Right after the conclusion of the Polish campaign, Hitler ordered the French campaign to be drawn up. Codename: Fall Gelb. Since the heavily fortified Maginot Line guarding the Franco-German border would make a frontal assault a risky operation, the Germans decided to go around it. To do so they had to violate Dutch and Belgian neutrality.

The assault on France and the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands) was postponed a number of times because of bad weather. At last the campaign started on May 10th 1940.

This article focuses on the situation around the Dutch town of The Hague. It provides some background information on this ambitious German campaign of the early days of World War II. For the first time huge numbers of airborne troops were put into action. Hitler personally thought up a scenario in which the paratroopers had to win the battle for Holland within one day, by capturing the Queen, the government and the army's supreme command.

Sources for this article include a number of books on situations around The Hague and the airfields. The most detailed ones have been written by Dutch Major Bongers, who wrote a series of excellent works on those first days of May. Furthermore I used eyewitness accounts of relatives who fought near and around the airfield of Ockenburg.

By no means this article will give a fully detailed view of the situation in the area around The Hague. In order to keep things understandable I tried to picture the main battlegrounds around the airfields and between towns The Hague and Rotterdam.

This article will show why this East-West version of "a bridge too far" not only fell short of reaching its objective, but in the end also led to the destruction of a huge part of the German air transport fleet and the troops it carried into battle. On the muddy grounds of Holland the Nazis, for the first time, tasted defeat.

More May 1940: German Assault on the Hague

General Introduction
Dutch Situation and Plans
German Situation and Plans
May 10, 1940: The War Begins
May 11, 1940
May 12, 1940
May 13, 1940
May 14, 1940 and Aftermath