In the Fire of the Eastern Front Read online

  Holland, as an up-and-coming land of industry and having become far more independent, was not spared the results of a worldwide recession. With a population of 8.8 million, almost 1 million were unemployed, despite its colonies in the East Indies, known today as Indonesia. The social climate was a catastrophe, as its prosperity dropped continually.

  In the families of the unemployed, meat was to be seen on the table just once a month, and then only for the father. A hot meal was eaten just twice a week. In a family with children, it was usual for them to possess just one set of underwear. When the mother washed it they stayed in bed, for the whole day when necessary, until it was dry. When, if unemployed, you were caught visiting the cinema, then your unemployment benefit was reduced. For those under twenty-one years of age and those over sixty, there was no financial support whatsoever. With that, the government worsened the social problem instead of getting to grips with it. More than once, they even radically reduced the unemployment benefit.

  In July 1934, in order to protest against this, the workers organised a demonstration on the streets of Amsterdam. The Army and Navy were called in to help the police suppress the protesting masses. There were demonstrations elsewhere, not only in Amsterdam. On that day, the result of people against tanks was seven deaths, and more than two hundred casualties. For those in power there was then nothing left of the widespread Dutch liberal mentality, when the population had dared to voice an opinion!

  In 1933 mutiny even broke out within the Dutch East Indies Navy. The crew of one of its warships, the Seven Provinces, mutinied in Indies waters, when their pay was drastically reduced. But to no avail. The Dutch government ordered the ship to be destroyed. It was attacked by the Navy. Twenty of its crew were killed.

  For us children living with our parents in Zierikzee, that was of no consequence for we had other problems, for instance, school. The school-house seemed to be of gigantic proportions to us, small as we were. Its ceilings appeared to be as high as in a palace, and it had colourful maps decorating the white walls of the classroom. The classroom was dominated by bulky school desks, and the desk of the master on the dais. Behind him was a huge blackboard smeared with chalk. The portrait of ‘the mother of our land’, Queen Wilhelmina never seemed to age, since she had looked down on her subjects with her youthful appearance, for some years.

  Zierikzee

  Our teacher, wise and demanding respect, always ruled us with a cane at the ready, to ensure discipline. It was not always warranted, but it did us no harm. Meister Ten Haaf was hard but fair and was our favourite teacher. He knew how to attract our attention, particularly in history. Dramatically, he would stick his hand into his jacket and seize our imagination in portraying Napoleon Bonaparte. Almost without breathing, we would wait for the words of this Corsican general, as standing before the Pyramids in Egypt, he told his soldiers, “Men! Thousands of years are now looking down on you!” All that was missing was Bonaparte’s tricorne hat.

  We school children literally hung on the words of our teachers. We lived, we feared and we suffered through the experiences of Louis XIV and Marie-Antoinette in the guillotine era, and the dictatorship of the French Jacobins. We followed the glory of the Grand Armée in their battles at Preussisch-Eylau, Friedland, Austerlitz. We ‘perspired’ in our classroom, in the heat of the Nile. With the modern Genghis Khan we ‘froze’ in the freezing temperatures of Smolensk and Beresina. We were also proud to know that our grandfathers had also fought with a red cockade on the front of their bearskin caps. Then, in our warm and cosy school-room of the thirties, we could not know that years later, some of us would ourselves be freezing in those same Russian Steppes, and wearing the emblem of the Totenkopf, or ‘death’s head’.

  That Napoleon had left behind him a Europe in fragments, is something that we were never told. What we were told, was that as France’s national hero and Grand Emperor, his last resting-place was under marble, not far from the Champs-Elysées. Our teacher was convinced that he had been a blessing for the world and held a high position in the world’s history.

