Dutch 'rookie' greets all of you

Since I graduated 5 years ago and couldn't find a descent job, sitting at home for a while, I started watching Band of Brothers. It probably sounds a bit dull, but that made me dig in our recent history again. I got totally fascinated and I still can't let go of it. I chose 'inevitable' as my nick, because I think ww2 was just that.


My homeland is Holland so 'we' were right in the middle of it. Everyone that lived here at that time had to deal with it and so there are a lot of stories; told and untold. A few years ago I volunteered to transcribe some interviews for our war & resistancecentre here in Groningen and that was quite interesting work. But with having a fulltime job now I only have the opportunity to surf the internet, watch movies and documentaries and read books. Next month I will travell to the Ardennes to Spa with a friend of mine. There we will visit Bastogne, Malmedy and forrests in the neighborhood and especially the area near Eupen and Hurtgen Forrest. Next year I will go to Normandy and I also want to go to the East.


To make it a little more personal:
My grandpa was about 14 when the war came to our country. As the war went on and he grew older, I believe in '43 he had a choice: work for the Germans in Germany, work for the Germans in the food industry in his own invironment or disappear into hiding. He chose the second option. That way the risk of being bombed to death by allied bombardments and being mistreated by the Germans (which wasn't always the case) was reduced. I think after the war people didn't like him because the farmer he worked for was a member of the NSB, our National Socialistic Party back then. The village where he lived (and me too the first 22 years of my life) was almost 'judenfrei' at the end of the war. He absolutely hated the Germans. He witnessed a German getting shot during the liberation by the Canadians. In my grandma's house (they hadnt met yet), which i grew up in, they had a few people in hiding who didn't want to do forced labour.


My other grandpa, who died when I was 2, was a bit older and worked on a ship. The Germans forced him and his crew to sail for them. When they asked, he refused. When he refused, they put a gun up his head. With a pregnant wife at home he eventually gave in. So he had to sail between Holland and Norway. When the child was born they called her Bea, named after the young princess who later became our queen. My grandpa insisted, while my grandma was anxious, because the Germans would not tolerate it. But apparently no one noticed or cared, because that still is her name
I still need to hear my grandma's story, because she can probably tell me more about his experiences at sea, it must have been awefully frightening to sail there with u-boats and allied ships and planes all over the place..
She herself witnessed the liberation of Groningen by the Canadian forces. With explosions in the distance she found her way through the rubble to grab what she could from the 'Scholtenhuis' a famous German headquarters in the North of Holland, which was abandoned by then. She was really hungry and just grabbed some things on the spot and ran away. When she came home she found out that she took a big box of condoms hehe..

The war did a lot of damage in our beautiful city. A big part of the centre was destroyed during the battle in april/may '45.

So why does this war intrigue me so much? Because it shaped the world as it is nowadays. It had such an impact! Jews got their own 'country', causing a shitload of trouble, the cold/korean war almost immediately broke out, all of a sudden the US was the biggest economy in the world, technology was booming, religion in the West had a severe beating when it comes to followers, colonies were treated very different.. And still, after 70 years, I read ww2-related things in the paper or wherever. And with the crisis nowadays being compared to the crash in the 30's and growing fascist movements, Germany unwilling to lead because of ww2..

Oh yeah.. I once tried being a writer too, so my keyboard sometimes is like a machine gun; just rattling on

Cheers!

 

Welcome to the forums!

 

Hello and welcome

Lesley

 

Hallo en welkom, I agree, very nice introduction, You indeed live in the middle of a most interesting area , I learned something too, I did not know that Groningen had been a battle zone and had been damaged. But it stands to reason. It is still a beautiful city.

Enjoy your trips and glad you found full time work,

Gaines

 

Hello and welcome. Netherlands in WW2 had been a recent interest of me lately. I read Johanna DeWilde's "Dancing in Bomb Shelters : A Diary of Holland in WW2" and Henri Van der Zee's "Hunger Winter Occupied Holland 1944-45" and got an idea horrific circumstances Dutch people had to endure during wartime and occupation. Dutch people were gallant and they survived everything Nazis threw them in four years of oppresion. I am first to admit deprivations and brutality of Nazis in Netherlands were new to me. Combined with isolation and inability of import/export and compounded geography of country Dutch were short of everything including food during wartime and they survived.


Note : I shall make a Beneleux tour in October for vacation and shall visit Netherlands along with Belgium and France. Arnhem , Nijmegen , Liberation Route and Eindhoven would be places I would like to see...

 

Welcome Aboard!

 

Welcome aboard, I grew up in 'Stad'

 

Welcome to the forums!

 

I have to say that the first 3 years were nothing in comparison to what happened in the east and other countries, because the Germans looked at Holland as sort of an 'equal' country that fitted in their picture. They treated the Dutch pretty good actually. Of course there were repercussions/sanctions against resistance and razzia's. But the real hell started after the loss of Stalingrad and the Invasion of Sicily. That made the people hopefull and the Germans angry. Even more after D-Day. Growing resistance and bigger razzia's caused more violence. The 'hungerwinter' was not only caused by the Germans taking all the food, but mainly because of the allies wanting to beat the Russians in taking Berlin, which of course also had something to do with the direction the were forced to take because of the Battle of the Bulge.

Oh by the way: far before the German invasion Hitler sent people to make maps of the countryside for strategic points. My grandpa told me about a German woman who moved to his village to do just that. I remember he showed me bills of insanely high inflation. I believe it was something like 500.000 DMark, maybe just enough to buy a bread. She gave it to him to show how the crisis had struck Germany before Hitler came to power.

 

Oh and thanks everyone for the kind words!

 

Aha, another Dutch joining the forum, so Welkom and Welcome !

 

Welcome and enjoy.!!!

 

I just learned today that Hurtgen was there first, always thought it was after the Bulge, so the forcing part isnt right. My bad..

 

Welcome to the forum. Nice introduction. Mind you the Germans contributed heavily to the winter hunger. They took whatever they could get from the civilians and mugged my own grandma who was pregnant. She was driving her bicycle and they took the few potatoes she had managed to get from a farmer after a 20 km drive. Their only apology was saying "scheisse krieg", but they nontheless took the only food she had for her family ....

 

Yes, I realise that. I just wanted to point out that that wasn't the only cause The word 'mainly' in my post should be replaced with 'also'. After all the allies waiting below the rivers was a less bad thing than the Germans mistreating starving people.

 

Welcome, Inevitable -

Loved the introduction, but especially the part at the end about your keyboard being like a machine gun! Sounds like we can learn a lot from you with all of that history.

And we've probably all sat around watching Band of Brothers, and don't find that dull at all. You are with the right crowd here.