was subsequently transferred to the Netherlands, where he succeeded Kurt Student as commander of Army Group H. For the following three months he conducted a fighting withdrawal against the British 2nd Army, and was awarded the Swords to his Knight's Cross. This command was redesignated in early April 1945 and Blaskowitz became commander-in-chief of the northern (still occupied) part of the Netherlands. During the Dutch famine of 1944–45, Blaskowitz allowed air corridors for Allied airdrops of food and medicine to the Dutch civilian population. On 5 May Blaskowitz was summoned to the Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen by Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes, (commander of I Canadian Corps), to discuss the surrender of the German forces in the Netherlands. Prince Bernhard, acting as commander-in-chief of the Dutch Interior Forces, attended the meeting. Blaskowitz agreed with all proposals by Foulkes. However, nowhere in the building – some sources say nowhere in the whole town – could a typewriter be found. Thus, the surrender document could not be typed. The next day, both parties returned and, in the presence of both Foulkes and Prince Bernhard, Blaskowitz signed the surrender document, which in the meantime had been typed. Indictment and trial Blaskowitz was tried for war crimes at the High Command Trial (Case No. 12), one of the subsequent Nuremberg trials. In one notorious case he was accused of ordering the execution of two deserters after the German surrender. He committed suicide on 5 February 1948: after breaking away from his guards, he jumped off a balcony into the inner courtyard of the court building. According to Hans Laternser, the defence council for the lead defendant Wilhelm von Leeb, the prosecution told him that "Blaskowitz did not need to do that as he would certainly have been acquitted", leading to Laternser questioning the indictment. According to Clark, Blaskowitz could have counted on an acquittal. In historian Norbert Frei's book on the elites of Nazi Germany, it is stated that the Nuremberg judges expressly saw Blaskowitz as a positive example of how Wehrmacht officers could have behaved. Both the indictment and the suicide have been considered an enigma by scholars ever since, because he likely would have been acquitted on all counts and had been told by his defense to expect to be acquitted. Decorations Iron Cross (1914) 2nd Class (27 September 1914) 1st Class (2 March 1915) Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class