We're in the Netherlands.
A fortified shore.
This is the frontline of a conflict with the sea.
For centuries the Dutch have battled to build a coastline like no other.
A wind-powered landscape, lined with a carpet of colourful blooms,
and extraordinary constructions that Mark is exploring.
This is what the Dutch came up with. A 1 9-mile-long sea wall.
Miranda's off for a seaside snack.
This is raw herring. Not all at once.
Tessa Dunlop seeks the truth about tulip mania,
a bizarre tale of 1 7th-century bloom and bust.
lt's said that trading in these nearly bankrupted the nation.
Adam Henson meets the big cheeses of the dairy world.
These are the breed of cattle that are responsible
for turning the British countryside black and white.
And l'm on a peaceful isle,
said to be the site of the last battle of the Second World War in Europe,
to explore a tale of terror and traitors.
They're lndian people from lndia but wearing German uniforms.
They were caught in North Africa and they ran over to the Germans.
This is Coast and beyond.
The Netherlands may be brand-new territory for Coast,
but it seems rather familiar to me.
There's something strangely unreal about these flat landscapes,
borrowed from the sea and compressed by this enormous sky.
lt reminds me of where l grew up in Norfolk.
We share the North Sea with the Netherlands.
So we're being nosey neighbours,
going Dutch to see what we might copy to make the most of our own coast.
They don't just live beside the sea here, they live under it.
A third of Dutch homes are below sea level,
huge banks hold the water back.
They rearranged their coast to suit themselves,
channel the sea,
harness the winds, build mega ports.
The Dutch are old masters at making new land from the waves.
We've such sights to see on a shore full or surprises!
Ourjourney will take us to the border with Germany and the island of Rottumerplaat,
the coast cutting into the heart of the Netherlands.
But we start at the small coastal town of Ouwerkerk.
This is the province of Zeeland, ''See-land''.
We share this sea with the Dutch for better or worse.
ln 1 953 the east coast of Britain was battered by a terrifying storm.
307 Britons died, and over 30,000 were forced to flee as the North Sea rushed in.
Here on the Dutch lowlands the devastation was even worse.
The '53 flood was a national catastrophe.
ANNOUNCER: Never in living memory have the Dutch suffered such a disaster.
The seas lashed by a mighty wind broke through the dykes
and poured in to swamp the countryside.
NlCK: The flood left 1 800 dead, and many more homeless.
The tragedy renewed an age-old conflict with the sea,
that the Dutch are still fighting, 60 years on.
School trips teach the next generation to take up the struggle.
(Speaks Dutch)
(Man's voice speaking Dutch)
At this memorial to the flood victims they hear from those who fought for their lives.
(Speaks Dutch)
Mina Verton was the same age as these children the night the waters came.
ln 1 953 her family were caught up in a desperate race against time,
as water sped towards their home.
With little warning of the deluge, they were trapped.
What happened to you on the night of the flood?
ANNOUNCER: Aircraft fly in with supplies for the people still to be moved.
British, American and Belgian pilots keep up a shuttle service in helicopters,
to relieve the many isolated villages cut off from contact with the areas of safety.
l've got a map here which shows the parts of the Netherlands hit by the 1 953 disaster.
All the parts in green were underwater,
and it's shocking to see how much of the delta was affected.
Through the green you can see entire road networks, villages.
ln just six hours 700 square miles were completely submerged.
Because much of The Netherlands is below sea level,
when the protective walls failed in 1 953 the impact was worse here than in Britain.
So for 40 years the Dutch beavered away spending billions on high-tech schemes,
ringing their coast in concrete and rock defences.
At its heart, with 62 floodgates, the mighty Oosterscheldedam,
one of the engineering wonders of the world.
But it could be just ten years before the low-lying Netherlands need a new plan
as sea levels rise.
We share the same threat.
Will our shore one day share fortifications on the same massive scale?
Although we often say Holland, the Netherlands has 1 2 different provinces.
Only two are actually called Holland.
ln the south is the resort of Scheveningen.
Given Holland's watery history, something odd is happening here.
People are on the beach...enjoying themselves.
There's a watchful eye kept on the approaching waves.
