*Thanks to the help of a number of viewers, many locations have already been identified and now added to the timeline and CC captions* . There are still a number of locations to be identified (not easy!). There are a dozen more old films about Rotterdam on my channel: th-cam.com/play/PLP_6hUsQRi8uANUWXhXutoFj3JGSL77b-.html
0.26: upper left is the big bridge "Maasbrug". Big river at the left is de Maas. Harber in the center is Haringvliet. Big building in the topcenter: het Witte Huis (still excists). The harbor just under het Witte Huis is De Oude Haven. Parc at the left "De Boompjes". The big bridge was defended by Dutch Marines. At the other side of the river were the Germans on the Noorder Eiland.
My compliments for this video. My parents lived in the heart of this city. Im born in 1947 and I still remember I was playing with my friends in the empty heart, not realising what happened here. We played in and around the destroyed St Laurenskerk. This church is totally rebuild. I recoignise the old streetplan. Great job, this film.
God bless the perseverance and courage of the people of Rotterdam, who a few years later were able to rebuild their city, prosper and live once again in peace. Mitch, an Englishman now living in Australia.
Thanks so much for creating this. I visited Rotterdam several years ago and instantly fell in love with the city. As inspiring as the rebirth of the city undoubtedly is, I definitely noticed an underlying sadness about the loss of how it had once been. Sterker door strijd.
As a citizen born and raised in R'dam 1975 it gives me goose skin to watch such extremely realistic montaged video material. My compliments! It shows also the Unyielding mentality of the construction workers to rebuild our city to a strong city with impressive skyline
Het doet nog steeds pijn. Ik ben opgegroeid vlakbij Rotterdam, maar kwam niet zo graag in de ongezellige stad. Ze heeft al haar vroegere warmte verloren.
My family was there. My father's side of the family lived on the Rosestraat on the south side of the river and was spared the bombing and fire. My father was 14 at the time and went to the roof of his home to watch Rotterdam burning. My mother was only 13 but was working as a live-in housekeeper on the Zomerhofstraat. She and her employer survived, but their home was destroyed. Mom's family lived on the Schulpweg in Charlois. They saw the bombing and fire that followed, knowing that my mom was there and not knowing if she was alive or dead. It took mom several hours of walking through the destroyed city and avoiding the fire, but she eventually made her way home to her mother and siblings.
Wat een pijnlijke en tegelijkertijd fascinerende beelden. Het zal heel lang naar brand hebben geroken in dat vernietigde Rotterdam. Dank voor jouw inspanningen dit tijdsbeeld zo actueel te houden. Ook mijn compliment voor je muziekkeuze. Deze is wat mij betreft steeds goed.
En dit is maar het topje van de ijsberg: zo'n 8 kilometer aan stad is verwoest en dit is slechts het gedeelte van de Oude Haven tot aan de (nu gedempte) Schie. Ook een gedeelte van Kralingen, Noord en West zijn geraakt, evenals het Noordereiland dankzij vriendelijk vuur van de RAF.
Great job, the colorisation and the music are giving it a profound dramatic effect. For some reason the Germans did not throw their bombs on the Town Hall, the Post Office and the HBU building. And it was A.H. himself who gave the order not to demolish the remains of the Laurenskerk. The church was reopened on May 12th 1952.
Aangezien mijn vader in die meidagen als ned. militair gelegerd was in R'dam en er soms iets over vertelde, vind ik het ontzettend interessant om te zien wat de man gezien heeft. Wat een hel moet dat zijn geweest. Dank!
Bijzonder. Ik bedacht me hetzelfde. Mijn vader heeft er als 9 jarig jongen rondgelopen na het bombardement. Als we het erover hebben zegt hij dat hij de geur van de doden niet zal vergeten en alle lijken die in het water lagen.
Still hurts to see this as a Rotterdammer. Sad that I will never be able to see the beauty of the old city center. Hopefully we’ll start building in these architectural styles again.
Thank you for this. Very tragic and it gives a good impression of the scale of the destruction. I never knew the destroyed area was that big. My mother lived several kms away from there. She was 10 at the time and she asked her mother what were these big booms. "Thunder", she replied but she knew very well what was happening. Rotterdam, mostly the harbour, was also bombed by the Allies later during the war. My grandfather worked in the gas factory which was also a target. These were very stressful times for people living there.
My father spent the last three years of the war as forced laborer in Berlin. That was stressful too. Many people have had very, very bad times back then. Let us not repeat it, ever again.
I wish I could travel back in time to catch a glimpse of Rotterdam’s city centre before its brutal destruction, just feel the atmosphere, see the buildings, etc.😔...
i am sorry to say this , but a few years back the friend of my sister had some german people over, and they complained rotterdam was so modern and there were no old buildings. :( . i can`t forget that.
I had a friend from Hong-Kong over, halfway the nineties, she studied in Europe and of course she had to come to the Netherlands. Since I lived near Rotterdam I decided to take her there: we went to the Euromast. I will never forget her comments: ‘well, it isn’t very special, it is not Amsterdam, and the question ‘why they build like in China in this city’. And: how come there are no old buildings? No clue about the bombardement and what had happened. Obviously it was never in their history classes! I need to stress: Rotterdam was actually very boring before 2000. A lot has changed in the mean time with new icons and structures. Although now a certain Jef Bezos plans to have one the old historic bridges having demoshiled for his rich mens hobby yacht that won’t fit under a 46 meter high bridge.
Nah Mate I don't want to belittle the bombing of Rotterdam, but if they would teach about every city bombing in the Second World War there wouldnt be much time left for other topics. Unfortunately I can tell from my own experience that it is even skipped in german classes. Beside the atrocities of the Holocaust, there isn't really that much confrontation with German war crimes. I am quite sure most German people have absolutely no clue about the bombing
It was never a target like Rotterdam. In Amsterdam Noord the target was a Fokker factory plus one bomber dropped 4 bombs in the center because he got hit during an air raid on Schiphol airport. This was four days before the big hit on Rotterdam.
To my shame, I must admit that I did not realise that Rotterdam was so extensively destroyed. Looking at all the destruction is heart-wrenching. So many lives lost, homes and businesses destroyed. For what? Why is humanity so violent and cruel? We achieve the most brilliant art, music, literature and culture. We soar to the greatest heights. Yet our entire history is littered with war, greed, hate and violence. Around the 9:00 minute mark you see a windmill, such an icon of Holland, turning merrily away in the background of the now mostly cleared bombed out areas. It almost fills me with some hope, that even in the midst of such terrible destruction life can and does go on, and the industrious Dutch go about cleaning up their city. And the immediately afterwards you get the before and after split screens, and the hope I felt disappears. Such beauty destroyed. All those lives lost. The sad thing is it feels we are marching towards intolerance and fascism in so many countries, even in Europe. Add in Climate Change and the huge social and economic upheavals it will cause and I almost lose hope for the future and for our children and grandchildren. We do not seem to learn, as a species, and long-term planning or sacrifice always comes too late.
Rotterdam was a pretty big city in Europe back then with around 600,000 inhabitants a very important port city for europe already. So the center was pretty large and that entire area was bombed... Luckily the city was almost entirely evacuated during the bombardment because the city was under siege, but if that wasn’t the case there would have been around 50,000 deaths and that while this wasn’t even a real residential zone, it was filled more with shops and offices and government buildings. The Windmill is indeed a beautiful symbol but even that one burned down haha.... It’s so sad that such beauty was destroyed because of a useless war, videos like these are the ultimate reminder of how terrifying and gruesome war is, the city was called the Queen of the Meuse and it was known as one of the prettiest cities in North-Western Europe. I’m still mad at the Germans that the city where my family originated from was havocked like this luckily the city has climed back up again especially the last 20 years and large parts still did survive the war but most of the beautiful historic city center is gone forever. (At least while we have modernism as the standard for architecture)
The most poignant part of this was the windmill. It was as if it was saying "you can kill the people, you can destroy the city, but you cannot break the heart of the Netherlands". A true symbol of the resistance to tyranny that the Dutch were wage against the Nazis.
The Netherlands had the highest percentage of collaborators. We had a resistance of nothing. In 1942 there were 400 soldiers that occupied the Netherlands. The soldiers that were occupying the Netherlands described their time in the Netherlands as vacation. That’s a thing i am ashamed of when i look to my motherland. How hard we collaborated in the war.
