‘Our work was in the service of the suffering of mankind’: a case study of the motives of the Easternfront Ambulance nurses, 1941–1944

ABSTRACT

During World War Two, a group of Dutch nurses chose to join the Nederlandse Ambulance (‘Easternfront Ambulance’), a controversial though currently relatively unknown field hospital for the eastern front. In doing so, they supported the German war effort. This case study elaborates on the motives of these women to make a choice that was ultimately determined as ‘wrong’, by emphasising their unique gender role of nurse in the public sphere. By providing an insight into a relatively small group of ‘wrong’ women, this article aims to act as a call for further research into the gender context of limitations and opportunities of Dutch women during the German occupation. These nurses appear to have had various intentional and unintentional motives for enlisting. Nearly all of them later claimed they had pursued a ‘calling’. They had all been Nazi or Nationalist Socialist Movement in the Netherlands sympathisers and they had all enjoyed material benefits due to their position with the field hospital. In a few cases, it seems they had longed for interaction with soldiers, or men in general, and sometimes they had simply craved for an adventurous life far from home.

KEYWORDS:

• Nederlandse Ambulance
• Easternfront Ambulance
• nurses
• ‘wrong’ women
• Second World War
• Dutch Red Cross

Introduction

During World War Two, the Dutch Red Cross equipped a motorised field hospital for the eastern front called the Nederlandse Ambulance (henceforth referred to as ‘Easternfront Ambulance’). The board of trustees of the Dutch Red Cross, back then a largely military organisation, chose to do this under pressure from the German oppressor and the head of the Dutch SS Volunteer Legion (Vrijwilligerslegioen Nederland), lieutenant general Hendrik Seyffardt. On the 1st of November 1941, the Easternfront Ambulance was officially established. It offered around thirty Dutch nurses chances they had not known during peacetime. Due to their position with the Ambulance, these women gained a certain independence, and the chance to see something of the world – unusual for Dutch women in the thirties and forties of the twentieth century. These nurses joined an organisation with close ties with the German oppressor. Therefore, according to Dutch society, they were ultimately considered ‘wrong’. Although these women only represent a small group of a larger number of Dutch people who voluntarily chose to help the Nazis, their possible motives are very interesting, and open up more questions about the gender context of limitations and opportunities of Dutch women during the occupation (Harvey 2003; Koonz 1987).

Professional development for women, let alone emancipation, were clearly no part of Nazi ideology, but the approaching war demanded mobilisation of all possible workers. While for a long time historiography assumed that women under Nazi rule were mostly mothers and housewives, moving in the private sphere, this has proven to be an incomplete picture. The professional opportunities the Nazis created for women like the nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance – and thus their ‘scope for action’¹ in the public sphere – were nevertheless largely determined by the ruling assumptions of ‘typical’ gender roles. In the first part of the twentieth century, nursing was considered a ‘calling’, not a profession. It underlined the ideal of the woman as serving, caring and subservient to the man (Ebbinghaus 1987; Lower 2013; McFarland-Icke 1999).

The alleged neutrality of the Red Cross, and nursing as a calling, stand in stark contrast to racist Nazi ideology. Indeed, since 1933, the German Red Cross had been strongly Nazified, introducing military service for nurses in 1937. Consequently, these German women were active witnesses of the Nazi crimes, and sometimes perpetrators themselves, as in Aktion T4, the killing of the Lebensunwertes Leben (‘life unworthy of life’). In this parallel world, German nurses learnt to associate their profession with racial hygiene. It is possible therefore that the Nazis created a separate sphere: a Nazi medical sphere, where men as well as women could be found (Ebbinghaus 1987; Lower 2013; McFarland-Icke 1999).

Most publications about women under Nazi rule deal with German women and the German Red Cross. Authors writing about the Dutch Red Cross mainly discuss the decision of the board of trustees in The Hague. Individual medical personnel, especially those who made ‘wrong’ choices such as the members of the Easternfront Ambulance, did not receive any special attention. More well-known – although only relatively – is the fact that hundreds of Dutch girls and women worked for the German Red Cross in Germany and the occupied countries. There, these Schwester-Helferinnen worked in hospitals, but only rarely on the front lines. The fate of the much smaller group of Ambulance nurses, who were mostly certified nurses older then twenty-one, is virtually unknown (Van Bergen 2009, 2012; Grüter 2017; Krusemeijer 2015; Liempt and van Kooten 2017; Matthée 2013; Sax 2012).

