By April, 1945 Spring had come and with it warmer weather. But the food situation remained acute. Liberation which had once seemed so close now seemed so far; if something did not happen soon there would be mass starvation in Holland. Food supplies were now virtually exhausted. Something had to give, and something did. At long last Seyss-Inquart agreed to a plan which would allow the Allies to airlift food supplies to stricken Holland. On April 29th the first packages began falling. Less than a week later Nazi Germany surrendered. On May 4, 1945 Canadian troops began pouring into the northern provinces. Holland was at last liberated. Next to Norway it was the country to be longest occupied by the Germans.

The Hague, 1945

In the course of the War some 200,000 people had lost their lives. 100,000 of that number were Jews. Some 16,000 were people who had died during the time of the Hunger Winter. 30,000 were Dutch people who had been sent to German concentration camps for having engaged in anti-German activities. In Holland itself the Germans executed some 2,000 for such activities. The rest of the death figure includes Dutch soldiers who were killed during the German invasion and the civilians who died in Rotterdam. Also during the time of Operation Market Garden some 1000 civilians perished in the city of Arnhem.

Economically the War left Holland devastated. I have said much already about the way which Nazi Germany exploited Holland in the five years of their occupation. German policy was never so destructive as in the last six months. Wanting to forestall Allied forces the German systematically did all they could to destroy the Dutch infra-structure. They blew up the great harbor facilities in Rotterdam and Amsterdam; they blew up miles and miles of train track; they blew up many Dutch dikes, flooding thousands acres of land. After the War the task of re-building Holland seemed an almost insurmountable one. But rebuild their country the Dutch did. American aid in the form of the Marshall Plan did much to help. Immediately after the War the Dutch began to try those who had collaborated with or had otherwise abetted the Germans. The Dutch had abolished the death penalty in 1860, but after the War they briefly re-introduced it and had executed some of the most blatant collaborationists, Anton Mussert among them. Many of the less collaborationists were sentenced as their punishment to render service in rebuilding the country's physical infra-structure. By 1952 the Dutch had virtually completed the rebuilding of their country.

Continue: "Holland: The End As a Nuetral State"

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