Henri Winkelman (17 August 1876-27 December 1952) was Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Netherlands Army at the time of the Battle of the Netherlands during World War II.
Biography[]
Henri Winkelman was born in Maastricht, Netherlands on 17 August 1876, and he became a lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands Army in 1896 after graduating from the Royal Military Academy. He became a major in 1923, a Major-General in 1931, and a Lieutenant-General in 1934, and he was honorarily discharged in 1934 after he failed in his bid to become Chief-of-Staff. However, he was remobilized in 1939 and made commander-in-chief of the Dutch Army as World War II broke out. Winkelman was the commander of the Dutch armed forces at the time of the Battle of the Netherlands in May 1940, and he believed that the Dutch should defend "Fortress Holland" until Allied reinforcements came to relieve them. However, the Germans overran the country within a week, and the bombing of Rotterdam convinced Winkelman to surrender on 14 May 1940. On 2 July 1940, he was interned after refusing to pledge his loyalty to the Nazi Party, and he spent the rest of the war in a German prisoner-of-war camp. He was released in 1945, and he died in 1952.