Mechelen Incident - Dutch Reaction

Dutch Reaction

Although the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and her government were alarmed by the Belgian warning, Dutch supreme commander Izaak H. Reijnders was sceptical of the information. When the Belgian military attaché in The Hague, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Diepenrijckx, handed him a personal memorandum from Van Overstraeten on the 12th, he reacted: "Do you believe in these messages yourself? I don't believe in them at all". Again the Dutch were not informed of the precise source and the Belgians hid the fact that the Germans in these plans only intended a partial occupation of The Netherlands, not including the Dutch National Redoubt, the Vesting Holland.

Whether Reijnders was also warned the next day by Sas is still unknown; after the war he even denied having spoken to the Belgian attaché but on the morning of the 14th, in reaction to the Belgian alert, he ordered that no leave was to be granted to any soldier — unlike the Belgians the Dutch thus did not recall anyone — and to close the strategic bridges while fuses should be placed within their explosive charges. The civilian population in the afternoon became worried by the radio broadcast about the leave cancellation. They feared that the Germans would take advantage of the severe cold to cross the New Hollandic Water Line, now that it was frozen. The next week, to reassure the people, much press coverage was given to the motorised circular saws that were available to cut the ice sheets over inundations.