Think Like a Historian: Liberation of the Netherlands
The Think Like a Historian project is a series of videos and accompanying learning tools designed to help educators and students analyze and interpret primary sources. This edition of the series focuses on Canadian experiences in the aftermath of the liberation of the Netherlands.
In the final months of the Second World War, Canadian forces were given the important and deadly task of liberating the Netherlands from Nazi occupation. From September 1944 to April 1945, the First Canadian Army fought German forces on the Scheldt estuary — opening the port of Antwerp for Allied use — and then cleared northern and western Netherlands of Germans, allowing food and other relief to reach millions of desperate people. More than 7,600 Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen died fighting in the Netherlands. Today, Canada is fondly remembered by the Dutch for ending their oppression under the Nazis.