It's incredible (incredibly horrible) how it can take years to create buildings and only minutes to destroy them. Next to the loss of lives, this is the most awful aspect of war. As usual, local residents have nothing to say about how things are done, once the powers that be make decisions; doesn't surprise me they chose to get rid of a lot of older buildings unnecessarily. The mid 20thc was a time of "progress", and that was especially true with architecture, where too many historic structures were sacrificed, considered obsolete. That happened way too often in New York City.
Its so sad. It has happened in my city too. Some amazingly beautiful historic buildings are lost forever, and so my city's character has irreversibly changed. I live in Melbourne, Australia - a young city, where some of our amazing buildings were built in the 1880s-1930s. Its a tragedy that we lost most of them (through "developement"), and it is even worse that in Europe so much beautiful architecture and craftmanship was forever lost to war. My friend's late father was a German one of his earliest memories was playing with other children amongst the rubble in Germany.
No. Look at the destruction of La Haina on Mau in August, 2023. There are still 2,000 children unaccounted for. (But Oprah Winfrey’s property remained untouched. Weird, huh?)
@@Pamela.B Did you know she was secretly meeting with Jefrey Epstein and was working as an insider at the Rothschilds too? Its all in the Panama documents, she also med with Khadaffi a week before he died, she knows where his missing gold is! She is keeping it hiding it from the Rotschilds but they to hit her with their Jewis space lazer but it was not calibrated and missed!
Wonderful informative. I had never been sure how big or important pre war Rotterdam was, we only know it today as the modern, thriving port city of today. It’s always so sad to see all the history and heritage lost, on all sides, by the bombing of WW2 in Europe and Britain. However, I was also struck by the way in which the Dutch cleaned up after the destruction, the roads were cleared of rubble and everything put in order as far as was possible……Not the actions of a people who feel defeated, they still had their pride.
Hi Martin pre-war Rotterdam port was very important. It would go on to be the biggest port in the world, only in recent times being demoted by da da da China. My father told me the Dutch invented containerization. As far as cleaning the rubble it does not surprise me the Dutch would scrub their stoops once a week. I never saw a piece of litter until a trip in 2012. My mom booked the ships in Rotterdam with goods after the war and before emigrating to the US. Cheers.
It is impossible not to focus in the horrors of these scenes. But it is important to also aknowledge the incredible resilience and power of the Dutch people, and how this city went from a total ruin to one of the most important economic poles in the entire world in such a short period of time.
So much lost history, always remember for the curse of time is absolute to those who forget the lessons. the punishment is to repeat history and the madness that follows.
Hallo Rik, ik heb een paar kleine locatie aanvullingen voor deze indrukwekkende film. 3:00; Vanaf het Erasmushuis (HBU gebouw) over de Korte Hoogstraat en Hoogstraat richting de laurenskerk genomen. Vanaf 3:30 ; Vanaf het Erasmushuis (HBU gebouw) genomen richting Leuvehaven, achtereenvolgens; 3:31 Leuvehaven, 3:38; Schiedamsedijk, 3:40; Gedempte Vest. Verder op 3:42; het Hofplein. 3:51; Delftse Poort en Stadhuis. 3:56; Links boven is niet het Stadhuis op de Coolsingel! Wat wel weet ik nog niet. 4:26; Nieuwe haven. 6:25; Hoogstraat. 9:17; de twee filmpjes zijn in het begin niet vanuit hetzelfde standpunt genomen, Linker filmpje vanaf de laurenstoren en het rechter filmpje vanaf het Witte huis(Laurenskerk is in beeld), tegenovergestelde richting dus. Vanaf 9:24 klopt het weer wel, beide gefilmd vanaf het Witte huis. Heel veel dank voor het uploaden, groet, Hans
@Warren Surrendering to genocidal fascists doesn’t guarantee the survival of its people.There agenda was clear at that point,the complete and utter extermination of all dissidents which basically was a blanket twisted ideology.Surrendering already showed its horrible consequences throughout other cities,which were destroyed anyway. The communication breakdown was a formality which was making headway however the cacophony of events following resulted in a firestorm that literally did more of the damage than the initial bombing.
Amazing work rick, so sad to see it all in ruins, but like many other towns and cities after the war had to rebuild and decisions had to be made by City planners😔
I'm from rotterdam and my grandmother still every new year is terrified of every loud sound it's really sad to see her suffer like that but we also need to remember that our so called allies bombed rotterdam in 1943 and killed 500 people and destroyed a intire city block they didn't care about us just like our government that just left us after 2 day of fighting
Sorry to hear about your grandmother but pilots and precision bombing was a big problem back in the day. They didn't have the proper technique or the skills were missing.
@@antho3062 rotterdam was bombed on the 4th day we surrendered on the 5th day but the government and royal family fled the country on the second day like the cowards they are
I guess there is some truth in that. Rotterdam was bombed by the Germans to get The Netherlands on their knees and the allies did the same with Dresden towards Germany.
During the blitz on London 700 tons of high explosives were dropped by the Germans and 100,000 incendiaries in one night. Birmingham received 12,500 tons of bombs over 2 months, Coventry got 10,000 incendiaries and hundreds of tons of bombs. This went on all over England for several years. Sadly lovely cities on both sides were destroyed along with many of their inhabitants. I think there comes a time in a war like that when any form of humanity towards the enemy disappears. Sad part is we have not learned any lessons from it to this day.
Er schijnt een lijst geweest te zijn waarop 144 gebouwen stonden die voor herbouw in aanmerking kwamen. Die lijst is verdwenen. Persoonlijk vind ik dat molen de Noord op het Oostplein herbouwd moet worden. In andere plaatsen worden ook constant molens herbouwd. Molen de Noord had het bombardement overleefd maar is in 1954 afgebrand.
ik persoonlijk zou het liefst de oude stadsschouwburg terug willen hebben. Dat had ook herbouwd kunnen worden omdat het gebouw behalve het interieur nog redelijk intact was.
@@bastian8763 Architect Verheul had gevraagd of de schouwburg herbouwd mocht worden. Het bestuur zou zelf de kosten betalen. Zou de gemeente niets kostten. Maar helaas. Ook het gespaarde Klooster Sint Lucia (naast de schouwburg) en de oude panden achter het klooster zijn later toch allemaal gesloopt. Zo zijn ook het gebouw van Handel en Nijverheid en het Gildehuys, beiden aan de Coolsingel, gesloopt. Ook het gebouw van Gerzon mocht niet blijven. De overgebleven panden aan de Hertekade: eveneens gesloopt. De prachtige Koninginnekerk in Jugenstil. Weg Zo kan ik nog wel even doorgaan met gebouwen die nog hadden kunnen blijven staan.
@@hammereisen7493 Die lijnbaan gaat toch ooit een keer weer gesloopt worden. Zoveel mensen die het lelijk vinden en de straat verpauperd ook. Hopelijk kan dan op de exact zelfde plek de schouwburg weer herbouwd worden, dat is misschien wel het mooiste gebouw wat verloren is gegaan.
It depends where you come from. Here in The Netherlands almost everyone knows of this German bombing attack. It is rooted deep in Rotterdam's history. When you visit Rotterdam you will hardly find any old buildings, just modern architectural monstrocities.
@@tonybarde2572 the city center of Antwerpen wasn't completely destroyed like rotterdam. this was a terror bombing to force a surrender like they did to warschau that did not happen in Antwerpen
"On the evening of May 13, 1940, the Army High Command ordered the 18th Army to "break the resistance in Rotterdam by all means". [1] General Schmidt, who commanded the combat group of the 18th Army destined for the capture of Rotterdam, gave the Dutch city commander Pieter Scharroo an ultimatum on May 14 to surrender the city. The fighting was temporarily stopped and negotiations between the Germans and the Dutch began. Rotterdam had been declared a fortress city and was therefore no longer subject to the protection of civil institutions under international law. On May 14, the leadership of the Wehrmacht ordered an air raid on Rotterdam, which followed immediately." "The news of the surrender negotiations that the defense lawyers had meanwhile commenced reached the German command posts too late on May 14th. Only the II. Group of the approaching Kampfgeschwader 54 could be ordered back by a counter-order. 57 bombers from Group I approaching Rotterdam carried out the attack. It turned out to be particularly tragic that the towed aerial had to be retracted on the Heinkel He 111 bombers before the bombs were dropped. For example, the radio command to abort did not reach some of the attacking pilots, and they carried out their mission. [2] Lieutenant Colonel Otto Höhne, leader of one of the two attacking columns of the combat squadron, was the only one who recognized the red lights of the German paratroopers, which signaled that the Dutch had surrendered. Höhne and his column turned at the last moment, thus preventing further damage to the already hard-hit inner city. [3] [4]" tl;dr they were trying to defeat the resistance and they did but last moment the bombers were already underway and had their radio antenna pulled inside and didn't get the transmission to abort the mission, they also didn't see the flares to abort. Only the last bomber squadron aborted because they saw it.
