Nazis fainted at the horrors of the Croatian Ustashas

[pieter]

3 feb 2021 History of Europe

The SS-Dutch Volunteer Legion (SS-Vrijwilligerslegion Nederland / S-Freiwilligen Legion 'Niederlande') consisted of Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers that fought during the Siege of Leningrad at the Volkov Front and saw action during the Battle of Lake Ladoga. Most noteworthy was Gerardus Mooyman who became the first foreign volunteer in the German forces to be decorated with the Knight's Cross. Regiments were named: General Seyffardt and De Ruiter. Early 1944 these soldiers were stationed at the Oranienbaum Front and, after their retreat, saw action during the Battle of Narva (1944) and the Battle of Tannenberg Line (1944). They were trapped in the Kurland Pocket and most of them evacuated during Operation Hannibal.

History Hustle presents: The Dutch Volunteer Legion on the Eastern Front – Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteers during World War II.

Gerard Mooyman


SS-Sturmmann Gerardus Mooyman after awarding the Knight's Cross

Gerardus Leonardus Mooyman (23 September 1923 in Apeldoorn – 21 June 1987 in Anloo) was a Dutchman who served in the Waffen-SS during World War II.

Biography


Gerard Mooyman (right) receives the Knight's Cross.

Mooyman was born in Apeldoorn and came from a Catholic middle-class family. His father was a milkman and became a member of the NSB during the crisis.

Mooyman reported in April 1941 as a volunteer for the SS-Freiwilligen-Standarte "Nordwest". His first frontline deployment was in January 1942 with the Volkhov in the Netherlands Volunteer Legion. As an anti-tank gun commander, he earned the Iron Cross 1939 Second and First Class for destroying some Soviet tanks. During the battle around Lake Ladoga in February 1943, Mooyman destroyed 13 enemy tanks in one day. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 20 February 1943. This made him the first Dutchman and the first non-German to receive the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. In total he managed to disable 23 tanks.



Mooyman was used by the Nazis for a publicity campaign and set an example for Dutch youth. In many places streets and squares were named after him.

He then trained as an SS-Scharführer (non-commissioned officer) in Radolfzell in the summer of 1943. At the end of August 1943 he left for officer training at the SS-Junkerschule in Bad Tölz; he was a cadet in the 11th Kriegsjunkerlehrgang. In the spring of 1944 he returned to the Narva front as SS-Standarten-Oberjunker (cf. ensign) and was promoted to SS-Untersturmführer der Reserve (reserve second lieutenant) on 21 June 1944.


The 2 highest Austrian SS Nazi officials in the Netherlands, left the highest SS and Police Leader in the occupied Netherlands and therefore the leading security and police officer there during the period of 1940–1945, SS-Obergruppenführer Hanns Albin Rauter (4 February 1895 – 24 March 1949) and SS-Obergruppenführer and Reich commissioner for the German-occupied Netherlands (Nazi leader of the Netherlands) with inbetween them the 19 year old Dutch volunteer SS-Sturmmann Gerard Mooyman

Mooyman became an American prisoner of war on 4 May 1945. A few days later he escaped and went into hiding in Germany. In March 1946 he was arrested in the Netherlands. During a transport from Scheveningen to Delft he escaped for the second time and was arrested again in August 1946. Mooyman went to court in October and was eventually sentenced to 6 years in prison, but was released at the end of August 1949. After his release, Mooyman led an unremarkable life as an independent entrepreneur in the city of Groningen. Mooyman was married and had a daughter.

The only time he came into the public eye after that was in 1967, when he was interviewed by the magazine Revue. In this article he expressed his horror at the crimes of the Nazis, for which he considered himself partly responsible. He gave his Knight's Cross to a collector. He died in 1987 as a result of a traffic accident near Anloo.




SS-Sturmmann Gerard Mooyman with the leader of the Dutch National Socialist Movement (NSB) Anton Mussert (11 May 1894 – 7 May 1946)

[pieter]

Other source

[pieter]

[pieter]

This guy comes from the Eastern Netherlands, he speaks with a Eastern Saxon Dutch accent.

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

The occupation of Denmark was initially not an important objective for the German/Austrian Nazi government of the the German Reich (The Third Reich, Das dritte Reich). The decision to occupy its small northern neighbour was taken to facilitate a planned invasion of the strategically more important Norway, and as a precaution against the expected British response. German military planners believed that a base in the northern part of Jutland, specifically the airfield of Aalborg, would be essential to operations in Norway, and they began planning the occupation of parts of Denmark. However, as late as February 1940 no firm decision to occupy Denmark had been made. The issue was finally settled when Adolf Hitler personally crossed out the words die Nordspitze Jütlands ("the Northern tip of Jutland") and replaced them with Dä, a German abbreviation for Denmark.

Although the Danish territory of South Jutland was home to a significant German minority, and the province had been regained from Germany as a result of a plebiscite resulting from the Versailles Treaty, Germany was in no apparent hurry to reclaim it. In a much more vague and longer-term way, some Nazis hoped to incorporate Denmark into a greater "Nordic Union" at some stage, but these plans never materialized. Officially Germany claimed to be protecting Denmark from a British invasion.

At 4:15 on the morning of 9 April 1940, German forces crossed the border into neutral Denmark. In a coordinated operation, German ships began disembarking troops at the docks in Copenhagen. Although outnumbered and poorly equipped, soldiers in several parts of the country offered resistance; most notably the Royal Guard in Copenhagen and units in South Jutland. At the same time as the border crossing, German planes dropped the notorious OPROP! leaflets over Copenhagen calling on Danes to accept the German occupation peacefully, and claiming that Germany had occupied Denmark in order to protect it against Great Britain and France. Colonel Lunding from the Danish army's intelligence office later confirmed that Danish intelligence knew the attack would be coming on either 8 or 9 April and had warned the government accordingly. The Danish ambassador to Germany, Herluf Zahle, issued a similar warning which was also ignored.


A group of Danish soldiers on the morning of the German invasion, 9 April 1940. Two of these men were killed later that day.

As a result of the rapid turn of events, the Danish government did not have enough time to officially declare war on Germany. Denmark was in an untenable position in any event, however. Its territory and population were too small to hold out against Germany for any sustained period. Its flat land would have resulted in it being easily overrun by German panzers; Jutland, for instance, was immediately adjacent to the German state Schleswig-Holstein to the south and was thus wide open to a panzer attack from there. Unlike Norway, Denmark had no mountain ranges from which a drawn-out resistance could be mounted.


Sixteen Danish soldiers died in the invasion, but after two hours the Danish government surrendered, believing that resistance was useless and hoping to work out an advantageous agreement with Germany. The flat territory of Jutland was a perfect area for the German army to operate in, and the surprise attack on Copenhagen had made any attempt to defend Zealand impossible. The Germans had also been quick to establish control over the bridge across the Little Belt, thus gaining access to the island of Funen. Believing that further resistance would only result in the futile loss of still more Danish lives, the Danish cabinet ultimately decided to bow to the German pressure "under protest". The German forces were technologically sophisticated and numerous; the Danish forces comparatively tiny and used obsolete equipment; partially a result of a pre-war policy of trying to avoid antagonizing Germany by supplying the army with modern equipment. Even stiff resistance from the Danes would not have lasted long. Questions have been raised around the apparent fact that the German forces did not seem to expect any resistance, invading with unarmored ships and vehicles.

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]