Sold For $5,170
*Includes Buyers Premium
World War II–dated DS signed by Major-General Sir Francis Wilfred de Guingand, "Fr. de Guingand" and Ernst August Schwebel, "Schwebel," one page, 8 x 13, April 28, 1945. Headed "Secret," a document containing the minutes of a meeting between "representatives of the Allies and of the German civil administration in Holland," listing the attendees and the outcome: an agreement to meet "at 1300 hours (German Summer Time) on Monday, 30th April, 1945, with Lieut-General W. Bedell Smith, Chief of Staff to General Eisenhower, leading the Allied delegation, and Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart leading the German delegation. German Naval, Army and Air Force representatives would form part of the delegation as the Reichskommissar's experts. The Dutch Director-General of Food, Louwes, would accompany the German delegates…After this agreement, Allied experts were called in to explain to the German delegation what methods of feeding the Dutch civilian population the Allies proposed. The German delegates agreed to refer these details to their experts in order that the meeting on 30 April should proceed expeditiously." Signed at the conclusion in ink by de Guingand and Schwebel. Professionally backed and deacidified, and in very good to fine condition, with scattered light staining and creasing, and small areas of restored edge loss which affect none of the text.
On April 28, 1945, at 0800 hours the Allied guns fell silent on the Dutch front. This was to facilitate a previously agreed meeting at Achterveld, near Amersfoort, where, at 1100 hours, Field Marshal Montgomery's Chief of Staff, Major General 'Freddie' de Guingand, met with Dr. Ernst Schwebel, a representative of Seyss-Inquart, the Nazi governor of the Netherlands, to discuss the serious food situation in the country.
The Allied plan was to seek German permission to drop food from the air, beginning the following morning, and to follow this operation by sending further supplies by land, sea and rail as soon as possible in order to feed the Dutch nation who were now approaching starvation.
The German delegation approved the Allied plan in principle and this, the first Allied-German meeting on Dutch soil, enabled the humanitarian air drops popularly known by the British as Operation Manna and the Americans as Operation Chowhound, followed shortly by the ground-based relief operation called Operation Faust. Air drops of food began during the early hours of April 29th, while deliveries of food, medicine, and fuel by land and sea began on May 2nd. In total, over 11,000 tons of food were dropped over a ten-day period.
This historic agreement, which saved Holland from starvation, was also the catalyst for the cessation of hostilities. The temporary truce brought about by the meeting continued until German forces in the Netherlands finally capitulated on May 5, 1945.
These meetings between de Guingand and Schwebel are documented in Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich by Barry Turner (pp. 158–161).