As a Dutch person it's very sad for me to see these images. But there is no anger, for who is there to be angry at? Germans today have nothing to do with their past and as countries we strive for the same things : democracy, individual liberty and freedom. I don't even feel angry at the individual pilots, soldiers or navymen. They were serving their country and doing what they thought was best, just like every young man was doing in Europe at the time. If we were born during that time in Germany then it's arrogant to think we wouldn't have been fighting on the front. Just bad luck of where you were born. Let's just try to never make this happen again :)
Another excellent reconstruction Rick, and obviously, a very emotional one too. Was Rotterdam also bombed by the V weapons? or was that Amsterdam, Google isn't clear on this.
Thanks! V-weapons were never used against The Netherlands. Rotterdam was bombed by a traditional aerial attack involving 54 Heinkel He 111 aircraft (Wiki). As far as I know, the V1 and V2 "Vergeltungswaffen" were only used against the UK. By the time they were invented and operational, almost the whole of Western Europe was already under German occupancy. The V1 and V2's were launched from the Northsea coast (The Netherlands, Belgium (?) and France) to primarily hit London.
@@Rick88888888 In fact V1s and perhaps also V2s were also heavily used against Antwerp towards the end of the war and as launch sites became fewer and fewer. Re-taking Antwerp was a major target for the Nazis as the allies advanced towards Germany and breaking through to Antwerp was one of the principal motives for the Battle of the Bulge in the Belgian Ardennes.
Ja dat had ik ook. Tijdens het maken en editten van de video's dringen emoties niet zo tot me door omdat ik dan voornamelijk met de techniek bezig ben, maar als ik daarna het resultaat bekijk komen de emoties soms flink los, mede doordat dan ook de muziek de sfeer benadrukt ...
@@Rick88888888 Dank u voor het antwoord! Ik had gister al een bericht geplaatst maar heb gemerkt dat die zomaar was verwijderd na een aantal uur, zonder enige reden of waarschuwing. Dit gebeurt me nu al weken en ik weet niet waarom, ik vermoed censuur van TH-cam zelve. Enfin, ik geniet altijd van de oude beelden die u plaatst, vooral van Rotterdam maar zeker ook daarbuiten! Zijn er ook al beelden opgedoken van plaatsen als Delft of Haarlem?
@@HighFlyingOwlOfMinerva Hartelijk dank. Ja TH-cam heeft momenteel kuren. Ik ben een lijst met berichten kwijt en ook is een stuk of 10 comments van gisterenavond laat verdwenen. Die van jou zat daar vast ook bij. Op mijn kanaal is wel een "Hold inappropriate comments for review" TH-cam filter actief en zijn schuttingwoorden (in NL en Engels) geblokkeerd. Maar dat is vast niet in dit geval aan de orde.
De ergste schaden was niet van de bommen, maar die de mensen daarna de stad aan hebben gedaan. Molen de Noord is door 'onbekende reden' afgebrand in 1954 en de gemeente gaf geen toestemming tot herbouw. Dat zegt genoeg. 9:04
So,.. basically the film was an assessment of the 'success' of the raid... When I saw it, I was wondering... is this a film made by order of the Dutch government.. , or were it the Nazi's? (By that time few Dutch planes were left..... and the government busy evacuating the queen, the gold and itself. Or even more likely, it was filmed a couple of days later... some streets seems already cleared,... some dust/smoke clouds still around...)
@@oswaldveroor ja tijdens de 2de wereldoorlog die Engeland heeft gestart, het is natuurlijk onacceptabel dat de nazi's onze mooie stad hebben gebombardeerd maar dat was nooit gebeurd als Engeland & Amerika zich nooit met nazi Duitsland hadden bemoeit
@@r.a.h7682 in het universum waar ik leef is Duitsland de oorlog begonnen door Polen aan te vallen. In no time werden andere landen daarna door de Duitsers bezet waaronder ook Nederland. Misschien ben ik op een paralelle tijdlijn beland met een ander verloop van de geschiedenis, Mocht dit onverhoopt toch niet het geval blijken ben ik wel benieuwd hoe jij erbij komt dat Engeland deze oorlog gestart is?
@@r.a.h7682 Uhm Amerika verklaarde Japan de oorlog op 7 december 1941. Duitsland verklaarde Amerika de oorlog op 8 of 9 december 1941. Dat is ruim anderhalf jaar nadat Rotterdam gebombardeerd was. Hoe in vredesnaam kan Amerika hier iets mee te maken hebben? En Engeland en Frankrijk verklaarden Duitsland inderdaad de oorlog. Nadat Duitsland Polen was binnengevallen. En daarna Denemarken en Noorwegen. En toen België, Frankrijk, Luxemburg en Nederland. Ik weet niet waar u geschiedenis heeft gehad, maar ik zou mijn schoolgeld terugvragen.
Nothing "accidental" about it. The German bombardement was done deliberately to force the Dutch government to capitulate. Other Dutch cities would have been next if they hadn't surrendered. I think you might be mixing up the bombardement of Rotterdam with that of The Hague where indeed a navigation error was made by the RAF causing a residential area to be bombed in stead of V2 lauch sites just over a mile away in the woods.
@@Rick88888888 Utter nonsense? Weird how German and English Wikipedia cite literature to this topic, documented how squadrons turned around in midair and how stupid Heinkel He 111 bombers were designed because their antenna had to be retracted before bombing. Please recommend some history lessons! Based on facts and not on things made up in your head!
@@hanz3967 You really think Hitler wouldn’t have set his eyes on the West? He was a megalomaniac…he was never going to be satisfied until he ruled everything.
@@MWDL2007 He admired the british empire and his biggest miscalculation was thinking they would not defend poland. When he would've won the war against the Ussr he would've been occupied with supressing rebels etc. No way he would declare war against britain or France after this
Read about how Germany got "squeezed" after WW-I in an attempt to keep them from attempting to dominate Europe again. Huge mistakes were made by the British and other powers trying to keep the "Hun" under control. As a result of the suppression, the German economy and population suffered deeply. All that was needed was a strong leader to emerge who would (and could) promiss the Germans a better future. Unfortunately that leader was Hitler. There are plenty of examples nowadays of entire populations blindly following their leaders in the presumption that no one else can provide them with a better, proporous future. There are profound reasons why the Nazi regime acted against 'minority groups' in Germany and why the majority of the population supported these actions. Nothing to do with "madness", but in stead fully explainable (and ofcourse condemnable). So few people bother to dig deeper into the historic facts. This Wikipedia page only superficially touches the negative sentiments towards these minorities and the reasons behind it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht It is recommendable to read much more about *why* this Kristallnacht happened.
@@Rick88888888 To be honest it was mainly (though not exclusively) the French who pushed for German reparations via the Treaty of Versailles. The British economist John Maynard Keynes warned of its consequences, and Lloyd George the Prime Minister was against the harsh terms. The reparations actually ended up not as bad as feared, partially because Germany simply could not afford to pay them with its weakened economy. They did have a detrimental effect on the German economy, of course, but blaming them for the hyperinflation that followed was a Nazi thing. What actually did fatally weaken the already weak German economy was not the direct repayments Germany was forced to make (they only ever paid a small fraction of what was owed) but the occupation of the Ruhr area by the French and Belgiums as a reprisal for failing to pay the reparations. This was met with a general strike by the workers in this area which ruined the German public finances.The reparations did, however, fuel the resentment that helped the Nazi party's rise to power.
@@yorkyswe Thank you very much! Good to see that some viewers can still make such insightful, well informed comments. I wish far more viewers would make such comments in stead of pathetic superficial comments like "not an obese person in sight" etc. I really wonder what people get tought nowadays at school about history and in particular WW-II. Hardly anybody nowadays seems to be able to make well-contemplated analyses and own judgements of historic events. The "parrots" are by far in the majority.
