ALL EYES were on Germany, but behind the Allied advance were many tears of joy from the liberated Dutch. From as far back as the Scheldt campaign in October 1944, the people were gradually being freed as fighting swept across their land. There had been painful prices to pay, including the flooding of Walcheren Island, but the Dutch had begun to rebuild their society in the liberated south of the country. Still, some 4.5 million citizens under German occupation in the north and west continued to suffer from dwindling food stocks.

The Germans had been systematically starving the Dutch since September 1944, removing food and reducing the official food rations to fewer than 750 calories a day. There was a “constant feeling of hunger,” one Dutch child remembered, “and eating had therefore become the high point of the day.”

With most of the crops and food stolen by the locust-like Germans, and with almost no electricity or gas, people in the cities relied heavily on the official ration. Over the next six months, it would be further reduced, eventually to about 350 calories. Healthy humans need about 2,000 calories a day. Germany was using food as a weapon to force submission through starvation.

Society began to break down as hunger and fuel shortages closed schools and businesses. Garbage was not collected. Hospitals had little medicine. Black markets emerged where some items and food were available at a high price. Family pets disappeared. Many people turned reluctantly to plentiful tulip bulbs to supplement their diets. The bulbs were slightly poisonous unless prepared properly and difficult for weakened people to digest.

“It is just too much to die on,” was a common complaint, “but certainly too little to keep you alive.”

After the Rhineland battles, Crerar’s army remained in the front lines waiting for the next assault. The Americans were driving the enemy back and Montgomery ordered an advance to the Rhine. There was little opposition left on the west bank, but the historic Rhine was large, wide and swollen. Along the east bank, the Germans would make a stand. Crerar received welcome news that I Canadian Corps would be sent from Italy for the final assault. In late August 1944, after the Allied victory at the Gothic Line—a 16-kilometre-deep defensive belt extending across Italy from coast to coast­—the Germans had continued to skilfully retreat, using rivers and gorges as natural defences. The weather turned nasty in October, with the roads dissolving. Morale sank.

On the western advance, the 3rd Division faced a resolute enemy in Zutphen, a city on the IJssel River. After a two-day battle against first-class troops, the city fell to the Canadians on April 8. “It was house to house fighting all the way,” recalled Corporal Ray Lane of the Sherbrooke Fusiliers, who supported the infantry with Sherman Firefly tanks.

The division kept moving, advancing 185 kilometres in April and capturing 5,000 prisoners on the way to Leeuwarden near the Netherlands’ northeastern coast.

Most of the Germans had little desire to fight to the death, but there were pockets of fanatical resistance. The Canadians could never be sure when they were going to encounter a strongpoint, often turning to their flame-throwing Wasps to burn out the enemy.

“To be the target of a flame-thrower is most terrifying,” one Canadian trooper remarked. “Any of the enemy who survived threw down their weapons and sped through the fire and smoke toward us with arms in the air.”

The emboldened Dutch Resistance helped the Canadians, often telling them where the enemy was hiding, and even conducting some attacks. When the Canucks moved on to new targets, the resistance took over civil affairs, rounding up Nazi sympathizers, many of whom were dragged into back alleys or basements and never seen again.

Dutch women, young and old, who had taken up with German soldiers were also treated harshly. Publicly humiliated before jeering crowds, their hair was shorn with dull scissors, leaving bloodied scalps. Some Canadians tried to intervene. Dutch men and women with blood in their eyes gently but firmly turned the liberators away.

“We witnessed the sadistic emotions of revenge,” remarked Gunner James Brady, “and it sickens the human spirit.”

The 4th Armoured Division engaged enemy formations from early April, on the far right of Crerar’s army. Straddling the border of Germany and the Netherlands, the Canadians rode hard into enemy territory.

The German people watched them with anger, but did not rise up. There was some resistance, however, and the Canadians were quick to raze houses when snipers used them, and they hit hard when there was any sign of resistance. “We are no longer a liberating army now that we are in Germany,” one Canadian remarked. “We come as conquerors.”