Bombing began at the outset of hostilities on 10 May and culminated with the destruction of the entire historic city centre on 14 May,[2] an event sometimes referred to as the Rotterdam Blitz.

The psychological and the physical success of the raid, from the German perspective, led the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL) to threaten to destroy the city of Utrecht if the Dutch command did not surrender.

[4] The strategic location of the Netherlands between the United Kingdom and Germany made it ideal for the basing of German air and naval forces to be used in attacks on the British Isles.

Armament production was slightly increased after the German invasion of Denmark in April 1940, but the Netherlands had only 35 modern wheeled armoured fighting vehicles, five tracked armoured fighting vehicles, 135 aircraft, and 280,000 soldiers,[5] and Germany committed 159 tanks,[6] 1,200 modern aircraft,[citation needed] and around 150,000 soldiers to the Dutch theatre alone.

[11] General Schmidt had planned a combined assault the next day, 14 May, using tanks of the 9th Panzer supported by flame throwers, SS troops and combat engineers.

[16][17] The attack was to be preceded by artillery bombardment, while Gen. Schmidt had requested the support of the Luftwaffe in the form of a Gruppe (about 25 aircraft) of Junkers Ju 87 dive-bombers, specifically for a precision raid.

The Mayor of Rotterdam, Pieter Oud, consulted with his aldermen and concluded that there was not enough time to evacuate the city within the two-hour period the Germans had set.

ScharrooOn receipt of Scharroo's letter, Schmidt sent a telegram to the 2nd Luftflotte (responsible for the air raid) stating:[23] Airstrike postponed due to ongoing negotiations.

The fires across the city centre spread uncontrollably and, in the subsequent days, were aggravated as the wind grew stronger; they merged to become a firestorm.

As the haze came nearer, it turned the glorious spring day into a gloomy mid-November darkness, and as we stood there gazing at the sky and not understanding what was happening, a flake of paper came down, and another one, and more….

[28]: 159 Schmidt sent a conciliatory message to the Dutch commander General Winkelman, who surrendered shortly afterwards at Rijsoord, a village southeast of Rotterdam.

[23] The commander of Luftflotte 2, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring was interviewed about the event during the Nuremberg Trials by Leon Goldensohn, who recalled:[29] Kesselring admitted that the conditions were such that an attack could have been called off, but still clung, rather unreasonably, to the idea that it was tactically indicated because he had been ordered to do so, and he was not a politician but a soldierKesselring stated that he had not known about the capitulation, but that is contradicted by the evidence that his headquarters had received the message at 12:42, roughly 40 minutes before the bombs started to fall.

[24] In his memoirs, written while he was in prison for war crimes, Kesselring gave his account:[30] On the morning of 13 May, Student kept calling for bomber support against enemy strongpoints inside Rotterdam and the point of main effort at the bridges where the parachutists were held up.

At 14:00 hours the sortie in question was flown, and its success finally led to the capitulation of Holland on 14 May 1940General Student had requested strikes against enemy strongpoints, not carpet-bombing of the city.

The fact was that he had already admitted at Nuremberg that he was for the attack since he wanted "to present a firm attitude and secure an immediate peace" or take "severe measures".

[35] The German weekly Die Mühle (The Windmill) stated that the Dutch government was to blame for turning Rotterdam into a fortress, despite multiple summons to evacuate.

Half a mile away, the cement spattered wooden forms of a huge, new wholesale mart climb to knobby squares above the flat sands.

[46] That ran counter to the decision taken in other European cities destroyed during the war, such as Warsaw, for which the Polish government spent considerable resources on reconstructing historical buildings and quarters and restoring them to their prewar appearance.

[42][47] The largest and most controversial change in the layout was to move the main dike of the city alongside the riverbank, so as to protect the low-lying Waterstad area from flooding.

[43] That was met with criticism from the newly-formed Inner Circle of the Rotterdam Club, which promoted integrating the city with the Maas (Meuse), and claimed that the dike would create a marked separation from it.

[47] The Basisplan placed a high emphasis on broad open spaces and promoted the river's special integration with the city through two significant elements: the Maas Boulevard, which reimagined the newly-moved dike as a tree-lined street 80 wide, and the Window to the River, a visual corridor running from the harbour to the centre of the city.

Because reconstruction work began so rapidly after the bombing, the city had by 1950 regained its reputation as the fastest loading and unloading harbour in the world.

[46] Rotterdam's urban form was more American than other Dutch cities, based on US plans,[46] with a large collection of high-rise elements[42] and the Maas boulevard and Window to the River functioning primarily as conduits for motor vehicles.

The Rotterdam police drove around in huge Chevrolets...and the Witte Huis was the first high-rise building in Europe with a Chicago-type steel skeleton and a ceramic façade.The larger-scale 'wholesale-quantity' approach was equally used for hospitals and parks (such as Dijkzigt Hospital and Zuider Park) as retail centres,[47] but close attention was still paid to creating human-scale walkable promenades, especially that of the Lijnbaan, which presented broad sunny walkways for shoppers and spectators, and tried new retail techniques such as open glass walls to blend interior and exterior.

[46] While urban reconstruction can be fraught with complexity and conflict,[44] Rotterdam's status as a 'working' harbour city meant it did not receive the same resistance to rebuilding as a cultural or political centre (as Amsterdam or The Hague) might have.

[47] However, there was still significant movement of people away from the city centre during Rotterdam's reconstruction to purpose-built neighbourhoods such as De Horsten and Hoogvliet, which are now inhabited by mainly lower-income households.