"On the evening of May 13, 1940, the Army High Command ordered the 18th Army to "break the resistance in Rotterdam by all means". [1] General Schmidt, who commanded the combat group of the 18th Army destined for the capture of Rotterdam, gave the Dutch city commander Pieter Scharroo an ultimatum on May 14 to surrender the city. The fighting was temporarily stopped and negotiations between the Germans and the Dutch began. Rotterdam had been declared a fortress city and was therefore no longer subject to the protection of civil institutions under international law. On May 14, the leadership of the Wehrmacht ordered an air raid on Rotterdam, which followed immediately." "The news of the surrender negotiations that the defense lawyers had meanwhile commenced reached the German command posts too late on May 14th. Only the II. Group of the approaching Kampfgeschwader 54 could be ordered back by a counter-order. 57 bombers from Group I approaching Rotterdam carried out the attack. It turned out to be particularly tragic that the towed aerial had to be retracted on the Heinkel He 111 bombers before the bombs were dropped. For example, the radio command to abort did not reach some of the attacking pilots, and they carried out their mission. [2] Lieutenant Colonel Otto Höhne, leader of one of the two attacking columns of the combat squadron, was the only one who recognized the red lights of the German paratroopers, which signaled that the Dutch had surrendered. Höhne and his column turned at the last moment, thus preventing further damage to the already hard-hit inner city. [3] [4]" tl;dr they were trying to defeat the resistance and they did but last moment the bombers were already underway and had their radio antenna pulled inside and didn't get the transmission to abort the mission, they also didn't see the flares to abort. Only the last bomber squadron aborted because they saw it.
Thank you for sharing those images ! 👍 Rotterdam looked like Hiroshima ! A lot of Germans today use the same tactics of the Juz and portray themselves as the eternal victims. The majority of people have the memory of goldfish... or simply have no clue at all. That's why it is important to remind them of pas events.
No thats not true, i have friends from Germany and these guys are tormented with guilt of the war. They don’t have nothing to do with the war. It’s good that we all need to know something about the war, but to torment 3 generations in Germany with guilt of the war is wrong.
Dat was met opzet. Doordat men brisantbommen gebruikte brandde er juist meer plat dan dat je met enkel een explosie kan bereiken. Google maar eens op ‘firestorm’ of het bombardement op Dresden.
In respect of this video about Rotterdam you are totally wrong and probably in general too. Just Google "Rotterdam 14th of May 1940"! You probably are confused with the bombing of The Hague Bezuidenhout quarters which was intended to destroy V2 launch sites in the nearby woods but due to a navigation error they hit a large residential area. The USA has never dropped bombs on The Netherlands, as far as I recall.
@@jw7501 Dank je wel, maar je andere nogal onbeschofte reactie heb ik verwijderd. Ik weet ook niet alles, maar verdiep me altijd in het onderwerp van mijn filmpjes.
Benefit of bombing Rotterdam? "A German ultimatum to surrender was ignored by the Dutch government after which Hitler decided to heavily bombard Rotterdam." The benefit of the invasion of the Benelux countries as a whole? Not having to breach the Maginot line, the most heavily fortified French line of WW1 but entering France from Belgium.
![Stunning and very rare footage of Scheveningen in the Roaring Twenties in color! [A.I. enhanced]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PFyg-o3E1Ic/mqdefault.jpg)
*Thanks to the help of a number of viewers, many locations have already been identified and now added to the timeline and CC captions* . There are still a number of locations to be identified (not easy!).
There are a dozen more old films about Rotterdam on my channel: th-cam.com/play/PLP_6hUsQRi8uANUWXhXutoFj3JGSL77b-.html
4:42 C&A Hoogstraat - Korte Hoogstraat (denk ik)
@@UnusSedLeo-w5l I have now made a start with the timeline and added your contribution!
Around 2:04 you can see Windmill ''De Noord'' at the Oostplein
0.26: upper left is the big bridge "Maasbrug". Big river at the left is de Maas. Harber in the center is Haringvliet. Big building in the topcenter: het Witte Huis (still excists). The harbor just under het Witte Huis is De Oude Haven. Parc at the left "De Boompjes".
The big bridge was defended by Dutch Marines. At the other side of the river were the Germans on the Noorder Eiland.
@@ZevenhuizenNL Dank je wel! Kun je a.u.b. misschien de tijdstippen erbij vermelden?
My compliments for this video. My parents lived in the heart of this city. Im born in 1947 and I still remember I was playing with my friends in the empty heart, not realising what happened here. We played in and around the destroyed St Laurenskerk. This church is totally rebuild. I recoignise the old streetplan. Great job, this film.
God bless the perseverance and courage of the people of Rotterdam, who a few years later were able to rebuild their city, prosper and live once again in peace. Mitch, an Englishman now living in Australia.
Thanks so much for creating this. I visited Rotterdam several years ago and instantly fell in love with the city. As inspiring as the rebirth of the city undoubtedly is, I definitely noticed an underlying sadness about the loss of how it had once been. Sterker door strijd.
As a citizen born and raised in R'dam 1975 it gives me goose skin to watch such extremely realistic montaged video material. My compliments! It shows also the Unyielding mentality of the construction workers to rebuild our city to a strong city with impressive skyline
Het doet nog steeds pijn. Ik ben opgegroeid vlakbij Rotterdam, maar kwam niet zo graag in de ongezellige stad. Ze heeft al haar vroegere warmte verloren.
it always hurts my heart to see how this beautiful city got destroyed.
Such a pity I could never experience the old Rotterdam
My family was there. My father's side of the family lived on the Rosestraat on the south side of the river and was spared the bombing and fire. My father was 14 at the time and went to the roof of his home to watch Rotterdam burning. My mother was only 13 but was working as a live-in housekeeper on the Zomerhofstraat. She and her employer survived, but their home was destroyed. Mom's family lived on the Schulpweg in Charlois. They saw the bombing and fire that followed, knowing that my mom was there and not knowing if she was alive or dead. It took mom several hours of walking through the destroyed city and avoiding the fire, but she eventually made her way home to her mother and siblings.
Wonderful story. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you very much for sharing this with us
So very sad and painful to watch the destruction of my beautiful home town.
It became a beautiful city again, but with a concrete heart.
Wat een pijnlijke en tegelijkertijd fascinerende beelden. Het zal heel lang naar brand hebben geroken in dat vernietigde Rotterdam. Dank voor jouw inspanningen dit tijdsbeeld zo actueel te houden. Ook mijn compliment voor je muziekkeuze. Deze is wat mij betreft steeds goed.
Wát een vondst. Ik heb dit materiaal nog nóoit gezien. Enorm bedankt voor het werk dat hier in is gegaan. Chapeau!
En dit is maar het topje van de ijsberg: zo'n 8 kilometer aan stad is verwoest en dit is slechts het gedeelte van de Oude Haven tot aan de (nu gedempte) Schie. Ook een gedeelte van Kralingen, Noord en West zijn geraakt, evenals het Noordereiland dankzij vriendelijk vuur van de RAF.
Amazing archive.
Top class.
Great job, the colorisation and the music are giving it a profound dramatic effect. For some reason the Germans did not throw their bombs on the Town Hall, the Post Office and the HBU building. And it was A.H. himself who gave the order not to demolish the remains of the Laurenskerk. The church was reopened on May 12th 1952.
So sad. The utter idiocy of the thing called "war"
@Warren talking of idiocy, clearly ( though not enough for you) the remark was aimed at WAR in general.
@Warren all war is idiocy. Killing people for nothing, breaking all normal norms.
@@MrDaiseymay exactly !
@@MrLukealbanese Exactly. That is normal. There is no reason to make war. And war has never brought humanity anything than more hatred.
@@plonss I am so thankfull I never had to experiance war. and I'm so scared people forget...
Thank you so much for sharing these unique historical videos with us.
The evil that Germany did is still shocking and should never be forgotten
AND have to take LESSONS from it. EVERYONE. This is what rassism brings.
Rotterdam was a communication error, and the Germans didn't want it to happen in the first place but due do miscommunications it was too late.
wat een waanzinnig mooie reportage weer. echt unieke beelden. dankjewel dat je dit met ons wil delen rick
Aangezien mijn vader in die meidagen als ned. militair gelegerd was in R'dam en er soms iets over vertelde, vind ik het ontzettend interessant om te zien wat de man gezien heeft.
Wat een hel moet dat zijn geweest.
Dank!
