Word: rotterdamers
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German strategy would be to draw defenders away from Britain's airfields by intolerable attacks on other targets, if need be on heavily populated areas. A threatened destruction of London, such as the destruction of Rotterdam (in which 54 German planes killed 30,000 people and reduced the centre of the city to rubble in 7^ minutes, according to official Dutch announcement), might force the R. A. F. to come to the metropolis' defense. But if British airfields were left undefended, their shops, hangars and planes on the ground would be destroyed and in a short time...
Royal Air Force bombers paid a visit to Nazi Rotterdam one dawn last week. Just to make sure Germany would have fuel trouble in mounting her invasion of Britain, they rebombed the oil storage tanks along the Maas, reported "a great explosion ... lit up the adjoining docks and waterways. Flames rose several hundred feet. ... It is believed they are now totally destroyed...
Neutral correspondents, going from Berlin to see what Holland looked like after the Blitzkrieg, doubted Nazi claims that their war had taken but 300 Dutch civilian lives. In Rotterdam alone, whose marshy base allowed few underground shelters, uncounted thousands were crushed under heaps of bricks and stones. A deadly air bombing, ordered by the Germans when a Dutch commander withheld his surrender a few minutes beyond the ultimatum hour, smashed a square mile of commercial Rotterdam-according to the story in seven-and-a-half minutes. The Stadhuis (Town Hall), the new Beurs (Stock Exchange), the Post Office, the biggest...
Governed by the inexorable requirements of existence, life went on- even in Rotterdam. In The Hague, Amsterdam, Utrecht, other large cities, theatres reopened, papers came out (under German "guidance") cafés did good business in the spring sunshine. Along Amsterdam's quays the familiar flower barges once more set out jonquils, tulips, forget-me-nots, pansies for sale. At The Hague, where bombs had dropped on the Government Plein (square), swarms of bicycles returned to the pavements...
...There was no other way. ... If we had fought on, not only our Army would have been destroyed but all civilians, women and children. . . . Today Rotterdam had her terrible share of what bombing means, and Utrecht, Den Helder and other centres were threatened likewise. . . . Our Air Force was too weak. . . . We were left to ourselves and so I had to make a grave decision which was a very difficult one for me to lay down our arms. ... All I can say is, trust in the future, behold your traditions. Long live Her Majesty the Queen! Long live the Fatherland...