Operation Trojanisches Pferd (i)

Trojan horse

'Trojanisches Pferd' (i) was the German undertaking to take and hold the bridges over the Waal river near Nijmegen in the Netherlands as part of 'Gelb' (10 May 1940).

The object of the undertaking was to prevent the destruction of these bridges by the Dutch forces, and thereby speed the advance of General Georg von Küchler’s 18th Army of Generaloberst Fedor von Bock’s Heeresgruppe 'B'. The 18th Army thus secured all the strategically vital bridges on the axis toward Rotterdam, thereby penetrating into 'Vesting Holland' and bypassed the 'Hollandsche Waterlinie' from the south.