there is this story ive been told, idk when idk by who but quite a few of my friends here in the Netherlands have also heard this from various places.
ive heard various variations of the story but they all boil down to "town hears that allied forces are close, start hanging out flags in celebration causing the nazies to flee" in some retellings the people celebrated way too early and had to fend for themselves for a little while.
so is there any truth to this premature celebration story?
On the 5th of September 1944 there was the “Dolle Dinsdag” or crazy Tuesday especially in the south of the Netherlands. Rumours were there that the allies could arrive at any minute now because on 3th of September the allies had taken Brussel and on the 4th they had taken Antwerp. People thought that at that rate they would liberate Rotterdam on the 5th and The Hague and Amsterdam on the 6th. The rumours of this fast advance were strengthened by an incorrect radio announcement that Breda, a city in the south of the Netherlands was liberated. The result was that Dutch citizens started celebrating. Part of the German soldiers and members of the NSB (Dutch Nazi party and collaborators) also believed the rumours and started fleeing to the north and to the east into Germany.
In reality British and Canadian troops had made a fast advance towards Antwerp to capture that harbour, their prime objective. They had done this through a narrow corridor that was seriously threatened by German forces in Belgium. They needed to consolidate this corridor first before anymore advance good be made. This took to the end of September. At that point the Germans had reorganized and returned to towns and villages they had abandoned before. Mind you, most were never completely abandoned.
At the end of September operation Market Garden was launched with the intention to create a corridor into Germany. Had this operation succeeded this probably had resulted in the Netherland being liberated in 1944. However, it failed and the focus of the advance shifted to the American front who were entering Germany through Belgium and France. The result was that the Netherlands stayed occupied until May 1945. One of the last occupied territories in Europe. During this time the western part of the Netherlands suffered through the hunger-winter in which thousands of people starved to death.
Another example of premature celebrations was with the liberation of Amsterdam. On May 5th the German forces in the Netherlands officially surrendered. People in Amsterdam including armed resistance fighters went to the streets to celebrate. However, there were still a lot of armed German soldiers in the city. This resulted in multiple gunfights with the biggest on Dam square in the city centre.32 people got killed in that shooting alone. Canadian forces finally entered the city on the 7th of May.
There are definitely scenarios where local public celebrations occurred prior to the completion of combat activities in that specific village or town.
In his wartime memoir, “Beyond Band of Brothers,” Major Richard Winters writes about the day in which the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment entered the town of Eindhoven after their airborne insertion on September 17th. He first states:
“On September 19th, two days into the operation, Easy Company…was given the mission of of advancing toward Helmond, east of Eindhoven, to make contact with the enemy. As we departed Eindhoven, the Dutch were out again, cheering, waving flags, offering food and drink.” (Winters & Kingseed, 126)
Then, on the next page of the memoir he writes:
“As soon as we returned to Eindhoven [later that day], the German Air Force gave the center of the city a terrific pounding. The image of that aerial and artillery bombardment remain seared in my mind to this day. The Dutch, who just that morning had been so happy to be liberated, and who had cheered us as we marched out to Helmond, were now inside closing the shutters, taking down their flags, looking dejected. It was a sad sight. They obviously felt that we were deserting them in the face of a determined enemy advance. Large fires continued burning in the town and it wasn’t until the morning before Eindhoven’s residents brought the fires under control.” (Winters & Kingseed, 127)
This somber departure occurred 2 days after the first elements of the 101st Airborne initially entered Eindhoven to a large celebratory affair and welcome, as portrayed in HBO’s “Band of Brothers.”
On a similar note to support this, from the same unit, David Kenyon Webster writes in his memoir, “Parachute Infantry,” about his first days in Eindhoven beginning September 17th:
“Heroes for the day, we pose for snapshots and sign our autographs; drink cognac and wine that have been hidden away to celebrate the liberation. A Dutchman, Hans Wesenhagen, served us a splendid meal of vegetable broth, roast veal, brussels sprouts, boiled potatoes, applesauce, and fresh milk; the girls stared at us in admiration…” (Webster, 94)
He goes on further to write of September 19th,:
“ We bade the civilians farewell and marched off at a hurried and pace to join the rest of the 2nd Battalion… Dutchmen cheered us as we passed through the villages and hung out orange flags and offered refreshments and generally acted as if the war were over, but we were no longer enthusiastic.” (Webster, 96)
Further, after a day of contact on the road northeast of Eindhoven toward Helmond, he writes:
“Villages that a greeted us so wildly on the way out quickly hid their orange banners and closed their doors and windows when they saw us come back. Nobody waved to us or patted our backs or offered apples and pears. They were afraid the Germans would follow us in… though we had cursed the march to Helmond and back, we now discovered that it had been our salvation. Not only from the airplanes which had set fire to a British ammunition convoy in the streets of Eindhoven and killed several hundred people, but also from an enemy armored column from Helmond.” (Webster, 98)
So clearly a large amount of civilian casualties occurred after their warm welcoming parties for the Allied liberation forces.
