In the afternoon of 15 April 1945, a Canadian armoured column reaches the museum from the direction of the Deelen airfield. The troops decide to continue onwards to liberate Otterlo. But at the entrance to the park, a fierce battle ensues with the German soldiers stationed there. When night falls, the Canadian troops retreat to the museum. Snipers are positioned on the roof and there are tanks around the museum, even one on top of the bomb shelter. After heavy fighting with many casualties, Otterlo is liberated by the Canadians.

The troops, led by Lieutenant Colonel Gerald Levenston, remain at the museum for several days awaiting the outcome of the capitulation negotiations, which are taking place at Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen. Levenston is apparently a real art lover and Auping and he become friends.

Shortly afterwards, on 18 April, Sam van Deventer is arrested by the Military Command on suspicion of collaboration with the German occupier. He is relieved of all his administrative duties and detained, together with his German wife Mary Lehnkering, her daughter and their 5-year-old son, in separate camps near Ede. A long lasting investigation is launched into his actions during the war years. On 17 May 1945, Willy Auping is appointed curator, ‘responsible as acting director’ of the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller and as secretary of De Hoge Veluwe National Park Foundation. The role of Van Deventer on the Veluwe is thereby played out. In 1948 he was dishonorably dismissed as director of the museum by the Minister of Education, Arts and Sciences.

After the liberation of the Netherlands on 5 May, the patients and staff of the Red Cross want to move back to Arnhem as soon as possible. There, a new emergency hospital is set up, where patients from Otterlo are accommodated. The museum is evacuated on 1 June. Van der Voort Maarschalk writes to Auping: ‘Together we experienced the sharpest contrasts in and around our Red Cross work in a time when everything seemed to crumble, but you always reminded me – in spite of everything – of that which endures: art and the artist. For me, this is the result of “Otterlo” for which I shall always be grateful to you’.