Dolle Dinsdag
As Dolle Dinsdag (German: "foolish Tuesday") went down in history in the Netherlands on Tuesday, September 5, 1944. On this day in the Second World War , according to the rumors circulating, the liberation by the Allies should take place.
history
After landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, the Allies had liberated large parts of France from German occupation by the end of August. In the subsequent advance to Belgium, they liberated Brussels on September 3, and Antwerp was captured the next day . Also on September 4th, Dutch Prime Minister Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy gave a speech on Radio Oranje in which he announced that the Allies had reached the Dutch border and that the hour of liberation had now come. Rumors said that the invasion would take place on September 5th. It was expected that Rotterdam would be captured on the same day, and Utrecht and Amsterdam on September 6th; the rest of the country would soon follow suit.
The rumor soon solidified that some places near the southern border of the Netherlands had already been liberated. In fact, on the morning of September 5th, a UK radio station falsely reported that Breda had been liberated. The Dutch then prepared to receive the Allies. Most of the workers stopped and left their jobs, the Dutch and royal “Orange” flags were laid out and the streets filled with the expectant population. Panic broke out among the German occupiers and members of the Dutch National Socialists NSB ; Documents were hastily destroyed, and more than 30,000 NSB members fled with their families from the Netherlands to German territory. Many of them found shelter in the Lüneburg Heath , while party leader Anton Adriaan Mussert fled to the Bellinckhof in Almelo .
What the Dutch people didn't know was that the Allied troops were too small to be able to advance at the pace of the past few days. Most of the companies were still in France; only a small raiding party had advanced to Antwerp and liberated a narrow corridor in Belgium . Occupied territory remained on both sides so there was a high risk of being cut off. Without reinforcement it was therefore impossible to advance further north. The fact that there was misinformation and the incorrect radio broadcast in this situation had to do with the fact that at this point in time, due to the rapid advance, not even the Allied commander in chief knew exactly where his own troops were.
The term Dolle Tuesday was first used by De Gil ("the outcry"), a propaganda newspaper of the occupying power published by the Active Propaganda Department of the Main Department for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (branch of the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda ). In its September 15 issue, the paper opened with the headline: Generale Repetitie - dure les van Dollen Dinsdag (dress rehearsal - expensive lesson of foolish Tuesday). The author of the article was Willem van den Hout , who after the war was to become famous as the author of successful books for young people under the pseudonym Willy van der Heide .
Although on 14./15. In September, Maastricht , a Dutch city, was captured by the Allies, but most of the Netherlands remained under German control. As the German Reich reacted to the September 5th strike with an economic embargo, the so-called “ Hongerwinter ” occurred , in which around 20,000 Dutch people died of malnutrition. The German occupation only ended with the surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 5, 1945 in Wageningen . The day is therefore celebrated in the Netherlands as Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Hirschfeld : Foreign rule and collaboration - The Netherlands under German occupation 1940-1945. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1984 (= studies on contemporary history; 25), ISBN 3-421-06192-0 , p. 194.
- ^ Old newspapers: illustration of the September 15, 1944 edition of De Gil
- ↑ 82nd Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Armored Division and the 30th Infantry Division, "Old Hickory". "Only members of the 1104th Eng. C Gp would have been in the city center of Maastricht on the evening of Sept. 14th, 1944. The next day the 120th cleared the Maastricht island. "