On to Victory

by Mark Zuehlke

  The Cape Breton Highlanders also encountered no opposition during its night advance of April 2-3, being delayed only by mines and a blown bridge over a canal, which it took engineers until 2340 hours to replace. Chafing at this delay, Lieutenant Colonel Boyd Somerville ordered the leading ‘A’ and ‘B’ Companies to pick up the pace.36

  ‘B’ Company’s Quartermaster Sergeant, Ronald Finamore, and his friend Private Alfred James “A.J.” MacKeigan had just returned from seven days’ leave in England. The furlough had enabled A.J. to visit his recently acquired wife in her Birmingham hometown. As the two men reported for duty, they spotted the two rifle companies marching into the darkness. The company’s carrier driver, MacKeigan rushed to join his partner, Private James Bertram Cusack, in the vehicle, and at 0030 hours the vehicle sped off after the infantry. Fifteen minutes later, Finamore heard a “big bang and we all ran out to the road to look—then we jumped into my carrier and went up the road. There was A.J.’s carrier cross-ways on the road and two or three fellows were running back from the rear platoon. Cusack had fallen down on the floor of the carrier and A.J. was sitting behind the wheel. A big fellow jumped up on top of the carrier—reached down—grabbed A.J. by the belt and pulled—he had only the ragged belt when he straightened up. Cusack had a big lump on the back of the neck—both men were dead—just two days after A.J. had left his wife back in Birmingham. One contributing factor was that there were no sandbags in the bottom of the carrier.” These had been removed for the ship movement from Italy to France, and with MacKeigan on leave they had not been replaced. “The mine came right through the bottom of the carrier—we guessed that the explosion broke Cusack’s neck and pieces hit A.J. in the hip and waist.” They were the battalion’s first men to die in Northwest Europe.37

  The moment Lieutenant Colonel Somerville learned that ‘B’ Company’s carrier had been destroyed and two men killed, he radioed ‘A’ Company to warn its leading troops to be extra wary of mines. A few minutes later, the company commander reported being held up by a spot so badly cratered by demolitions that the carrier could not pass. Somerville told him to leave it behind. He then sent the battalion’s pioneers and sappers from the supporting engineers to repair the road. By 0520 a GGHG tank troop, a platoon of medium machine guns from the division’s Princess Louise Fusiliers support battalion, and two battalion anti-tank guns moved up to shadow ‘B’ Company.38

  Despite being continually slowed by mines, the Highlanders secured Heteren by mid-morning and reached the dyke overlooking the Neder Rijn. ‘A’ Company had just finished digging in behind it at 1100 hours when ten German infantrymen launched a hopeless attack. They “were soon shot up and those who weren’t killed, fled in the direction they came from. Later a small fighting patrol went out in search of the enemy but they seemed to have disappeared completely.” One Highlander was wounded in the exchange.

  At 1400 hours, ‘B’ Company contacted the Perth Regiment on the right flank. Things remained quiet all along the battalion’s front until 1830, when ‘A’ Company spotted about thirty Germans trying to paddle across the river in boats. Artillery drove them back, but the moment the guns ceased firing the Germans again launched their boats. Renewed artillery convinced them to abandon the venture.39 Clearing their section of the Island cost the Highlanders three men killed and five wounded.40

  The Perth Regiment faced stiffer opposition and suffered the most casualties in its advance on Driel. Even as the rifle companies formed up on the evening of April 2, they came under heavy shelling that caused three casualties. Although ‘B’ and ‘C’ Companies encountered little resistance during their night advance towards the road leading into Driel, when the other two companies passed through at 0400 hours on April 3, ‘A’ Company had a rough scrap for control of a cluster of houses around a road junction, and three men were killed or wounded. A single Dutch SS soldier taken prisoner surprised the Perth’s war diarist by “willingly giving information about the enemy in Driel. He told us that our artillery fire had considerably lessened their numbers.” This made Major P.F. Fisher decide to attack immediately. 41 With Nos. 1 and 2 Troops of the GGHG’s ‘A’ Squadron following, ‘A’ Company and ‘D’ Companies went forward.

