In the Fire of the Eastern Front: The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-45

CHAPTER 9 Solstice in the East

The offensive named ‘Barbarossa’ began in the early morning hours, just before daybreak, at 3.15 am. The German Army had begun their march into Russia, on 22 June 1941. Thousands of guns thundered over a 2,500 wide front, from Finland to the Black Sea against the East, on that fateful June night.

At 5.30, a fanfare burst over every German radio channel heralding a broadcast from the Minister for Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels. In minutes, not only the German people but the whole world knew about Hitler’s campaign against Russia. Supported by the Air Force, a Blitzkrieg operation was underway, with regiments of tanks which were to eradicate the Red Army that was massed together just behind their borders. The plan rested on speed and surprise, and it appeared to work.

Was Stalin surprised by this German offensive? “Yes”, said Vicitor Suvarov, from the former Red Army General Staff. However, the peaceful impression that Russia had given was the lull before the storm, the storm on Germany. Stalin was about to attack Germany and everything was being prepared. The massing of his army was not for de fence purposes. In his book The Icebreaker, Vicior Suvarov states that “Stalin would have used Hitler’s advancing troops to crush the whole of Europe, if he had chosen another time. Hitler however was too early, by two weeks”.

The following was published in 1989 in the magazine Der Spiegel from an eyewitness:

It was certainly no coincidence that over two and a half million Red Army soldiers, together with those from White Russia, were stationed where they were in Ukraine, at the time of Germany’s attack. The Wehrmacht captured enormous amounts of weaponry, even in the first weeks of the war. The hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners from this powerful army were proof enough to convince every German soldier down to every private, that the ‘Barbarossa’ operation was a preventive measure against an obvious act of aggression aimed at Germany. “Russia was in every measure prepared for a western offensive, at every conceivable moment.” (Quote from General Franz Halder the German Chief of Staff)

Alexander Werth, correspondent from an British newspaper, and in Moscow during the Second World War, wrote in his book Russia at War, that “in his speech from 5 May 1941, Stalin stated that “war with Germany is unavoidable, with the existing international situation. The Red Army can expect a German attack, or take the initiative itself.”

In Hitler’s proclamation of 22 June 1941 he stated,

After Hungary had joined forces with Germany in Yugoslavia, their army also took part in the eastern offensive. Italy also sent divisions to the Russian front, proclaiming their unity with Germany. On 23 June, Slovakia, after taking part in the Polish campaign in 1939, also appeared on the front. Spain’s government declared their sympathy with the Axis powers, allowing the formation of the volunteer division called the ‘Blue Division’, but declining any part in the leadership of that offensive, in comparison with other western powers. Finland, although having conducted a doubtful winter campaign against Soviet invaders in 1939/40, now operated together with German mountain troops in northern Russia. Bulgaria and Rumania were natural brothers-in-arms from the beginning, their relationship with Germany over time having become very close. In 1940 Rumania had to cede both Bessarabian and Bukovinian territories to the Soviet Union, and now they wanted to recover their old rights.

The military worth and reliability of those brothers-in-arms who stood under our command, was varied. Leon Degrelle, a Walloon and East Front fighter, remembered after the war that,

Unfortunately, the Rumanians possessed much of the basic characteristics of the Russian, including a very wild nature and we had to suffer for their measures of revenge on the prisoners they took and slaughtered. Nonetheless, the German non-stop march brought them to Smolensk within the first three weeks of the war, then to the outskirts of Kiev and the Leningrad perimeter, giving the Russians a paralysing shock and causing panic and confusion.

There were many Wehrmacht generals who were convinced that, by the second week in July, the war was nearly won, nearly. However, it was not at an end. The American General Staff had already offered their opinion by 23 June 1941, on the situation in the East. “Germany will need between one and three months to conquer Russia”. A week later the opinion of the British General Staff was, “It is possible that this ‘lightning’ war still needs six to eight weeks, before final victory”. The euphoria of the German ‘victors’ infected the population of the annexed Baltic countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who had had much to suffer in the recent past. They greeted the Wehrmacht heartily as liberators. Even in ‘old Russia’ the situation was the same in many towns, the people having had more than enough of Communism. Since the October Revolution in 1917, they had suffered expropriation, ethnic cleansing and mass-murder, through deliberate starvation, bitter poverty, robbery of personal freedom, not to mention the suppression of their religion and churches.

