Magazine “Der Freiwillige”, 1992

“Der Freiwillige” was a monthly veterans “magazine of the former Waffen-SS, which was published from 1955 to 1992 by the Federal Association of the ‘Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit’ (HIAG). In the young Federal Republic of Germany, there were numerous veterans” associations, including associations of former Wehrmacht soldiers and veterans of the Waffen SS, some of which cooperated and competed with each other. For the approximately 250,000 former members of the Waffen SS in the Federal Republic in particular, the organizations were a point of contact for social and legal support. The Federal Association of the HIAG was an attempt to unite the latter and thus further strengthen their political clout. Despite the classification of the Waffen-SS as a “criminal organization”, the core objective of HIAG’s lobbying work was to align pension entitlements with those of Wehrmacht soldiers, which is why it promoted the appearance of the Waffen-SS as “completely normal soldiers”.

The association magazine “Der Freiwillige” served as a newsletter, but also to continue the common ideology and its repositioning in the Federal Republic. The subtitle of the magazine, “For unity and justice and freedom”, refers to one of the association’s core strategies for political legitimization: HIAG always countered scandals with democratic statements in order to avoid a possible ban on the organization. In the course of the 1980s, however, the discrepancy between these statements and the behaviour of the members of the organization’s base deepened and they increasingly expressed openly right-wing extremist views. In 1991, it was decided to dissolve the federal association and this was carried out at the end of 1992. This was also due to the fact that the leadership saw the HIAG as a “time-bound association” that was limited to the lifetime of the veterans. Other associations such as state associations and military comradeships continued to exist, in some cases through the children and grandchildren of veterans.

The ideological guideline of the HIAG can still be read in one of the last issues of the Bundesverband*. The essays on historical topics were often based on personal experiences and perpetuated the myth of the Waffen SS as an elite force and a “European army”. In most cases, the content was only just within the bounds of what was permitted under criminal law: the Holocaust or crimes were not actively denied, but questioned, for example, by citing foreign alleged contemporary witnesses or authors. In articles about Knight’s Cross recipients such as Michael Wittmann, some of which included the authors’ personal memories of the individuals, the heroization of the Knight’s Cross recipients of the Waffen SS was perpetuated. However, “Der Freiwillige” was not just about the past – current political events and debates were also followed and commented on, often with reference to the Second World War. For example, Hubert Meyer, former SS regiment commander and spokesman for the HIAG from 1969 until the dissolution of the federal association, wrote the foreword to this issue entitled “What’s wrong with Germany”. In it, he described refugees as “bogus asylum seekers and refugees of prosperity” who were “flooding our country” and “foreigners who have not contributed a single piece of the mosaic to German culture, to German development and existence in centuries” and linked this to German history: “In this situation, responsible politicians want to turn Germany, which has been robbed of a quarter of its land and which already took in 12 million German refugees after the end of the war, into a country of immigration.” Meyer thus made use of radical right-wing narratives and ciphers that had not changed even almost 50 years after the end of the war. “Der Freiwillige” was published until 2014 and then merged into DMZ Geschichte, which belongs to the far-right spectrum.*

*Addendum: With the dissolution of the federal association in 1992, the magazine was no longer published by it, but continued to run until 2014.

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