(Shouting)
But the Dutch don't hide behind their sea walls.
Miranda's come to find out what Netherlanders like to do beside the sea.
Sea bathing started here around 200 years ago, about the time it was really taking off in Brighton.
And this is a photograph of this resort some years later.
ln fact, it could even be Brighton,
apart from these extraordinary wicker chairs on the beach.
Like our early resorts, Scheveningen started as an exclusive retreat for the rich.
But in the late-1 9th century the tourist trade developed.
ln 1 885 this grand hotel The Kurhaus was opened,
nearly ten years before the Blackpool Tower was built.
So, what are we looking at?
The Dutch version of Blackpool?
Or perhaps Brighton below the sea?
Or maybe something else altogether.
l need a local guide to the locals.
- Philip. Hi. Miranda. Nice to meet you. - Hi.
Philip Walkate is a keen observer of the Dutch at their leisure.
We work quite hard, and we enjoy partying on a nice summer day.
When this is packed, everybody will have their own square metre of sand.
Very organised, very structured.
Yeah, we have to, because there's not a lot of space,
and half the country will go to the beach on a nice day.
So, ''This is mine, that's yours.
We'll be fine together as long as we don't get involved with each other.''
Quite like a class system, would you say?
We have a class system as well, and we're in the right part of the beach for your class now.
That's good. Thank you.
Like all the posh people go over there, and this is where the partying goes on.
l'm curious. Do the Dutch share any of our seaside traditions, like building sandcastles?
Look at this. l mean, this is a sandcastle extraordinaire.
- l made this this morning, especially for you. - l don't think so.
l mean, this is incredible. We'd never see something like this in England.
l suppose it represents all the things that you can do in the water.
This big guy here sunbathing. Was that modelled on you or not?
- The Mayor of Amsterdam. - (Laughs)
This is all he does, just lying in the sun.
No day out at the seaside's complete without a snack.
Philip's promised me a real Dutch delight.
- This is raw herring. - Wow, is he just gutting it?
Cutting it and gutting it. Taking off the head.
You leave the tail, because you use that to eat it.
Not all at once.
Mm. Amazing.
lt's like the best sushi ever.
ls this a good time of year to eat this? ls it quite a seasonal product?
Yes, this actually is the new Dutch herring.
The fatter it is, everybody gets more excited.
That is very good.
The fat Dutch herring is much more than a delicacy, it's a celebrity.
Every July the first catch is celebrated with a festival.
(Singing)
Washed down with lashings of the potent local tipple.
l'll pour you some Dutch gin - jenever, it's like a schnapps.
l've got to drink this as well as this? lt's only ten in the morning.
Yeah, you can just take a sip. You can knock it up or you can just take a sip.
- You want to knock it up? - (Laughs)
Why not!
Wow.
l'm beginning to see what draws the Dutch back to the beach.
- l could do this all day. - (Both laugh)
ln a land where the people guard their coastline closely,
here, at least, the Dutch take time out from hostilities with the sea.
NlCK: The locals have ingenious solutions for living in their ''Waterworld''.
Tunnelling under it...
..floating on it...
and draining it dry.
And sometimes...just rising above it all.
(Young woman calling out in Dutch)
lt took off 500 years ago.
The Dutch wanted to get about without getting their feet wet.
Now, it's an international sport.
lt's called Fierljeppen - far leaping.
Who leaps farthest wins.
l'm Jaco de Groot.
l'm Dymphie van Rooijen.
Running as fast as possible.
Come on. Run faster, faster.
Run and climb up. Go, go, go. Yeah, good!
Climb on. Whoa!
Climb, climb...faster.
The water, it's two metres deep.
Nee! Help!
And yes, it's very cold.
Oh!
The pole is standing in the water, so we run about 30 kilometres an hour.
And then you run to a pole standing still and then you have to grab it.
(Shouting in Dutch)
And you have to climb it in five seconds.
- lt's just like you fly. - Yeah.
We're working our way up the Dutch coast.
This land is famous for being flat, with walls holding back the water.
Sea dykes are as Dutch as windmills,
and a tale of doom with one of those dykes turned a local lad into a legend.
l'm on his trail.