  Our enthusiasm had been fired to re-enact what we had heard about this ‘grand army’ in school. In wanting to do the same, we marched around with wooden rifles and capes, storming the banks surrounding the meadows. Such banks were for the safety of the sheep and cows when flooded and while I was the only one with an air rifle (no longer functional), I was the leader of the gang. Our ammunition was really what we could lay our hands on, such as lumps of clay or root vegetables. Often, after it had rained, the low-lying meadows were sodden, and we too were sodden and muddy. The cows didn’t mind, nor were they disturbed by our war cries. Only when we drove them into a gallop to attack, did they object in bewilderment with a ‘moo’.

  For us ‘children of nature’ the island was a paradise, and it was ours. It belonged to us. There were no tourists, and we knew every corner and every backyard. The farmers knew us too. Protected against the wind by tall trees, the thatched, red-bricked farmhouses always stood alone. Framed by water-filled ditches and green meadows, the vegetable gardens always separated houses from stalls and barns. The sweet-smelling perfume of phlox surrounding the vegetable gardens, mixed with that of hay and dung. We played in the sweet-smelling warmth of the hay-barn, springing bravely from the highest bale on to the straw below. It was here that we learned about a taboo subject, that was not taught in school, or at home, and that was of sexual behaviour. We learned from the animals on the farm, from the horses and pigs, and from the hand of ‘mother nature’. The story of the stork belonged at home.

  All in all, our lives progressed along modest lines. We were happy and without complaints and enjoyed the smallest of surprises. My pride and joy was my old bicycle which shone like new through my own efforts and care. We used to ride all of fifteen kilometres from Zierikzee to Haamestede and West Schouwen, where the widest dunes were to be found, and the largest beach in the whole of Holland. When natural dunes were not to be found, then huge dykes protected our land. One of them was to be found not far away from Zierikzee. Every portion of the coastline with a dyke, was our swimming pool, without tiles, pipes or warm water, very often cold, but to compensate for that, endless and beautiful.

  We never had to go to school on Wednesday afternoons. In the fine weather, we played in the water, amongst the seaweed and slippery jelly-fish until the sun went down. The seagulls and crows used to pick between the green-grey stones for dyke mussels, throwing them in mid-flight on to the stones below to break them open. When we didn’t have our bicycles with us, then we sprang on to a passing hay-wagon to go home, tired, brown from the sun and exhausted from the water.

  CHAPTER 3

  Political Revolution

  The Allies believed that with their success in 1918, they had set the westerly pattern for democracy. When the truth was known, it was a government reform that endured a gigantic crisis. Worldwide more and more people turned away from it.

  Such was the case in Italy — although it had been one of the ‘victors’, they too suffered from commercial hardship. It had not helped them to suddenly join the side of those ‘victors’ and also declare war on Germany. It was just such poverty that turned its people to Communism. A Bolshevik uprising in the north, threatened to turn into civil war, only coming to an end in 1922 as the Duce Mussolini came to power and ended the chaotic conditions.

  A large part of the world was very enthusiastic about that man. In those times of commercial disorder ‘strong men’ were rare. After visiting Italy, one could report that the trains ran punctually again, that poverty had vanished and above all, there were then no unemployed.

  The British Prime Minister, Ramsey MacDonald, visited Mussolini in 1933, and was one of those enthusiasts, as was Winston Churchill. Mahatma Ghandi, the Chief Minister of India’s Congress Party, described him as being Italy’s ‘saviour’. There were many admirers also in Holland, including many prominent people. The result of a survey was published in Holland’s leading newspaper, Allge
meine Handelsblatt, that in forming this Fascist State, Mussolini was, after the inventor Edison, the ‘greatest personality’ of that epoch.

  However, in Germany, the situation could not continue as it had done. The German Kaiser chopped his wood in Doorn in Holland, and his land was a slowly dying kingdom. After twelve years in which thirteen chancellors had ruled, the land was very near bankruptcy and had nearly 7 million unemployed. The German population was ripe for a radical change in politics. The man, who after years of campaigning, of attending hundreds of party-sittings and who in 1930 entered parliament with 107 other democratically voted politicians, was none other than Adolf Hitler. Not quite three years later, on 30 January 1933, President von Hindenburg named that Austrian-born man as Reichskanzler.

