Henri Winkelman

:"This page is about the Dutch general, for the town in Arizona see: Winkelman, Arizona."Infobox Military Person
name=Henri Winkelman


caption=
rank=General
branch=Royal Netherlands Army
commands=Supreme Commander Military of the Netherlands
unit=
battles=Battle of the Netherlands
family=Married to Arendin Jacomina Coert, with two sons and two daughters
nickname=
allegiance=flagicon|Netherlands Netherlands
lived=August 17, 1876 - December 27, 1952
placeofbirth=Maastricht, Netherlands
placeofdeath=Soesterberg, Netherlands
serviceyears= - 1945
portrayedby=
laterwork=
awards=Military William Order

Henri Gerard Winkelman (August 17, 1876 - December 27, 1952) was a Dutch General best known for his command of the Dutch troops during the German invasion of the Netherlands.

Pre-war

Winkelman was born in Maastricht as the son of Julius Hendrik Winkelman and Charlotte Henriëtte Braams. After he completed his secondary education he attended the Royal Military Academy (KMA) in Breda. His goal was to become an officer in the KNIL, the Dutch colonial army for the Dutch East Indies. During his training he adjusted his goal and became an infantry officer. He was promoted to Lieutenant in 1896. He married Arendin Jacomina Coert in 1902 who would give birth to two sons and two daughters. Having completed his military education, he began to climb up the ranks of the Dutch army. In 1913 he was promoted to Captain, in 1923 he became a Major and in 1931 he was given the rank of General and became the commander of the Dutch 4th division.In 1934 he became a Lieutenant General, but left the military only shortly thereafter. Winkelman had been running for the position of Chief of Staff of the Dutch Army, but had lost out to General I.H. Reijnders. Winkelman then decided to retire and was granted honorary discharge. As a retired officer, he remained active in a number of ways, mostly by giving advice. The Dutch mobilised their armed forces on August 28, 1939, four days before Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Chief of Staff, General Reijnders, was appointed as Supreme Commander of the Dutch forces, but it was clear from the outset that his personal and professional relationship with Defence secretary, Adriaan Dijxhoorn, left a lot to be desired, ultimately leading to Reijnders' (honorary) discharge on February 5th, 1940. After a brief meeting of the Dutch cabinet General Winkelman was summoned to The Hague (the seat of the Dutch government) and was offered to become the new Dutch commander. He accepted the job the following day.

War

Winkelman was well aware of his army's limitations. He had 280,000 men at his disposal; not enough to defend the entire country. The Dutch army possessed no tanks. The troops were poorly trained. There was a lack of field artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Winkelman was convinced that the Dutch army was incapable of a modern, 'mobile' defence. Instead, he decided to keep things simple: the Dutch would only defend 'Fortress Holland' (the Noord-Holland, South-Holland and Utrecht provinces, roughly the area now referred to as the Randstad), using traditional, static defence lines and fortified fixed positions. Winkelman did not have the illusion that the Dutch could push Hitler's armies back into Germany. Instead, the Dutch forces should simply slow the Germans down, win time and keep 'Fortress Holland' in Dutch hands long enough to enable the Allies to join them.

In practice, the three northern provinces (Drenthe, Groningen and Friesland) would remain largely undefended. State-of-the-art fortifications at the east end of the Afsluitdijk (the long dike connecting the Friesland and Noord-Holland provinces) should stop the German invasion and prevent the Germans from threatening 'Fortress Holland' from the north. In the east of the country, the first line of resistance ran along the IJssel and Maas rivers. The main Dutch defence line, however, was in the very heart of the country and called the Grebbe Line, to be defended by the entire 2nd and 4th Army Corps. The Grebbe Line was to be defended until the bitter end, as the eastern front of 'Fortress Holland' (the New Dutch Water Line, once the pride of the Dutch defence system) was deemed obsolete and too close to major cities such as Utrecht and Amsterdam.

The inevitable German invasion started on May 10th, 1940, at 3:55 a.m. Dutch time (5:35 German time). Hitler's bold plan to drop paratroopers around The Hague, push into the city and capture the Dutch government, the Royal Family and the Supreme Army Command to force The Netherlands to its knees within 24 hours, ended in failure. In the east, the Germans crossed the Dutch borders with relative ease, but were halted near the main Dutch defences: the Grebbe Line and the Afsluitdijk fortifications. After one day of war, General Winkelman was relatively satisfied about the way his troops had reacted to the first German push. The only area where the situation was already critical was in the south: paratroopers had secured the Moerdijk bridges, south of Rotterdam and Dordrecht. Meanwhile, strong German infantry (supported by the 9th Panzer Division) had smashed through the so-called Peel-Raam Stelling iand now marched rapidly through the southern province of Noord-Brabant, threatening to establish contact with the bridge head at Moerdijk and to enter 'Fortress Holland' from the south, effectively isolating The Netherlands from Belgium and France. An attempt, supported by French units, to re-conquer the Moerdijk bridges failed on May 11th. Attempts to win lost ground back in the Grebbe Line were also unsuccesful.

The Grebbe Line fell in the evening of May 13th, after a ferocious battle of three days. Meanwhile, the 9th Panzer Division had reached the Moerdijk bridges, pulling into 'Fortress Holland' and reached Rotterdam, occupying the south bank of the river Meuse. The situation had now become strategically hopeless, but the north river bank was still in Dutch hands, Dutch machine guns made it impossible for the Germans to cross the Meuse bridges as Dutch marines put up fierce resistance in the streets of Rotterdam, much to the annoyance of Adolf Hitler, who expected to have occupied The Netherlands by now. On May 14th he ordered that Dutch resistance be crushed at once. The bombing of Rotterdam followed, and the German threat to give major Dutch cities such as Utrecht, Amsterdam and Haarlem the same treatment, General Winkelman was forced to surrender in the evening of May 14th. The capitulation was made official the next day in the village of Rijsoord.

Post-War

After he had signed the Dutch surrender, General Winkelman refused to officially declare that he would not resist to the German forces in the Netherlands in any way. He was therefore interned on 2 July 1940 and remained a prisoner of war for the remainder of the occupation. He was honourably discharged from the Dutch army after the war on October 1st, 1945 and given the Order of William, the oldest and highest miltary decoration in The Netherlands. His statue can still be see outside of the elementary school in Rijsoord, where he signed the capitulation on May 15th, 1940. An army base in Nunspeet was named after him. The name was transferred to another base (at Harskamp) as of May 15th 2007, after the former closed down. General Henri Winkelman died peacefully at his home on December 27th, 1952.

References

* de Jong Dr. L., Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Staatsuitgeverij, The Hague, 1981
* Middelkoop T. van, Een soldaat doet zijn plicht, Europese Bibliotheek, Zaltbommel, 2002
* [http://www.go2war2.nl/ Go2War2] ("Respected and authoritative Dutch website on World War II")
* De Bange Meidagen van '40, Lecturama, Rotterdam, 1978
* Nederlands Legermuseum ("Dutch Army Museum")
* Verzetsmuseum ("Dutch Resistance Museum")