In this paper, I analyse the motives of fifteen of these nurses for joining the Easternfront Ambulance. By doing so, I hope to provide an insight into the lives of a few Dutch women under Nazi occupation, of the society in which they lived, and of the profession they pursued in the context of war. Moreover, I hope this article acts as a call for further research into ‘wrong’ women during World War Two, in all layers of Dutch society.

Most of the primary sources I used for my research are derived from the Central Archives for Special Criminal Jurisdiction (Centraal Archief Bijzondere Rechtspleging or CABR) and related archives in the National Archives (Nationaal Archief) in The Hague. These files were compiled in the years directly after the Second World War, when so-called ‘political delinquents’ were put on trial. They contain all kinds of legal evidence, such as membership cards of National Socialist organisations, photographs, correspondence, witness testimonies and legal reports. Although these primary sources are very valuable, they are not entirely trustworthy. At the time of their interrogations, these women knew they had ended up on the ‘wrong’ side of history. They knew they would be punished for their wartime actions. This definitely influenced what they said and did not say. For this reason, I not only relied on what the nurses themselves said their motives had been, but also on what other possible motives can be found in their files. I was able to access the files of sixteen women – probably nearly half of the total number of Easternfront Ambulance nurses – and those of their eventual husbands, mostly considered ‘political delinquents’ as well. One nurse’s file contained only a single short note on NSB membership and was therefore unfit for use. This reduced the number of women possible to investigate to fifteen. The search for more information about another fourteen named nurses proved to be futile, mostly due to having insufficient details to obtain the personal record cards needed to inquire after these women at the National Archives, although there were also some names that simply did not have a file at the CABR. Unless otherwise stated, the information I mention in this article originates from the files of the above mentioned fifteen nurses and their husbands. Due to Dutch privacy laws, I cannot describe them in any further detail.

The Easternfront Ambulance recruits

All the fifteen women researched for this article who travelled with the Easternfront Ambulance to the East in mid-1942 were (qualified) nurses and Nazi (pro-German) sympathisers or members of the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands (Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging or NSB). This information can be found in membership cards of National Socialist organisations, legal reports, witness testimonies, photographs and correspondence. By the end of 1941 the planned deployment of the Ambulance must have been well-known, especially within National Socialist circles. In the summer of that year Dutch National Socialist newspapers such as Volk en Vaderland and Het Nationale Dagblad – and reposted articles in other (regional) journals – mentioned a field hospital for the eastern front for the first time. Notices and posters were also spread throughout the country, alerting the Dutch to their supposed ‘duty’ to support the Dutch SS Volunteer Legion. The newsreel Polygoon broadcasted several items about the Ambulance, and organisations such as the Medical Front (Medisch Front) for the NSB and the National Socialist Women’s Organisation (Nationaal-Socialistische Vrouwenorganisatie or NSVO) organised benefits to raise money.

On the 18th of July 1941, the Easternfront Ambulance put the first call for medical personnel in the newspapers. It described the Ambulance as intended for the care of SS Volunteer Legion soldiers, but at the same time the field hospital was presented as a legitimate successor to earlier Dutch Red Cross ambulances that had served in warzones in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) and Finland. Neutrality, a notion closely associated with the Red Cross, was something announcements about the Ambulance kept emphasising: ‘Friend and foe need aid’. In this case however, the claim of neutrality was false. The SS Volunteer Legion in The Hague was responsible for the recruitment and deployment of all medical personnel, and in the course of the war, the field hospital as well as its members were incorporated into the German army. The influence of the Dutch Red Cross – if any ever truly existed – had already vanished when the first medical units travelled to Kiev in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in 1941 (Het Volk, 1941; Het Vaderland, 1941).

However, on the 4th of September 1941, the Easternfront Ambulance suddenly announced that ‘with the dangers in mind (…) for now, no female personnel will be brought along’. They claimed to understand the probable disappointment of the ‘many nurses’ who had offered to help ‘spontaneously’, but the ‘ransacking Soviet gangs’ in the East had forced the organisation to make this decision. Further announcements suggested the women pursue a position with the German Red Cross behind the front lines, mostly in German hospitals. Some of the nurses who had initially applied for the Ambulance, took this opportunity, others did join the Ambulance later when the decision to turn down female personnel was changed. Until late spring 1942, repeated calls went out for nurses under the age of forty with an A certificate in general nursing, although details of the deployment remained uncertain and the process took a long time. It is very likely the financial situation, which was portrayed so positively in propaganda articles, caused the delay in deployment. Newspapers published donation requests almost daily until the summer of 1942 (NIOD Instituut voor Oorlogs-, Holocaust en Genocidestudies (NIOD KA II – 1383), 1933–45).