These are just two small unit personal memoir accounts of a 3-day span in one town in the Netherlands. All during just the first days of Operation Market Garden. These confirm celebrations were had prior to both military and civilian casualties as a result of combat in that same town/village. They are many other examples of this exact phenomenon written about by myriad paratroopers or armored infantry and armored units of the ground forces in Market Garden.
For further reading on this, I recommend combat memoirs of the US 101st and 82nd airborne divisions, as both divisions participated in the drop and have a multitude of accounts in the matter.
Also, please look into RG Poulussen, an author and historian native to the region. He currently lives near Nijmegen and has written two incredibly detailed strategic overviews of Market Garden and the liberation of the Netherlands during 1944/45. They are called “Lost at Nijmegen” and “Little Sense of Urgency,” respectively.
Sources: “Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters” - Winters and Kingseed, 2006
“Parachute Infantry” - David Kenyon Webster, posthumously, 1994
Edit: spelling and grammar
In August of 1944, the German civil administration in (the Grand Duchy of) Luxembourg prepared evacuation plans in order to flee from the approaching allied troops. Documentation was either evacuated or destroyed, money and other possessions confiscated and transported to the German Reich. On the 1st of September rumours about Allied troops approaching the Luxembourgish border led to a lot of the civilian administration and local collaborators and officials to flee Luxembourg in a hurry.
In the small town of Dudelange, the locals witnessed the German troops and officials leaving town on the night of the 1st to the 2nd September. A local power shortage had cut any means to listening to the clandestine radio broadcasts thus there was no way of certifying the truth of the rumours surrounding the approaching Allied troops. The morning of the 2nd September the crowds assembled in front of the town hall in celebration of their liberation. The population brought forth the Luxembourgish flag while destroying the remains of the German occupation (flags, street signs, pro-German property). The resistance members came out of their hiding places and took over the civil administration of the town and began rounding up the remaining collaborators to present them to the crowds while awaiting the arrival of their liberators.
Unbeknownst to them, the Allied troops were still 120km away and the town was instead surprised by the arrival of German troops and members of the SS supported by local collaborators that same day. It is unclear if the German troops just happened to pass by or if they were warned of what was going on. Nevertheless, the Germans opened fire to disperse the crowds. They then proceeded to hunt down the participants and in particular the resistance members. Six civilians ended up being killed. Several others were taken hostage by the Germans while the population was forced to hand over any weapons that had been stolen during their absence. While most of the hostages were released, three were killed.
Over the course of the next days, the German civilian administration and a lot of the high-ranking officials were forced by the German military to return back to Luxembourg. (Quite humiliating for the Officials, including the Gauleiter) There they continued their planned destruction of documentation. However, their stay ended up being of short duration as the Americans started to arrive at the border on the 9th of September, leading the remaining officials to flee in a hurry back to the Reich. The first towns were liberated that same day, the capital on the following day.
You would probably be interested in the liberation of the Channel Islands. For context the islands are a group of British islands just off the coast of France and were heavily fortified by the Germans after their capture in 1940. Many of the fortifications remain today (including a massive underground hospital/bunker complex dug into the hills) and it was clear that a direct attack would have resulted in a devastating loss of life, so the islands were bypassed and cut off from German supply lines.
Red Cross ships were allowed in to supply the civilian population, whilst the Germans had to make do with their rapidly diminishing supplies, kindness from civilians and whatever they could grow or forage. Most reports say the Germans behaved in an exemplary fashion when unloading and distributing these supplies, although some cases of theft and “loss” occurred.
Towards the very end of the war a force of approximately 6000 men was assembled for a planned assault on the islands. Hitler commited suicide on April 30th and the force was given the order to prepare to embark on May 3rd and to attack the next day. The civilian population was extraordinarily restless by this point - British flags and bunting were being openly sold on the streets, German military police were being openly defied and the civilian civil servants on the islands were on strike in every way but name. A request was made that all civilian “political prisoners” be released from prison, and was granted.
The British realised - or at least hoped - that the Germans would probably accept a surrender rather than a pointless fight to the death. The attack was postponed and on May 7th the Germans were informed that British ships were en-route to accept their surrender, they replied that they had no authority to surrender without orders from their own high command but would operate a general cease fire for the rest of the day.
The next day, May 8th, the cease fire expired and the Germans released all POWs on the island (including British, French and Americans) as well as prisoners sentenced by their own authorities and not the civilian ones. The population immediately realised it was as good as over, the bunting and flags went up and radios - banned by the Germans - were taken out of hiding and British broadcasts were listened to in public all over the islands. The formal surrender documents were signed on May 9th and a small force - I believe of only about 20 troops - quickly rushed to Jersey (the largest of the island) to formally liberate it. Massive crowds of cheering islanders greeted them and they made their way to the main square where the swastika flag - still flying proudly, and presumably absolutely bizarrely, above a sea of British Union Jacks and red, white and blue bunting - was finally lowered.
German troops were ordered to withdraw out of the main town and into their own camps until they could be formally processed; a small number were allowed to remain to guard ammunition and supply depots as well as their own hospital. Some German officers and police assisted in maintaining public order during the raucous celebrations over the next few days, and eventually they were all repatriated.