The story
It certainly was a surprise, because it was long intended to not civil, but to establish a military Government in the Netherlands, as also happened in other countries.
Hitler had chosen a different route at the last minute, to dismay of the military authorities, who were busy with their preparations. The biographer of Seyss-Inquart, Henk Neumann, commented: ' while in Düsseldorf, where the headquarters of the troops operating in Netherlands was established, still diligently by worked on the plans for the military administration, hit there on the evening of the 17th may as a thunderbolt the command in that there the next day no rides to the occupied area were allowed to be made. Details decided was to the establishment of a civil administration. '
The following day, Seyss-Inquart on Hitler's headquarters in the Eifel region the designation certificate awarded. And he got the instructions with it: he had to make the Netherlands a part of the greater German Empire, and before that it was a gradual nazificeringspolitiic the preferred route.
According to historian Dr. l. de Jong has Seyss-Inquart in Vienna that day his wife called with the romantic code message: ' say Trude, the Führer wants me plants tulips. '
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