Mijn vader heeft ook gevochten als marinier tegen de Duitsers tijdens dat bombardement. Op zijn oude dagen kwam alles weer naar boven.
Bijzonder. Ik bedacht me hetzelfde. Mijn vader heeft er als 9 jarig jongen rondgelopen na het bombardement. Als we het erover hebben zegt hij dat hij de geur van de doden niet zal vergeten en alle lijken die in het water lagen.
Still hurts to see this as a Rotterdammer. Sad that I will never be able to see the beauty of the old city center. Hopefully we’ll start building in these architectural styles again.
There are some videos on YT about Rotterdam before the war. I couldn't believe my eyes so beautiful like Amsterdam. Such a shame
Thank you for your work frm Poland. This country was destroyed in WWII through Germany.
Only because of Soviet compliance.
Now we stand as one, We'll never let Poland suffer like that again i hope..
Thank you for this. Very tragic and it gives a good impression of the scale of the destruction. I never knew the destroyed area was that big. My mother lived several kms away from there. She was 10 at the time and she asked her mother what were these big booms. "Thunder", she replied but she knew very well what was happening. Rotterdam, mostly the harbour, was also bombed by the Allies later during the war. My grandfather worked in the gas factory which was also a target. These were very stressful times for people living there.
my grandpa saw Rotterdam Burning from his farm in New Delfland. The absolute horror of what happened was absolute.
My father spent the last three years of the war as forced laborer in Berlin. That was stressful too. Many people have had very, very bad times back then. Let us not repeat it, ever again.
I wish I could travel back in time to catch a glimpse of Rotterdam’s city centre before its brutal destruction, just feel the atmosphere, see the buildings, etc.😔...
i am sorry to say this , but a few years back the friend of my sister had some german people over, and they complained rotterdam was so modern and there were no old buildings. :( . i can`t forget that.
I had a friend from Hong-Kong over, halfway the nineties, she studied in Europe and of course she had to come to the Netherlands. Since I lived near Rotterdam I decided to take her there: we went to the Euromast. I will never forget her comments: ‘well, it isn’t very special, it is not Amsterdam, and the question ‘why they build like in China in this city’. And: how come there are no old buildings? No clue about the bombardement and what had happened. Obviously it was never in their history classes! I need to stress: Rotterdam was actually very boring before 2000. A lot has changed in the mean time with new icons and structures. Although now a certain Jef Bezos plans to have one the old historic bridges having demoshiled for his rich mens hobby yacht that won’t fit under a 46 meter high bridge.
Nah Mate I don't want to belittle the bombing of Rotterdam, but if they would teach about every city bombing in the Second World War there wouldnt be much time left for other topics. Unfortunately I can tell from my own experience that it is even skipped in german classes. Beside the atrocities of the Holocaust, there isn't really that much confrontation with German war crimes. I am quite sure most German people have absolutely no clue about the bombing
@@roaming-skoomacat the ones responsible are dead
L bozos
Triest om dit zo levensecht op film te zien, geboren en opgegroeid in de stad in de jaren 50,ik zal nooit de geluiden van de heimachines vergeten.
Amsterdam was also very close to being bombed. Sad moments in history and Rotterdam was just as beautiful as Amsterdam. They looked identical.
Utrecht was actually next in line, but they certainly would've continued to Amsterdam if necessary
The Allies bombed Amsterdam. Anne Frank wrote about the nightly air raids in her dairy.
It was never a target like Rotterdam. In Amsterdam Noord the target was a Fokker factory plus one bomber dropped 4 bombs in the center because he got hit during an air raid on Schiphol airport. This was four days before the big hit on Rotterdam.
@@onlyvik Amsterdam is lucky it didn't suffer the same fate as Warsaw, London and Berlin.
@@sean.furlong1989 yes that's true or else I wouldn't be alive today probably. I am from Amsterdam myself. Bombings in general are horrifying.
mY PARENTS , ENDURED THE HORROR, And their stories are terrifying to listen to, damn, my mother was traumatized all her life from this horror,
😂😂😂 ! Germans did nothing wrong !
To my shame, I must admit that I did not realise that Rotterdam was so extensively destroyed. Looking at all the destruction is heart-wrenching. So many lives lost, homes and businesses destroyed. For what? Why is humanity so violent and cruel? We achieve the most brilliant art, music, literature and culture. We soar to the greatest heights. Yet our entire history is littered with war, greed, hate and violence.
Around the 9:00 minute mark you see a windmill, such an icon of Holland, turning merrily away in the background of the now mostly cleared bombed out areas. It almost fills me with some hope, that even in the midst of such terrible destruction life can and does go on, and the industrious Dutch go about cleaning up their city. And the immediately afterwards you get the before and after split screens, and the hope I felt disappears. Such beauty destroyed. All those lives lost.
The sad thing is it feels we are marching towards intolerance and fascism in so many countries, even in Europe. Add in Climate Change and the huge social and economic upheavals it will cause and I almost lose hope for the future and for our children and grandchildren. We do not seem to learn, as a species, and long-term planning or sacrifice always comes too late.
Rotterdam was a pretty big city in Europe back then with around 600,000 inhabitants a very important port city for europe already. So the center was pretty large and that entire area was bombed...
Luckily the city was almost entirely evacuated during the bombardment because the city was under siege, but if that wasn’t the case there would have been around 50,000 deaths and that while this wasn’t even a real residential zone, it was filled more with shops and offices and government buildings.
The Windmill is indeed a beautiful symbol but even that one burned down haha....
It’s so sad that such beauty was destroyed because of a useless war, videos like these are the ultimate reminder of how terrifying and gruesome war is, the city was called the Queen of the Meuse and it was known as one of the prettiest cities in North-Western Europe.
I’m still mad at the Germans that the city where my family originated from was havocked like this luckily the city has climed back up again especially the last 20 years and large parts still did survive the war but most of the beautiful historic city center is gone forever. (At least while we have modernism as the standard for architecture)
I live in Rotterdam hard to watch this !
The most poignant part of this was the windmill. It was as if it was saying "you can kill the people, you can destroy the city, but you cannot break the heart of the Netherlands". A true symbol of the resistance to tyranny that the Dutch were wage against the Nazis.
The Netherlands had the highest percentage of collaborators. We had a resistance of nothing. In 1942 there were 400 soldiers that occupied the Netherlands. The soldiers that were occupying the Netherlands described their time in the Netherlands as vacation. That’s a thing i am ashamed of when i look to my motherland. How hard we collaborated in the war.
@@kuzudestroyer7586 yet we did have a very strong resistance, even if they where outshadowed by cowards.
It's incredible (incredibly horrible) how it can take years to create buildings and only minutes to destroy them. Next to the loss of lives, this is the most awful aspect of war. As usual, local residents have nothing to say about how things are done, once the powers that be make decisions; doesn't surprise me they chose to get rid of a lot of older buildings unnecessarily. The mid 20thc was a time of "progress", and that was especially true with architecture, where too many historic structures were sacrificed, considered obsolete. That happened way too often in New York City.
Its so sad. It has happened in my city too. Some amazingly beautiful historic buildings are lost forever, and so my city's character has irreversibly changed. I live in Melbourne, Australia - a young city, where some of our amazing buildings were built in the 1880s-1930s. Its a tragedy that we lost most of them (through "developement"), and it is even worse that in Europe so much beautiful architecture and craftmanship was forever lost to war. My friend's late father was a German one of his earliest memories was playing with other children amongst the rubble in Germany.
When I watch this amazing restoration I wonder if humanity has evolved out of this insanity?
There is no carpet bombing of cities in Ukraine for whatever reason. They conflict looks like a pinic vs the scale of WWII
No. Look at the destruction of La Haina on Mau in August, 2023. There are still 2,000 children unaccounted for. (But Oprah Winfrey’s property remained untouched. Weird, huh?)
@@Pamela.B Did you know she was secretly meeting with Jefrey Epstein and was working as an insider at the Rothschilds too? Its all in the Panama documents, she also med with Khadaffi a week before he died, she knows where his missing gold is! She is keeping it hiding it from the Rotschilds but they to hit her with their Jewis space lazer but it was not calibrated and missed!
Wonderful informative. I had never been sure how big or important pre war Rotterdam was, we only know it today as the modern, thriving port city of today. It’s always so sad to see all the history and heritage lost, on all sides, by the bombing of WW2 in Europe and Britain. However, I was also struck by the way in which the Dutch cleaned up after the destruction, the roads were cleared of rubble and everything put in order as far as was possible……Not the actions of a people who feel defeated, they still had their pride.
