to the royal dynasty and overseas possessions - or else.
    By the end of the first day, the Dutch city of Maastricht had surrendered. Queen Wilhelmina’s daughter, Princess Juliana and her husband, Prince Bernard, and their children left on May 12 on the HMS Codrington. Later that afternoon, the Dutch beseeched the British for three divisions, but they were unavailable, because the British were almost as unprepared as the Dutch.
    By the next day Holland had been cut off from the Allies by land. Later on the 13th the rest of the Dutch Government left on the British Destroyer H.M.S. Windsor.  Queen Wilhelmina left on the British Destroyer H.M.S. Hereward. Also, on the 13th, the first German tanks arrived at Rotterdam.
    That same day, concerned that the British might reinforce the Dutch, Eighteenth Army Commander, General Georg von Kückler, instructed General Rudolf Schmidt, commander of XXXIX Panzer Korps, that, “Resistance in Rotterdam should be broken with all means. If necessary, threaten with, and carry out, annihilation of the city.”  General von Kückler  would be awarded the Field Marshal’s baton on June 30, 1942. During the war, he acquired the nickname “Sidecar George.” Luftwaffe Chief, Field Marshal Hermann Göring, concerned about the fate of the beleaguered paratroopers in the city, ordered it bombed.
    At 9:00 a.m. on May 14th the Germans delivered an ultimatum to Colonel Pieter W. Scharroo, Commander of the Rotterdam Defenses, demanding a capitulation of the City. The note threatened that if a positive response was not received within two hours the, “...severest means of annihilation...” would be employed. The Colonel passed the communication to the Dutch supreme commander, General Henri Gerard Winkelman, who instructed the Colonel to send an envoy to clarify matters. The Dutch then returned the note to the Germans, complaining that it wasn’t in proper form! At 12:15 p.m. a Dutch Captain handed this request to Lt. Colonel Dietrich von Choltitz, who would earn the gratitude of all civilized people for defying Hitler’s order to burn Paris in 1944. General Schmidt, together with his Dutch interpreter, drafted a “proper” ultimatum, which was then delivered to the Dutch.
    Thirty minutes prior, 90 German bombers, led by Walter Lackner, had taken off from their bases near Bremen with their target, Rotterdam. The second, redrafted, ultimatum and the German bombers, arrived at 1:20 p.m. The second ultimatum demanded a response by 4:20 p.m. That would be two hours after the bombing of Rotterdam began.
    The Luftwaffe dropped 1,308 bombs, destroying the inner city and killing 814 civilians. One square mile of the city and twenty-four thousand houses were destroyed, leaving eighty thousand homeless. The Mayor and City Alderman demanded that the city be surrendered before more damage was sustained. At 3:50 P.M., Colonel Scharoo personally surrendered the City of Rotterdam to General Schmidt. The Colonel expressed his resentment that the bombing had occurred before the time promised in the General’s second note. The German General replied, “Colonel, I fully appreciate your bitterness.”
    Meanwhile, Field Marshal Göring had ordered a second bombardment of the City unless a message was received that Rotterdam had surrendered. On hearing this, General Schmidt, at 5:15 p.m., sent an un-coded message stating that the City had, indeed, surrendered. The bombers were recalled just in time.  
    As Dutch Captain J.D. Backer was meeting with General Student to finalize the terms of surrender, the Dutch soldiers assembled outside as instructed by the Germans. A detachment of approaching SS soldiers, seeing so many armed enemy soldiers, started firing. At that, General Student ran to the window and was shot in the head. His life was saved by a Dutch surgeon, but he would not return to duty until January 1941 - just in time to plan the airborne assault on Crete. An investigation determined that a German had fired the shot.
    Following the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Rotterdam, the R.A.F. took the gloves off and began bombing civilian industrial targets in Germany.
    In the meantime, Colonel Cuno Edouard Willem Baron van Voorst tot Voorst, commander of the Dutch Defenses of the City of Utrecht, received a demand for that City’s surrender, saying that only unconditional surrender could, “...spare it the fate of Warsaw.”  Since the city had no anti-aircraft defenses, he surrendered it.  Because he refused to sign an oath of loyalty, both he and his brother would spend the rest of the war as guests of the Reich.
    Feeling that the Dutch position was untenable, and that German policy was to bomb those cities that did not surrender, General Winkelman, at 4:50 p.m., ordered the Dutch troops to lay down their arms. At 5:20 p.m. the German envoy in The Hague was so informed. At 7:00 p.m. General Winkelman informed the Dutch people of the surrender by radio. At 5:00 a.m., the next morning, a German invitation to General Winkelman to meet with General von Kuckler, to negotiate the articles of written capitulation, was delivered.  General Winkelman made it clear that only the armed forces in the homeland would capitulate, not the Country itself, and that all other armed forces, wherever located, would continue to resist. The document was executed at 10:15 a.m. May 15th. The day before, Vice-Admiral Johannes Furstner had sailed for England with the Dutch fleet.
    The German occupation, under Reichskomissar, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was, not surprisingly, harsh, with some 250,000 Dutch dying. However, it cannot be ignored that 55,000 Dutchmen served in the Wehrmacht, with many of them serving in the 23rd SS Nederlands Panzer-Grenadier Division and the 34th SS Landstorm Nederland Grenadier Division. The Nederland Division fought well on the Eastern front, participating in the Battle of Narva with the Norwegian, Estonian and Latvian SS divisions. The first non-German to be awarded the Knight’s Cross was Dutchman Gerardus Mooyman from the SS Nederlands Division. He received the award for single-handedly destroying 19 Soviet tanks during the Second Battle of Lake Ladoga, near Leningrad in January 1943. The Landstorm Nederland fought on the Western Front, and at one time faced the Prinses Irene Brigade in Field Marshal Montgomery’s Army Group, also composed of Dutchmen. Many more Dutch “cooperated” with the German authorities.
    On March 31, 1943, the city of Rotterdam was again subjected to a massive bombing attack. This time it was not the work of the German Luftwaffe, but rather the American Eighth Air Force. 401 Dutch were killed and 16,500 were left homeless.

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.