In 17 years things had changed. Firstly, everything appeared to be smaller than I could remember. My fellow Dutch were friendly, but loud. ‘Very loud’ was my assessment, as I inquisitively watched the people on the street, like a child. They drifted here and there and were casual, and now had a far more leisurely manner. The Maastricht Agreement was not yet in force, but the coffee beans were very much cheaper than in Germany. In Holland’s oldest city I filled myself with Matjes herrings, that I had not had the pleasure of for many a year.
On subsequent visits I was able to assess that my homeland was not as it had been. No, it had changed a lot since the war, especially in the large towns. There was nothing left of the Old School mentality, now it was casual and dirty. My wife Brigitte was not impressed with the dirty towns that she saw. In Breslau I had told her with pride that even the exterior of the houses were washed in the annual spring-clean. I told her how orderly and clean my people were, and the streets spick and span. Sadly, not any more, except perhaps in the suburbs where Old School standards still prevailed, just as I remembered them.
Naturally enough there came a time when. I wanted to see my old comrades. But in Holland there was still a problem. The neighbours could not be told. They were very quickly suspicious and they were not to know about one’s past. In West Germany that was now no problem. There it was already very liberal. Groups of war-veterans were forming, who helped one another when in need. They were also assiduous in the service of searching for missing comrades. That was an urgent priority, for only in the second half of 1948 were former Waffen SS members included by the American Occupation authorities into Social Benefit laws. In other zones it stayed as it had been since 1950. There were no government social benefits or facilities whatsoever, to show gratitude for our sacrifice, or for our service to the Fatherland.
Later generations were able to recognise the ‘yoke’ under which the front-troops had bent. They bore no grudge, no ill-feelings against the State. How did we find one another? From my own post-war actions of searching for those that I knew, it was very quickly evident that our troops were widely scattered in all corners of Germany, and in places that I had never heard of. That really didn’t need any explanation. Millions had been evacuated from war-torn towns that remained empty for some time. A very happy reunion took place with Georg Haas, the former accountant of the 11th in Breslau. He put an enquiry into the military magazine Der Freiwillige, wanting to know the whereabouts of former comrades. This took place in 1956. The joy was great at seeing one another again after 11 years. He had feared that I had not survived, having been a POW under the Russians.
Following the war the author remained in contact with his comrades. Above is the beginning of a letter from the former commandant of Breslau during the siege, General (retired) Hermann Niehoff, thanking Hendrik for sending him his war memoirs.
In two of the books that he wrote, Brände an der Oder, and Gaben die Hoffnung nicht auf, I contributed original photos and sketches. I played a large role in them under the pseudonym Hendrik Velthoven. Both books on the ‘Stalingrad of Silesia’, in which he wrote truthfully and openly about the bitter battles, and the suffering of its citizens, were successful documents of the last months of the war.
All of us comrades were industrious in the search for former brothers-in-arms. The Waffen SS were first and foremost in the search, as was confirmed time and time again by the Red Cross and other War Welfare services. Eight years after the war there were 3.5 million missing persons. The fate of 750,000 illegally deported civilians, and 300,000 children, still had to be researched. This action reached tremendous proportions that were exclusive to the Waffen SS.
Regularly, the bands of searchers met together to exchange their findings, such as in Minden in 1956, on 5 and 6 September when 10,000 members were present! Two years later in Hamlin, 16,000 turned up. Between them all, they could solve 600 cases of missing comrades. The director of the German Red Cross at that time, Dr Pasewaldt, could report that the whereabouts of a quarter of the former units, 13,000, had been located, all from the work of the comrades, which was passed on at those reunions.
The speakers at the reunions were none other than commanders from the Armed Forces, such as General Paul Hausser, and the Generals Felix Steiner and Kurt ‘Panzermeyer’ Meyer, as well as politicians and the mayor of Minden, Dr Mosel. There were absolutely no problems with these meetings at that time. On the contrary, Dr Mosel began his speech of welcome with “My dear comrades of World War II”. He told the many who were assembled, that it was an honour for the city to be able to welcome us war-veterans.
The former chairman of the FDP party, a pariiamentarian Dr Erich Mende, recipient of the Knight’s Cross, and a former major, declared, “We were totally dependent on our brothers-in-arms for our lives. We did not ask, “are you Catholic?” or “are you Evangelist, Wehrmacht or the Waffen SS?” We were dependent, as a Wehrmacht division, for example, on the Waffen SS holding the Caen-Falaise road.” Support and understanding for our troops, came from various directions. Dr Kurt Schumacher, the chairman of the post-war SPD, the German Labour Party, and also Federal-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who referred to the Waffen SS at the CDU Conference, in Hannover in 1949, as “Soldiers like every other”.
In the following years, as World War II started to belong to the past, and the war generation wandered into old age, they became ‘interested parties’. It is forgotten how closely-knit the German population were at one time. According to old tradition, one placed a burning candle on the windowsill, to guide the soldier-lad home, and to keep alive the memory of those, still far away, many in foreign POW camps.
The Waffen SS slowly belonged to the past, and slowly, speeches of regret started to take place, from parties and from the politically prominent. But “out of sight, out of mind!” is not the code that we of the Waffen SS live by. Our code, “Our loyalty is our honour,” may be scoffed at by some, but we still live by it today. It is a duty, the duty of unending work to locate our missing. Then we work to give him or them a worthy grave. There are still 1.4 million Germans missing (1995 statistics). We try to give social help where needed. An example is the organisation Paul Hausser Social Work. Up to 1992 it could boast of collecting 4 million marks for social help.
Every land honours their dead. Until recently, everywhere except Germany. The American soldiers returning home to the States had the red carpet rolled out for them. We were de-nazified, the Wehrmacht and foreign ‘volunteers’ too. Old soldiers meet and shake hands over the graves, those from the East and those from the West, in Normandy and recently in Russia. A front-line soldier shares the experiences of others, and each brings respect to the other. They are all eyewitnesses who did their duty. This only applies outside Germany.
Until recently the state did not honour their dead. Only outside Germany did one find a wreath of remembrance on the grave of a German soldier, ‘unknown’ or not. Until recently, our remembrance services were ringed with police and protestors. We are reminded “to remember not to forget”, but can also find upon our arrival, that our memorial service has been cancelled. A comment from a former French President of a veterans’ organisation was, “A land which ignores its own history, which lies about its past, staggers thereafter, without orientation”.