Recruitment for the Easternfront Ambulance appears to have been difficult, principally suggested by repeated calls in the papers, the fact that many nurses were over forty years old, and that several did not possess the requested A certificate. Based on newspaper articles and legal reports the estimated number of Ambulance nurses was slightly over thirty. These were women who had completed their education during the Great Depression, thereafter often working various jobs such as typist, governess or librarian. Almost all of them were unmarried and came from (lower) middle class families.

During the interwar period, a ‘womanly’ profession like nursing was a much safer option than any profession in which women had to compete with men. However, during this period nursing was not only economically appealing, it also guaranteed some social standing. It was considered a noble, respectable and refined profession that was an excellent preparation or substitute for marriage. For girls from the lower middle classes, attending nursing school meant a rise on the social ladder, while the better-off found a suitable and respectable purpose in life. Moreover a position as a nurse created a certain independent existence. The educational entry requirements were very modest: character was always more important than actual knowledge. Compliance, forbearance and a sense of duty were highly valued and even considered essential. Above all, nursing as a calling – from a religious as well as an ideological perspective – was the most important facet of the image of the nurse. Nursing would be a calling rather than a profession for well into the post-war period.

However, despite nursing being an increasingly modern discipline on the eve of World War Two due to many improvements in medical science, it certainly also had disadvantages. This became evident, for example, in the hierarchical structures on the work floor. Not only between doctor and nurse – she was merely his instrument, to report to him at all times – but also within the nursing staff, between unskilled labourers, student nurses, qualified nurses and ward sisters. In addition, nurses were consistently underpaid for physically and mentally very demanding work. Their social independence was therefore only relative. As Dutch anthropologist and former nurse Truus Spijker wrote in 1979: ‘You could rightly state that the nurse’s calling was exploited’ (Spijker 1979).

Nevertheless, at the eastern front, all such boundaries faded away. Those between nurses themselves, those between doctors and nurses, and those between work, daily life and survival. In their choice for the Easternfront Ambulance, a few dozen Dutch nurses broadened their horizons in multiple respects.

Nursing in the East

Shortly before their departure with the Easternfront Ambulance, the nurses who had signed up were vetted in the Kriegslazarett in The Hague, among other things having their blood group tested. On the 30th of May 1942, twenty nurses left The Hague for Berlin, followed a few months later by another ten on the 28th of August. They all stayed in Berlin for approximately a week, where they slept in the Werner-Schule, a training centre for the German Red Cross. It is clear they received some kind of counselling there about the circumstances in the East, but what these courses really taught them – and to what extent they included racial hygiene – remains unknown. The nurses had to exchange their Dutch uniforms for German Red Cross ones: grey robes, a white apron and cap, but no additional German Red Cross emblems. Furthermore, they all wore a universal Red Cross brassard or armband, and some chose to wear their own nurses’ brooch or the emblem of the NSB (called ‘oranje-blanje-bleu’) on their collars. From Berlin, these Dutch nurses travelled to Kiev, Ukraine, where they arrived in June and September 1942 respectively. In later years, a few other nurses joined them.

The first posting of the Easternfront Ambulance was some distance behind the front lines, near the Pushkin Park and Kiev Zoo, slightly off the main road into the centre of town. This location was chosen because of the possible dangers for the female personnel at the front. Over two hundred people worked in the field hospital, most of them Dutch, but also Russian (Ukrainian) maids and prisoners of war (POWs). They cared for Dutch and German soldiers, and sometimes also for POWs or Ukrainian citizens. Approximately thirty ambulances, coaches and motorbikes drove constantly back and forth between the main dressing stations at the front and the hospital in Kiev. Wounded were also brought in by train or by airplane. Most soldiers only stayed at the Ambulance for a few weeks, before they were discharged and sent back to their units or were transferred to hospitals or convalescent homes further west. Dutch National Socialist newspaper Het Nationale Dagblad wrote about the Ambulance: ‘Here, Dutch men and women attend to their duties in good spirits, like brave Dutch chaps at the front collaborate to knock out the venomous teeth of the Bolshevist monster!’ (Het Nationale Dagblad, 1942).

