Chapter Eight – Holding On As soon as he had the news, Sas communicated it to his own authorities and to Colonel Goethals. At midnight he received a lightly coded message from The Hague to enquire if there really were to be no change in the arrangements for ‘the operation on your wife’. Sas told them it would take place in under six hours. But the Dutch did not take the warning seriously, and even the Belgians did not mobilise until 3a.m. The German forces swept over them, driving the British Expeditionary Force, severely depleted, back across the Channel, and decimating the French units which had fought alongside it. General Hoth raced along the north coast of France, while Generals Guderian and Kleist (the latter a cousin of Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin) headed south and east, smashing through the Ardennes. Paris fell on 14 June, the French capitulated on 22, and hostilities ceased on 25. Hitler ordered that church bells be rung throughout the Reich for a week in celebration.
