Andries Jan Pieters (2 August 1916 – 21 March 1952) was a Dutch war criminal and, together with Artur Albrecht, was one of the last two people to be executed in the Netherlands. Pieters served as a volunteer for Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. When he was wounded he returned to the Netherlands and in the final months of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he led a SS commando in the Netherlands, which tortured and executed resistance members and others.

Early life

Pieters was born in 1916 in Leksula, Eastern

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

, as the son of a Protestant

missionary A missionary is a member of a Religious denomination, religious group which is sent into an area in order to promote its faith or provide services to people, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care, and economic development.Tho ...

. Pieters was frustrated during his childhood as he was not allowed to play with native Indonesian children. His father was stern and was recalled to the Netherlands due to mismanagement. In 1924 the family returned to the Netherlands and settled in

Groningen Groningen (; gos, Grunn or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen province in the Netherlands. The ''capital of the north'', Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of the northern part of t ...

. His father started a furniture shop which went bankrupt after a while. Pieters claimed this was caused by "Jewpeople". After failing at school Pieters joined the

armed forces of the Netherlands The Netherlands Armed Forces ( nl, Nederlandse krijgsmacht) are the military services of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The core of the armed forces consists of the four service branches: the Royal Netherlands Navy (), the Royal Netherlands Ar ...

World War II

In 1941, one year after the invasion of the Netherlands by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

, Pieters joined the ''Vreemdelingenlegioen Nederland'', a foreign volunteer force of the SS. He was sent to the Eastern Front. In a police-interview in 1947 Pieters said the reason he joined the Vreemdelingenlegioen was because of his upbringing he was fiercely anti-communist and therefore wanted to fight communism. Near the end of the war he was wounded. SS-leader

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

gave orders to small groups of SS-members to return to their home country and start a guerrilla war. These groups were under command of

Otto Skorzeny Otto Johann Anton Skorzeny (12 June 1908 – 5 July 1975) was an Austrian-born German SS-''Obersturmbannführer'' (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-SS during World War II. During the war, he was involved in a number of operations, including th ...

. Himmler gave Pieters a carte blanche to do what he considered necessary. In early 1945 he joined the Jagdverband Nord/West in

Neustrelitz Neustrelitz (; East Low German: ''Niegenstrelitz'') is a town in the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte district in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. It is situated on the shore of the Zierker See in the Mecklenburg Lake District. From 1738 ...

. Pieters held the rank of

Untersturmführer (, ; short: ''Ustuf'') was a paramilitary rank of the German ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) first created in July 1934. The rank can trace its origins to the older SA rank of ''Sturmführer'' which had existed since the founding of the SA in 1921. ...

and commanded of a group of thirty men, which he there trained for secret fighting missions in the Netherlands. The group of men was known as Kommando Zeppelin or Kommando Steinbach, after the pseudonym of Pieters. On 6 or 7 April the group of men took over control of Castle Groot Engelenburg in

Brummen Brummen () is a municipality and a village in the eastern Netherlands. Brummen has a small railway station - Brummen railway station on the line between Zutphen and Arnhem. The village is situated about southwest of Zutphen, no farther than 1 ...

. The group captured dozens of resistance members and perceived resistance members, mainly due to information provided by local SS and SD officials. In the castle the group tortured their victims by hitting them with batons, preventing blood from reaching the genitals, putting out candles on bodies, hitting nails under toe and fingernails, poking with fire irons and rape. On 13 April 1945 the group left the castle when the Canadian armed forces were closing in on Brummen. Before leaving eight prisoners were shot to death and left in the castle pond. Pieters and his group moved to the town of

Loosdrecht Loosdrecht () is a town in the municipality of Wijdemeren, North Holland, the Netherlands, with a population of about 8,600 inhabitants. Loosdrecht consists of two small villages: Nieuw-Loosdrecht and Oud-Loosdrecht. Nieuw Loosdrecht covers a ...

