E. H. Brongers

The German attack on The Hague of the 10th of May 1940 was meant to bring the German invasion of the Netherlands to a swift conclusion: parachutists, supported by aerial bombardment, would seize the Ypenburg airfield and secure the landing of a large force of airborne troops. They would capture Queen Wilhelmina and her government before anyone realised what was happening.

In the event, the ill-equipped, untrained and outnumbered Dutch defence forces managed to hold the airport for long enough to destroy a large proportion of the vulnerable German transport aircraft as they tried to land. When the Germans captured the airfield, it was already unusable. The Dutch had time to bring up artillery and force them out again.

This local victory didn't really help the Dutch, as the Germans forced a surrender anyway by bombing the city centre of Rotterdam on the 14th, but it was one of the few major setbacks the Germans suffered in the early part of the war, and made both sides rethink the tactics of airborne attack.

Lt-Col Brongers' account has a strong local-history flavour, inevitably, and it does help if you know the area well enough to be able to work out what it looked like seventy years ago, but it is a very detailed, professional description of the battle, making extensive use of eye-witness testimony and official logs from both sides.… (mais)