Reality however, was not as positive as the propaganda would suggest. The nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance worked long shifts, twenty-four hours a day and were confronted with the most horrible injuries. When they had their weekly afternoon or evening off and wished to visit town, they had to be escorted by two SS Volunteer Legion soldiers. Sometimes, they travelled to other destinations in occupied Europe with a transport of wounded soldiers. On these occasions, they often had the opportunity to see something of their surroundings. What they saw exactly, or what they knew – especially of the Holocaust – their files do not tell. There was just one of them who, after the war, said she was ‘bitterly disappointed’ [‘bitter teleurgesteld’] by what she had seen ‘experiencing National Socialism first-hand’ [‘het Nationaal Socialisme van nabij meegemaakt’]. Occasionally, the women went to the Netherlands on leave. Almost all of them considered the time at their post in Kiev in a positive light. Due to the intense cooperation between nurses and other medical personnel, especially the doctors, many love affairs blossomed.

In the fall of 1943, the Soviet army marched on Kiev. The Easternfront Ambulance was forced to retreat to Chelm in occupied Poland, back then the General Governorate for the occupied Polish Region (Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete). Spirits sunk. The initial optimism among Ambulance personnel of a victory for Germany slowly started to fade. Moreover, the nurses thought of Chelm as ‘just a dead hole’ [‘maar een dood gat’] compared to Kiev, as one of them wrote to a friend back home. Nevertheless, there was still an opportunity to have fun in addition to their obligatory nursing duties. Military bands visited, and the leisure organisation Kraft durch Freude (‘Strength through Joy’ or KdF) organised performances. Christmas was celebrated extensively with everyone receiving a Christmas gift package with food and warm clothes from the Medical Front of the NSB. In their spare time the nurses often went for walks in the woods, the park or the small town. In the Soldatenheim or military home in Chelm they could buy coffee and cakes, or in the evening have dinner in the company of soldiers. There were still opportunities for some trips abroad, for visiting war friends or even for skiing.

Meanwhile, the front shifted westward, and in May or June 1944 the Easternfront Ambulance and its personnel fled to Kraków and later on to Berlin. The retreat of the German army was chaotic. Things fell apart in both material and human terms. In 2009, one of the security guards of the Ambulance said in an interview he had seen ‘horrible things’, ‘especially when the Russians marched further and further West’. He did not specify what it was he saw, but it is certain some of the nurses later fell into the hands of the Soviet military (Auteur onbekend 2010).

In Berlin, most nurses obtained permission to leave for the Netherlands for a few weeks. When they returned at the end of the summer of 1944, they were told the Easternfront Ambulance had been disbanded. Following this announcement, the women were deployed across different army units under the flag of the German Red Cross. A significant number of them were placed with the Third SS Pantzerkorps in north-eastern Estonia. Most continued to work for the German Red Cross until the German capitulation, constantly on the run from the Russians. Some did not survive the war: one nurse died of typhoid fever, another of shrapnel wounds. The others returned to the Netherlands in the course of 1945 and 1946, some after they had done compulsory nursing for the allied forces in western Germany. After repatriation, they were detained and interrogated. They awaited their trial and sentencing in the post-war ‘special criminal jurisdiction’ for months, sometimes even years. Notably, women who had become mothers during or after the war were only interned for a very short time, or not at all, as it was assumed that internment would have a negative effect on their motherhood and family life. Yet they were seen as ‘wrong’ all the same, sometimes even as ‘immoral’, because of their relationships with Germans or alleged collaborators (Grevers 2014).

Trial and sentence

The post-war special criminal jurisdiction was meant to prosecute all Dutch who were accused of ‘wrong’ political ideologies or actions during the German occupation. Special investigation services (Politieke Opsporingsdiensten or POD and Politieke Recherche Afdelingen or PRA) investigated the nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance – and many of their husbands – in their respective places of residence. In total the POD and PRA produced over 500.000 files with records of evidence, often multiple files for one person. The Dutch nurses, living at home or in internment camps, were interrogated several times and witnesses were called to testify. The Dutch post-war government valued witnesses as they considered them able to expose the individuals behind political misdeeds, and believed it was possible to distinguish between people who had been ‘wrong’ and people who had made the wrong choices. Most witnesses were colleagues, housemates, neighbours, in-laws or family members. Acquaintances sometimes wrote letters in favour of the accused; in fewer cases, they reported suspects to the special investigation services or the police (Grevers 2009).

