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Achtung Achtung, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and with James Holland of course.

And we're joined today by a special guest to take things towards the end of the war in the Netherlands.

James, who have we got today?

Well, we've got a Dutch retired school teacher and historian, Hans Onderwater. Hans is, uh, funny enough, he's actually written about, um, 600 squadron.

He's written about two squadron, the Royal Air Force, he knows a thing or two about the Royal Air Force, it's fair to say.

But he's also an expert on the history of the occupation of the Netherlands.

But also that kind of rather forgotten episode, Operation Manor and Chan Hunt, um, which is, of course, the relief operation at the very end of the war.

Bombers coming over and dropping supplies to the starving Dutch people.

So, um, you know, we're, you and I are, we're big fans of the Dutch and we're big fans of, of looking at the Second World War in the Netherlands and the low countries.

But I don't know about you, but, but, you know, um, Manor and Chan Hunt is, is not something I'm particularly familiar with.

I mean, I know the essence, but I don't know the details, so.

Hello there, Hans. Thanks for, thanks for joining us.

Now, this, this is, uh, one of those examples of, um, a story from the end of the war that in the sort of, uh, in the, the, the, the, the kind of standard account that British people tell themselves the Second World War, the, the last years, there's D-Day, then there's Arnhem and then the war ends in May, 1945.

And it's, of course, it's Arnhem that causes all the problems for the Dutch in the months to come. Well, yes, I was just exactly what I was just going to say.

That, that, that, at least people know about Arnhem, but they don't know about the, about the, the, the fallout from that operation and, and the, what happens to, to Dutch people.

Just, just briefly take us, take us through the, um, the consequences of the honor operation for the Dutch civilians and then we'll get on to, uh, on to Manor and Chaoha.

Excellent. Well, the thing was that when the Allies decided to carry out Operation Market Garden, the Dutch government in exile, uh, told the Dutch railway workers to go and strike, which meant that the trains in Holland couldn't run anymore,

unless the Germans would import a lot of German railway workers to do it for them. Right.

There's a railway strike after the failure of Market Garden.

Uh, cause the Germans to be so angry that they would deny the Dutch further transportation of food from the agricultural eastern part of the Netherlands to the densely populated west.

Then, unfortunately, the winter of 44, 45 years to remember the Battle of the Belch was a very large winter.

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