On September 17, 1944, at the request of the Allied High Command, the Dutch government in exile in London called for a railway strike in the Netherlands.
The intention of this strike was to make it harder for the German army to move their troops and equipment to Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven, where the allied troops on that day began their offensive: "Operation Market Garden".
After a radio call from Radio Orange on September 17, 1944 (Code message: 'De kinderen van Versteeg moeten onder de wol' ), 30,000 employees of the NS (Dutch Railway) laid down their work. The result of this successful strike call was that nearly all employees of the Dutch Railways were not going to work and thus creating a standstill.
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The expectation of the strikers was that the strike would be over quickly, since the Netherlands was about to be freed soon. But the Germans won the Battle of Arnhem and the strike lasted until the liberation on May 5, 1945.
This had great impact on the life in occupied territory, including the way the occupation authorities did respond. The Germans went looking for other ways to bring back transportation to full running. Because the Germans succeeded in doing this quickly, the impact of the strike on the German troops had lost his effectiveness within 10 days.
The Germans had warned that a strike would endanger the food supply. They made this threat come true. While the German soldiers started to use their own trains for transport to supply their troops, for the Dutch population the railway strike meant that their was lack of food and fuel, and travel became a lot harder. Especially the west of the Netherlands suffered under the winter famine (hongerwinter).
Among the seven million Dutch people, who have not been liberated, the mood against the occupier became expressively grimly.
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Photo: Rotterdam 40 - 45
