Strategy & Tactics 347: Operation Holland

Operation Holland is a two-player alternative history wargame intended to investigate the operational parameters that would have been in place during the first eight days of fighting across northern Belgium and southeast Netherlands had Hitler decided to launch his massive counteroffensive toward Antwerp from there instead of the Ardennes. An additional goal here would have been to cause sufficient casualties among the United Kingdom’s ground forces so as to remove 21st Army Group as an effective offensive force for the coming 1945 campaign season. Such a German effort, if maximally successful, would likely have caused a three to four month delay in the historic timeline of the Anglo-American advance into Germany. In turn, that would have allowed Hitler to concentrate greater forces in Poland to seriously slow or defeat the Soviet offensive there in January, causing a similar delay in the Red Army’s seizure of Berlin. Taken together, the ultimate result of a major Wehrmacht success in Operation Holland could well have meant one or two German cities would have received the first atomic bombs, in place of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, late in the summer of 1945.