The Hero of Haarlem.
The town's honoured him with a statue.
And this is it; the boy with his finger in the dyke.
The schoolboy whose self-sacrifice saved his village. lt's a Dutch a story as you'll discover.
Or so you'd think.
This little boy was really made famous by an American author, Mary Mapes Dodge,
who included the story of the boy and the dyke in her 1 9th-century book,
Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates.
Mapes Dodge never even visited the Netherlands, but as her fictional tale caught on,
the locals erected a statue to satisfy curious fans.
The young Hero of Haarlem has been adopted by the Dutch
as an emblem of their struggle with the sea.
lt's ironic that the story was imported here from the USA,
because the city's name Haarlem went the other way.
The neighbourhood of Harlem in Manhattan
is a reminder that around 400 years ago New York was called New Amsterdam.
Part of the Dutch trading empire had reached New Zealand,
named after their province of Zeeland.
Today they celebrate their sea-faring heritage,. it brought enormous wealth on the wind.
The golden age of sail saw the birth of global trade,
and the city of Haarlem prospered.
Here coastland commerce fuelled a ''flower power revolution'', 1 7th-century-style.
lt's a story of boom and bust that's brought historian Tessa Dunlop
to the most Dutch of Dutch industries.
Within sniffing distance of the sea there's another ocean on this coast.
La, la-la, la-la, la-la
La, la, la-la...
An ocean of tulips.
When it's spring again
l'll bring again
Tulips from Amsterdam
You can't get much more Dutch than this - there's even a windmill.
Well, sort of.
Most of Britain's tulips start life in Dutch soil.
ln April and May the northern coast of the Netherlands blossoms - a carpet of colour.
Carlos van der Veek's family's been growing bulbs on this shore for years.
Why is it that tulips grow so well here in Holland especially?
lt's mainly because of the climate. The sea brings in his influence, the springs are cool,
the winters are mild and that's an ideal temperature for tulips.
Sadly, these beautiful blooms will never brighten someone's birthday.
Their heads are lopped off- these tulips are grown for the bulb, not the bloom.
The flowers become mulch to feed a billion-pound bulb industry.
So tulip bulbs today have a value,
but four centuries ago it seems they were almost priceless.
lt's said that trading in these nearly bankrupted the nation.
Turn back the pages of history to the early 1 7th century,
and the tulip, a wild flower from Asia, had recently arrived in Europe.
Tiptoe through the window
By the window...
Rich merchants wanted them at any price.
Dutch dealers went so bananas for bulbs they were portrayed as greedy monkeys.
lt became known as tulip mania.
The story goes that when the price of the bulbs crashed, so did the economy.
Markets that outgrow common sense are familiar now,
but does this tale of bloom and bust stand up?
l want to find out the real truth behind tulip mania.
Historian Anne Goldgar has spent years studying tulip mania,
using original 1 7th-century sources.
Why, Anne, did Holland of all places become tulip country?
Because they had access, first of all, to them,
because of the fact that the Netherlands was a very important trading nation.
And because there were a lot of people who were interested in collecting exotica.
People in the 1 7th century wanted to have tulips which were striped or speckled,
and you can see that in this tulip catalogue, which was made in 1 637.
So this is rather like having, l don't know, the right diamond today.
Yes, l know. Absolutely.
This 1 7th-century floral bling was prized for its rarity.
Tulips are tricky to grow. lt takes seven years from a seed.
ln the time of tulip mania, bulb farming was a bit of a lottery,
a gamble that Dutch traders hoped would win them a jackpot.
So how did that work?
Let's see what we might learn from the modern flower market.
l've come with Anne to Aalsmeer, the world's biggest flower auction.
lt's fascinating. lt almost reminds me of The Price ls Right.
You've got the men here bidding, and at the bottom there are the women showing off,
stroking their bunches of flowers.
This is a proper Dutch auction.
The clock counts down the price.
The first trader to press their button stops it and pays what's on the dial.
Turn back the clock some 400 years and it's said the market went haywire.
How do these modern traders feel about tulip mania?
The moment you still see that when a new tulip variety is produced,
then we feel still a bit of the tulip mania is still going on.
