When in June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the SS appealed to young men in occupied areas to support the crusade against Bolshevism. At least 20.000 Dutchmen came forward to put their names down for this cause. The vast majority of them served in what was first called the legion, later the brigade and later still the ‘Nederland’ division. In From Leningrad to Berlin the history of the largest Dutch Waffen-SS unit on the eastern front is described for the first time.
The main sources drawn on when writing this book were documents that survived the war, such as unit diaries and Berlin-generated paperwork on Dutch volunteers preserved in archives in Moscow and Prague, which can now be consulted in Dutch archives. By extensively studying the relevant literature the author has endeavoured to place the history of Dutch Waffen-SS volunteers in its rightful political and military context.
The history of Dutch volunteers in the Waffen-SS forms a black and, until now, unwritten page in Dutch history.
Perry Pierik is historian and author of several books:
- Hungary 1944-1945 The forgotten Tragedy
- Tannenberg. Erich Ludendorff and the Defence of the Eastern German Border in 1914
- The Crimea. Assault - Siege - Conquest - Occupation and Murder 1941 - 1942
- The Unknown Reich. Less Known Facts of the Eastern Front
- Geopolitics of the Third Reich