Category: Netherlands, Spring 2023

On our drive from Maastricht to Otterlo we stopped at the Overloon War Museum.  Their motto is “War belongs in a museum”, and I couldn’t agree more.

The museum opened on May 25, 1946, making it one of the oldest WWII museums in Europe.  You couldn’t get much older, so I don’t know which museum is vying for first place.

The museum is located on the site of the Battle of Overloon, a tank and infantry battle that occurred in September and October, 1944, in the aftermath of Operation Market Garden.  The museum is huge, and has an incredible number of tanks, aircraft and various weapons displayed throughout.  They even have the Netherlands very own bicycle defense force on display!  Surprised they couldn’t hold the Nazi’s off longer with some of these babies.

This is one of only a few dozen  copies of Mein Kampf that was made for Nazi leaders and gifted to them by Adolf Hitler.

At the start of the Nazi invasion, the royal family was in The Hague.  A crashed German plane had details of a plan to capture the Dutch cabinet and the Royal Family.  Two days later they decided to flee to England.  The vehicle below is the actual transport that took Queen Wilhelmina to a waiting boat.

This typewriter has a specific key that can type the “SS” insignia, seen on the number 5 key.  Click on the photo for a larger version that you can zoom in on if you want to see it.

They have several uniforms spread throughout the exhibit.  Here is a Nazi SS uniform.  Apparently many of the contents of the museum were collected from the battlefield.

The below is a uniform from a concentration camp victim.  These were only given out at certain concentration camps and during only a portion of the time these camps were in existence.  Most Jews/Sinti/Roma had to wear whatever they could find in the camp, usually the clothes of somebody who had recently been murdered.

This guy, Anton Mussert, was quite the piece of shit.  He was the leader of the Dutch National Socialist Movement, a Dutch fascist organization that supported the Axis powers.  He basically sold out the Dutch people during WWII, doing nothing to prevent the “hunger winter” of 1944/45, when 18,000 people died of starvation.

He actually met with Hitler several times, hoping to retain a level of power in the Netherlands.  After the war he was arrested and charged with high treason.  He begged Queen Wilhelmina for clemency, but she didn’t mess around, so he was executed by firing squad at The Hague in May 1946, at the same spot so many Dutch citizens had been killed by the Nazi’s.  Payback is indeed a bitch!

They had a pretty good video inside that was basically a message that “war is bad”.  At least it had some English subtitles.  As for the museum overall, the English version of the app they have for your phone is filled with bugs and doesn’t work well at all.  It turned out to be much easier to use Google Translate with my phone on each Dutch sign we saw.

There were several video screens not working and the WIFI is spotty throughout.  There was a later video that depicted the events of Operation Market Garden and it was very poorly made with poor quality video.  It actually made the battle seem more confusing than it was, particularly after watching a video that depicted it so well at a later museum (Airborne Museum at Hartenstein).  The depiction of life in the bomb shelters afterwards was also subpar, particularly if you speak English and want to know what they are saying.  Anyways, at least one video was decent!

The below British Lancaster aircraft crashed in a 1945 in a swampy meadow in Bunsbeek, Belgium.  It was on it’s way back from a bombing run when it was downed by German anti-aircraft fire.  The plane then sank into the swamp, taking all 7 occupants with it.  It was rediscovered in 2016, and all 2000 pieces of the plane were brought to Overloon to be put on display.

They laid out every part in it’s proper place on a diagram of the plane.  It’s a pretty impressive sight.

The below is a German Biber (German for beaver), which is a one-person midget submarine equipped with a single torpedo.  These were used in Western Europe in small harbors and rivers during WWII, but proved unreliable.  Approximately 60-70% of the crew lost their lives during the missions.

Here is a German V1 Flying Bomb, basically an early version of a cruise missile.  These were used to bomb London and other English cities.  From June to October 1944, a total of 9,521 V1’s were launched on England from the French and Dutch coastlines, only stopping after the Allies overtook the launch positions.