Four centuries after tulip mania traders are still tense.
ln the 1 7th century bulbs were bought in a frenzy,
betting they would go up in value before they were out of the ground.
The market did boom out of control.
Single bulbs went for the price of a grand house.
But did the bust nearly bankrupt the nation?
They come to a head on the 7th of February, 1 637,
and at that point someone says ''l have a bulb to sell''
and nobody bought it in Haarlem.
And at that point people started to worry, and the prices did fall dramatically.
That part of the story is true.
As for bankruptcies, l have found no-one who went bankrupt because of tulip mania.
Anne's research shows society didn't crash when the tulip bubble burst.
So where's that story come from?
This book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
did much to make the myth.
200 years after tulip mania the author, Scotsman Charles Mackay, wrote..
MAN'S VOlCE: ''Substantial merchants were reduced almost to beggary,
and many a representative of a noble line saw the fortunes of his house ruined. ''
TESSA: Mackay was printing the legend perpetuated by the original paintings
that made mischievous fun of tulip traders.
Four centuries on the bulb market is blooming,
but reminders of darker days haunt the fields.
This is a picture of the Semper Augustus,
supposedly one of the most sought-after bulbs of the tulip mania period.
But weirdly you'd struggle to find a tulip like this growing today,
because in fact the flaming striped effect is a sign that the plant had a virus
that could spread and infect the rest of the crop.
So what was once so fashionable now would immediately be dug out and thrown away.
The odd offending bloom still pops up, once highly-prized, now despised.
lt seems the Netherlands will never really close the book on tulip mania.
NlCK: Dutch engineers have carved out a remarkable coastline.
They've battled with the sea.
And they've taken command of it...in a big way.
The North Sea Canal,
a corridor of water carrying the coast inland,
taking us to the heart of the Netherlands, and the capital - Amsterdam.
But this channelling of the waves pales in comparison with another Dutch creation.
At the end of the North Sea Canal is Flevoland.
60 years ago all this land was underwater.
This is where the Dutch got their own back on the sea.
Mark is searching for clues to this land's sunken past.
l'm on the hunt for a medieval ship that's somewhere in those meadows.
Miles from the sea, they're digging up the timbers of a medieval shipwreck...
..in the middle of a field!
But it's not the boat that's out of place, it's us.
Now, we're ten miles from the sea, but only 80 years ago this was the sea bed.
This landlocked shipwreck isjust one of hundreds discovered
after a huge area was reclaimed from the sea.
The sheer scale of this land grab was staggering.
For centuries the sea regularly flooded the heart of the Netherlands.
But in the early 20th century the Dutch fought back.
Stage one was to build a huge sea wall across the mouth of the inlet.
Work started in 1 927, and was completed five years later.
lt was one of the greatest engineering projects...
..in an age of innovation.
And this is it.
The 1 9-mile-long Afsluitdijk.
The name means closing off dyke.
Over there is the North Sea - that's saltwater.
And the line of the coast is defined by a motorway.
On one side the sea, and on the other a lake.
This concrete causeway became a new stretch of the Netherlands coastline.
With the concrete dyke holding back the sea,
safe behind their defences, they started to pump out saltwater, to reclaim the land.
Legions of men armed for the task were drafted in.
Barracks were built to house them.
(Bell rings)
And to drain the small ocean behind their new sea wall, they used pumping stations.
The Dutch make it look so easy, but how does it work?
- Hi. - Hi, Mark.
Rombout Jongejans is a reclamation expert.
- First of all you start with building an island. - Right.
On this island you build a pumping station.
ln the old days we did it with a windmill. For this model l'll show you with the electricity.
So here we have a model of a pump.
At the same time you start building a dyke.
- So you build the island first and then the wall. - Yeah.
- Then we start... - Wahey, there it goes.
OK, so you're pumping now the water from the new land to the sea.
So the water goes up here, and down on that side.
When we reclaim land in Britain, we fill the land up above sea level,
- but you do it the other way round. - Yeah, we do the other way round.
And afterwards when the land is dry you fly over with an aeroplane
and put in seeds of wheat, which grows and use quite a lot of water,
and gives structure to the ground.
