The Kazemattenmuseum; perhaps the Netherlands' best-kept museum secret. Driving along the Afsluitdijk, you pass it. Unnoticed. And that's a shame, because this compact museum houses a treasure trove of stories, heroism, tragedy and is a paragon of the courage to which we owe our freedom.

This is the only place in Europe where the German Blitzkrieg was stopped in May 1940: the battle of the Afsluitdijk. Roughly 225 soldiers, with the help of gunboat Hr. Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau firing 98 precision shots, managed to stop the German troops, as many as 15,000 heavily armed men, in May 1940. An extraordinary example of intransigence, clever tactics and courage.

A casemate is a type of bunker. Further described as a 'space fitted with embrasures for the arrangement of a firearm'. There are a total of 17 bunkers, with walls up to three metres thick. Apart from being equipped for fighting the enemy, the casemates were also used for living, eating and sleeping. This is on display at the Casemate Museum. The sleeping quarters with the original straw mattresses, the telephone exchange, the command post, anti-aircraft casemate, the shelving kitchen, the armouries, machine gun casemate, gun casemate, searchlight casemate, a guardroom and the sanitary facilities.

The Casemate Museum is a hotbed of stories. Not only about the Battle of the Afsluitdijk and Stelling Kornerwerderzand, but also about the construction of the Afsluitdijk and the reason for it, the German occupation and liberation in the spring of 1945, the Cold War and the story about the Lockheed Hudson and its crew that crashed in the IJsselmeer during World War II.

Get goosebumps from the impressive monuments dedicated to the fallen crew of Hr. Ms. Johan Maurits van Nassau (sunk on 14 May 1940) and the other fallen servicemen.

Visit the Kazemattenmuseum in Kornwerderzand: don't miss it.