dajak

True. At least the order of events is. First ultimatum threatening to raze cities, then notice by Dutch army of willingness to negotiate, then Rotterdam is bombed anyway, then Dutch army capitulates without negotiation. Whether that was intentional is still a historical question.

Great.

(Note: This issue is completely offtopic here.) Whether the fighting lasts a few days, or weeks, or months is immaterial to the strategic importance of an episode of the war. The capitulation of the Dutch on the 14th and the breakthrough at Sedan at about the same time are of great importance to understand the events of 1940 for those who want a rational explanation of the surprising collapse of the French-English-Belgian-Dutch forces in 1940. Timing was of great importance here. Those 4 days include a number of interesting and intense battle scenario's (around The Hague and Ypenburg, Rotterdam and Waalhaven, and the Grebbeberg). The Dutch (7% of the allied forces) caused some 15% of the German casualties, and suffered losses per unit per hour matched only by Poland before that and Russia in certain episodes of that war later on. The Germans failed to break through the Dutch lines, and achieved first day objectives only on the fourth day. At this point the Dutch were completely without air cover and short on ammunition. Because the Germans desperately needed to shorten their front at this point in time, they decided to use terror to end Dutch resistance. They bombed Rotterdam and threatened to do the same with Amsterdam and Utrecht. German memo's (Hitler, Goering) make clear that the Germans considered their position nearly lost at that point, despite a succesfull breakthrough in France, until the Dutch capitulated. Dutch historians mostly ignore this war and focus on the occupation period, probably because they don't like lost wars. That's one reason why events in the Netherlands are mostly unknown. The capitulation of the armed forces of the 'Kingdom in Europe' also left the Netherlands Indies, with its oil, rubber, and metals vulnerable to the Japanese who started preparing for taking out the rival US at Pearl Harbor. Independence from European supply of oil was maybe THE most important strategic consideration of Japan. This attack HAD been anticipated by the Dutch: in the 20's and most of the 30's the Dutch government was more concerned with the defense of the Netherlands Indies against Japan than with its neighbour Germany. After the loss of the Netherlands Indies the Allies were allowed to freely use the oil from the refineries in the Netherlands Antilles, the aluminium from the mines in Dutch Guyana, the Dutch merchant fleet and (leftovers of the) Navy. The Netherlands (with less than 20,000 subjects under direct control) mainly contributed to allied strength throughout rest of the war in this form. The military weakness of the overstretched 'Dutch empire' with its plentiful natural resources IS an important factor in the events of 1940. No WWII description is complete without it. It is not just one of 'many small countries' of Europe (including its colonies it was in fact one of the biggest countries of the world by many measures). Anyway, the US and Great Britain would have been just as weak militarily as the Netherlands, Belgium and France proved to be if they would have shared a land border with Germany in 1940. Fortunately they had the time to arm themselves.

The Germans invested considerable effort in assimilating the Netherlands into Greater Germany, wheras a lot of other occupations were merely 'military' occupations. In addition the Dutch kept very detailed populations records that fell into German hands, and it is a densely populated country, with a sizable Jewish population. It was hard to hide the Jewish population. Dutch resistance tried to destroy the population records later in the war. To be fair Dutch resistance to the occupation was probably motivated more by Dutch nationalism than the desire to save the Jewish population. The Dutch government-in-exile kept silent about the jews throughout most of the war (but the same is true for the allied governments, of course).