Last week tall, tart Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von Falkenhausen, who as Chiang Kai-shek's chief military adviser once taught Chinese troops to goose-step, took over the military Government of the Low Countries for Adolf Hitler. At the same time Berlin let it be known that Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart of Austria and points east, Germany's handy man for disciplining captured countries, would become civil administrator of The Netherlands when the time is ripe.
The time was already ripe enough to send crack foreign-tradester and Göring's right hand, Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat, to inventory Dutch finances, set up a German-Dutch economic block. Dr. Wohlthat was a natural choice to Nazify (and destroy) what was once the most complex and extensive banking system on the Continent. Only last summer he was deep in a deal whereby the British Government would lend Germany five billion dollars.
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 department store, two railway stations, the whole length of the Coolsingel (Rotterdam's main business street) were destroyed by 2,200-lb. delayed-action bombs. Along the River Maas, the entire harbor was wrecked, the ancient quarter of Boompjes annihilated. The Nieuwe Waterweg, along which Rotterdam's ships pass to the North Sea, was left blocked with ships sunk by Nazi mines.
Flushing, the best coastal harbor, and Den Helder, Holland's chief naval base, were heavily bombed, and even the ancient harbor of Stavoren on the Zuider Zee was shelled. Elsewhere, except in key defense towns like Breda, Tilburg and Maastricht, physical damage had not been great. For the rest, most of the great cities surrendered too quickly to be bombed.
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.
Never, said visiting reporters returning to Berlin, had they seen grass greener, clouds lovelier, May's tulips more glorious, than in Holland last week. But they could not miss a note of grimness either. Determined Protestants, the Dutch taught all Europe 350 years ago that foreign domination could be resisted and overthrown. For them a Seyss-Inquart is another Duke of Alba.