The expectations of the local residents from the Germans were fulfilled by the service given in the Smolensk Cathedral in August of 1941, and in churches that had been used as party-archives, warehouses or cinemas. “Former Ukrainian clergy donned their long-hidden robes once more, and blessed the people of all ages streaming into their churches”. (Erich Helmdach, Überfall)

The Orthodox Bishop of Archimandrit, Bovis Jokubovski, thanked the commander of an engineer battalion for the resurrection of the Russian Houses of God, and the Cathedral churches, on 5 October 1941. He said, “It is our duty to give our heart-felt thanks to you, your engineers and Adolf Hitler and we will never forget”.

When possible, farmland was divided and returned to the villagers for them to manage the field cultivation themselves. But that good relationship, nurtured by the front-line troops failed unfortunately, being absent later in the National Socialist Eastern politics.

At home, the churches in Germany were carried away with “the crucial course of military action against the mortal enemy of Christian Occidental culture” [taken from Statutes of the German Evangelist Churches 9 July 1941]. “The Reich’s Christianity give you, our Führer, the guarantee, in these moving hours, of our unwavering faith and willingness”. In the edition from 10 August 1941, the newspaper Kirchliche Rundschau, produced for the entire group of Evangelist churches, it was stated that they prayed for a victorious result in the battle in the east. “Dear God, we praise you, we thank you for our leader, and for the men that you have given us to lead our army to victory”.

Following the typical spirit of today’s political atmosphere, they now vehemently deny that they gave their blessing then, in fact they now try to convince us that they rejected National Socialism. It was definitely not as they state. To quote, “It is true that there were exceptions, but in the majority, many influential men of the church, or circles of both confessions, definitely supported the Third Reich. Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda, distributed worldwide, every printed declaration of support appearing in church publications.” (from Nicolaus von Preradovich and Joseph Stingl’s Gott segne den Führer).

Neutral States also supported Germany’s ‘just war’ alongside the church, such as Turkey, who put it in ‘black and white’ in a memo which it sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on 22 June, shortly before a German/Turkish Alliance had been formed. There were groups in Britain and America too who welcomed and encouraged the bravery and audacity of Germany in tackling Stalin.

The governments in London and Washington however saw things differently. Due to the pressure of the situation, Britain agreed to an alliance with Stalin, not with foresight, for after the war Churchill was to say, “we slaughtered the wrong swine”. Stalin received gigantic amounts of war-material from the western Allies that were despatched over the Persian-Gulf and the polar sea routes. From reports from the United States War Ministry, Stalin received during WWII enough war material to equip 200 divisions, including 400,000 lorries and 1,500 planes, for his Red Army. The very alliance between Capitalism and Communism was a very unnatural one. It ended, after the war, in a ‘cold war’ that lasted decades.

In deciding to join the fight against Communism and with their enthusiasm for a new Europe, thousands of young foreign ‘volunteers’ enlisted for the Waffen SS in 1941. 135,000 men all-in-all, from the western European lands in the four years of the Russian campaign. They were made up of 55,000 Dutch, the largest portion, followed by 23,000 Flemish and 20,000 French and as many Walloons. Among those volunteers, were the sons of the Norwegian Nobel prize-winner for Literature, Knut Hamsum and Iceland’s President Sveinn Björnson. By the end of the war, 1,123,700 non-German nationals had served in the German Wehrmacht (quoted from Hans W-Neulen An Deutscher Seite), statistics that are not generally known, never broadcast, and are even suppressed.

The thought of a new crusade fascinated not only National Socialists but also the conservative and ultra-clerical in the occupied lands. They marched with the enemy in their homelands and in doing so were bound closer together with them, than with the anti-Christians in the Soviet Union.