The Battle for the Hague was a battle that took place on May 10, 1940 as part of the Battle of the Netherlands between the Royal Netherlands Army and German paratroopers. German paratroopers dropped in and around The Hague and were given orders to capture Dutch airfields and the city. After taking the city, the plan was to force the Dutch queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands to surrender and to thus defeat the Dutch within a single day. It was the first major air-landing operation in history. The battle ended in failure for the Germans, resulting in negative effects on the Wehrmacht for the rest of the war.
Plan
The Germans planned to surprise the Dutch and so catch them off guard, allowing them to isolate the head of the Dutch Army.[2] It was their intention to fly over the Netherlands in order to lull the Dutch into thinking that England was their target. This was to be followed by approaching the country from the direction of the North Sea, attacking the airfields Ypenburg, Ockenburg and Valkenburg to weaken potential Dutch defenses before taking The Hague. It was expected that the queen and the commander in chief of the Dutch forces, Henri Winkelman, might agree at this point to surrender. However, if the Dutch did not surrender, the Germans planned to cut off all roads leading to the Hague in order to quell any subsequent Dutch counter attack.
The German attack
According to plan, the Germans flew over The Netherlands in the early hours of the morning on May 10th, but rather than lulling the denizens of The Hague, their passage alarmed them. The Germans circled back and, at approximately 6:00 AM, bombed the airfield at Ypenburg. Immediately thereafter, their transport planes dropped paratroopers in several waves into the field and its surroundings, though Dutch machine gun fire inflicted heavy casualties on these arrivals and kept them scattered. The Dutch resistance was stronger than the Germans expected, and Germans paratroopers used captured Dutch soldiers as human shields, violating the rules of the Geneva Convention. Dutch resistance was eventually weakened, and the paratroopers were able to occupy the base's main building and to display there the swastika flag. In spite of this victory, the Dutch managed to prevent the Germans from advancing beyond Ypenburg to enter The Hague.
At around the same time, German paratroopers were dropped at the airstrip in Ockenburg, which was more weakly defended. The defenders of Ockenburg were unable to prevent the Germans taking the airfield, but they were able to delay them long enough to ensure that the Dutch infantry units arrived to prevent the paratroopers from advancing into the Hague. As the Germans were using the Ockenburg airfield to strengthen their numbers, the Dutch bombed it themselves to prevent the landing strip being used further .
The Valkenburg airfield was only partially constructed. As with Ypenburg, the Germans troops bombed the airfield prior to dropping paratroopers, causing heavy casualties among the defenders. Though the subsequent waves of paratroopers also sustained heavy losses, the defenders were unable to prevent the Germans taking the field. However, as the airfield remained under construction, the Germans could not fly their transport aircraft from it and further transports were unable to land. Following several ground skirmishes, the German troops occupied the village of Valkenburg as well as some of the bridges and buildings at Katwijk, along the Rhine.
The Dutch counter-attack
Although the German troops managed to capture the three airfields, they failed in their primary objective of taking the city of Hague and forcing the Dutch to surrender. Accordingly, the Dutch Army launched a counter-attack several hours later.
The counter attack was started from Ypenburg. Though outnumbered and relying on ammunition that they had captured from the Germans, the Dutch fought their way into position to launch artillery attacks against their own airfield, causing heavy damage to it. Following the attacks, the German troops were forced to evacuate the airfield's burning buildings, losing their strong defensive position. The Dutch troops were able to advance into the airfield, and in the skirmishes that followed, many of the German soldiers were forced to surrender. Those who did not were eventually defeated.
The airfield of Ockenburg was bombed by the Dutch forces. The Dutch troops followed up their own bombing of Ockenburg by storming the airfield. The Germans were forced into retreat, and several were captured. However, some of the German troops withdrew to the woods near the field and successfully defended themselves from the Dutch. The Dutch forces were later ordered to disengage and turn instead to Loosduinen, the Germans headed towards Rotterdam.
Having sealed off Leiden, the Dutch retook a strategic bridge near Valkenburg, using only three men. When reinforcements arrived, the Dutch began addressing Germans on the ground at the same time that Dutch bombers arrived to destroy the grounded transport planes. While the Germans attempted to put up a defense at the outskirt of the airfield, they were forced to evacuate. Battles to liberate occupied village positions nearby continued for several hours, but eventually the Dutch forces defeated the occupiers.
By the end of May 10th, the first day of the battle, Dutch forces had retaken all the captured airfields.
Casualties
The Dutch suffered 515 killed; the number of wounded is unknown, but estimated to be around 1000. The German casualty numbers are given as 134 killed by German sources (Name list of German KIA), while Dutch sources estimate that 400 Germans were killed. Numbers of wounded, missing and captured are not known with certainty (German source , 2nd German source), but Dutch sources estimate that 700 Germans were wounded. A surprisingly high total of 1,745 were captured according to Dutch sources (German source quoted below does not confirm such a high number of captured, but it might be simply incomplete, as the majority of all captured were recaptured by German forces soon after the end of the battle (German source) / Peter vel Domen121). They also lost 182 transport aircraft, including 47 damaged. Most of the aircraft were of the Ju-52 model.
Aftermath
According to historian E.H. Brongers, the failure of the operation had several negative effects on the German military. The defeat resulted in loss of confidence in airborne assaults among the German senior commanders, and airborne troops were reduced in a large number, which caused manpower shortages for Operation Sea Lion. Loss of a large number of transport aircraft, which could be used for future operations, was another major blow. Specifically, Brongers mentions the impact of the loss of transport aircraft during the Invasion of Crete. Since the Germans did not have sufficient aircraft to land troopers in force, they had to drop them instead in groups, which resulted in heavy casualties.
The biggest problem for the Dutch was the remaining German forces who had managed to escape from the airfields. Von Sponeck was ordered to go and aid the attack on Rotterdam. On his way there, his isolated group twice avoided Dutch traps but eventually had to dig in for all-around defense with as many as 1100 men, holding out against attacks until the end of hostilities. Additionally, German defenders managed to hold out at the village of Valkenburg until the 14th.
Hitler intentionally had this battle downplayed to keep up the morale of German troops and maintain the illusion that the German Army was invincible. It was one of few German defeats throughout the entire Western Front Campaign in 1940.