Anton van der Waals

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Anton van der Waals (1948)

Antonius "Anton" van der Waals (born October 11, 1912 in Rotterdam , † January 26, 1950 in Scheveningen ) was a Dutch spy who worked for the German Security Service (SD) during the Second World War . Because of his work as an agent and informant, which killed dozens of Dutch agents, van der Waals is considered by many Dutch people to be one of the worst traitors during the war.

biography

Early years

Van der Waals was born in Rotterdam in 1912 as the fifth child of Gerardus van der Waals and his wife Adriana Wouterina Cranendonk, the father owned a painting company. The family was of the Reformed faith . After graduating from school, van der Waals initially worked for some time as an employee in the Rotterdam office of RS Stokvis en Zonen , before pursuing a career in electrical engineering at the age of 19 . After acquiring the relevant diploma, however, he was unable to find a permanent job. In addition to some temporary jobs, the attempt to set up his own repair company for radios and motorcycles failed, and in between he was dependent on unemployment benefits. In 1931 he also attended a technical craft school in Dordrecht for some time , but left it again due to poor performance and financial difficulties. After the father's health deteriorated, the son helped out in the family business.

In 1934 van der Waals became a member of the fascist association Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing (NSB), but was not actively involved. On December 12, 1934, he married his first wife, Francien Goedhart, but the marriage was divorced again in May 1936, as van der Waals had not told his wife about membership of the NSB. Only two weeks later he married Johanna Hendrika Groos, with whom he fathered their son Gerard, whom he never officially recognized as his descendant. Because of this refusal, the second marriage was dissolved after only two years. During his marriage to Groos, van der Waals had contact with his third wife, Aukje Grietje Harkina Smits, with whom he was married on November 8, 1939. Smits initially assumed that van der Waals had only been married once and that this marriage had only lasted two days. During this time he worked mainly as a salesman at the electrical engineering company de Hoop in Rotterdam, a job he owed to false pretenses about his qualifications.

First contacts with the underground

On behalf of his employer Lodewijk de Hoop, van der Waals worked regularly as an electrical engineer in the port of Rotterdam from mid-1939 , where he mainly worked on submarines and acquired German and English skills. In the summer of 1940, a few months after the start of the German occupation of the Netherlands, van der Waals came into contact with the Rotterdam factory director Ary van der Meer, to whom he presented an invention allegedly made by him: an aircraft drive that worked without a crankshaft . However, it is doubtful whether van der Waals was actually the author of this invention. More likely, the plans fell into his hands in the wake of the chaos that reigned in Rotterdam after the city was bombed on May 14, 1940. At the meeting, he made hints that the Germans would be interested in his invention, but that he would rather let the British benefit from it. Via van der Meer he came into contact with the Dutch resistance that was just forming . Among these contacts was the military cadet Jan Streef, who organized a meeting of van der Meer's resistance group in van der Waal's apartment on April 24, 1941. A few days after this meeting, the SD arrested five of the seven members of the group.

Activity for the SD

As early as 1940, van der Waal had first contacted the SD office in Rotterdam, to whom he offered information about the resistance members with whom he had contact. The SD was still not very interested in his advice. It was not until April 30, 1940 that the head of the Rotterdam branch office, Joseph Schreieder , introduced him to the head of the SD's counter-espionage department in The Hague . From then on, van der Waals worked as an informant in the Dutch resistance for the SD. His first assignment was to investigate the perpetrator of an attack on a German railway official in Haarlem . He was able to locate this man named Hans Bierhuijs quickly and hand him over to the SD, for which he received a reward of 5000 guilders . From this point on he received monthly remuneration for his agent work, which initially amounted to 250 and later to 1,100 guilders.

After Bierhuij's arrest, Schreieder van der Waals contacted the resistance group to which he belonged. The group named ECH / 3 (after the radio transmitter it used) was headed by Johannes Klingen from Heemstede and was active in the Kennemerland region . Van der Waals quickly gained Klingens trust, on May 6, 1941, the first two members of the group, Henk Schoenmakker and Willem Zietse, were arrested by the SD after a tip from van der Waals. The Germans also got their hands on encryption codes for radio communications between the Dutch resistance and England. The remaining members were arrested by May 29, 1941 and most of them were interned in the police prison in Scheveningen, known as the Oranjehotel . Klingen and Schoenmakker were executed the following year.

In the meantime, the resistance group around Ary van der Meer began to distrust van der Waals after a large part of the group had been arrested. The suspicion was specifically confirmed when van der Waals claimed to have housed a member in a safe place, which the group already knew that the man was being held as a prisoner in the Oranjehotel. The liquidation of van der Waal was then planned, but the remaining members of the group were arrested by the SD before they could implement the plan.

