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The Dutch are shocked when the Germans bomb Rotterdam and invade their neutral country. But Germany follows with insidious conciliatory gestures that ease tensions. Germany gradually exploits the populace with conscriptions, forced labor and deportation of Jewish citizens. Finally anticipating liberation as the Allies move westward, Dutch suffering intensifies. As the German propagandists had claimed, liberation brought devastation, not from warfare but from a brutal German embargo and intensified deportations.