  The Leader of the National Social German Workers Party, i.e. the Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, the NSDAP, was then 44 years old. Like Napoleon, he was obsessed with his own ideas and the intention of altering everything overnight. It appears that he did just that. The disputes and quarrels, from those in power who had brought Germany to the edge of bankruptcy, were silenced. The authorising laws legalising Hitler’s regulations were made without consent of Parliament. Theodore Heuss was among those consenting. He was later to become the Federal President.

  The sceptics in the land, as well as those abroad, waited and listened. Millions of idealists, including those wanting to make a career, the adaptable and those who wanted to ride on the turn of the tide, flocked to the new flag in such numbers that membership was stopped. In among the adaptable, was none other than Prince Bernhard von Lippe, who was later to become Prince Consort to Holland’s Queen. He allowed himself to be selected as a candidate for Hitler’s Sturmabtailung, the SA, but joined the SS, i.e. the Schutzstaffeln or ‘protection squad’, which befitted his social status. Driving to many a pleasant NS Rally and ‘guard duty’ were among his duties, just like any other. He, as a confirmed SS-man however, changed his convictions more than once along the way.

  The people saw a ‘messiah’ in Hitler, who did solve the unemployment problem, who did ban Communism from Germany and who did free the land from the chains of the Versailles Pact. Already by the first days of 1935, on 13 January in fact, the Saar area was resurrected through a referendum. A 90.8% result demanded that it be reclaimed and returned to its homeland. In March of the next year, battalions from the Wehrmacht marched over the Rhine and moved into garrisons there. They reclaimed their own western-lying territory, having been declared a demilitarised zone by the former ‘victors’.

  The defeated, and still lethargic population from 1918, suddenly became self-propelled into social and commercial activities. It became a year of events. Successes were celebrated with brass bands, ceremonies where uniforms could be seen and Richtfeste, whereby a small tree with colourful streamers, was placed on the roof-beams of a new building before being tiled. For the very first time a state made it possible for the small man to go abroad on holiday. It was through the organisation Kraft durch Freude, or ‘Strength through Joy’. Places like Madeira, Scandinavia or Italy, were the targets for the traveller, on board large modern liners. For the majority, it was the very first holiday that they had ever had. The ‘Bohemian Private’, as Hitler was scathingly called by the envious, had made that possible, whereas kings and the rich colonial powers never had.

  Foreigners from all over the world visited Germany and were impressed. Many diplomats and ministers came, including the former British Prime Minister Lloyd George. He greeted the new Chancellor, in Obersalzberg, as one of the ‘victors’. Others included representatives of both French and British front-line soldiers from WWI. The famous American pilot, Charles Lindberg, also paid a visit, as did the abdicated King, the Duke of Windsor. France’s Ambassador, André Francois-Poncet, arrived in a highly polished, black Mercedes owned by the state, on his visit to the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg.

  In 1938, Winston Churchill wrote the following to Hitler, “Should England ever find herself in a national disaster as Germany did in 1918, we would pray to God that he sends us a man with your strength, will and mentality”.

  A good percentage of the foreign press did not withhold compliments either. The Daily Express, for instance, said “the man has worked wonders”. The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that Hitler had destroyed the danger of Communism in Germany, even before becoming Chancellor. A Catholic paper, De Tijd, agreed with Hitler “that the fight against Marxism had been a fight for life over death”. A Dutch anti-revolutionary newspaper, De Standaad, formulated their opinion as, “the freedom In the Weimar Republic had led to extremes, and lack of godliness had increased”. As late as 1938, a Dutch Jewish newspaper agreed that “one cannot reject everything that National Socialism creates”.

  Naturally enough there were other opinions. The Dutch Communist newspaper described Hitler as “the new Chancellor, the farmhand of the German bank capital of the larger industrialists, and an East Prussian country bumpkin”. They further suggested that National Socialism would not last long, that Communism would march in, free the working classes and guide them to a socialist ‘Soviet-Germany’. The Dutch population looked on in interest at the developments, and waited. It was generally accepted that Germany had done the right thing in freeing itself from the chains of the Versailles Pact. The Dutch Establishment however could not but help envy Hitler’s and Mussolini’s success. Perhaps, if the truth be known, they were afraid that certain sections of the population doubted their capabilities as protectors, which had been loudly proclaimed.

