Military History of The Netherlands - Cold War

Cold War

After the Second World War, the Dutch were first involved in a colonial war against the nationalists in Indonesia. As a result the home forces were much neglected and had to rearm by begging for (or simply taking) surplus allied equipment, as the RAM tank. In 1949 Bernard Montgomery judged the Royal Netherlands Army as simply "unfit for battle".

In the early fifties however, the Dutch fully participated in the NATO build-up of conventional forces. US financial support paying half of the equipment budget made it possible to create a modern defence force. Afraid that the USA might give up Europe immediately after a Soviet attack, the Dutch strongly reinforced the Rhine position by means of the traditional Dutch defensive weapon: water. Preparations were made to completely dam the major Rhine effluent rivers, forcing the water into the northern IJssel branch and thereby creating an impassable mudbarrier between Lake IJssel and the Ruhr Area. The Dutch navy was also expanded with an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, twelve destroyers and eight submarines.

In the sixties, the Navy again began to produce modern vessels of its own design and expanded slowly, however nuclear propulsion was refused by the USA. The Army replaced most of its motorised units by mechanised ones, introducing thousands of AFVs into the Infantry and the Artillery. Conventional firepower was neglected however as it was intended to engage in nuclear war immediately.

In the seventies, it was hoped that the strategy of flexible response would allow for a purely conventional defence. Digital modelling by the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research showed that successful conventional defence was feasible and indeed likely, provided that conventional firepower would be improved. Whereas the British, French, Belgians and Canadians reduced their forces in this decade, the Dutch government therefore decided to go along with the German and American policy of force enlargement. As a result in the mid-eighties the Dutch heavy units equalled the British in number and the Dutch Corps sector at the Elbe was the only one to have its own reserve division; it was conceived as to be able to hold an attack by nine reinforced Soviet divisions, or about 10,000 AFVs including materiel reserves. These facts were obscured somewhat by international press attention to the relaxation of discipline, part of a deliberate policy to better integrate the forces into the larger society. At the same time the Navy had over thirty capital vessels and the Air Force about 200 tactical planes.

When the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself collapsed, the Dutch reduced their forces considerably and integrated their army with the German; but also created a new airborne brigade, replaced the conscript army by a fully professional one and bought hundreds of light AFVs for use in peace missions. Modernising of naval and air forces, less drastically reduced, continues.