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N0KFQ > TODAY 10.05.08 05:30l 53 Lines 2356 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - May 10
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From: N0KFQ@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
To : TODAY@ALLUS
May 10, 1940
As Germany invades Holland and Belgium, Winston Churchill becomes
prime minister of Great Britain
On this day in 1940, Hitler begins his Western offensive with the
radio code word "Danzig," sending his forces into Holland and
Belgium. On this same day, having lost the support of the Labour
Party, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns;
Winston Churchill accedes to the office, becoming defense
minister as well.
As British and French Allied forces attempted to meet the 136
German divisions breaking into Holland and Belgium on the ground,
2,500 German aircraft proceeded to bomb airfields in Belgium,
Holland, France, and Luxembourg, and 16,000 German airborne
troops parachuted into Rotterdam, Leiden, and The Hague. A
hundred more German troops, employing air gliders, landed and
seized the Belgian bridges across the Albert Canal. The Dutch
army was defeated in five days. One day after the invasion of
Belgium, the garrison at Fort Eben-Emael surrendered, outmanned
and outgunned by the Germans.
The Dutch and Belgian governments immediately appealed to Britain
for help. Neville Chamberlain pleaded to Parliament that a
coalition government, of Liberals and Labour, would be necessary
to generate support for a war effort, especially given the
lethargy that infected Britain, still reeling from World War I.
Labour demonstrated no support for Chamberlain, preferring
Churchill, who they thought better able to prosecute a war. As
one member of Parliament put it: "Winston-our hope-he may yet
save civilization." Great Britain had finally come to take the
Nazi threat seriously.
Also on this day, in 1941, Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland
in an attempt to negotiate a truce between Britain and Germany
On May 10, the day Hitler planned to invade Russia, and German
bombs dropped on London in a spring "blitz," Hess parachuted into
Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with Britain, in the person
of the Duke of Hamilton, whom Hess claimed to have met at the
1936 Berlin Olympics. Such a peace would have prevented Germany
from fighting on two fronts and greatly increased Hess's own
prestige within the Nazi regime.
He did, in fact, find peace-in the Tower of London, where the
British imprisoned him, the last man ever to be held there under
lock and key.
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