  To combat this, negative campaigns were broadcast that Germany was approaching bankruptcy and Hitler about to die, being incurably ill. Those who lived in the border areas did not believe those stories, or allow themselves to be influenced, in view of flourishing employment possibilities. They peddled to and from their work over the border. In fact, when as unemployed you rejected work in Germany when offered it, then the Dutch authorities stopped your unemployment benefit. They damaged their prestige by such action, but in part it solved their unemployment problem, even when they did not want to admit it. To offset this criticism, the Dutch press was always ready to propagate negative stories about Germany, and to publish public opinion in detail. The success of Germany’s new government was being deliberately ignored.

  That cannot be said for the Dutch businessmen and the commercial representatives who were impressed with Germany’s industrial creativity and who wanted a closer working relationship. They saw vast opportunities for their own land. Through the Buro Ribbentrop, named after Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joachim Ribbentrop, the German-Dutch Association was formed. It concentrated on the traffic of business, not only with one another, but specialising in western Europe.

  My father visited Germany too, buying machines in Mönchengladbach, and negotiating with IG Farben AG. He was fascinated with the modern technology presented at the exhibitions, in both Hannover and Leipzig. As a director of a rubber factory, he then engaged two Germans to work for him, one as a ‘master’ and the other as an engineer. Both were ‘old school’ diligent workers. The constant contact between my father and those treasured workmen, being examples of German discipline and enthusiasm, won father’s sympathy for the Hitler ‘fans’ and the ‘new order’.

  For us young folk, Germany was a large and distant land. It stretched far to the east, with its rich countryside of gentle hills, dark forests and high mountain ranges, and to the south. That is how it was described to us in our school, none of us having seen it with our own eyes. Germany was also the ‘land of birth’ of those wonderful model railways and metal cars, from the firm Märklin. For us boys it was ‘Märklin land’. The model soldiers with their authentic, decorated and highly coloured uniforms and the ‘Made in Germany’ label, fascinated us. The significant uniforms of the German Wehrmacht were more familiar to us than those of our own Army.

  We were also impressed with the sporting idols of our next-door neighbour, such as the BM
W moi orcycle rider George Schorsch Meier, the World Champion boxer Max Schmeling, and our favourite Auto-Union racing driver Bernd Rosemeyer. We gladly changed to Radio Bremen to hear martial music, or the songs of Marika Rökk, such as On a night in May, which represented Germany for us. Otherwise there were, in comparison, the Anglo-Saxon songs of Louis Armstrong, presented for hours on end by Radio Hilversum.

  The successful developments of the Republic, under Hitler, had a political influence on Holland, in that the National Socialist Movement (Bewegung) the NSB formed in 1931. An independent associate party of the NSDAP had a sensational increase in membership. Their Party programme was very similar to that of Benno Mussolini’s party, being “true to the King, Social Rights and anti-Marxist”. At the beginning they showed no signs of anti-Semitism. In the mid-thirties, there was a total of 56 parties in Holland, nearly all quarrelling with one another.

  The leader of the NSB, a water-engineer called Anton Mussert, was a 100% conventional Dutchman, with strong ideals. In ‘better circles’ his party was fully accepted, because of its strong anti-left character. It drew in businessmen, officers, retired Colonial officials, those from the middle classes and free-lance individuals. Baron de Jorge, Holland’s Governor General and former Colonial, did not relect the National Socialist Movement either. The disillusioned unemployed also gave it their support. The NSB held 8% of the indirect Parliament Election of 1935, being 300,000 votes with which Mussert was more than con tent. In the cities of Amsterdam, the Hague and Utrecht, the party held 10% and 39% in the eastern border counties adjacent to Germany.