General Dike

Some weeks ago the Nazi High Command sent, as a handsome present to The Netherlands High Command, 1,500 copies of the official military map of Germany, showing every creek and hillock, every canal and road and bridge. Couple of days later the Nazi High Command hinted delicately to The Netherlands High Command that it would be jolly if this compliment were returned in kind. The Dutch ignored the suggestion. The problem of defending their little country against a German juggernaut is bad enough without showing the drivers precisely where to go.

Last week, with Nazi troops and airplanes still massing just across the frontier, with the Nazi press barraging The Netherlands for not fighting harder against Great Britain's sea blockade, and with a possible Nazi threat about airplanes hanging over Queen Wilhelmina's head (see p. 17), The Netherlands High Command stepped on the starter of its defense engines, set them idling alertly though still strictly in neutral.

All military furloughs were canceled. State of siege was extended to all towns and villages in the defense areas. All lighthouses and lightships except one were blacked out. Banks whipped their gold over to Amsterdam. Buses were requisitioned, trains held in readiness to evacuate civilians. Army reservists were called to duty. Some on such short notice that they reported for pillbox and blockhouse duty still in wooden shoes.

Tension was increased when at the border town of Venlo (see map), a Dutch car drew up just short of the line. Two men got out, one a member of the Dutch secret service. From the German side of the border came a car carrying six men in plain clothes, evidently Gestapo. They jumped out shooting. The Dutch sleuth fell. The Nazis dragged him and his comrade across the border into Germany, also kidnapping two other men who had sat talking in a nearby tavern.

Two days later a detachment of Nazi soldiers came to the same border station and removed all the furniture from that part of the German customs house which stands on Dutch soil.

Despite reassurances from The Hague and from Brussels, where King Leopold conferred long & often with his ministers and generals after returning from his sudden visit to Queen Wilhelmina, nervousness and foreboding continued through the weekend. Despite repeated German denials, all intelligence reports agreed that Adolf Hitler was planning to move somewhere, soon and suddenly, in the West. Logic for his striking through The Netherlands was compelling. With the Belgian border fortified against him almost as strongly as the French, the Dutch dike was his weakest target. His objective would not necessarily be the turning of the Allied flank but acquisition of bases for planes and submarines much closer to Great Britain than his present bases, for intensified warfare upon British shipping and the supply line of the British Expeditionary Force in France. With some 200 miles cut from their round trips to English Channel naval bases and industrial centres, Nazi bombers could be given fighter escorts, and fuel would be conserved. Should Britain go to The Netherlands' aid, her aid to France would be weakened by just so much.

The Dutch defense plan, like the Polish, is one of strategic delay and retreat. No attempt could be made to save the northeastern provinces. First stand would be made in a line of pillboxes and blockhouses running from Zwolle south through Nijmegen all the way to Maastricht, behind the Ijssel and Maas (Meuse) Rivers (see map). While this line held, the civilian population would be taken behind a second defense system, called the Grebbe Line, extending southeastward to Nijmegen from Eem on the Ijssel Lake (the diked, reclaimed Zuider Zee).

When that line no longer holds, the next retreat is to Amsterdam, leaving a flooded area from Ijssel Lake to the Waal and Maas Rivers to protect the western heart of the country including Utrecht and Rotterdam. Stranded in the middle of this flood would be the ex-Kaiser's home at Doom. Another secondary defense line would back up the main water line, running southwest from Utrecht to Breda, near the Belgian border.

From Nijmegen down to the Belgian border extends a marshy area which can be made marshier by flood water from two big canals which enclose it on the west and south. But this sector would be the most passable for the Germans and here, in a drive for the higher ground at Hertogenbosch, Tilburg and Eindhoven, is where the first German assault could be expected. Gaining this foothold, the Germans could then press on to take Flushing and other coastal points south of the river deltas, enjoying the Dutch flood zone as protection for their right flank from any counterattack. The likelihood of this attack, and its obvious menace to Belgium, was believed last week to have led King Leopold to tell Queen Wilhelmina that if the Germans invaded her land, his troops would have to occupy her southeastern corner to meet them. Also, it was understood, he would invite the British and French to cross Belgium to back him up.

Germany's first move, no doubt, would be a mass air attack aimed at all the Dutch airports, especially those along the Channel which might serve any power coming to The Netherlands' rescue. The Dutch Air Force contains not more than 300 planes, two-thirds of them old, though the pilots are heady and capable. Anti-aircraft defense is weak. Ground troops total less than 100,000 trained men, with 280,000 green reserves. So long as she did not tackle Belgium's Albert Canal and "Little Maginot" lines, and unless Belgium moved fast indeed to meet her in The Netherlands, Germany should have little trouble slicing through the smallest neutral to the Channel.

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