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Anton van der Waals

Nederlands misdadiger (1912-1950)

Antonius van der Waals (Rotterdam, 11 October 1912 - Scheveningen, 26 January 1950) was a spy for the German Sicherheitsdienst (SD) during the war. He made at least 83 victims and played a leading role in the Englandspiel, which has cost the lives of many Dutch secret agents from England.

Antonius Van der Waal

In German circles he was sometimes called a V-mann or "Vertrauensmann." Common indications in the Netherlands were 'secret agent', 'infiltrator' and provocateur. His task was to penetrate Dutch resistance groups and to gather information, which had to lead to a rapid arrest of members of the resistance. Van der Waals operated under a multitude of false names. The relevant identity cards were either assigned to him by the SD, or Van der Waals obtained them through his own action, including murder, theft and confiscation.

Childhood

Anton van der Waals was born in 1912 as an unexpected descendant in a family with four children; brother Johan "Jo" (8 years), brother Gerard "Gerrie" (12 years), sister Dirkje "Dit" (13 years) and brother Frans (15 years). The family was reformed. He was baptized on October 26, 1912 in the Reformed Church in Rotterdam's Snellemanstraat. His call name was "Tom." At home he was crazy about building with meccano. Due to the increasingly weak health of his parents, who were already old, his oldest sister took him under her wing. His father, Gerard van der Waals, was a painter with his own company on the Van Houtenstraat. He was seven years younger than his wife, Adriana Wouterina (Arie) Van der Waals-Cranendonk. His father came from a Protestant nest from French-speaking Belgium. Van der Waals senior was also internally converted in his youth and considered it extremely important for his family to live according to the Bible.

Early career

In 1928 Van der Waals got a job with the Rotterdam trading company R.S. Stockfish, where he fulfilled an office job. He was now very impressed by the radio and the technology behind it. In the same year his father placed a radio receiver in the room, after which Van der Waals placed an antenna on the roof. In February 1929 he started a small repair company for radios and motorcycles in the Delfgaauwstraat, where the parental home was then. However, the company was not running enough to make a living. In 1931 he went to the technical craft school in Dordrecht. In February 1932 he left the art school due to financial shortages and disappointing results. Van der Waals went to help his father, who was suffering from poor health. When he was in the hospital, his son replaced him. This one always went very well dressed on the road.

Early career

In 1928 Van der Waals got a job with the Rotterdam trading company R.S. Stockfish, where he fulfilled an office job. He was now very impressed by the radio and the technology behind it. In the same year his father placed a radio receiver in the room, after which Van der Waals placed an antenna on the roof. In February 1929 he started a small repair company for radios and motorcycles in the Delfgaauwstraat, where the parental home was then. However, the company was not running enough to make a living. In 1931 he went to the technical craft school in Dordrecht. In February 1932 he left the art school due to financial shortages and disappointing results. Van der Waals went to help his father, who was suffering from poor health. When he was in the hospital, his son replaced him. This one always went very well dressed on the road.

Marriages

Van der Waals married Francien Goedhart on December 12, 1934. They divorced on 6 May 1936 because he would have withheld her membership of the NSB. In this period he earned extra as a repairer of radios and motorcycles. He made a radio invention, about which Philips NV tapped him; he would have violated their patent. He then stopped developing his invention.

He moved a lot during this period and regularly placed advertisements for a worker. This led to the meeting with Johanna Hendrika (Jopie) Groos, whom he married on May 20, 1936 (fourteen days after the divorce of his first wife). On February 14, 1937 he was employed as a salesman by the Electrical Engineering Company N.V. A. de Hoop, which was led by Lodewijk de Hoop. Anton lied in his appointment that he had an HBS diploma.

In August 1937 a son was born from the marriage with Jopie Groos: Gerard van der Waals, or 'Kleine Gerrie'. However, Van der Waals did not recognize Kleine Gerrie as his son. This led, along with other matters, on June 8, 1939 to the dissolution of his second marriage. On November 8 of that year he married the Frisian Aukje Grietje Harkina Smits, with whom he was already dating at the time of his marriage to Jopie Groos. Aukje understood that Van der Waals had only been married once before and that it had only taken two days. That this was different she discovered after November 1939.

Aukje often visited Kleine Gerrie, in contrast to Van der Waals, who did not consider the child worthy of a glance. The divorce between Van der Waals and Aukje took place on January 7, 1943. On 28 June 1944 he married Cornelia Johanna den Held under the name Hendrik Jan van Veen. This marriage was dissolved on February 15, 1945.

Inventor and spy

Lodewijk de Hoop, director of Electrical Engineering Company De Hoop, sent Van der Waals very regularly to the port of Rotterdam in the late summer of 1939, where he carried out repairs on submarines and other military ships. During that time he learned to speak English and German. After service, he regularly visited the 'Royal Ships' café on Witte de Withstraat, together with the ship's crew. There he became acquainted with (counter) spy life for the first time.

After the bombing of Rotterdam on May 14, 1940, chaos broke out in Rotterdam; companies remained closed for a number of weeks and looting was the order of the day. In those days, Van der Waals had mysteriously acquired two patent inventions, which he presented as his own spiritual children; a radio improvement and a crankless combustion engine. In September 1940 he presented the inventions to Lodewijk de Hoop. De Hoop did not trust it and returned the papers. Via his older brother Johan, Van der Waals came into contact with Ary van der Meer, the 38-year-old director of biscuit factory Paul C. Kaiser. Van der Meer was very willing to cooperate and, as a member of a young resistance group, prepared to pass on the invention to the English government. Van der Waals also presented itself as anti-German. Van der Meer introduced him to Jan Streef, an illegally active cadet from the Royal Military Academy. Following a meeting organized by Streef at Van der Waals' apartment on 24 April 1941, five of the seven members of the 'Van der Meer' resistance group were arrested by the SD in the following days.

