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

CHAPTER 4 War in Sight?

On 14 March 1919, the National Assembly in Vienna agreed that Austria annexe itself to the German Empire. In Germany it was a sensation. But it was immediately refused by the ‘victors’. This had to wait for twenty years.

The pro-German movement had steadily grown as in the years before. In the end, it could not be suppressed and came into power, but not without some bloodshed, or spasmodic opposition. The Ostmark region laid itself at Hitler’s feet and he readily accepted the new duty. The Wehrmacht marched from Bavaria, over the borders, to be showered with flowers from the enthusiastic Austrian population. Street after street was made free for what was thereafter to be called the ‘Flower Campaign’. A month later, 99.75% of the Austrian people voted for annexation to Germany and the church gave its effusive blessing.

Only a few months later, and under the motto “The Right of Referendum” from the League of Nations, the Sudetenland, deprived of its right of self-government, was the target of the German government. Having been suppressed, lived in extreme poverty and been persecuted for the previous twenty years by the Czechs, Sudetenland held the highest rate, not only of suicides but also of infant mortality, in the whole of Europe! The borders however were hermetically sealed, not allowing migration. It is not to be wondered at, when the slogan ‘Home to the Reich’ grew from day to day, and the immediate areas behind Germany’s borders experienced an economic boom. The same situation arose therefore as it had in Austria, and came to an inevitable head. German troops marched in on 1 October 1938. Flowers, cries and tears of joy greeted and accompanied the marching troops. By September, Britain’s Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, as representative of the western powers, met Theodore Heuss in Berchtesgaden, and then others in the Rhine hotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg, along with representatives of the German government. All agreed with that union.

Abroad, it was acceptable as a natural step for Germany to gather its leaders into a Pan-German league and the world’s press reported positively. The Times wrote on 4 October 1938, “the first Czechoslovakian State has been destroyed, through its own politics from which it was born. They had never survived a war and its destruction was automatic, even without the reality of war”. Already in January 1938, nine months before the affiliation of the Sudetenland, the Amsterdam newspaper Het Nieuwe Nederland, critically stated that “the shameful treatment of National minorities in Czechoslovakia must be destroyed, in the interest of freedom. The Benes-clique must also be dealt with”.

Till then, Hitler’s foreign policy had been peaceful and successful and the explosive situation caused by the Versailles Pact had been defused. However, that did not mean that the German government accepted the existence of the Czechs. The policy continued in the rest of Czechoslovakia. Hitler felt very strongly about that. He found a friend and ally in Pierre Cot, the French Minister for Aviation, when voicing the opinion that, in the case of war, German towns and centres of industry could be bombed from Czechoslovakian aerodromes. Did France want to place her planes at Germany’s borders? In order to avoid this dilemma and also win enough living-space for Germany’s self-sufficient politics, the Czech President of State Emil Hàcha was prevailed upon to “re-instate internal order in his land”, which he did. In March 1939, the Wehrmacht marched into Prague, the oldest German university town, without a shot being fired. Bohemia and Moravia having belonged to a Germanic empire for a thousand years, was declared a Protectorate under German supreme command. Slovakia declared itself independent.

After marching in, and in order to avoid being attacked by Poland, the German troops had to take up defensive positions along the Czech/Polish borders. There was no help forthcoming from Russia, on the contrary, they were waiting for a piece of the booty.

Reaction from Britain was surprisingly quiet. On 15 March, Chamberlain gave a speech in the House of Commons saying, “although the State has given certain guarantees to guard these borders, these have now come to an end, having been settled internally. His Majesty’s Government can therefore no longer be bound by these duties”. Many in Britain did not share this opinion and demanded that a ‘Note of Protest’ be sent to Germany, as did the French.

Ernst von Weizsäcker, who was State-Secretary in the NS Foreign Office, returned the protest, defending the move as “Politically, morally and lawfully necessary, in order to correct the foundations of privacy”. This drew enormous protest over Germany from the Press abroad, and one could smell gunpowder.

Although Hitler’s own principle was to give the population the right of referendum, he did not follow his principle at that time. With the success of his latest coup, he set about removing the last and largest injustice inflicted by the Versailles Pact, the ‘Polish Corridor’. Arbitrarily it separated East Prussia, with its 2.5 million population, from their fatherland. It was only by plane, or with sealed railway wagons, that one could reach the north-east province of the land, formerly West Prussia, by using a 30–90 kilometre corridor. The rail connections, meaning everything essential to life, were used as harassment, to the full, by the Polish authorities. For every authoritative party within the Weimar Republic, the division was an impossible situation.

Hitler tried to find a solution. He started to bargain with Poland by suggesting that a motorway and stretches of railway be built through the corridor to West Prussia, this being a long-term guarantee for the German/Polish borders. That guarantee was in earnest. At that time a strong Poland, as a buffer against Russia, was a necessity for Germany.

Poland’s reaction was one of dismissal. Despite every political reception for German politicians in Warsaw, and friendly speeches over drinks, the efforts were without success. In the end, Poland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Beck, threatened Hitler with war, should the existing statutes be altered. By March 1939, with guarantees from France and Britain, Warsaw mobilised for the protection of the corridor. The call for war could not be ignored.

Without inhibition, campaigns in the press started against Germany. At events for the masses and at parades, the cry “off to Danzig and to Berlin” could be heard. Propaganda postcards in extraordinary numbers reached propaganda centres, with an enlarged ‘new’ Poland, its borders stretching over Berlin and Leipzig to Lübeck.

