Was the German attack on the Netherlands in 1939 a strategic mistake?

I struggle to understand why Germany thought it necessary to attack the Netherlands in 1939.

They did not do so in 1914 when the main thrust of there attack was through the Low Countries. In 1939, with the Schwerpunkt through the Ardennes, there seems even less reason to attack Holland.

Long term the evacuation of the Dutch Royal Family to Britain, Dutch navy, service personnel etc seems to me to a big negative.

 

I think it depends on how much they knew about the French plans to dash north into the north of Belgium to protect Antwerp etc. behind the upper "curve" of the K-W Line and attempt to link up with the Dutch...

Given how well it worked at drawing France's best-equiped armies right up into Belgium - as a strategy it worked a treat! Yes they lost Holland as a through-channel as per WWII for raw materials bought on the world market (until the Allies could get a WWII-style "Quota System" instituted and financed again...)...but they did STILL gain Holland's hugely-valuable agricultural output; in WWII, Germany had been a HUGE market for Dutch farm products - grain , meat animals and carcasses, and HUGE amounts of hay and animal fodder....but this time at prices the Germans wanted to pay!

Loosing Holland as an import gateway was a big decision - but NORWAY...which had played the SAME role in WWI...had already been abandoned despite that potential economic role to the requirements of the war Also...when all these decisions were being made, ITALY was still Neutral, and must have looked as a viable alternative that couldn't be bought off by the Allies!

 

Not only was Italy "neutral" but so was Turkey and Spain. There were other possible options.

 

Spain (and Portugal) and arguably Turkey were of limited use until Germany had direct transport links with them. Tito's value in Yugoslavia for example was in stopping them using the direct rail route for Turkish chromium...

The attack in the West was a major gamble that MIGHT not have worked as well as it did, ensuring easy access over the Pyrenees! But the spring of 1940 lost them Denmark, Holland AND Norway as trading partners and international gateways, remember....

I wonder if there's a study comparing what Germany got via the "lost" European and Scandanavian Neutrals in WWI with what they got from the USSR 1939-41???

 

There's another aspect to this that we can consider now - but didn't matter much THEN....

What if Holland had remained uninvaded and Neutral as of December 7th 1941???

Within days the Japanese...part of the Axis...were attacking the Dutch East Indies; what if the Dutch had entered the war by default THEN on the Allied side??? Or what if Hitler had made another US-war declaration-style mistake?

The Allies I.E. Britain would INSTANTLY have been handed an uncontested European continental entry point IF they could have moved faster than the Germans to get forces into Holland! A British Army-bolstered "Fortresss Holland" would have provided ALL sorts of strategic alternatives when the time came for a break-out....

 

While it is an interesting theory I don't believe it would have been the all mighty back breaker of the German army, While the Axis would largely have had few forces to secure the Netherlands I dealt the British would them selves be in a position to rush in any more then half a division, Not unless it had been discussed previously with the British.

The best role would have played would be there Navy and Air force in a better position which would likely then play a part in SEA in the Pacific alongside the RAN and USN and there air units split between Fighting under British/American command in Europe and Australian command in the Pacific.

 

For that matter, if the Dutch were not allied with Britain in a European war, would they feel compelled to join Britain and the US in an embargo against Japan? All concerned knew it was almost certain to bring war. They could anticipate the likely outcome for their East Indies colonies; at best they'd be involved in a costly war for a cause that wasn't of primary importance to them. Just like Roosevelt or Churchill, they could see that whoever got themselves into a war with Japan would likely end up fighting Germany as well; Hitler might even warn them against taking sides against his Axis ally. If the Netherlands wasn't overrun immediately, it would become the main Anglo-German (and American) battlefield. Historically the Dutch were counting on the British and Americans to get them their homeland back, a powerful incentive to cooperate with whatever else those two required of them. In this scenario, cooperation is likely to lose them both homeland and colonies.

 

From what I've read, one of the reasons for Germany's invasion of The Netherlands was to have direct air access to bomb England. Surely the Dutch would not allow the Luftwaffe to use Dutch air space for such reasons. Not sure where I read this, but up to that time I was wondering why they invaded Holland at all.

