Decades after my recruitment, the description “the volunteers from Sennheim were adventurers and criminals”, was to be found in an official war document. It came from a Dutch historian, who most probably was the only one who knew the truth, whilst turning chronicler and whiling away his time as an exile in England. As such, he could not have been further away from first-hand knowledge. One should remember Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy that “The historian is spoilt, for he has the power to alter the truth which the gods cannot.” It cannot then be said, by those who regard the duty of a soldier as defamatory, that it was the generation of the twenties who had kindled a war.
It was in 1966, in his book Soldaten wie andere auch, that General Paul Hausser, a man worshipped by his men and respected by former opponents wrote, “I respect the opinions of others and of authors, who write against the Waffen SS because of their convictions. I object, when their work is taken as “pure knowledge”, “sober and objective” or “the matter fair and just”, and is discussed or examined as such. In particular “ when they gather only discriminatory material and/or compensate everything of a positive nature, with defamatory comments, which is unmistakably evident”.
Within two years of the end of the war, unqualified and damning literature appeared, such as in the National Socialist newspaper Het Parool. This important instrument of the movement wrote, “since our liberation, there is a chasm of hate and contempt between the National Socialists and the rest of our people. The right to hate, when allowed, is the right of those who personally suffered under the occupation, or were actively resistant. It is noticeable however, that the hate was never as strong with that group as with the average citizen who remained untouched by the invaders. During the war the true resistance members, who chose their own destiny, themselves stood psychologically closer to the Dutch volunteers who also risked their lives, as they had done.”
Our training slowly came to an end in Sennheim, which was not the case with the war. Although we could not say that we had lived like a god in France, to leave its land and people was hard; in particular, to leave the daughters of Alsace was very hard.
In between times, Germany’s theatres of war had extended to North Africa, which was not particularly desirable. Often during the war, Germany’s allies such as Italy, were not, as expected, competent enough to perform their military plans, either due to leadership or quality of troops.
Mussolini’s ‘sword’ proved to be somewhat ‘blunt’, in his lust for expansion, and turned out to be nothing but a burden. Hitler was forced to give him military support in Africa and the Balkans. Still eager for some of the bounty, Italy found itself on the side of the victors during the last hours of the war in the West. After a successful lightning attack during three weeks in southern Europe, German soldiers hoisted their flag of war in Belgrade, and in the Acropolis in Athens. From Tunis, and nearly to the Nile, the Swastika fluttered in the wind, but only after Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Korps had rescued Italy’s warriors from a military catastrophe. On the Mediterranean island of Crete, German soldiers were also the ‘victors’, after their paratroopers under General Student suffered terrible losses against overpowering odds of 6,000 Greek and 27,000 British soldiers.
Standing in the wings and before we could act in that war, we had another very hard ‘Weapons and Terrain Course’ before us, in the mountains of Austria, in Carinthia. Lendorf, near Klagenfurt was our new posting. In the summer of 1941, our train steamed over Munich and Salzburg into, for us, a strange land, with its Alpine folklore dress of felt hats and leather trousers. We had assumed however that we were destined for the Balkans. Underway and when stopping, the teams of Red Cross nurses quenched our thirst with chicory coffee at the railway stations, and wished us ‘brave soldiers’ a healthy return.
We had been impressed with the hills of Alsace, but we ‘flatlanders’ were overwhelmed with the gigantic mountain world of Carinthia. Standing in front of them was for us an alpine nightmare, one which cut us off from our homeland and was unimaginable from pictures seen in school. In comparison however to our makeshift quarters in Sennheim, our barrack here at the foot of the Ulrich mountains consisted of modern, two-storied buildings of pristine-pure cleanliness, and conscientiously placed against an idyllic background. Specially built for the Waffen SS, the exaggerated and monumental expression of power was missing. Only the huge dining room, which was also the assembly room in the main building, offered the appropriate martial radiance of architecture of that era. Gigantic wall-paintings of battles showing the new German army, decorated the walls between the tall windows and were certainly intended for the motivation of the recruits. I made a return visit to those barracks, used by Austrian mountain troops in 1959, and the wall-paintings were still there.
We were finally issued weapons and with that status, in Klagenfurt. Just as in other armies, we were to be sworn-in as soldiers. It was noticeable that none of the volunteers were forced to take those vows of allegiance. Anyone could then leave without disadvantage, if of the opinion that they were not grown up enough for service to their country and the responsibility thereof, or if they had reservations concerning the conditions of the oath they were about to swear. Their point of view was respected and without any attempts to persuade or convince from their superiors, they could at that point return home as civilians. After duties of the soldier, disciplinary measures, honour, oath to the flag, as well as other regulations were read to us in detail, we then stood under the military, penal law of the Wehrmacht.
The battalion was assembled for swearing-in on the barrack-square in groups of four, and flanked by small upright stacks of machine-guns. With our right hands raised, and our left hands on a drawn sword, in chorus we repeated our oath after an officer. “I swear to you, our leader Adolf Hitler, faithfulness and bravery. I pledge obedience to you and my superiors until my death, so help me God”. It was done in front of our highest commanders.
The pledge was sealed with the tattooing of everyone’s blood-group on the inside of their left arm. It was done as a medical insurance for a quick and life-saving blood-transfusion on the battlefield. However, after the war, it proved to be a stigma for tens of thousands. It was known as ‘the mark of Cain’. They were made lepers of society. It cost them, in many cases, no less than their lives.
Now I was officially a soldier of the Waffen SS and my unit was the 4th Company of the surrogate battalion ‘Westland’, belonging to the ‘Wiking’ Division. This Division was one of the armoured divisions, equipped with rocket-launchers and machine-gun squads and we bore the burden of those machines. We had to carry them, which we did, willingly. In this way, we could stay together as the former unit from Sennheim. New members arrived in numbers, from other northern countries, such as Scandinavia. Things did not always run smoothly for our instructors, having to adjust to the mentality of those young men from the north.
There were problems right from the beginning with the blond northerners, especially with the Danes. They were stubborn, coarse, critical, and loved good drink and food. They complained about the menus from the military kitchens, the food not being to their liking at all. Now and again such criticism even reached obstinacy and defiance.
The German instructors did win their faith, after what seemed to the Dutch, with their strong national sensitivity, to be nothing but harassment and humiliation, which they hated. After a dose of encouragement, they were found to be approachable and, despite everything, showed a wide-awake sense of justice and a spirit of comradeship.