  As the force entered Driel’s outskirts, two machine-gun positions east of the village drove the infantry to ground.42 The tanks quickly silenced the guns, but Driel itself proved defended by diehard Dutch SS snipers. Even after the tankers smashed buildings in which they hid, the survivors continued to plink away with rifles from new hiding spots until either killed or driven to a new location.43 It took until 1400 hours to silence the last of the snipers. Everyone was settling down for a rest when ‘D’ Company—set up outside the village—was hit by two heavy counterattacks, which were beaten off “without much trouble.” Inside Driel, ‘A’ Company was attacked by ten Germans, who killed one man before the GGHG tanks drove them off with machine-gun fire. Only in the late afternoon did the enemy concede Driel’s loss. Even then, heavy machine-gun and artillery fire from positions on the Arnhem side of the river continued harassing the Perth lines. In the two-day action, the Perths had four men killed and nine wounded.44

  Although the Island had fallen rather easily, it was not a pleasant spot to be in afterwards—particularly the eight-mile Canadian sector extending west from Driel to Randwijk. Across the river, a low ridge provided excellent observation, and throughout the day any movement drew fire. “The greatest disadvantage of this front is not being able to move around the forward areas in daylight,” the Cape Breton Highlander war diarist observed. “The ration vehicles have to go forward before first light in the morning and not again until after last light in the evening, making the day pretty long.” On April 5, it was decided to deploy seven generators to mask the corps positions “behind a cloud of noxious smoke.”45

  APRIL 5 WAS a fine, warm day full of the promise of spring. Well back of the soldiers sheltered along the Rhine behind the foul smokescreen, Crerar welcomed Montgomery into his office at Venlo. Montgomery personally informed the First Canadian Army commander that the politicians had reached their decision. As he left, Montgomery handed Crerar written orders that instructed him to send one corps comprised of “at least two divisions” to “operate westwards to clear up western Holland. This may take some time; it will proceed methodically until completed.” Meanwhile, the bulk of the army was to “operate northwards to clear northeast Holland, and [eastward] to clear the coastal belt and all enemy naval establishments up to the line of the Weser.

  “In the operations of Canadian Army the available resources in engineers, bridging equipment, etc, may not be sufficient for all purposes. In this case the operations [in northeast Holland] will take priority; the clearing of western Holland will take second priority. Canadian Army will be responsible for establishing civil control in western and northeast Holland as these areas are cleared.

  “Canadian Army will have priority for all amphibious resources of 79 [Armoured Division], e.g. buffaloes, etc. These will very probably be necessary in western Holland and may serve to speed up the operations in that area.”46

  Although he would bow to the inevitable, Crerar was not optimistic about his chances of success. It seemed as if the Germans within western Holland had “chosen to fight a separate battle, standing first along the IJssel and then the Grebbe and New Water lines [farther] to the west. For such a contest the Commander of the Twenty-Fifth Army would have the combined resources of the troops still remaining in the country as a garrison, and the formations now falling back across the river as a result of my offensive to the north. It was to be assumed that his total forces would number about 100,000 men. Not all of his formations were experienced in battle, nor all at full strength, but with the varied water obstacles which they were evidently prepared to exploit without regard to the further devastation by flooding of large areas of the country at this stage of the war, they [would] be capable of putting up a strong defence. At the same time, I held only a low priority on th
e special resources necessary to carry my operations westward to the North Sea.” Montgomery had made it clear that an advance into western Holland was secondary to supporting his push through Germany. If, and when, I Canadian Corps embarked on this mission, it would do so while standing at the bottom of the supply chain and equally lacking in priority for calls on such supporting arms as tactical air.47

  [12]

  On the Brink

  NOWHERE IN WESTERN Europe did the German occupation go so horribly awry as in the Netherlands. This was a great shock to the Germans. When they invaded on May 10, 1940, they expected an easy victory and on the surface appeared to have won one. Yet, in five days of fighting, the Dutch armed forces had inflicted twelve thousand casualties and destroyed 10 per cent of the Luftwaffe’s aircraft. Along with the royal family, about 4,600 Dutch officers, sailors, soldiers, and policemen escaped to England to form the backbone of a government-in-exile.