Apart from the raw materials and food stuffs gained from occupying The Netherlands, a lot of Dutchmen served in the SS in Russia. Of course that factor was not a factor when Germany was making war plans, but it did help out a bit.

Norway was needed for raw materials I suppose, but greater access to the Atlantic for their u-boats and surface units was a major factor in going north.

 

The offensive against the Netherlands was launched on May 10th 1940, not 1939

 

Well...

Looking at the map in Bishop - only three out of forty-six notable fighter and bomber bases used in the Battle of Britain were situated in Holland...! Of the "low countries" - Belgium was far and away the more important for that.

 

As for your original question, I think it would have been a wash either way. The one thing that might have influenced Hitler to take Holland out was the worry that Britain might induce the Dutch to renounce their neutrality and then quickly use that country as a beachhead into Europe.

As for Norway, I do read several sources that Hitler had some intellegence that predicted that Britain would either invade Norway or at least mine the Leads, which I believe they may have actually done in WW1.

 

Well...

Don't forget the Dutch and Belgians both liaised with the French regarding dashing the seven divisions of the French 7th Army into the gap between the Belgian and Dutch front lines in the event of war...so reaching agreement with the British to invite them in to bolster Fortress Holland wasn't that unrealistic - except for the degree to which it would be seen as compromising Dutch neutrality and thus drawing down a German attack!

 

That is sort of like "Monday morning quarterbacking", looking back on history after it took place, but I do appreciate your observation and pointing it out. I don't think that OKW had the plans to the Battle of Britain drawn up before the invasion of The Netherlands occurred. There's no way anyone could have envisioned the war developing the way that it did, especially the total military collapse of the West. Having the airspace of The Netherlands under German authority could only benefit the prosecution of future military operations of the Luftwaffe, in whichever direction it took.

 

Well, a rosetinted (or otherwise coloured!) view of history is our advantage from this remove, after all

There's one other aspect to the paucity of Dutch fields used during the BoB of course...

This was high summer When the Germans "arrived" in May, they found the Dutch military fields boggy and next to useless - but this would not have been the case by July/August And thus its perhaps even more suprising that so little of the Luftwaffe's effort July-October was based there when they had been so apparently desperate to take the airfields in May!

Plus - given the terrain in Holland, one would have thought that the Luftwaffe could have manged to find enough flat, dry ground to establish a few more "scratch" fields by then!

 

The use of the French 7th army to meet up with the Dutch was a late addition and it was the fatal mistake for Gamelin. For the Germans the invasion was a key part of the Manstein plan as an additional means of drawing the allies in. The main reason for the German invasion was the Maastricht corridor, which is in the way of getting into the Belgian plains. So once the decision was made it was decided to take the whole country. The irony is that the Dutch wanted allied help and then withdrew their trooops from the Belgian border so the French had no troops to meet up with.

 

So it seems that the round house RIGHT hook through Holland also served as bait to draw the French 7th Army and BEF north away from the front at Sedan where the Panzers were heading.

 

If Gsmrlin had not sent the 7th army north it would have been available to meet the Sedan thrust.

 

You give too much credit to Gamelin I believe, but your observance does has it's merits. The Allied frame of mind was to occupy as much property as possible as if they were replaying WW1. Antwerp, the Scheldt, and as much of the Belgian-Dutch coastline HAD to be occupied as they say fit to avoid the supply problems anticipated. Just MHO here.

If I'm not mistaken, but wasn't the French 7th Army made up of seven infantry divisions? They wouldn't been able to do much to blunt the Panzer break through at Sedan I believe.

 

For its fast dash north among its divisions it contained the 9th and 25th Motorised infantry divisions....and also the 1st Mechanised Light Division - a fully converted French cavalry division and first-class armoured unit

I doubt it would have been sent to Sedan; if its five divisions weren't slotted for the dash north to join the two French divisions slotted for Zealand...it would STILL probably have been sent into Belgium, into the Gembloux Gap as THAT forward movement ALSO demanded motorised infantry and fast armour!