Retribution began against German nationals in Poland. Out of five hundred schools, three hundred were closed. German cultural centres and associations were forbidden. Tension grew in the summer months, resulting in incidents, bloody clashes and gruesome torture of those German nationals. Under the motto “Harvest-festival of the Shining Knives”, very many who had lived in good neighbourly harmony, living and working alongside the Poles, were without reason suddenly arrested, transported away and/or murdered. Out of 2.1 million German residents, 70,000 fled to Germany, reporting their shocking experiences to the German Wochenschau, or newsreels.

Hitler’s speeches became harder and more merciless and with them the menace against the German population increased. Under the cloak of protection from the west, Poland became more pig-headed. At last, in August, came the shameful incident of Lufthansa’s civilian planes, on their way to East Prussia from Hela and Gdingen, being fired on by the Polish Air Force.

For weeks, French and British Military missions had talked with their Russian counterparts in Moscow about the situation for Germany becoming more than critical. Just as had happened twenty years before, Germany’s enemies were circling around her. In order to avoid this, Hitler endeavoured personally to coax goodwill from the Kremlin. They gave it. In August 1939, a State contract was drawn up with signatures from Stalin, and the ministers for foreign affairs, Molotov and Ribbentrop. The Red ‘Tsar’ drank to Hitler’s health.

Seldom was such a Treaty sealed with so many malicious resolutions as the pact between National Socialism and Communism. The unbelievable had happened and the generals of foreign affairs, who had criticised him fearing a two-front war, had to wonder at Hitler’s stroke of genius.

The Dutch watched this military leadership with many a worry about the explosive tension in Europe. Holland had reason to worry with its own army in such a desolate state, due to years of merciless saving, thus producing a grotesque situation. Dutch artillery had to use artillery dating from 1880, and the infantry had rifles which had been produced in 1895. The cavalry used carbines and sabres. Some hundred machine guns from the First World War had been left in south Limberg during the war by retreating German troops. Those then had to be restored. Many of those ‘antiques’ seldom worked properly, and mostly never. The machine guns, weighing a huge amount, were often just as dangerous for those using them as for the enemy.

Things were no better for their Air Force, the accent being on ‘air’ rather than on planes and weapons, which on paper, had the sum total of 130 aircraft, many obsolete. France in contrast, possessed nearly 1,000 fighters. A modernisation for their forces was decided upon, but as it turned out, far too late. Only a small percentage of the modernisation programme was achieved.

Because there were no volunteers, the conscripts, by drawing ‘lots’, were housed in uncomfortable and empty barracks for five and a half months, some not even possessing a canteen. The basic tasteless menu was cooked in the open air, in field kitchens or in cattle-feed stoves. The soldiers found their military education boring and without reason, their uniforms old-fashioned and impractical. All in all they were devoid of any sort of morale. They also had to cope with an unpopular image from the general public, being accused nastily of being ‘murderers’. Very strong anti-military groups demanded the dissolution of both Army and Navy. The active demonstrators displayed banners with a broken rifle, with the words “no men, and no money”, being their solution to the problem.

Only with the general mobilisation of 1939 did the government appeal to the brave defenders of their land to make sacrifices. It was much too late. Once more in gear, the training unfolded, but nowhere was there to be seen any hint of the expected and wished for military effect. Both the government and the army reckoned on the military help of both France and Britain, when it came to the crunch.

Till then the 300,000 strong Dutch Army would take up their positions behind ‘the waterline’. Always their enemy, water was about to be their saving grace. The ‘waterline’ plan was designed to hinder any entry into their land by flooding the canals to a height of 50cm on the water-gauge. That would make them invisible, and thus ideal traps for tanks. They would be too low for the passage of amphibious vehicles and boats. Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and the Hague were the most populated and important areas, making up Holiand’s ‘fortress’. The cities would receive the maximum defence that such a plan could give. Concrete bunkers were manufactured and erected as quickly as possible, from Ijsselmeer to the south-west of the land. Many miles of barbed wire and trenches were to be seen in the rolling countryside, time however, not allowing for their camouflage. The bunkers were therefore noticeable for miles around, naked of trees, banks or bushes.

That was not the only problem with the plan. In various areas fruit plantations hindered the rotating barrels of the stationary weapons of defence. The government refused permission for the felling of the fruit trees because the compensation for their owners had not been calculated into their defence budget.

Returning to the situation on Germany’s easterly borders, Hitler’s demands began to take shape, with the non-aggression pact with Russia. However, his patience with the blindly chauvinist Polish attitude, that had been strengthened by support from France and Britain, was wearing very thin. He demanded a referendum under an international guarantee for the ‘corridor’ area. The advantages in solving the ‘Macedonian situation’ representing a ‘continued peace’ not only for Germany, but for the whole of Europe, being his personal view. Negotiations therefore criss-crossed with breathtaking speed between East and West in the last, politically heated, days of August.

On 29 August 1939 there were alarming news reports of strong rioting in Poland aimed at German nationals. London warned Warsaw to stop using weapons aimed against the increasing numbers of refugees wanting to leave the land. On the same day the hypocritical British negotiations were welcomed and accepted by the Germans. They failed due to Poland’s stubbornness and Hitler’s impatience. The Polish Ambassador in Berlin explained that he had no authority to act, apart from obeying instructions from his government that he was ‘not to enter into discussion’. It was a fatal mistake.