, and took occupance in cafe-restaurant ''het Witte Huis''. In Loosdrecht the group resumed its rounding up of (perceived) resistance members and tortured them. One prisoner died during the torture and another female captive died soon after the liberation of Loosdrecht. A total of 33 people were taken captive by the group, including a whole family of Jews who had been in hiding from the Nazis. The acts of the group were perceived to be so heinous that they were arrested by German police on 3 May 1945. The order to arrest them was given by either the highest SS-member in the Netherlands,

Karl Eberhard Schöngarth Karl Eberhard Schöngarth (22 April 1903 – 16 May 1946) was a German SS officer during the Nazi era. He was a war criminal who perpetrated mass murder and genocide in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust. After the war, Schöngarth and s ...

, or

Willy Lages Willy Paul Franz Lages (5 October 1901 – 2 April 1971) was the German chief of the Sicherheitsdienst in Amsterdam during the Second World War. From March 1941 he led the so-called ''Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung'' (Central Bur ...

, who was later sent to life imprisonment for war crimes himself. Either way, an argument arose between Pieters and Schöngarth, with Schöngarth ordering Pieters to stop his torture practices and disband his unit and Pieters refusing repeatedly because he had been given permission by Himmler. Schöngarth only ordered Pieters' arrest two weeks after the start of the argument. Two days after the group was arrested the German forces in the Netherlands surrendered. Journalist Stijn Wiegerinck claims that Pieters would have been executed by the Germans for desertion.

Trial and execution

In 1949 the trial of Pieters started. There were dozens of witnesses of both the torture and executions against Pieters. In June 1949 he was sentenced to death by the

Bijzonder Gerechtshof The Bijzonder Gerechtshof (Dutch for "Special Court of Justice") was a special court that was established in the Netherlands to try defendants accused of committing high treason, treason and war crimes immediately after the country's liberation dur ...

of Amsterdam. An obligationary appeal was launched, with the main question surrounding the responsibility of Pieters regarding the executions. He admitted being involved in the torture but claimed the executions were carried out by his subordinates. A German SD officer was already sentenced as the prime suspect in the case of the executions. The Court of Appeal quashed the sentence by the Bijzonder Gerechtshof of Amsterdam. The case was reassigned to the Bijzonder Gerechtshof of Haarlem, there Pieters received a life sentence. The prosecutor appealed the sentence. The Court of Appeal was divided on the issue, with five for capital punishment and two for life imprisonment. In November 1951 the Court of Appeal sentenced him to death. Pieters then sought a pardon by

Queen Juliana Juliana (; Juliana Louise Emma Marie Wilhelmina; 30 April 1909 – 20 March 2004) was Queen of the Netherlands from 1948 until her abdication in 1980. Juliana was the only child of Queen Wilhelmina and Prince Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Sh ...

. He claimed that his bad youth experiences and a misplaced sense of duty to fight against communism had motivated him. He saw it as part of angry psychosis. A pardon was regular practice, as of 154 death sentences only 39 were actually carried out, while 101 received a pardon. In 1951 there were only seven death sentences remaining to be discussed between the Queen and the Dutch minister of Justice,

Hendrik Mulderije Hendrik Mulderije (4 January 1888, Zutphen – 18 March 1970, Amsterdam) was a Dutch politician of the Christian Historical Union (CHU). He was Minister of Justice in the First Drees cabinet from 1951 to 1952. References *Parlement.com biogr ...

. Mulderije sought as many death penalties as possible while Queen Juliana sought the opposite. A compromise was made, with four receiving a pardon and two were to be executed, another case would be decided later. Pieters was to be executed, together with German Artur Albrecht. In January 1952 the Dutch minister of Justice, Hendrik Mulderije, called the crimes committed by the group of Pieters to be among the worst during the German occupation. The Dutch judges called his crimes the most serious they had seen during all their cases after

. On 20 March 1952 Pieters was informed of his execution the next day. He started a small prison riot, which could only be put down when his attorney calmed him down. Pieters was executed, together with Albrecht, before a

firing squad Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are us ...

at the

Waalsdorpervlakte The Waalsdorpervlakte () is an open place in the dune area "Meijendel" (The Hague, Netherlands), where between 250 and 280 members of the Dutch resistance were killed by the Germans during World War II. After the liberation of the Netherlands, N ...

on 21 March 1952, near

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...

. They were the last persons to be executed in the Netherlands.

Personal life

Journalist Stijn Wiegerinck, who wrote the book ''Het commando-Pieters'' about Pieters and his actions called him a deeply frustrated man, citing a failure of projects gone wrong, a failed marriage and poor choices.

References

External links