  Hitler should have been warned. The pre-war Dutch fascist party—the Nationaal Socialistische Beweging (NSB)—had been one of Europe’s weakest pro-Nazi parties. It had held only four of one hundred seats in the Netherlands Parliament’s Lower Chamber and had a reputation for being “vocal but not really influential.”1 Its membership of 3.9 per cent of the population was declining.2 But despite the country’s lukewarm enthusiasm for fascism, Hitler expected to reshape the Netherlands into a National Socialist state.

  He believed it was only a matter of time before the Dutch recognized their kinship with Germany. They were Aryan, the majority undiluted by interbreeding with inferior races. Queen Wilhelmina’s husband was German, and in 1936 Crown Princess Juliana had married Bernhardt zur Lippe-Biesterfeld. However, immediately adopting the Dutch spelling, Prince Bernhard had proven loyal to the Netherlands. After fleeing to Britain, he refused to accompany Juliana and their two children to safety in Canada. Instead, while they took up residence in Ottawa, he joined the RAF and earned his pilot’s wings.a In August 1940, he was also appointed as a Dutch naval captain and army colonel. With each passing year, Bernhard’s influence within the government-in-exile and involvement in developing the growing resistance movement within the Netherlands increased.

  At first, Hitler extended a velvet glove. There was no looting. No assaults. No rapes. The soldiers told the Dutch they were “cousins.” Many people believed there would be none of the atrocities common in countries such as Poland. And, for a while, the policy did seem to be working, partly because of a widespread historical antipathy towards the British going back to the defeat and subsequent perceived mistreatment of the Dutch Boers in the South African War.

  Certain conditions following the invasion also encouraged compliance. When most government ministers fled with the Queen to Britain, they left behind a group of bureaucrats with no idea how to respond to the occupation. The Germans stepped in to fill this leadership vacuum. No nascent resistance movement existed yet either, so there was an absence of viable opposition or outlets for dissent to find expression. Instead, to advance their careers or curry political favour, men and women had to win the approval of German authorities. Accordingly, NSB membership increased dramatically. The Dutch SS was born, and twenty thousand Dutchmen—the largest contingent from any western European country—even volunteered for service with the German Waffen-SS.3

  The Dutch majority, however, refused to embrace fascism or collaborate in any way with the German occupation forces. Remaining loyal to the monarchy, most people attempted to quietly go about their lives, despite the defeat that Holland had suffered. To replace Queen Wilhelmina, Hitler imposed a German head of state invested with all the powers she had enjoyed and more. Reichkommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart had overseen unification of his Austrian homeland with Germany in 1938, being rewarded with the governorship of the resulting Austrian province. He came to the Netherlands from a posting as Poland’s deputy governor. Seyss-Inquart had told his wife, Gertrud, “The Führer wishes me to plant tulips.”4

  Tall and balding, Seyss-Inquart had a studious manner, his thick, horn-rimmed glasses giving him the appearance of a mid-level bureaucrat. A mountain-climbing accident had left him with a pronounced limp, which inspired the Dutch to call him manke poot (lame paw), although a more common nickname was the Dutch equivalent of “six-and-a-quarter”—a wordplay on his name that demeaned his intelligence. However, Seyss-Inquart was anything but dimwitted. A lawyer, he was intelligent and systematic.5

  In the beginning, Seyss-Inquart attempted to maintain the illusion that the occupation meant little change, even as he introduced measures that dramatically altered Dutch society. All political parties other than the NSB were banned. Dutch Nazis filled most of the provincial commissioner and community burgomaster posts. An Allied analysis concluded that the level of German control in the Netherlands was “more direct and rigid than in either France or Belgium.” Because the provincial and municipal governments were retained, it appeared they were still “nominally controlled by the Netherlanders.” Yet even the Dutch Nazis holding government positions were not independent, being supervised by a German commissioner who kept quietly in the background like an unseen puppet master.6