Hi Martin pre-war Rotterdam port was very important. It would go on to be the biggest port in the world, only in recent times being demoted by da da da China. My father told me the Dutch invented containerization. As far as cleaning the rubble it does not surprise me the Dutch would scrub their stoops once a week. I never saw a piece of litter until a trip in 2012. My mom booked the ships in Rotterdam with goods after the war and before emigrating to the US. Cheers.
It is impossible not to focus in the horrors of these scenes. But it is important to also aknowledge the incredible resilience and power of the Dutch people, and how this city went from a total ruin to one of the most important economic poles in the entire world in such a short period of time.
En de molen op het Oostplein draait door . The windmill on the east squer kept turning
Thanx for this informative video!
Rotterdam is NOOIT meer zo mooi geworden als het was!!!
@@urbandiscount Interessante info, dankjewel !
So much lost history, always remember for the curse of time is absolute to those who forget the lessons. the punishment is to repeat history and the madness that follows.
Hallo Rik, ik heb een paar kleine locatie aanvullingen voor deze indrukwekkende film.
3:00; Vanaf het Erasmushuis (HBU gebouw) over de Korte Hoogstraat en Hoogstraat richting de laurenskerk genomen.
Vanaf 3:30 ; Vanaf het Erasmushuis (HBU gebouw) genomen richting Leuvehaven, achtereenvolgens; 3:31 Leuvehaven, 3:38; Schiedamsedijk, 3:40; Gedempte Vest.
Verder op 3:42; het Hofplein.
3:51; Delftse Poort en Stadhuis.
3:56; Links boven is niet het Stadhuis op de Coolsingel! Wat wel weet ik nog niet.
4:26; Nieuwe haven.
6:25; Hoogstraat.
9:17; de twee filmpjes zijn in het begin niet vanuit hetzelfde standpunt genomen, Linker filmpje vanaf de laurenstoren en het rechter filmpje vanaf het Witte huis(Laurenskerk is in beeld), tegenovergestelde richting dus.
Vanaf 9:24 klopt het weer wel, beide gefilmd vanaf het Witte huis.
Heel veel dank voor het uploaden, groet, Hans
Heel hartelijk dank! Ik ga het toevoegen
Great Job Rick !
From one of the most beautiful cities in the Netherlands to one of the most ugliest. So sad.
@Warren Surrendering to genocidal fascists doesn’t guarantee the survival of its people.There agenda was clear at that point,the complete and utter extermination of all dissidents which basically was a blanket twisted ideology.Surrendering already showed its horrible consequences throughout other cities,which were destroyed anyway.
The communication breakdown was a formality which was making headway however the cacophony of events following resulted in a firestorm that literally did more of the damage than the initial bombing.
Amazing work rick, so sad to see it all in ruins, but like many other towns and cities after the war had to rebuild and decisions had to be made by City planners😔
I love you,my hometown Rotterdam...
Ik ook.
Thank you.
I'm from rotterdam and my grandmother still every new year is terrified of every loud sound it's really sad to see her suffer like that but we also need to remember that our so called allies bombed rotterdam in 1943 and killed 500 people and destroyed a intire city block they didn't care about us just like our government that just left us after 2 day of fighting
Sorry to hear about your grandmother but pilots and precision bombing was a big problem back in the day. They didn't have the proper technique or the skills were missing.
They stopped fighting to avoid less casualties
@@antho3062 rotterdam was bombed on the 4th day we surrendered on the 5th day but the government and royal family fled the country on the second day like the cowards they are
Hoe kan dat? Je eigen mensen aan het lot overlaten?
So basically, Dresden was 'Rotterdamed' in 1945?
a good comparison
I guess there is some truth in that. Rotterdam was bombed by the Germans to get The Netherlands on their knees and the allies did the same with Dresden towards Germany.
During the blitz on London 700 tons of high explosives were dropped by the Germans and 100,000 incendiaries in one night. Birmingham received 12,500 tons of bombs over 2 months, Coventry got 10,000 incendiaries and hundreds of tons of bombs. This went on all over England for several years. Sadly lovely cities on both sides were destroyed along with many of their inhabitants. I think there comes a time in a war like that when any form of humanity towards the enemy disappears. Sad part is we have not learned any lessons from it to this day.
NO Rotterdam was an open city that had surrendered. Every person in Desden was supporting NAZI's and that made them fare targets
Rotterdam bombing killed around 800. People had a bit of time to evacuate.. The Dresden bombings killed around 25,000. So I'd disagree.
Thanks. I have never seen my fathers place of birth like this. It is even worse than I thought.
Er schijnt een lijst geweest te zijn waarop 144 gebouwen stonden die voor herbouw in aanmerking kwamen. Die lijst is verdwenen.
Persoonlijk vind ik dat molen de Noord op het Oostplein herbouwd moet worden. In andere plaatsen worden ook constant molens herbouwd. Molen de Noord had het bombardement overleefd maar is in 1954 afgebrand.
ik persoonlijk zou het liefst de oude stadsschouwburg terug willen hebben. Dat had ook herbouwd kunnen worden omdat het gebouw behalve het interieur nog redelijk intact was.
@@bastian8763 Architect Verheul had gevraagd of de schouwburg herbouwd mocht worden. Het bestuur zou zelf de kosten betalen. Zou de gemeente niets kostten. Maar helaas.
Ook het gespaarde Klooster Sint Lucia (naast de schouwburg) en de oude panden achter het klooster zijn later toch allemaal gesloopt.
Zo zijn ook het gebouw van Handel en Nijverheid en het Gildehuys, beiden aan de Coolsingel, gesloopt. Ook het gebouw van Gerzon mocht niet blijven.
De overgebleven panden aan de Hertekade: eveneens gesloopt.
De prachtige Koninginnekerk in Jugenstil. Weg
Zo kan ik nog wel even doorgaan met gebouwen die nog hadden kunnen blijven staan.
@@hammereisen7493 Inderdaad, allemaal erg doodzonde en een onnodig verlies voor de stad.
@@hammereisen7493 Die lijnbaan gaat toch ooit een keer weer gesloopt worden. Zoveel mensen die het lelijk vinden en de straat verpauperd ook. Hopelijk kan dan op de exact zelfde plek de schouwburg weer herbouwd worden, dat is misschien wel het mooiste gebouw wat verloren is gegaan.
@@Mark-xd5up Lijnbaan? Ik heb wel eens gelezen dat het beschermd stadsgezicht is. Kan niet zomaar weg dus.
One of the "lesser known" war crimes during ww2.
It depends where you come from. Here in The Netherlands almost everyone knows of this German bombing attack. It is rooted deep in Rotterdam's history. When you visit Rotterdam you will hardly find any old buildings, just modern architectural monstrocities.
It was not a war crime
@@reichskanzler1186 What a stupid comment to make! Ofcourse it was a dreadful war crime!
@@Rick88888888 it was „moralbombing“
@@Rick88888888 like your „allie-heros“ in the sky
My father survived the bombing. His little brother died. He never talked about it.
Heartbreaking...
The survivors were so strong back there, they just overcome even without saying a thing, they were incredible.
Antwerp would meet the same fate one day later
Antwerp wasn't carpet bombed
@@bastian8763 Uh yeah it was
@@tonybarde2572 the historic city center is still existing, with historical buildings, even Antwerpen Central is the same like before ww2
@@dharmagall9082 It was damaged though and Hoboken was the worst hit
@@tonybarde2572 the city center of Antwerpen wasn't completely destroyed like rotterdam. this was a terror bombing to force a surrender like they did to warschau that did not happen in Antwerpen
Gracias por tus videos son muy bonitos todos los. Veo 👍👍
Very sad….what war …does..and what’s gained?…
Another fantastic historical document of NAZI atrocities and the appalling horror that was #WW2 🇬🇧🙏🇳🇱🌷😊
War is destruction, dead, disappear 🙏😔
It happened after they surrendered !!
"On the evening of May 13, 1940, the Army High Command ordered the 18th Army to "break the resistance in Rotterdam by all means". [1] General Schmidt, who commanded the combat group of the 18th Army destined for the capture of Rotterdam, gave the Dutch city commander Pieter Scharroo an ultimatum on May 14 to surrender the city. The fighting was temporarily stopped and negotiations between the Germans and the Dutch began. Rotterdam had been declared a fortress city and was therefore no longer subject to the protection of civil institutions under international law. On May 14, the leadership of the Wehrmacht ordered an air raid on Rotterdam, which followed immediately."
