Three Hollands

By many accounts, Hollanders were in their right to feel emboldened by the recent events surrounding their nation. Though in the big picture their breakaway from the Holy Roman Empire merely looked like a change of hands, Queen Wilhelmina’s political maneuvering within the new British administration had gone a long way. In the end, one would be foolish to understate the accomplishment of a nation gaining any amount of autonomy when encircled and pressed from all sides. With French forces just outside Amsterdam and Rotterdam, several issues remained critical, such as the general sense of insecurity and the housing situation, as thousands of people crowded The Hague in an attempt to flee the ever-closing borders and the cities under threat. As royalty, the governing family was also particularly vulnerable to slander, and was still recovering from the allegations of romance between Wilhelmina and her son-in-law, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld.

Yes, Holland was as strong as it was small, but whether it remained that way was in large part a matter of adroit leverage.

The Leiden Corridor

On September 1st, 1939, the Quadripartite Agreement came into effect, wherein Great Britain pledged to protect Holland from any further French aggression. For a time, it seemed that the New Republic would indeed settle with its substantial gains in Imperial territories, as it was felt to also be evidenced by their efforts to assimilate South Rotterdam rather than push on. Yet by mid-November, the self-enforced agreement proved to have only given the Hollanders a misled sense of confidence, as the Communists merely took it as an opportunity to reorganize. Being so close to claiming all of Rotterdam and its port was tantalizing, and there was no telling when the next opportunity to strike Holland in such vulnerable times would present itself. This extra time was actually critical to French tactics, as the stretch of land south of Rotterdam was still recovering from Holland’s flood tactics, complicating logistical endeavors. Two months is more than their drills required to successfully open drainage canals, allowing for the next offensive to take place. 

Thus the last three months of 1939 would be marked by renewed French attacks, in an operation intended to split Holland in two. To achieve this, the French would attempt to cut through the Leiden corridor, a relatively more sparsely populated area between The Hague and Amsterdam, all the way to the sea. If successful, this move could be devastating to Holland’s economy and logistics, severing crucial routes through the mere control of a narrow sliver of countryside. Moreover, a prolonged encirclement of The Hague would spell a quick end for Europe’s newest nation.

Narrow, but solid, as the French would soon find out. Heavily concentrated, quick to dispatch, and supported by the first arrivals of British automatons and light vehicles, the highly motivated Hollander troops still had a show of resistance to offer. Despite heavy losses to the French artillery, the subsequent attacks only yielded a few kilometers at a time – and by January, less than half of the distance to Leiden had been secured by the enemy.

In the meantime, the British also had cards to play in their own interest. Tensions over the Channel mounted in the winter, culminating in February's Operation Capricorn. Though ultimately a failure to capture Calais and establish a British foothold on the continent, the offensive served to immensely relieve Holland, effectively terminating the Leiden operations. With that, the window finally opened to set the Hollander long-term plan in motion.

The time had come to make Holland into a fortress. But first, a quick commercial break...

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Thanks to the financial contribution of their friends overseas, Holland entered the new decade with a newfound ability, that of entertainment. Already, the Zendbode PH-ZB-32 radio had encountered resounding success in homes and on the frontlines, so Zendbode Industries did not need much incentive from the state to create their entertainment branch, Zendbode Entertainment. On March 1st, 1940, the first ZE show aired, marking the beginning of an era of TV and radio entertainment programs made in Holland. They were not a first of their kind, of course, but the first of this scale, and would develop into a full-fledged tool to distract the average citizen from the woes of wartime.

Comedic Duo Anton de Jong and Jan de Jonge(no relation) would be among the rising icons of Hollander TV. Their sketches and commentary on daily life and current events would become the primary source of information for many homes, who preferred their light-hearted approach to the bleak traditional broadcasts.

In the margins of official programs, more amateur but conspicuously partisan media would also become popular. This was true, amongst others, of Radio Noordzee – an Anglo-Hollander radio broadcast show discussing news from both sides of the Channel, focusing on shared heritage and exploits, trade and investment news, as well as musical collaborations between British and Hollander orchestras and conductors.

Cartoon characters like Diederik Dons, a young gosling navigating an idyllic version of Holland’s polders, would also become cultural staples and impress the viewers with tactfully manufactured values. Among Diederik’s friends was Hank the albatross, whose English accent and friendly demeanor would make many a young spectator giggle; and Geert the coot, who sounded misguided and Frisian, always needing Diederik’s and Hank’s help to get out of sticky situations. Together, in most episodes the three friends would face the bullies, known simply as the Eagle and the Rooster.

