Waffen-SS: Campaign in the West, 1940

Background

Operation Yellow, the attack on the West, was intended to be a decisive blow that would defeat France in a few weeks. Initially the army High Command proposed to repeat the strategy of the Schlieffen Plan of World War I. This envisaged the bulk of the German Army advancing through Holland and Belgium before trying to outflank Paris from the west. Hitler was unimpressed and turned to a young major-general called Erich von Manstein, who had developed a daring plan to push a tank column through the Belgian Ardennes forest to split open the French and British defences. As a diversion, a strong force would strike into Holland and northern Belgium to draw Allied forces into the Low Countries. Once the panzers had effected a breakthrough, German forces would race to the Channel and defeat the British and French armies piecemeal. The dramatic character of the plan appealed to Hitler, and in the spring of 1940 he overruled his generals and adopted Manstein's scheme.

The SS role in the attack

Fast-moving armoured and motorized units were crucial to the German plan, which relied on surprise and speed to keep the British and French off-balance. Not surprisingly, the motorized units of the armed SS were given a prominent role in the coming campaign. The SS-VT Division and the Leibstandarte were assigned spearhead roles for the invasion of Holland. The Totenkopf was not considered to be as combat-ready as its counterparts, and was initially assigned only a reserve role, ready to exploit any breakthrough created by the panzers. The Polizei Division, however, was relegated to a secondary role reinforcing the troops screening the Maginot Line along the Franco-German border.

Dutch defences

Surprise was a key element in the German plans, so the assault force for the attack on Holland was garrisoned far from the border and no obvious preparations were made that would give away the impending attack. The Dutch defence was based on holding a series of key canals and rivers that would prevent any German advance on their main cities far to the west. German plans called for parachute and glider-borne troops to seize key Dutch objectives, particularly strategic road bridges, to allow motorized columns quickly to penetrate Dutch defences. Commando troops from German military intelligence's Brandenburg Regiment also participated in these operations dressed in Dutch uniforms. It was the job of the Leibstandarte, the SS-VT and the 9th Panzer Division to take advantage of the opening created by Lieutenant-General Kurt Student's airborne forces to capture the Dutch capital, The Hague, in a lightning advance.

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