In due course, on account of a special tribunal decision (‘Tribunaalbesluit 1944ʹ), most Easternfront Ambulance nurses were cleared of prosecution while on parole, sometimes with an earlier release from internment. These specific ‘political delinquents’ were regarded as ‘light cases’, because they had not committed serious criminal offences such as treason or crimes that carried a sentence of life imprisonment. Judgement for them was as follows: provision of direct or indirect aid to the enemy power and a ‘wrong’ political affiliation during the occupation. The subsequent sentences were for the majority more or less the same: they lost certain civil rights – such as the right to vote – for the duration of ten years, had to pay fines varying from some dozens to hundreds of guilders and sometimes had to go to live and work at a place chosen by the government. They were also put under supervision: financially, by the Dutch Governing Institute (Nederlands Beheersinstituut or NBI), and politically, by the Institution for Supervision of Political Delinquents (Stichting Toezicht Politieke Delinquenten or STPD). During their probation, the nurses were expected to behave ‘like a proper Dutch person’, which meant they must not display any National Socialist sympathies. In a few cases, if it was decided they had joined an enemy military service, the women lost their Dutch nationality and became stateless. The special tribunals in the different regions were not unanimous in their verdict as to whether or not the Ambulance had been a component of the German Red Cross, or on the question of whether the women had known or could have known this beforehand (Romijn 1989).

Sometime around 1952, the Dutch special criminal jurisdiction and the purge of police and civil servants came to an end. In this period of ‘reconstruction’, the rebuilding of Dutch society after the war, a widespread and determined attitude towards the future prevailed, and the Easternfront Ambulance nurses were working hard to get their lives back on track. For the most part, they belonged to the 90.000 Dutch people who reintegrated into society with the help of their NBI and STPD supervisors. They went back to their (traditional) gender roles of nurse, mother and housewife, and entered into oblivion. The aversion against NSB and Nazi sympathisers, culminating in antipathy and exclusion, which existed for a very long time after the war, must have affected their lives on a daily basis. Nevertheless, the files of these women make no mention of it.

Possible motives

To find out more about the motives of the nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance, it was necessary to read between the lines. Mainly because, apart from some very precious ego documents, legal reports were the main primary sources available. These sources pose certain difficulties. It is quite possible that in what they said, the women were influenced by the post-war knowledge that they had been on the ‘wrong’ side of history, and that they would be punished for it. They probably said no more than necessary, or gave socially desirable answers, or hid certain things. It was sometimes obvious they tried to justify themselves or represent things in an incorrect light, but not as a rule. Moreover, these legal reports were written in difficult juridical terms – even quotations were often rewritten in a juridical fashion. For these reasons it was necessary to look behind what the women themselves claimed were their motives for other possible reasons which might be found in the available sources.

The motivations of these women to join a field hospital for the eastern front appear to differ considerably and it is likely these always included both different and interdependent motives.

The most frequent reason for applying given by the nurses themselves was the chance to care for others; it has to be taken into account that this also was a favourable allegation in the light of the special criminal jurisdiction. In most cases they claimed to have taken this opportunity out of an ideological sense of calling. A twenty-seven year old nursing auxiliary at the internment camp Duinrust (at Overveen, near Haarlem) said to the PRA in September 1946: ‘I only went to the eastern front as a nurse to serve mankind’ [‘Ik ben (…) uitsluitend als verpleegster naar het Oostfront gegaan om de mensheid te dienen’]. In a legal report of July 1946, another nurse, thirty-six years old and originating from Nijmegen, said about herself and her husband – who had been a doctor for the Easternfront Ambulance: ‘Our work was in the service of the suffering of mankind and nor my husband nor I have ever considered which patients we attended to’ [‘Ons werk was in dienst van de lijdende mensheid en noch mijn man noch ik, hebben ooit gekeken, wie wij behandelden’].