"The news of the surrender negotiations that the defense lawyers had meanwhile commenced reached the German command posts too late on May 14th. Only the II. Group of the approaching Kampfgeschwader 54 could be ordered back by a counter-order. 57 bombers from Group I approaching Rotterdam carried out the attack. It turned out to be particularly tragic that the towed aerial had to be retracted on the Heinkel He 111 bombers before the bombs were dropped. For example, the radio command to abort did not reach some of the attacking pilots, and they carried out their mission. [2] Lieutenant Colonel Otto Höhne, leader of one of the two attacking columns of the combat squadron, was the only one who recognized the red lights of the German paratroopers, which signaled that the Dutch had surrendered. Höhne and his column turned at the last moment, thus preventing further damage to the already hard-hit inner city. [3] [4]"
tl;dr they were trying to defeat the resistance and they did but last moment the bombers were already underway and had their radio antenna pulled inside and didn't get the transmission to abort the mission, they also didn't see the flares to abort. Only the last bomber squadron aborted because they saw it.
wow vreselijk wat de mensheid heeft moeten doorstaan Knap gemonteerd.
All the horrors of war at the end its innocent people who end up suffering the most.
I just want to say sorry. No a days we are on the same site. 🙏🏼
Unless you're really old and piloted a bomber or gave orders you're in the clear and there's no reason for you to say sorry
As a Dutch person it's very sad for me to see these images. But there is no anger, for who is there to be angry at?
Germans today have nothing to do with their past and as countries we strive for the same things : democracy, individual liberty and freedom.
I don't even feel angry at the individual pilots, soldiers or navymen. They were serving their country and doing what they thought was best, just like every young man was doing in Europe at the time. If we were born during that time in Germany then it's arrogant to think we wouldn't have been fighting on the front. Just bad luck of where you were born.
Let's just try to never make this happen again :)
Another excellent reconstruction Rick, and obviously, a very emotional one too. Was Rotterdam also bombed by the V weapons? or was that Amsterdam, Google isn't clear on this.
Luckily, Amsterdam was never bombed.
Thanks! V-weapons were never used against The Netherlands. Rotterdam was bombed by a traditional aerial attack involving 54 Heinkel He 111 aircraft (Wiki). As far as I know, the V1 and V2 "Vergeltungswaffen" were only used against the UK. By the time they were invented and operational, almost the whole of Western Europe was already under German occupancy. The V1 and V2's were launched from the Northsea coast (The Netherlands, Belgium (?) and France) to primarily hit London.
@@Rick88888888 In fact V1s and perhaps also V2s were also heavily used against Antwerp towards the end of the war and as launch sites became fewer and fewer. Re-taking Antwerp was a major target for the Nazis as the allies advanced towards Germany and breaking through to Antwerp was one of the principal motives for the Battle of the Bulge in the Belgian Ardennes.
@@MWDL2007 Amsterdam was bombed twice www.amsterdam.nl/nieuws/achtergrond/verzwegen-bombardement-pekbuurt/
www.amsterdam.nl/kunst-cultuur/monumenten/erfgoed-week/bombardement-blauwburgwal/
The ss headquarters in the what's now called Gerrit van der Veen straat was bombed...
Unique,bright pictures I never saw before! In such a short time só much destroyed by Warcriminal Hermann Goering!
Ik moest even een traantje wegpinken op het eind: die drie bewegende beelden zijn zo triest om naar te kijken na +75 jaar!
Ja dat had ik ook. Tijdens het maken en editten van de video's dringen emoties niet zo tot me door omdat ik dan voornamelijk met de techniek bezig ben, maar als ik daarna het resultaat bekijk komen de emoties soms flink los, mede doordat dan ook de muziek de sfeer benadrukt ...
@@Rick88888888 Dank u voor het antwoord! Ik had gister al een bericht geplaatst maar heb gemerkt dat die zomaar was verwijderd na een aantal uur, zonder enige reden of waarschuwing. Dit gebeurt me nu al weken en ik weet niet waarom, ik vermoed censuur van TH-cam zelve.
Enfin, ik geniet altijd van de oude beelden die u plaatst, vooral van Rotterdam maar zeker ook daarbuiten! Zijn er ook al beelden opgedoken van plaatsen als Delft of Haarlem?
@@HighFlyingOwlOfMinerva Hartelijk dank. Ja TH-cam heeft momenteel kuren. Ik ben een lijst met berichten kwijt en ook is een stuk of 10 comments van gisterenavond laat verdwenen. Die van jou zat daar vast ook bij. Op mijn kanaal is wel een "Hold inappropriate comments for review" TH-cam filter actief en zijn schuttingwoorden (in NL en Engels) geblokkeerd. Maar dat is vast niet in dit geval aan de orde.
how sad indeed, everything that excist disapears.
De ergste schaden was niet van de bommen, maar die de mensen daarna de stad aan hebben gedaan. Molen de Noord is door 'onbekende reden' afgebrand in 1954 en de gemeente gaf geen toestemming tot herbouw. Dat zegt genoeg. 9:04
Schaden? Duits accentje?
Dit zal ik nooit vergeten, Rotterdam sterker door strijd 😢😢
Beautiful music
Air-to-ground footage filmed from a Heinkel 111....
Indeed!
So,.. basically the film was an assessment of the 'success' of the raid...
When I saw it, I was wondering... is this a film made by order of the Dutch government.. , or were it the Nazi's?
(By that time few Dutch planes were left..... and the government busy evacuating the queen, the gold and itself. Or even more likely, it was filmed a couple of days later... some streets seems already cleared,... some dust/smoke clouds still around...)
@@Michiel_de_Jong The source is unclear. It are many fragments. The aerial views are from a German Heinkell H111 bomber.
Hoe triest het ook allemaal is geweest, mijn liefde voor mijn dierbaar Rotterdam zal tot aan mijn laatste snik nooit verdwijnen.
Son unas joyas estos videos
Thank you
My Mam was 12 in Delfts Haven when R'dam was bombed.
Is your mother still alive? How I would love to know whatever memories she can recall!
@@alphabet_soup123 My grandpa was 22 when he saw Rdam burning from their farm in newdelfland. Must have been surreal
Germany should pay for rebuilding Rotterdam in old style...
nee amerikanen moeten er voor betalen zij hebben dit veroorzaakt.
@@r.a.h7682 hoe dan? Dit kwam door Nazi Duitsland.
@@oswaldveroor ja tijdens de 2de wereldoorlog die Engeland heeft gestart, het is natuurlijk onacceptabel dat de nazi's onze mooie stad hebben gebombardeerd maar dat was nooit gebeurd als Engeland & Amerika zich nooit met nazi Duitsland hadden bemoeit
@@r.a.h7682 in het universum waar ik leef is Duitsland de oorlog begonnen door Polen aan te vallen. In no time werden andere landen daarna door de Duitsers bezet waaronder ook Nederland. Misschien ben ik op een paralelle tijdlijn beland met een ander verloop van de geschiedenis, Mocht dit onverhoopt toch niet het geval blijken ben ik wel benieuwd hoe jij erbij komt dat Engeland deze oorlog gestart is?
@@r.a.h7682 Uhm Amerika verklaarde Japan de oorlog op 7 december 1941. Duitsland verklaarde Amerika de oorlog op 8 of 9 december 1941. Dat is ruim anderhalf jaar nadat Rotterdam gebombardeerd was. Hoe in vredesnaam kan Amerika hier iets mee te maken hebben? En Engeland en Frankrijk verklaarden Duitsland inderdaad de oorlog. Nadat Duitsland Polen was binnengevallen. En daarna Denemarken en Noorwegen. En toen België, Frankrijk, Luxemburg en Nederland. Ik weet niet waar u geschiedenis heeft gehad, maar ik zou mijn schoolgeld terugvragen.
Looks like Hiroshima 😟😢
Or Mariupol
Rotterdam,sterker door strijd!!!
this was after the accidental bombing? (the one that wasnt called off on time)
Nothing "accidental" about it. The German bombardement was done deliberately to force the Dutch government to capitulate. Other Dutch cities would have been next if they hadn't surrendered.