And presumably there's water constantly filtering back through?
Yes, that's also the reason why you still have to be pumping.
- You can see that the dyke's a bit insecure. - Yeah, yeah. OK, this is just a model.
(Laughter)
ln 40 years of pumping and digging,
the Dutch recovered an area the size of Greater London.
And now they could populate it.
The 1 960s saw a mass migration within the Netherlands.
Families were encouraged to set up home on the old sea bed.
Wherever the Dutch encountered obstacles pumping out the land,
they worked around them.
Shokland, once an island adrift in the sea, was now swallowed up by land,
its old shoreline traced out by trees.
But they couldn't manage to pump all the water
out of an area called the Oostvaardersplassen.
So now it's one of Europe's largest wetland nature reserves,
a wild corner on a tamed coast.
NlCK: Neat, unnaturally straight lines rule on this man-made shore.
There's a hard edge to the heart of the Netherlands.
l've reached the mid-point of my journey at Lelystad.
A young city born out of the waves, it harbours a reminder of an older age.
When the Dutch began building boats - to build an empire.
This is an exact copy of a 1 7th-century original.
The Batavia was launched in 1 628 not to do battle, but to do business.
This ship was part of the Dutch East lndia Company,
an organisation so vast it's been called the first multi-national corporation.
Craft like this carried spices from Asia.
They made the Dutch East lndia Company very wealthy indeed.
Success set the Netherlands on a collision course with neighbours across the North Sea -
the English.
l've got a copy of a painting.
lt shows a daring raid in 1 667 by the Dutch on the English Navy.
The English ships are on fire and all this happened just outside London - pretty cheeky.
That naval humiliation was one of many in the Anglo-Dutch wars
that rumbled on throughout the 1 7th century.
Wars that the Dutch won.
So how did they beat the Royal Navy? Did the secret lie in their ships?
They're building one here to find out.
lt's the baby of Aryan Klein.
This is a 1 7th-century admiralty ship,
and she was specifically designed to wage warfare at sea against the English.
What was the difference between the Dutch maritime power and English maritime power?
We were geared up for shipbuilding in a huge way,
so that meant we could produce ships at a fast rate.
So you could mass-produce ships like this.
Almost mass-produce. A ship like this would be ready within a year.
How could the Dutch build a ship in just a year when the English couldn't?
What was the key to this mass-production?
Windmills, lots of them.
Before steam power there was wind power.
lf you can use a mill to pump water and to grind wheat, why not use it to saw wood as well?
During the Netherland's golden age of sail,
hundreds of windmills fed the shipbuilding industry with a production line of cut wood,
enabling mass-production of ships almost a century before the lndustrial Revolution.
The trade in Asian spices fuelled the Dutch Empire.
Links to Asia left a legacy in the nation's appetites.
ln Britain we might go for an lndian meal,
in the Netherlands, they go for an lndonesian.
My name is Wai Man Lo. l was born in Rotterdam and l run an lndonesian restaurant.
My family is from New Guinea. lndonesia used to be a Dutch colony.
After the independence a lot of people from lndonesia they came to Holland.
My dad came in the '60s, he started a restaurant in 1 975.
My dad is a really hard-working man.
Looking at this picture l feel kind of proud of him.
This kind of market really reflects like how the people live here in Holland.
lt's like a big melting pot.
(Sings)
Most of the market stand holders are Moroccan or Turkish.
We buy some fish at these markets; we like to keep our fish like pretty fresh.
Most of the people in our restaurant they order the rice tables.
The rice table is really a Dutch invention.
The Dutch colonists who went to lndonesia, they liked to taste a bit of everything.
We have, like, beef dishes all the way to chicken and vegetables.
When tourists ask what is like typical Dutch food, they usually tell the tourists,
''Well...try lndonesian food.''
NlCK: Out of the city, and into the country.
The province of Friesland, the rural heartland of the Netherlands.
1 00 years ago these fertile fields gave birth to a black and white revolution - in Britain.
At the port of Harlingen,
farmer Adam Henson has crossed the North Sea.
He's in search of the origin of some familiar faces.
These beauties remind me of home.