Frequently, these women appealed to the alleged neutrality of the Red Cross, making no distinction between the Dutch, German and international branches. A number of them spoke of their pre-war wish to join a field hospital commissioned by the Dutch Red Cross. One forty-three year old nurse who tried to challenge her loss of nationality wrote to the Special Court of Justice (Bijzonder Gerechtshof) in The Hague in November 1946: ‘It has always been my ardent wish to join such a field hospital as a nurse’ [‘Het [is] steeds myn vurige wensch geweest, eens als verpleegster aan zo’n ambulance te mogen deelnemen’].

The motive to care could also originate from less ideological, but more practical causes. The thirty-six year old nurse from Nijmegen said to the police in May 1946 that her choice for the Easternfront Ambulance was ‘an expression of professional duty’ [‘een uiting van beroepsgevoel’], ‘especially because my work activities in the Netherlands were finished’ [‘temeer daar de werkzaamheden in Nederland voor mij waren afgeloopen’] and she needed ‘something to do’ [‘iets te doen’]. Someone else – thirty years old when she was interrogated by the PRA at Hilversum – explained it like this: ‘After my nurses’ examinations I wanted to obtain my certificate for maternity care, but for this course I had to wait two years, and that was too long for me’ [‘Na mijn examen voor verpleegster wilde ik mijn kraamverpleegster diploma zien te halen, maar voor deze cursus moest ik twee jaar wachten, wat mij te lang was’]. In giving the motive to care, the women fell back on their devotion to nursing itself and underlined the contemporary altruistic image of the profession, but completely dropped the unique character of the Ambulance as an instrument for the German oppressor from consideration. This enabled their choice to travel to the East to be presented by them as the next reasonable step in their career.

As mentioned above, it was clear from their files that these nurses were members of National Socialist organisations like the NSB, the NSVO, the Dutch People’s Service (Nederlandse Volksdienst or NVD), the Dutch East Company (Nederlandse Oost Compagnie), the National Youth Storm (Nationale Jeugdstorm), the Dutch Labour Service (Nederlandse Arbeidsdienst) and the Medical Front. They read National Socialist newspapers and magazines like Volk en Vaderland and De Zwarte Soldaat and they supported National Socialist initiatives like the Winter Care (Winterhulp). Furthermore, their political preferences were not only apparent in their correspondence, but also in witness testimonies. Their choice of the Easternfront Ambulance could not only have been plausible for these women, but also logical, because their political orientation and background meant they were in closer contact with the Ambulance than nurses without NSB or Nazi sympathies (Tames 2013).

Despite this, only the nurse from Hilversum declared her political ideas to be a motive for joining the Easternfront Ambulance: ‘I was pro-German back then, and thus I have decided to apply for the SS Volunteer Legion, department Ambulance’ [‘Ik was in dien tijd pró Duitsch, en ik ben [sic] toen besloten, mij op te geven voor het Vrijwilligers Legioen Nederland, Afdeeling Ambulance’]. Presumably, most of the women concealed or downplayed such ideas to a degree as a Nazi or NSB background alone could be sufficient grounds for conviction. Anti-Semitism was seldom heard in the hearings, and mostly the interrogators did not ask about it. Only in a few cases were certain women explicitly accused of Anti-Semitic actions during the war back home. They both denied these accusations and claimed they had been against the persecution of the Jews. A more common motive to be raised was Anti-Communism; this could have been part of a wider strategy given the post-war context of the emerging Cold War, although Anti-Communist rhetoric was widespread during World War Two, including in the recruitment advertisements for the Ambulance. One thirty-one year old nurse told the POD at Schiedam in November 1945 that she had seen ‘a danger’ [‘een gevaar’] in Communism.

Interaction with soldiers seems to have also attracted these women to join the Easternfront Ambulance. Many nurses had previously cared for the military and most were in regular contact with German soldiers or Dutch members of the SS Volunteer Legion. It is very likely they were loyal to the soldiers who were ready to give up their lives in battle, even more so when it concerned their friends, family members and fiancés. One nurse, forty-one years old at the time of her interrogation by the PRA in De Bilt in June 1946, stated she was even persuaded by such a man – a doctor and Sturmbannführer with the Ambulance and the man she would later marry: ‘Because I made the acquaintance of Dr. (…), who was on the point of leaving for the eastern front, I also made the decision to go’ [‘Doordat ik toen in kennis kwam met Dr. (…), welke op het punt stond naar het Oostfront te vertrekken, besloot ik om ook te gaan’]. This woman was the only one who directly said something that touched on a possible secondary motive in this interaction with soldiers: it gave these women access to a world in which a certain freedom in the interaction with men was allowed.