I think you might be mixing up the bombardement of Rotterdam with that of The Hague where indeed a navigation error was made by the RAF causing a residential area to be bombed in stead of V2 lauch sites just over a mile away in the woods.
Yes, the bombers were not informed in time
@@visrem9143 What an utter nonsense! Please take some history lessons or at least read the description under my video.
@@Rick88888888 Utter nonsense? Weird how German and English Wikipedia cite literature to this topic, documented how squadrons turned around in midair and how stupid Heinkel He 111 bombers were designed because their antenna had to be retracted before bombing.
Please recommend some history lessons! Based on facts and not on things made up in your head!
Eeuwig zonde
Triest, sad.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
wow shocking...
Utter destruction and the best way to create enemies unnecessarily the nazis were so dumb.
@Warren So the allies should have just left the Nazis alone? Let them rule the world and kill millions of people in the process?
@Warren You do realize that if they had not gotten involved they would have been conquered by the Germans and maybe even later by Russia?
@@MWDL2007 The germans would've never attacked GB or France even later on. Their goal was to conquer land in the east.
@@hanz3967 You really think Hitler wouldn’t have set his eyes on the West? He was a megalomaniac…he was never going to be satisfied until he ruled everything.
@@MWDL2007 He admired the british empire and his biggest miscalculation was thinking they would not defend poland.
When he would've won the war against the Ussr he would've been occupied with supressing rebels etc. No way he would declare war against britain or France after this
Well paybacks did come to the Germans, look what happened to Berlin and Collogne. I was in Berlin years ago and most of it that was old was gone.
Don't forget Dresden...
Leuke beelden Rick bedankt! Erg emotioneel! Hoe kom je aan deze beelden? En nog een vraag, hoe hebben ze dit gefilmd in die tijd hadden ze camera?
Camera bestaat al sinds rond 1907. Dus ja.
Leuke beelden???
@@OldtimersGarageNL hij bedoelt daarmee denk ik interessante beelden
@@Ridder020 Dan had ie dat moeten zeggen ipv 'leuke beelden' haha
Mijn God......
Hi Good morning 🙏 🌄...... 🌄.
👍 Dank :-) ⛏🛠💪
😭😭😭😭😥😥😥😰😰😰
Toch zag Rotterdam er toen een stuk beter uit dan nu.
Dat heeft mijn vader ook altijd al gezegd!
Heftig he
I always wonder what the nazis were thinking and what was wrong with them.
Read about how Germany got "squeezed" after WW-I in an attempt to keep them from attempting to dominate Europe again. Huge mistakes were made by the British and other powers trying to keep the "Hun" under control. As a result of the suppression, the German economy and population suffered deeply. All that was needed was a strong leader to emerge who would (and could) promiss the Germans a better future. Unfortunately that leader was Hitler. There are plenty of examples nowadays of entire populations blindly following their leaders in the presumption that no one else can provide them with a better, proporous future.
There are profound reasons why the Nazi regime acted against 'minority groups' in Germany and why the majority of the population supported these actions. Nothing to do with "madness", but in stead fully explainable (and ofcourse condemnable). So few people bother to dig deeper into the historic facts. This Wikipedia page only superficially touches the negative sentiments towards these minorities and the reasons behind it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht It is recommendable to read much more about *why* this Kristallnacht happened.
@@Rick88888888 To be honest it was mainly (though not exclusively) the French who pushed for German reparations via the Treaty of Versailles. The British economist John Maynard Keynes warned of its consequences, and Lloyd George the Prime Minister was against the harsh terms. The reparations actually ended up not as bad as feared, partially because Germany simply could not afford to pay them with its weakened economy. They did have a detrimental effect on the German economy, of course, but blaming them for the hyperinflation that followed was a Nazi thing.
What actually did fatally weaken the already weak German economy was not the direct repayments Germany was forced to make (they only ever paid a small fraction of what was owed) but the occupation of the Ruhr area by the French and Belgiums as a reprisal for failing to pay the reparations. This was met with a general strike by the workers in this area which ruined the German public finances.The reparations did, however, fuel the resentment that helped the Nazi party's rise to power.
@@yorkyswe Thank you very much! Good to see that some viewers can still make such insightful, well informed comments.
I wish far more viewers would make such comments in stead of pathetic superficial comments like "not an obese person in sight" etc. I really wonder what people get tought nowadays at school about history and in particular WW-II. Hardly anybody nowadays seems to be able to make well-contemplated analyses and own judgements of historic events. The "parrots" are by far in the majority.
"On the evening of May 13, 1940, the Army High Command ordered the 18th Army to "break the resistance in Rotterdam by all means". [1] General Schmidt, who commanded the combat group of the 18th Army destined for the capture of Rotterdam, gave the Dutch city commander Pieter Scharroo an ultimatum on May 14 to surrender the city. The fighting was temporarily stopped and negotiations between the Germans and the Dutch began. Rotterdam had been declared a fortress city and was therefore no longer subject to the protection of civil institutions under international law. On May 14, the leadership of the Wehrmacht ordered an air raid on Rotterdam, which followed immediately."
"The news of the surrender negotiations that the defense lawyers had meanwhile commenced reached the German command posts too late on May 14th. Only the II. Group of the approaching Kampfgeschwader 54 could be ordered back by a counter-order. 57 bombers from Group I approaching Rotterdam carried out the attack. It turned out to be particularly tragic that the towed aerial had to be retracted on the Heinkel He 111 bombers before the bombs were dropped. For example, the radio command to abort did not reach some of the attacking pilots, and they carried out their mission. [2] Lieutenant Colonel Otto Höhne, leader of one of the two attacking columns of the combat squadron, was the only one who recognized the red lights of the German paratroopers, which signaled that the Dutch had surrendered. Höhne and his column turned at the last moment, thus preventing further damage to the already hard-hit inner city. [3] [4]"
tl;dr they were trying to defeat the resistance and they did but last moment the bombers were already underway and had their radio antenna pulled inside and didn't get the transmission to abort the mission, they also didn't see the flares to abort. Only the last bomber squadron aborted because they saw it.
😢😢😢
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Thank you for sharing those images ! 👍 Rotterdam looked like Hiroshima !
A lot of Germans today use the same tactics of the Juz and portray themselves as the eternal victims.
The majority of people have the memory of goldfish... or simply have no clue at all. That's why it is important to remind them of pas events.
No thats not true, i have friends from Germany and these guys are tormented with guilt of the war. They don’t have nothing to do with the war. It’s good that we all need to know something about the war, but to torment 3 generations in Germany with guilt of the war is wrong.
Gek he dat je nergens kraters in de grond ziet? je zou toch denken dat zulke zware bommen een krater achter liet?
Dat was met opzet. Doordat men brisantbommen gebruikte brandde er juist meer plat dan dat je met enkel een explosie kan bereiken. Google maar eens op ‘firestorm’ of het bombardement op Dresden.
vuurbommen
Actually the united states and britain engaged in most of the bomb dropping called terror bombing or fire bombing.
In respect of this video about Rotterdam you are totally wrong and probably in general too. Just Google "Rotterdam 14th of May 1940"! You probably are confused with the bombing of The Hague Bezuidenhout quarters which was intended to destroy V2 launch sites in the nearby woods but due to a navigation error they hit a large residential area. The USA has never dropped bombs on The Netherlands, as far as I recall.
@@Rick88888888 je bent abuis, wat dacht je ondermeer van het bombardement op Nijmegen in 1944 , circa 800 doden, bijna net zoveel als in Rotterdam
@@jw7501 Dank je wel, maar je andere nogal onbeschofte reactie heb ik verwijderd. Ik weet ook niet alles, maar verdiep me altijd in het onderwerp van mijn filmpjes.
I just what to ask the reich germany,what’s the benefits doing this??
To expand the reich
@@geertgietman 😂
@@viercanacs3940 its true
The nazis did this to force the dutch government to surrender. Which happened immediately.
Benefit of bombing Rotterdam?
"A German ultimatum to surrender was ignored by the Dutch government after which Hitler decided to heavily bombard Rotterdam."
The benefit of the invasion of the Benelux countries as a whole?
Not having to breach the Maginot line, the most heavily fortified French line of WW1 but entering France from Belgium.
Rotterdam today looks like a communist city but nicer and cleaner.
Huh????????
Mariupol 2022
donestk 2014/22
@@voidsoul97 Artemivsk, 2023
not even close. also it's now a safe place
Anywhere in Ukraine now
That’s how China will look soon.