Under the code name Anton de Wilde, van der Waals came into contact with the resistance group of the former Olympic athlete Ernst de Jonge . He was also able to infiltrate this group successfully by claiming that he had just returned from his training in England. To underpin this story, he had English cigarettes with him, among other things, and was able to tell in detail about everyday life in London . A little later almost all members of the group were arrested, but the group could not be completely broken up and remained active under the name Groep Kees until the liberation .

In Delfzijl , van der Waals was attacked by the shipowner Allard Oosterhuis and his resistance group 't Zwaantje . From Delfzijl, Oosterhuis operated the so-called "Swedish route", via which people and information from the occupied Netherlands could get to England. On July 23, 1943, the SD broke up the group after a hint from van der Waal that the "Swedish route" collapsed.

As part of the so-called England game , Schleieder also considered sending van der Waals to England for training , but ultimately rejected the plan as too risky. Van der Waals only played a small role in this "game" of the German defense , among other things he was involved in the "reception" of an agent who parachuted over the Netherlands.

"Murder" and use in Sweden

Following the action against 't Zwaantje, the SD spread rumors in mid-1943 that van der Waals had been murdered because distrust of him had increased within the Dutch resistance. In September of the same year he was sent from Delfzijl to Sweden, where he was given the task of gathering information about possible illegal contacts between Swedes and Dutch people. However, this mission was largely unsuccessful, so that he returned to the Netherlands in October 1943. There he settled in Loosdrecht under the code name Hendrik Jan van Veen. As van Veen, he also had his fourth and last marriage to Cornelia Johanna the Held on June 28, 1944, the previous relationship with Aukje Smits had meanwhile been divorced. The marriage with the hero was also short-lived and only lasted until February 15, 1945.

Criminal trial

Shortly after the end of the war, van der Waals surrendered to the Canadian military police , which handed him over to the British counter-espionage. Since it was known there that he had worked for the SD, he was considered suitable for tracking down National Socialists who had gone into hiding in defeated Germany and for infiltrating the so-called “ Werewolf Organization ”. Under the leadership of Louis Einthoven , the head of the Dutch secret service Bureau Nationale Veiligheid , he carried out various assignments and was also deployed against the Soviets in Berlin .

In the Netherlands, however, Einthoven was pressured by surviving victims of van der Waal's activities who urged prosecution. Van der Waals was extradited as a prisoner to the Netherlands in early 1947 and finally brought to trial in The Hague in April 1948. Joseph Schreieder was questioned as a key witness in this process . In its judgment of May 7, 1948, the court found van der Waals guilty of being responsible for the arrest of at least 83 people, 38 of whom had perished, and imposed the death penalty . A subsequent petition for clemency was rejected by Queen Juliana . The execution was finally carried out on January 26, 1950 on the Waalsdorpervlakte in Scheveningen.

literature

  • Frank Visser : De zaak Antonius van der Waals . Forum Boekerij / Zuid-Hollandsche Uitgeversmaatschappij, The Hague 1974, ISBN 90-235-8091-5 .
  • Auke Kok: De Verrader. Leven en Dood van Anton van der Waals . De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2005, ISBN 90-234-1736-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c David Barnouw: Waals, Antonius van der (1912-1950). In: huygens.knaw.nl. December 11, 2013, accessed December 13, 2018 (Dutch). originally published in: Biografisch Woordenboek van Nederland , Volume 4, The Hague 1994
  2. ↑ a b c Waals, Anton van der. In: mystiwot.nl. Retrieved December 13, 2018 (Dutch).
  3. ↑ Auke Kok: De Verrader. Leven en Dood van Anton van der Waals. De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam 2005, ISBN 90-234-1736-4 , pp. 38-40 .
  4. ↑ Verzetsstrijders in Heemstede. In: entoen.nu. Retrieved December 13, 2018 (Dutch).
  5. ^ Loe de Jong: Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog . tape 9 , no. 2 . Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1979, ISBN 90-247-2200-4 , pp. 897-898 .
  6. ↑ Harm Hill Inga: Allard Oosterhuis, verzetsstrijder. In: nazatendevries.nl. September 8, 2017, accessed December 13, 2018 (Dutch).
  7. ↑ Joseph Schreieder: That was the England game . Stutz, Munich 1950, p. 251 .
  8. ^ Frank Visser: De zaak Antonius van der Waals . Forum Boekerij / Zuid-Hollandsche Uitgeversmaatschappij, The Hague 1974, ISBN 90-235-8091-5 , p. 373 .
  9. ↑ Executie van Anton van der Waals (1950). In: vandaagindegeschiedenis.nl. Historiek, accessed December 13, 2018 (Dutch).
personal data
SURNAME Waals, Anton van der
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Waals, Antonius van der (full name); Veen, Hendrik Jan van (code name); Wilde, Anton de (code name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch spy
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1950
Place of death Scheveningen