Nevertheless, a possible longing for interaction with men in general was not something these nurses explicitly mentioned, and they were not asked to do so. At the time, such statements would be deemed ‘indecent’ and could have been damaging for their cases. However, the primary sources show through their actions that a longing for (certain) men could indeed have played a role. Short engagements, pregnancies outside of marriage, actual marriages – mostly shotgun ones – and affectionate correspondence with and from German soldiers and citizens and Easternfront Ambulance personnel, occurred with remarkable frequency. In the East, relations between the sexes were defined by other social rules than back in the Netherlands and the women must at least have suspected this when they applied. The loose morals at the eastern front were even mentioned in a file, when certain nurses were addressed on their supposed ‘misconduct’ at some point in 1943 or 1944. One of the doctors, who himself would later marry a nurse pregnant with his child, refuted these allegations in front of the military command. He said that these women ‘were somewhat busier with their love lives than was strictly necessary’ [‘wel iets meer aan de liefde [deden] dan strikt noodzakelijk’], but that most of them worked ‘very hard’ [‘zeer hard’]. Once married, nurses had to give up their work for the Ambulance (Carlier 2008).

Another possible, and in some cases perhaps interconnected, motive for joining the Easternfront Ambulance, seems to have been a craving for an adventurous life far from home. This was also not a motive mentioned in their post-war interrogations, but one of the nurses described her desire to live life to the fullest in an intercepted letter. In the fall of 1946, the single mother from Hilversum wrote to a man friend in Germany: ‘For me, the highlights were Kiev, Chelm (…) and what will follow, will never ever have that brilliance. I am glad that I could experience, what little other women ever live through. I was so happy, like I have never been again afterwards and will never be again. That was truly living, that happens only once, and it will not come back.’ [‘Voor mij waren de hoogtepunten KIEW, CHOLM (…) en wat er nog meer komt, kan nooit meer dezen glans hebben. Ik (…) verheug mij toch, dat ik mocht meemaken, wat menige vrouw heelemaal niet leert kennen. Ik was zoo gelukkig, zooals ik sindsdien niet meer geweest ben en ook niet meer word. Dat was pas leven, dat komt slechts een maal, dat komt niet meer terug’].

This woman had not only worked for the Easternfront Ambulance, but also for the German Red Cross, and she had tried to enlist for the Dutch People’s Service. Other nurses who seem to have wanted to go to the East whatever it took, sometimes chose to leave with other organisations when the deployment of the Ambulance was repeatedly delayed. The nurse who had mentioned Communism, stated in her legal report that in her youth she had read romantic books about nurses at the front. In their choice of the Ambulance these women seem to have craved a meaningful, unique existence, exciting even, during which they experienced things they would never have experienced otherwise. Even before they arrived in the East it must have been very clear for them that life at the front was going to be much more ‘thrilling’ than life in their occupied homeland.

Another motive not mentioned, but quite likely, was the right to financial and material allowances. All nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance received an increase in their salaries and they and their families were exempt from turning in their wireless sets, and received additional ration cards, fuel and sometimes even extra money. For ‘ordinary’ Dutch people, these things were not possible. This was therefore another reason a position with the Ambulance was alluring, especially for women from poorer backgrounds. The unqualified nurse who had stated only to have wanted to serve mankind, wrote in November 1943 to the Fürsorgeoffizier of the Waffen-SS at Den Bosch: ‘I sincerely hope my parents will shortly receive their coal allotment (…) I believe that in this time of year, it is otherwise somewhat harsh’ [‘[Ik] hoop dat mijn ouders nu toch spoedig in het bezit van hun kolentoewijzing zullen komen, (…) geloof dat het om deze tijd van het jaar toch wel wat kras is’]. It is possible the nurses did not mention these sorts of advantages so as not to appear selfish. Nursing was considered charitable work after all, even – perhaps even more so – in wartime.

Conclusions and call

It was not only the exceptional circumstances of war that defined the choice of over thirty nurses to go to the East with the Easternfront Ambulance during World War Two. Their own personal motives for associating themselves with an organisation closely bound to the German oppressor made me realise there is more to uncover, and it is twofold.