A staggering nine out of ten of all British dairy cows
can trace their ancestry back to these lovely Friesland ladies.
These are the breed of cattle
that are responsible for turning the British countryside black and white.
lt's difficult to image a world where dairy cows aren't black and white.
Two-tone is the symbol of dairy production around the globe.
But it all began here in Friesland.
How did these Friesian cows come to conquer the world?
The clue is in their coastal soil.
To find out what makes this landscape ideal for rearing cows,
l really need to take a step back in time.
Distinctive round mounds are dotted all around the Friesian coast.
Two and a half thousand years ago, this part of the Netherlands was marshland
and regularly flooded by the sea,
so the locals came up with a bright idea.
Build their own little hills, high ground above the flood.
These little manmade refuges stood proud over a landscape often under the sea.
That constant washing of the land left a legacy...in the soil.
These are the amazing grasslands of Friesland, but why are they so amazing?
Well, for a comparison, l've bought some of my soil from home.
My farm is on the top of the Cotswolds about 1 ,000 foot above sea level,
and the soil is called Cotswold Brash.
lt's full of stone, and it doesn't really retain the moisture,
and therefore it grows pretty poor grass.
Now in comparison, take a look at this stuff.
This is alluvial sea clay, that's full of minerals that come from the sea.
Those minerals help produce fantastic grass.
The grass is full of sugar and protein that the cows love, and that converts into energy,
and helps them produce masses of milk.
Gallons of the white stuff.
Their diet of nutritious coastal grass helps make these ladies world beaters.
But for a long while the world wasn't that mad about milk.
As a drink, milk straight from the cow had been considered beyond the pale,
unfit for human consumption.
But Louis Pasteur's revolutionary heat treatment in 1 864 changed everything.
Pasteurised milk was now touted as a health drink,
a source of vitamins and calcium city-dwellers desperately needed.
The new industrial world wanted milk.
To muscle-in on the market the farmers of Friesland
began selective breeding of their super milkers.
Those Friesian pioneers produced a cow with a higher yield, and higher visibility.
They bred a black-and-white brand to be instantly recognisable.
Marleen Felius is an artist and cow historian.
- Marleen. Hi. - Hi.
lt's not that old. The Friesian breed everybody says,
''Oh, it's centuries old.'' That's not true.
As a breed it started only late in the 1 9th century.
- Right. - Yeah, and before that they had good cows,
but it was not a breed, because people didn't breed yet.
The cattle from the 1 9th century were looking different than from the 1 7th century.
And then they became more black and white.
By the start of the 20th century black-and-white Friesians
became the gold standard of milk production.
ln Britain, with the First World War looming
the 1 91 4 Milk and Dairies Act declared cow's milk ''a most necessary food''.
So British farmers came here to go cow shopping.
From the port of Harlingen we lifted the two-ton Friesians out of the Netherlands
to breed our own copies.
One bull in particular helped turn the British herd black and white.
The Dutch are so proud of him they put him in a book.
This bull Cyrus, he's quite well known in Britain, because he had 78 sons who were exported.
The daughters...most daughters stayed, but the sons were exported.
So lots of his sons were exported to Britain. When did that happen?
ln 1 91 4. ln 1 91 4 many, many animals from Friesland went to Great Britain.
ANNOUNCER: The lovelies were lined-up in a milk-mopping contest
to see who could drink most milk in the least time.
No milk today, my love has gone away
The bottle stands forlorn...
To quench our thirst for the white stuff we imported premier league pinter producers
from our North Sea neighbours.
Bringing cattle over from Friesland turned the British dairy herd black and white.
Nine out of ten of our milkers can trace their roots back to the rich grassland
of this corner of the Dutch coast.
(Ship's horn)
Next time you're buying some milk in the supermarket
or driving past a field of black and white cows,
spare a thought for this part of the Netherlands coast,
and their beautiful Friesian cows,
that have contributed so much towards the worldwide production of milk.
The Wadden lslands, on the northwest coast of the Netherlands, peaceful and unspoilt.
But one island here conceals the scars of a terrible battle.
ln the Second World War the Netherlands and much of Europe were under Nazi occupation.
The tiny island of Texel seemed an insignificant dot.