  At first the Dutch economy thrived under German occupation, with 1941 proving to be one of the most successful in many years because of exportation of goods to Germany. But any illusions about prosperity and the benevolence of the occupation soon began to crumble as the war continued and German fortunes turned for the worse. With British triumphs in North Africa and the decisive defeat at Stalingrad in the winter of 1942-43, Seyss-Inquart introduced increasingly repressive measures to impose control over the Dutch and siphon off agricultural and industrial products to Germany without compensation. By September 1942, many basics such as meat, clothing, and blankets were rationed. Two months later, natural gas and electricity joined the list. Families and individuals were issued ration cards to redeem for such goods, but shortages were endemic and a black market soon emerged. Officials also used ration cards to punish or reward individual behaviour. Without a ration card, necessities could only be acquired through the black market at usurious rates. Even with rationing, major shortages appeared in the major urban centres.7

  Before the invasion, thousands of German Jews had fled to the Netherlands. Some of these had been among the approximately nine hundred Jewish passengers who escaped Germany on May 13, 1939, aboard the Hamburg-American line SS St. Louis. Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Panama all refused the refugees. Appeals to U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt for safe harbour drew no response, and an American gunboat shadowed the ship as it sailed towards Canada. Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King declared the refugees were not a “Canadian problem.” SS St. Louis finally trailed back to Europe and docked in Holland. As an interim measure, the Dutch settled the passengers in Westerbork camp, established in the northeastern province of Drenthe, near the towns of Westerbork and Assen. When the Germans occupied Holland, they turned Westerbork into a transit camp through which the country’s Jewish population was moved eastward to extermination camps.

  The 140,000 Dutch Jews had enjoyed the same rights as everyone else before the occupation. But, by 1941, Seyss-Inquart introduced measures barring them from the civil service and requiring mandatory registration of every man, woman, and child. In one of the first real displays of an organized resistance, the Dutch Communist Party called a national strike on February 25, 1941—the only anti-pogrom strike in German-occupied Europe. The Germans and their Dutch police surrogates responded brutally within two days. Nine strikers were shot dead and hundreds others arrested, eighteen being subsequently executed. Hundreds of young Jewish men aged twenty to thirty-five were rounded up and shipped to the “work camps” of Buchenwald and Mauthausen.8

  After the strike, Seyss-Inquart decided the Dutch were a lost cause and escalated the repression. Over the ensuing months, 165,000 Dutch were forcibly sent to Germany to work in factories and other industries. By 1942, about sixty thousand of these had illegally ret
urned to their homeland—most going into hiding. Called onderduikers (under-divers), such people took refuge in cellars, attics, and farm buildings. Some were hidden by relatives, friends, clerics, and perfect strangers. By 1945, the number of onderduikers had risen to about 330,000. Among them were students who refused to sign loyalty oaths or those men who ignored call-ups as workers to Germany or to help with construction of coastal fortifications and other defences. About twenty thousand Jews were also hiding. It was a dangerous course for both the hidden and those helping. To be caught meant certain arrest. Jews were automatically sent to Westerbork and immediately deported to death camps. Non-Jews faced imprisonment or assignment as slave labourers for either the German army in the Netherlands or in German industrial operations.9

  Unlike Anne Frank and her family—the most famous of all onderduikers—most hid individually and spent the majority of their time in total isolation, seeing their protectors only briefly to receive food and other assistance. Those hiding them had to also share their meagre rations.

  In step with the mounting repression came a rapid growth in the number and size of organized resistance movements. On September 5, 1944, the government-in-exile formed the Interior Forces under Prince Bernhard’s command. Although identified as the Binnenlandse Strijdkrachten (NBS), this resistance movement had three official arms that operated relatively independently. These usually were identified by their acronyms—LO, KP, and OD. The Central Government Organizations for Help to People in Hiding (LO) was formed to provide direct aid to the growing multitude of onderduikers. Its members counterfeited ration cards and distributed legitimate cards filched by loyal Dutch employed by the Nazis. LO operatives also broke into government offices to steal cards and attempted to gather advance intelligence on forthcoming police raids on onderduiker hideouts. Deliberately maintaining a low profile, LO members did not engage in open defiance or sabotage.