The entertainment program faced swift criticisms, being perceived as a disturbing attempt to draw the citizens' attention away from serious and pressing issues. Circenses without panem. Yet the fact of the matter is that it enjoyed tremendous and immediate success. With future prospects so grim for months at a time, and life conditions under constant threat of collapsing nation-wide, many Hollanders swallowed the distraction whole, embracing it like a life-saving buoy, consuming the media available then asking for more. Others, especially those closer to the front, found reality too hard to ignore, even resenting the media which tried to shield them. Turning on the Zebbo became a habit for much of the populace, a reflex, the one escape from the everyday; and in so doing they became very susceptible to the trickle of information the government provided. Yet with the veil so thin, how long could the wool be pulled over?

Een huis en de buis

The focus on entertainment did not mean that the state neglected the housing issues. In fact, it would pass its early 1940s policies under an “een huis en de buis” motto: a house and the telly.

The houses in question were yet to be built, but the means existed. Even before Operation Capricorn ended, a vast development plan was set in motion between The Hague and Leiden, with the aim to transform the existing refugee camp around Wassenaar into a city worth living in. Already, the living conditions in the camp had been plummeting horrifically under the waves of displaced citizens seeking shelter, with dysentery and other waste-related diseases becoming major health concerns.

First, the existing town of Wassenaar was turned into an administrative district. At the same time, some of the sandy hillocks near the shoreline were levelled, allowing for a rough grid of streets to be drawn around said district – the blueprint of Meijendel. Sand and scattered grass was soon replaced by concrete and stone. With time, the community was organized around a method of gradual upgrades: if at first the inhabitants were forced to live in tents or other types of makeshift houses, subsidized commerce and services kept the attractiveness relatively high while cheap but higher-quality housing was put together. Some would even come to call it the town that travelled through time: from humble market stalls surrounding wooden chapels, connected to the dwellings by dirt roads, Meijendel would grow and evolve into the modern age in the blink of an eye. Much of the credit would go to the workforce: an army of hundreds of Harrybots without whom such efficiency would not have been possible.

Before winter 1940, it had become a city in its own right, self-sufficient, its roads asphalted, capable of housing 100,000 people and still growing. Its planned street network lined with prefabricated homes would become a prime example of wartime, emergency urban development – not quite the postcard look, but a sight to behold regardless.

Voor Onze Steden!

Not only did the waves of British support strengthen Holland immensely, it also gave the nation the tools to strike back and maybe turn the tide against the French. Even with the British whispering in her ear, the queen knew what was best for her country, and that by the end of 1940 Holland proper should be a larger territory than it had ever been. Such an undertaking would have two primary goals: first, securing Rotterdam and Amsterdam, which now sit awkwardly on the border; and second, capturing Utrecht.

Since the pope had decreed that the city remained under Holland’s clerical rule despite the French occupation (an assertion of course backed by the queen), the city constituted an exclave of sorts. Under the instigation of Archbishop of Utrecht Franciscus Kenninck, who had orchestrated the papal intervention in the first place, a small but radical group of pro-Holland, religious dissidents had quickly grown in influence within the city. They quickly showed readiness to capitalize on the claim and fight the anticlerical French invader.

On March 10th, 1940, sections of Hollander troops set out towards Utrecht, a move that the New Republic showed little preparation for. Indeed, French intelligence (stretched thin with the Imperial front hogging most of its attention) had indicated that Wilhelmina’s people would focus on fortification and likely adopt a defensive stance from this point on.

This overlooked one key advantage provided to Holland by Great Britain: G.R.A.I.L. Not only had it confirmed early spring as a window of opportunity, but the machine had proved extremely accurate when paired with the tight-knit and highly disciplined Hollander ranks. Consequently, the Utrecht offensive was deemed implacable. With Kenninck’s men on the ready to disable Utrecht’s alert systems, the operation required perfect timing, which the attackers had placed almost blind trust in G.R.A.I.L. to define. The rest was up to human execution.