But this out-of-the-way place saw an eruption of violence in the dying days of the conflict.
lt's been described as the last battle of the Second World War in Europe.
But it all started so differently.
The Germans had taken the island in 1 940 almost unopposed.
Before long, they'd made themselves at home.
Two years into the war, this curious sort of occupation got...curiouser.
Look at these photos.
They were taken here on Texel, and they show local children posing with lndian soldiers.
But they're not prisoners of war.
lf you look carefully you can see they're wearing German uniforms.
These soldiers of the British Empire were part of the Nazi Army.
Why where the lndians here, thousands of miles from home, fighting for the enemy?
To make sense of Texel's strange war, l'm meeting two locals.
Cor Kievits and Riet van der Vis-Bremer were teenagers when the Nazis came.
The Germans soldiers in these photographs seem to be treating Texel like a holiday camp.
That's what Texel was for.
They had people who had been at the front and they were completely knocked out.
They brought them here for a couple of months to regain strength.
What can you both tell me about this very curious photograph,
with what seem to be lndian soldiers but surrounded by Dutch children.
The children were surprised by the dark colour of the people.
- They had never seen them before. - Yes, we never see that people.
They were caught in North Africa, and they ran over to the Germans.
These men were part of a remarkable Nazi project.
The Germans persuaded captured troops with a grudge against the Allies, to switch sides.
Some lndians from the Allied Army in North Africa were recruited by the Germans
to form an extraordinary lndian Legion.
A propaganda victory for the Nazis, but it didn't impress their generals.
Not trusted to fight, the lndian Legion was put to work on coastal defences.
Their stay on Texel was brief.
But the island's curious connections to foreign fighters didn't stop there.
lt's so strange to find the hammer and sickle, emblem of the Soviet Union,
here in a Dutch cemetery.
But it's Soviet soldiers who are buried here.
Like the lndian troops before them they'd come to Texel as part of the German Army.
Originally from the Soviet province of Georgia,
these were battle-hardened veterans of the Eastern Front.
Tough and independently-minded, Georgians had little love for their Russian commanders.
So, when captured, some collaborated with the Germans.
They arrived on Texel in early 1 945.
As the Georgians posed for pictures with the locals,
the Allied Armies were advancing across Europe.
ANNOUNCER: A mighty thrust into the heart of Germany began on the beaches of Normandy.
NlCK: Some nine months after D-day,
Texel and much of the northern Netherlands still remained under Nazi control.
But the German Army was being forced back on the Western and Eastern Front.
By April 1 945 the Germans were in desperate straits.
The Red Army was massing for a final assault on Berlin.
On Texel, the Georgians, once soldiers in the Soviet Army,
were ordered by the Germans to head to the front line to fight the Allies.
Having found themselves on the losing side,
the Georgians had one last desperate chance to redeem themselves.
Texel had survived almost five years of war without a shot fired in anger.
That all changed in the early hours of the 6th of April, 1 945.
- You see the bullet hole in the wall there? - Yeah.
Over there.
The Georgians turned on the Germans.
At one o'clock they started to kill the Germans.
They cut their throats and they put hand grenades in their rooms with them,
and they shot them.
But anyway they killed all the Germans that lived among them, any place where they were.
How many was that?
- l think about 500. - Good heavens.
500 massacred in one night.
The battle was later dramatised in this Soviet feature film.
Locals caught in the crossfire couldn't tell friend from foe.
Both sides wore the same uniforms.
l looked around the corner and l saw behind a tree...
What l saw, two Georgians. One of them pointed the flame-thrower at us,
and l said, ''Christ, they're bloody Germans.''
(Ringing)
German reinforcements flooded the island.
The Georgians who'd been fighting for control of Texel were now fighting for their lives.
(Gunfire)
Surrender wasn't an option.
The rebels made for the island's most secure stronghold.
One group of Georgians took a last stand here at the lighthouse.
Apparently, it still carries the scars of the fighting.
A new wall conceals the pock-marks of a desperate battle.
Mere bullets were never going to go through a wall this thick.
lt was an impregnable defensive position, but it was also a death-trap,
and all the Georgians in here were eventually killed
when the Germans blew in the door on the ground floor.
