Weerbaarheidsafdeling

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The WA marches on the occasion of Anton Mussert's birthday , May 11, 1941

The Weerbaarheidsafdeling (German roughly: "Wehrabteilung"; WA for short ) was the paramilitary arm of the Nationaal-Socialistische Bewegungsing , an initially fascist and later a National Socialist party in the Netherlands . The WA first existed from 1932 to 1935 and was reorganized in 1940. Their function was roughly comparable to that of the German SA .

Beginnings and interim dissolution

The Weerbaarheidsafdeling was initially set up towards the end of 1932 by Anton Mussert , the head of the NSB. The purpose was to create a uniformed troop to protect against attacks by political opponents. In particular, the presence of the WA men was intended to protect NSB members who were selling the party's newspaper Volk en Vaderland on the street . In addition, the WA took on the security service at NSB events. In this function, the first publicly perceived appearance of the WA at the "Landtag" of the NSB, which was held on January 7, 1933 in Utrecht . The characteristic identification mark of the WA men were the black uniforms, which earned them the nickname zwarthemden (in German: "black shirts").

After the Dutch government had banned civilians from wearing uniforms in 1933, paramilitary organizations were banned in 1935. As a reaction to this, Mussert initially dissolved the Weerbaarheidsafdeling in order to forestall an official request by the government.

Resurgence during the occupation

Funeral of Hendrik Koot in Zorgvlied , February 17, 1941

After the surrender of the Netherlands in May 1940, the NSB quickly became the only permitted political party and was able to re-establish its Weerbaarheidsafdeling towards the end of the year. In August 1941, Anton Mussert decreed that all male members of the NSB between the ages of 18 and 40 automatically had to become members of the WA from now on. Around 1700 NSB members refused to do this, which resulted in their status being downgraded from “members” to “sympathizers”. In his standard work Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog, the historian Loe de Jong gives the WA membership in 1941 as around 6,500. In 1942 this had risen to around 12,000, but in 1943 it fell again to around 8,000. However, he adds that these figures are likely to be inaccurate as the WA administration left something to be desired in this regard.

As a result of the revival of the WA, there were regular clashes between its members and politically dissenters, at the beginning often with supporters of the more moderate Nederlandsche Unie . After the Jewish community in the Netherlands was exposed to more and more repression from the German occupiers, the aggression of the WA thugs was directed more and more against “the Jews”. Among other things, WA men forced owners of hotels or cafés to hang up signs saying Joden niet gewenst (in German: "Jews not wanted"). The situation finally escalated on February 11, 1941, when fighting with Jewish residents broke out during a march in the Jewish quarter of the capital Amsterdam . The WA man Hendrik Koot was seriously injured and died three days later. The riots served the Germans, in the person of Commissioner General Hanns Albin Rauter, as a pretext to carry out the first open raids against Dutch Jews. On 22 and 23 February 425 Jewish men were arrested about and then to the concentration camp Mauthausen and Buchenwald deported. These measures met with open resistance in the Amsterdam population for the first time, which culminated in the so-called February strike on February 22nd . This protest, organized by the communist party CPN , was crushed by the Germans within a few days. Nine people were killed and 24 others were seriously injured.

Within the NSB, the WA and its leader, van der Hout, positioned themselves against the formation of the Dutch SS , as the WA already regarded itself as an equivalent to both the German SA and the SS . Nevertheless, the Dutch SS preferred to recruit its members from the ranks of the WA, as they were considered to be particularly "German-friendly". This led to the fact that the importance of the Weerbaarheidsafdeling decreased from around 1942, as many of its members now fought alongside the Germans in the war and their ranks thinned so noticeably. Physical incidents with political opponents now also occurred less often, as many groups now showed little interest in open disputes. Furthermore, the discipline of many WA men left a lot to be desired. Many of them, for example, repeatedly stayed away from joint exercises or committed criminal offenses, which regularly led to exclusions from the WA.

De Zwarte Soldaat

Through the Weerbarheidsafdeling the weekly De Zwarte Soldaat (in German: "The Black Soldier") was published, in which, among other things, anti-Jewish propaganda was spread and a future for the Netherlands as part of a Germanic confederation dominated by Germany was drawn. Towards the end of the war, the newspaper predicted that communist forces would take over power as soon as the Allied troops left the country.

Web links

  • Website of the NIOD with information on the Weerbaarheidsafdeling (Dutch)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ De WA (Weerbaarheidsafdeling) van de NSB. In: europeana.eu. Retrieved April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ a b c De WA marcheert. In: verzetsmuseum.org. Retrieved April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  3. ↑ Vincent Gaal: Anton, Adriaan Mussert. In: erepeloton.nl. 2002, accessed April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  4. ↑ Loe de Jong: Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog 1939-1945 . Ed .: Rijksinstituut voor oorlogsdocumentatie. tape 6 , no. 1 . Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1975, p. 403 .
  5. ↑ Mient January Faber: wapen Te . 1st edition. Spectrum, Houten / Antwerpen 2011, ISBN 978-90-491-0735-2 .
  6. ^ De Februaryistaking. In: tweede-wereldoorlog.org. Retrieved April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  7. ↑ De Jodenvervolging in foto's - Nederland 1940-1945 In: Historiek, October 19, 2019 (Dutch)
  8. ↑ Wouter P. Beekers, Rolf E. van der Woude: Niet alleen bij steen: patrimony Amsterdam: van sociale vereniging dead sociale onderneming, 1876-2003 . In: Passage reeks . tape 32 . Lost, Hilversum 2008, ISBN 90-8704-077-6 , p. 165-166 .
  9. ^ Februaryistaking (1941) - Protest tegen de Jodenvervolging. In: historiek.net. Retrieved April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  10. ↑ Robert Grunert: The Europe idea of ​​Western European fascist movements 1940-1945 . Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-77413-2 , p. 117 .
  11. ↑ Loe de Jong: Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog 1939-1945 . Ed .: Rijksinstituut voor oorlogsdocumentatie. tape 6 , no. 1 . Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague 1975, p. 403-405 .
  12. ↑ Nationaalsocialistische bladen uit de Second World War. In: kb.nl. Koninklijke Bibliotheek, accessed on April 3, 2019 (Dutch).
  13. ↑ Bas Kromhout: en opkomst ondergang van de NSB. In: histornieuwsblad.nl. April 2016, accessed April 3, 2019 (Dutch).