slowly and, by the time of the Battle of France, only the battalion was up to strength. 1940 France and the Netherlands The three SS divisions and the spent the winter of 1939 and the spring of 1940 training and preparing for the coming war in the west. In May, they moved to the front, and the was attached to the army's 227th Infantry Division. The Der Führer Regiment was detached from the SS-VT Division and attached to the 207th Infantry Division. The SS-VT Division minus Der Führer was concentrated near Münster awaiting the invasion of The Netherlands. The SS Totenkopf and Polizei Divisions were held in reserve. On 10 May, the overcame Dutch border guards to spearhead the German advance of X.Corps into the Netherlands, north of the rivers towards the Dutch Grebbe line and subsequently the Amsterdam region. The neighbouring Der Führer advanced towards the Grebbeline in the sector of the Grebbeberg with as a follow-up objective the city of Utrecht. The battle of the Grebbeberg lasted three days and took a toll on Der Führer. On 11 May, the SS-VT Division crossed into the Netherlands south of the rivers and headed towards Breda. It fought a series of skirmishes before Germania advanced into the Dutch province of Zeeland on 14 May. The rest of the SS-VT Division joined the northern front against the forces in Antwerp. On the same day, the entered Rotterdam. After the surrender of Rotterdam, the left for The Hague, which they reached on 15 May, capturing 3,500 Dutch as prisoners of war. In France, the SS Totenkopf was involved in the only Allied tank counterattack in the Battle of France. On 21 May, units of the 1st Army Tank Brigade, supported by the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, took part in the Battle of Arras. The SS Totenkopf, on the southern flank of the 7th Panzer Division, was overrun, finding their standard anti-tank gun, the 3.7 cm PaK 36, was no match for the British Matilda II tank. After the Dutch surrender, the moved south to France on 24 May. Becoming part of the XIX Panzer Corps under the command of General Heinz Guderian, they took up a position 15 miles south west of Dunkirk along the line of the Aa Canal, facing the Allied defensive line near Watten. A patrol from the SS-VT Division crossed the canal at Saint-Venant, but was destroyed by