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It took nearly 3 weeks after April 17th. before the whole of the country was liberated. May 5th. And since it’s the 80th anniversary, a time to celebrate. Added to that is the fact that the 75th anniversary was during the Corona lock-downs…
Why took it 3 weeks? A very odd reason perhaps. Montgomery’s attention was shifted from the liberation of the western part of the Netherlands to the NW part of Germany. And perhaps for a good reason: Germany had 120,000 soldiers in the area of the two Dutch western-most provinces. Including the 4 largest cities of the country. Street battles in 4 cities against an enemy that had nowhere to go and who was desperate, is a trap you don’t want to step into. And yes, those Germans were prepared to fight to the end. Remember what I wrote earlier about The Last Battle of WW2 on the island of Texel. Less ‘motivated’ German troops would have called it a day much much earlier!
Montgomery halted and kept the Dutch frontline ‘as is’. He swung his troops to the NE. Away from the Netherlands and focussed (in a straight line if you want) to the German/Danish border. The German coastal towns had a lot of Kriegsmarine ‘gear’ and that was more important, I guess.
At the same time, German high ranking officers were notified of Hitler’s death. And that was enough to reconsider their objectives. A short timeline:
April 25th: the Americans and the Russians meet at the river Elbe, near the village of Strehla.
April 30th: Hitler commits suicide; Admiral Dönitz is his successor.
May 1st: SS General Wolf and General Von Vlietinghof surrender all German troops in Italy. Dönitz is unaware of that (according to some sources)
May 2nd: General Weidling surrenders Berlin to the Red Army.
May 4th: Rear Admiral Von Friedeborg surrenders to Montgomery in Wendish Evern, (± between Hannover and Hamburg). All troops in the area not liberated by the Allies (See the map below). The unconditional surrender became effective on May 5th.
May 5th: General Blaskovitz surrenders the troops in ‘Holland’ to the Canadian general Foulkes in a hotel in Wageningen. Close to the frontline. The surrender @ various points along the frontline made that the last of the these papers were signed on May the 7th. With the following May 8th as the official V-Day in Europe.
In the meantime, the Canadians had taken over the German HQ that was located in my hometown. The complete infrastructure was taken over and copied. After all: telephone lines worked etc. Even German cars and trucks in my town were repainted in Allied green and given the Allied markings.
So now, it’s time to celebrate: First picture is a banner that’s put up exactly next to the former German HQ (symbolically. The next pic is a sort of Canadian Club party tent; they’re scattered all over the parks in my town. Finally, a picture of the frontline.
A big parade of Allied vehicles is planned. A stretch of road, nearly 1 km long is reserved for the arrangement of the ‘vehicle train’ (roughly translated from Dutch). The Keep ‘m Rolling classic car club has a big part in this https://www.ktr.nl/en/information.html
Pink: liberated by the Allied Forces; Red: frontline; area where the German were fighting the Allied Forces. White: the area the Allied forces didn’t reach before the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany.
