Anton Mussert speaking to
NSB recruits with
Reich Commissioner Arthur Seyss-Inquart, General
Hendrik Seyffardt and Rauter to the rear;
The Hague, October 1941 In May 1940, he was appointed
Generalkommissar für das Sicherheitswesen (General Commissioner for Security) and
Höherer SS-und Polizeiführer (Higher SS and Police leader) for the
occupied Netherlands. In his position as
police commander and highest ranking SS leader in the Netherlands, Rauter was responsible for the deportation of 110,000
Dutch Jews to the
Nazi concentration camps (6,000 survived) and the repression of the
Dutch resistance. He had 300,000
Dutchmen deported to Germany for
forced labour. His first victims to die were those killed during the armed break up of the
February strike on 26 February 1941, accounting for 9 dead that day: he also immediately declared a
state of emergency and ordered
summary executions. He was the chief promoter of terror through summary arrests and internment in the Netherlands. The SS set up a concentration camp named Herzogenbusch after the city of
's-Hertogenbosch, but located in the neighboring town of
Vught that gave the camp its name:
Kamp Vught. In total this camp detained 31,000 people, of whom some 735 were killed. Also, his SS manned a so-called
polizeiliches Durchgangslager or police transit camp near
Amersfoort, known as
Kamp Amersfoort, in fact also a concentration camp, where some 35,000 people were detained and maltreated and 650 people (Dutch and Russian) died. Rauter's SS also managed the
Kamp Westerbork (
polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork), the place from which some 110,000 Dutch Jews were deported to Nazi
concentration and
extermination camps, mainly
Auschwitz and
Sobibor. Under Rauter's guidance, a special block was built for 'political prisoners' (i.e. resistance workers) in the
Scheveningen prison. These were often held in
indefinite detention. In total 28,000 people were detained here over 4 years; many were severely mistreated, some were tried and 738 men and 21 women died here or on the nearby execution field, the
Waalsdorpervlakte (now a national place of remembrance). Rauter also instigated a system of retaliation for assaults on Nazi officials and their Dutch collaborators: one killed Nazi equalled ten Dutch victims, one killed Dutch collaborator equalled three Dutch victims. During 1944 these numbers sharply increased with the rise of resistance violence. During the Allied assault on
Arnhem in
Operation Market Garden, Rauter took the active field command of the
Kampfgruppe Rauter during operations in the
Veluwe area and near the bridges over the
IJssel river.
Kampfgruppe Rauter consisted of the
Landstorm Nederland,
Wachbataillon Nordwest and a regiment of the
Ordnungspolizei. After the assault on Arnhem had been fought off by the Germans, Rauter was given the command of the Maas front as a General in the
Waffen-SS. In the night of 6–7 March 1945 he was severely wounded by an attack staged by the Dutch resistance at
Woeste Hoeve on the
Veluwe, a small village between
Arnhem and
Apeldoorn. In a reprisal organised by SS-
Brigadeführer Karl Eberhard Schöngarth, the Germans executed 117 political prisoners at the location of the attack as well as 50 prisoners in
Kamp Amersfoort and 40 prisoners each in
The Hague and
Rotterdam—a total of 263 persons were killed. This attack had not been planned; the resistance merely wanted to hijack a truck and use it to drive to a farmer who had butchered cows for the German army. Instead of the truck, Rauter's
BMW motorcar was stopped by members of the resistance dressed in German
uniforms. However, Rauter had just two weeks earlier issued a directive stating that German patrols should not stop any German military vehicles outside towns or villages, and a firefight broke out. His fellow passengers were all killed, but Rauter feigned death and survived. He was found by a German military
patrol and transferred to a hospital where he remained until his arrest by
British Military Police after the end of hostilities. == After the war ==