Firstly, as well as the time, place and (political) environment, gender as a social construct was of equal importance to their choice. Before the war, as nurses, thus with a respectable and even noble profession, these women made something of their lives in a socially accepted way. During the war, after they chose the Easternfront Ambulance and ended up in the German war machine, they were always treated as women, because while the gender role of nurse at the front brought certain freedoms and opportunities it also confirmed prevailing gender stereotypes. It concerned, after all, a uniquely ‘womanly’ position. In this respect, the situation of the Ambulance nurses resembles that of their German Red Cross counterparts. However, the Dutch nurses voluntarily went to the East, whereas a lot of German women had less choice. After the war, due to their gender, the Ambulance nurses were interned and sentenced in a different way than male collaborators were, and subsequently all returned to their pre-war gender roles.

Secondly, the image of the (Dutch) Red Cross played an influential part. During post-war interrogation, in their defence, most nurses not only presented themselves as ‘simply’ women, swallowed up by the extraordinary circumstances of their time, but also as ‘simply’ nurses pursuing their calling, working for a neutral, charitable organisation with interests which exceeded the goals of individual countries. In this, they echoed the Nazi propaganda that was used to recruit them. When looking back, most of them denied any relation between the Easternfront Ambulance and the SS Volunteer Legion or the German Red Cross. They leaned heavily upon all that was Dutch about the Ambulance and emphasised a neutrality that had actually never existed.

These women escaped the restrictions of Dutch patriarchal society and their – often underpaid – jobs in a frequently hostile work environment. They seized the opportunity to pull their weight in the propagation of National Socialism and the repulsion of Communism, and, on a personal level, they cared for their own loved ones and their comrades. They also enjoyed the financial and material benefits their position created for them, in addition to an ‘adventurous’ life far from home. These nurses ended up in various, complex gender roles in the public sphere (or Nazi medical sphere), because of their profession. In being a nurse, they obtained a considerable scope for action: as political perpetrators, bystanders and opportunists – as sympathisers of a criminal regime.

The motives of these nurses in joining the Easternfront Ambulance seem to have been very political. Being a woman and a nurse in war-time Netherlands was not sufficient reason to travel to the eastern front and support the German war effort, nor alone were many of the other above mentioned possible motives. The exception is their political orientation: having Nazi or NSB sympathies enabled these women to earnestly consider their future with the Ambulance, and then actually take this next step in their career. These Ambulance nurses were far from ignorant or passive, or only present in the private sphere.

Due to the lack of detailed research on this subject, I would like to be cautious with these conclusions. More studies into the different (gender) roles of Dutch women under Nazi rule are crucial to understand what possibly encouraged these women to actively contribute to National Socialism and make ‘wrong’ choices. Further research could then serve as an examination of the above speculations. It is likely that research into the motives of a much larger group of Dutch girls and women in joining the German Red Cross as Schwester-Helferinnen, could shed more light on the general situation of Dutch nurses during the German occupation. The Central Archives for Special Criminal Jurisdiction and the other archives it harbours possess an enormous number of primary sources about the lives and motives of these people. These files are probably the closest we will get to this generation, which has almost died out. I hope the story of the Easternfront Ambulance nurses will inspire this future research.²

Acknowledgments

With special thanks to Cees Kleijn, Jocelyn Krusemeijer, Stijn Reurs and Cecile aan de Stegge in providing me with several names of nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance, and to the sons of one of the nurses, who brought their mother to life for me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sietske van der Veen

Sietske van der Veen (1992) is an historian and journalist. She graduated in History from the University of Amsterdam (UvA), her master’s thesis concerning the nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance. After working freelance in public history for a few years, she is currently a PhD candidate at the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands (Huygens ING), where she researches the social mobility of Jewish Dutch with a high(er) social status (1880–1940).

Notes

1. The German sociologist Christina Herkommer was the first to use the term ‘scope for action’ in the context of women under National Socialism. With it, she tried to indicate the action potential of all these women to contribute to the Nazi objectives, directly or indirectly, and each in her own specific situation (Herkommer 2008).

2. I have published a shorter article about the nurses of the Easternfront Ambulance in Historica, Dutch-language scientific journal about gender history. Due to the gender focus of that publication, I left out some medical aspects, which are now included in this article. Moreover, the objective of this article to function as a programmatic call is broader, and thus the conclusion is also somewhat more elaborate than that of the Dutch publication.