The city was guarded by a relatively small garrison of men more used to the open terrain of the Low Lands. Unable to take advantage of the cityscape, they effectively collapsed under the assault within a day. The English would credit G.R.A.I.L for it, though the populace would denounce the use of “terror tommies” used to break the morale of the stationed men at the onset of the siege. Damaged and sparse following weeks of fighting the French outside Leiden, the automata had been sent in the vanguard to kill on sight, a tactic said to have been directly inspired by the wandering Tommybots of Calais that had been responsible for many civilian losses. Efficient but traumatizing, the move would be termed “reckless friendly fire” by the Hollander high command, tensing relationships between Hollander and English officers, and leading to the formal request that the British do not dispatch Tommybots on Holland’s territory thereafter.

Eastern Amsterdam too was liberated, at a higher human cost but also more rapidly than anticipated, as the French apparently concluded the capital to be too high a stake. The frontline retreated eastwards, giving the city room to breathe after many exhausting months.

On the southern front, G.R.A.I.L.’s assessment proved short-lived, or rather, its operators wrongly surmised that French troops would withdraw so as to reinforce the Alsatian front against the Imperials – an assumption that underestimated the NFR’s seemingly endless manpower, able to sustain many fronts at once. Additionally, while the Holy Roman Empire’s ongoing Operation Mordhau was cornering the attention of the French, the Communist forces defending Rotterdam were mostly of Flemish and Walloon descent, men without the same cultural attachment to France proper as the ones facing the Imperials. As such, their morale held up, and they would not give up the city so easily. Throughout 1940, Rotterdam would remain a stalemate, the theater of constant combat and artillery shelling. Soon it was reduced to a desolate place where the few remaining inhabitants led a tired, empty existence, windows greyed out by concrete dust, clinging onto memories of a life buried deeper and deeper under the rubble.

Fort Holland

In other places of the world, walls remained the long-standing preference for protection. In Holland though, one did not erect protections: one dug them.

The Water Line had been protecting Holland for centuries, and even recently against the bulk of the French assaults. Floodable at will, its depth carefully controlled to render most boats unusable and drastically slow down men, horses, and vehicles. It functioned as a gigantic moat of formidable efficiency, but presented the downside of sacrificing swaths of friendly land with every use. Now with the nation’s borders fitting the Old Water Line almost perfectly, the necessity to make it more controlled became more and more evident.

Such is the enterprise that civil engineers George Pickwick and Reindert Biemans were tasked with. With the border deserted by both French and Imperial troops, the circumstances were moderately safe, and the pay consequential. Under the direction of Pickwick and Biemans, the hard-working engineers built dykes around the bodies of water to be voluntarily inundated, limiting their maximal extent to a controlled area. Their depth was also standardized, allowing for consistent changes in water level across the Line. For draining purposes, hundreds of sluices were included on the western side of the Line, connecting it with the network of smaller canals crisscrossing the country. To reduce reliance on rivers for flooding (as the Rhine lay, for a large part, outside of Holland’s control and could be diverted), the use of seawater was made possible as well. This option was kept secret and would be reserved for cases of force majeure.

The herculean task would take all of 1940 and then some to complete. When achieved however, the Water Line would be more familiar to its handlers, and less damaging to farmlands than ever. Data was recorded and mapped so precisely that six different flooding levels could be picked from, separating Holland from the continent by an average of 55 to 1,220 meters (180 to 4,000 feet).

Hollanders had once again proved to the world their mastery of water engineering, and in doing so, become a thorn in the side of Europe.

The Friesland Man

1940 will have been a year of internal focuses for Holland. The time would come, however, when more attention would need to be paid to changes in neighboring nations. In particular, when it came to the rest of the provinces traditionally referred to as “Dutch”.

Following the important territorial losses of the Holy Roman Empire in what was known as the Netherlands, the Imperials were left with the provinces of Friesland, Drenthe, and Groningen, collectively reorganized into the Marksrepublik Friesland. The area, totalling over 1.8 million inhabitants, was now left leaderless. The Queen's commissioners in those provinces were felt to be loyalists, and as such, unfit to take over on behalf of the Empire. Yet one stood out to Karl’s administration: Baron Reint Hendrik de Vos van Steenwijk, commissioner in Drenthe.

De Vos van Steenwijk was a nobleman, and though his house had never laid claim to titles above that of a barony, his status gave him legitimacy, and the Empire leverage to ensure his loyalty. The man from Overijssel would be bestowed the Marksrepublik as a furtherance of his lineage within Imperial nobility, the alternative to which was to remain a man of little power in a province culturally stranded.

Through this semblance of a choice, the HRE effectively put a puppet in power of what remained of the Imperial Netherlands. This will be of importance as he becomes one of Wilhelmina’s most prominent interlocutors.