From Leningrad to Berlin

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.