After arriving in Otterlo, we made our way to a small bar for dinner.  There we witnessed 11 year old Matheo devour more food than Kim and I put together!  This kid could eat!  Very precocious as well.  His parents, Pablo and Maryam, are very lucky to have such a wonderful child.  Nice to meet you guys!

Next up, we visit the De Hoge Veluwe National Park and the Kroller Muller museum, our favorite museum in The Netherlands.

 

We took another day trip from Maastricht to visit Hoensbroek Castle.  Due to it’s important strategic location between Maastricht, Aachen and Cologne, a castle has been located on this site since 1225.

This castle was built in stages over several hundred years.  The oldest parts of the castle date from around 1360.  The round tower in the above photo was added in 1425.  This castle was the home to Sir Herman Hoen, who was the Lord of the area.  His family eventually changed their name to Van Hoensbroek, because nobody likes a last name with just one syllable.  Am I right?

As with seemingly all castles in the Netherlands, they have a scale model you can view.

Here is the view from the attic of the round tower.  You definitely want to watch your head in this section!  This is where the lookouts were stationed back when you had to worry about bad folks, like Vikings and politicians.  Unfortunately we still have politicians!

There is a White Stork’s nest in the above photo.  Here it is zoomed in.  They have these man-made nests all over the Netherlands.  We also saw some in Belgium.  They build these for two reasons.  One, much of their natural habitat is being curtailed by humanity, and two, if they don’t build these, the storks tend to build there nests at the top of utility poles, which can apparently cause electrical issues.  Shocking, I know!

This is a view of a tower that was built in the second half of the 17th century.

This is called the Green Room, as the green four-poster bed has been here since the 18th century.

I liked the view of the round tower through this stained glass window.

Here’s Kim in a mock-up of a hot air balloon over the castle.  Wish they had offered actual hot air balloon rides!

Below is a photo of the castles “Secret Room”.  This rooms entrance was hidden by a cupboard, so somebody could hide in case of an intrusion into the castle.  This room has a pretty cool story.  During the French Revolution, all the nobles were persecuted…for being nobles.  Sir Hoesbroek’s brother, Philip Damiaan Van Hoesbroek, was the bishop of Roermond (Netherlands) and was therefore subject to arrest.

He came to hide in his brothers castle, and ended up in the Secret Room.  The French soldiers trying to track him down knew he was hiding in the castle, and searched the entire premises without success.  They realized every room in the castle has a window, so they instructed the staff to put a candle in the window of each room and circled the castle after dark looking for a hidden room.  Philip was made aware of this plan and put his own candle in the window.  This worked, and the French soldiers never found him, which just goes to show it’s easy to fool the French.

One of the unusual spots in the castle was this, the “kotsgat”, where the lovely rich folks who lived here would decide to vomit after eating too much, so they could start eating all over again.   The hole leads directly to the swimming pool….err….moat.

With this sort of lifestyle, maybe the French should have found his brother after all??

One last shot of the castle as a palate cleanser.  I’m sure the moat is much cleaner these days.  Bear in mind the castle has a dozen “privies”, toilets which actually hang on the outside of the castle and dump directly into the moat below.  Suffice it to say this was not a spot you wanted to take a swim.  Ok, guess that wasn’t much of a “palate cleanser” after all.

We then drove to Valkenburg to check out the ruins of Valkenburg Castle.  It was a castle kind of day!

On the way towards the castle we passed by one of the Valkenburg city gates.

At the entrance to the ruins is…you guessed it…a scale model of the castle!  This one depicts what the castle looked like at it’s prime in the 14th century.

The best views of the city are from the castle ruins.  This was the only castle in the Netherlands to be built on a hill, but that’s not surprising, since there are so few hills here.

Look, in the background, another hill!  The castle was pretty much destroyed by the Spanish in the early 17th century during the 80 years war.  There were plans to rebuild it, but during the French invasion in 1672 the Dutch destroyed it themselves rather than have it fall into French hands.  I’m thinking the Dutch and the French didn’t like each other very much?

There are signs throughout the area indicating what portions of the castle were built when, and they were actually in English.  They definitely weren’t in French!

Next up, we head to Otterlo, directly adjacent to National Park De Veluwe, and some excellent WWII sites.