The killing continued for a month on the tiny isle of Texel.
Then in Berlin, Hitler committed suicide.
(Pealing)
On the 7th of May, 1 945, Germany surrendered.
Europe celebrated peace.
But in Texel, once famous for its tranquillity the fighting continued.
The Germans wouldn't surrender to the Georgians.
lt was two weeks after the Second World War in Europe ended,
before Allied troops arrived to finish the final battle, here on Texel.
Of the 800 Georgians who came to the island, only 200 or so survived.
They had worn the uniform of the hated enemy.
But their remarkable uprising guaranteed their safe passage.
The rebels returned home, as heroes of the Soviet Union.
The sandy isles of the Northern Netherlands,.
they subtly alter their shape with each new tide.
lt's one battle between land and sea the Dutch have decided to stay out of.
Here they've encouraged nature to do its own thing.
Very few people are allowed to set foot on remote Rottumerplaat.
But Miranda's been given permission to look for signs of life.
MlRANDA: This is the sort of spot that seems to sum up ''getting away from it all''.
But as you walk across the dunes there's more than sand beneath your feet.
Concrete!
Loads of it.
Yes, you've guessed it -
like much of the Dutch coast, this island was built by the Dutch, or at least started by them.
You can still see the line of a seawall built in the 1 950s to trap shifting sands.
The island was encouraged to grow as part of another land reclamation scheme.
But...there's no-one here.
By the 1 990s wilderness proved more desirable than new living space.
Rottumerplaat was abandoned to nature.
Oyster catchers, spoonbills and common terns
are amongst the birds feeding on the mudflats rich in shellfish.
One of the few humans allowed to come here on a regular basis is naturalist Hans Roersma.
Everywhere you look there are birds.
And a big group of oyster catchers down here, some of them have taken off.
And the sun on their...on their tummies, their bellies, it's just like glitter. lt's fabulous.
And if they start flying it's one new, big animal. They feed individually but now they assemble.
You can see birds which have just arrived, eat like hell.
They go on probing and they eat and they eat.
And there's a couple of spoonbills.
lt's very odd the way they feed, isn't it?
This side-to-side motion in the shallows picking up shrimp and, l guess, tiny fish as well.
Yeah, when the tide comes in the shrimp also come in
and they follow them and little fish, of course.
And the water becomes too deep for them now to go on feeding.
So they move towards the island. lt's beautiful, they walk towards us now.
l can see why you love it here. lt's an incredibly beautiful place.
But why is it so special to you?
We live in the most densely populated area of Western Europe,
and then we have a few islands reserved for nature,
and l'm allowed to live and work there.
- You're a very lucky man. - Yeah, yeah. (Laughs)
The Dutch have been at war with the sea for centuries.
But here where they've learned to live together,
they put on quite a spectacle.
NlCK: The sweeping sand flats make for lovely, relaxed walking,
but getting between the islands isn't so easy.
All this sand makes it impossible to get a boat in here,
but the Dutch have come up with a typically ingenious idea.
Take the bus to your boat.
This truck is known as the Vliehors Express,
and it's one of the ways to get from island to island.
Theme from Van Der Valk (Eye Level)
(Accordion and singing)
This bus ride gets more and more otherworldly.
We've just stopped at a driftwood stockade in the middle of this sand dessert.
Looks like an art installation.
Even in this natural paradise, the Dutch can't stop reclaiming stuff from the sea.
Wonderful! lt's a museum of found objects.
Fish crates, computer monitors, buoys, lifebelts, signs.
This unusual busjourney has a suitably unlikely bus stop.
This peculiar walkway is actually a jetty.
At the far end the water is deep enough for a ferry.
Sand and sea together, combining to conjure up something truly special.
lt's a delightfully Dutch conundrum that sums up our Netherlandsjourney.
Life on the margins between sea and shore can create a flair and resourcefulness
that will arise above any challenge.
The Dutch have learned to live with the sea,
to recognise its opportunities and to meet its threats.
As sea levels rise and the search for novel solutions become more urgent,
l reckon we can all learn a thing or two from the Netherlands.