After four humiliating years of occupation, the German retreat through the Netherlands towards the Reich caused an unusual degree of jubilation, disdain and harsh laughter among Dutch civilians. On September 4, 1944, the day after the British Guards Armoured Division drove into Brussels to wild rejoicing, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands had broadcast to her occupied country from London: ‘Compatriots – You know our liberation is coming.’ Three months after D-Day, the formerly invincible Wehrmacht, which had crushed the Netherlands in the summer of 1940, had been reduced to stealing bicycles to escape the Allied advance. Vehicles requisitioned for the...