On the payroll of the SD

On 30 April 1941, Van der Waals was introduced to Joseph Schreieder by a certain Möller, chief of the Aussenstelle of the Rotterdam Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Schreieder led the German counter espionage from the Binnenhof in The Hague. Schreieder managed to win over Van der Waals by deploying him in the Zaak-Bierhuijs. That case concerned the murder of a member of the German Wehrmacht by Hans Bierhuijs, a 22-year-old student at the MTS. Hans Bierhuijs was arrested by the SD on 9 May 1941, after a journey from Haarlem to Rotterdam at the request of Van der Waals. The SD players beat Bierhuijs with fur and blue, while Van der Waals watched. A note with the name 'Boom' was found on Bierhuijs' body. Van der Waals received the address of the 24-year-old MTS boom that same evening. The following day, Boom was arrested.

The Bierhuijs case was extended at the request of Schreieder to the resistance group of Heemstede, of which Bierhuijs was also a member. The group was set up by Josef Klingen, a religious brother who was a teacher at the Jacoba School in Heemstede. "Brother Josef" was also a radio amateur from the brother house St. Jean Baptist de la Salle on Herenweg. Within a few days, Van der Waals had built up so much confidence in Brother Josef that he shared with him all his secrets. Van der Waals no longer appeared at his work at De Hoop, but was still there on the payroll because they did not dare dismiss him.

Klinge Group

In the spring of 1941, the national organization of the various but numerous resistance groups in the Netherlands was still a long way off. In particular, the proliferation of various channels and the resulting identity-free calls to the British address led to the development of a universal coding system by a Delft professor. Henk Schoenmaker, a radio operator from Haarlem, would personally bring that system to England. On May 6, 1941, Shoemaker and Willem Zietse, a naval officer, were arrested by the SD while traveling from Schiedam to Scheveningen. On May 14, 1941, Radio Oranje played a certain verse from the Wilhelmus Volkslied. This was a sign for Brother Josef that Shoemaker and Zietse had arrived well. Of course, the German headquarters took part in a game to deceive the members of the resistance. This deception was necessary to uphold the confidence of the resistance men in V-man Anton van der Waals and thus to guarantee the continuity of the SD arrests. In this game, called 'Englandspiel' by the Germans, messages were sent under false identity that apparently came from the resistance. All this to drive people from the English resistance into German hands. Brother Josef was arrested on May 26, 1941. Three days later, on May 29, 1941, Embert Spreeuw and Adrianus van Amerongen were also arrested.

With every arrest where Van der Waals was physically present, he was also handcuffed. This was done to protect him from suspicions by members of the resistance who watched the arrests as bystanders. Most members of the Klingen Group were taken to the Scheveningen prison (Polizeigefängnis), called 'Oranjehotel' by the resistance.

Van den Endes distrust

Already after the arrest of a large number of members of the Streef Group between April 24 and May 4, 1941, distrust had arisen among the remaining members Jan van den Ende and Ary van der Meer. This suspicion reached a peak when on 2 June 1941 Van den Ende heard from Jan Kwak's wife that Kwak was locked up in the Oranjehotel, while earlier that afternoon Van der Waals told him that he had placed Kwak in a secret location in the Biesbosch. Van den Ende now knew for sure that Van der Waals lied.

Together with Otto Verdoorn, Van der Meer and Van den Ende prepared a liquidation plan. This led to two failed attempts. The third attempt was to take place in Van der Waals' apartment, at Franselaan 186b. The action was planned on the evening of 7 August 1941. That same day Van den Ende was arrested at 1 p.m. in the presence of Van der Waals. The following days the rest of the group was also arrested and taken to the Oranjehotel.

E-Group

The E-Group was a resistance group that got its name from Ernst de Jonge. Van der Waals came into contact with him through Kees Dutilh. On his birthday, Leen Pot and resistance fighter Althoff came to visit him, they were arrested. On the way to the Binnenhof, Leen Pot pulled away and the Spui disappeared and Vroom & Dreesmann fled inside. As a result, the E-Group had lost its agent and its channel. The messages were from now on sent via the Swedish Route to England, but that never went fast.

In January 1943 Kees Dutilh meets a man who introduces himself as Anton de Wilde, who later turns out to be Van der Waals. De Wilde pretended to have just come from England, had English cigarettes with him and detailed stories about life in London. Too detailed, Leen Pot thought, but Kees Dutilh trusted him. De Wilde, who was still working for Josef Schreieder, had to try to penetrate the E-Group. Dutilh was arrested during a meeting with De Wilde on 10 March and was shot on 24 February 1944. Leen Pot felt unsafe and left in June via the Swedish Route.

Murdered

In June 1943 the message was spread that Van der Waals was murdered. In September van der Waals left Delfzijl for Sweden, just before he had Allard Oosterhuis arrested, ending the Swedish Route. In Sweden he had to find out whether there were any illegal contacts between Sweden and the Netherlands, but he didn't get much wiser, so he returned in October. He went to live in Loosdrecht under the name H.J. van Veen.

After the war

In 1945 he moved to Zuidlaren. He reported to the Canadian Field Security, who handed him over to the British Special Counterintelligence. He was deployed by L. Einthoven, head of the National Security Bureau, to infiltrate Germany, but was delivered to the Netherlands in 1947. In 1948 he was brought before the Court of Justice in The Hague. Van der Waals is sometimes called the largest Dutch traitor of the Second World War. The outcome of his trial between April 1948 and January 1950 was therefore that there was sufficient evidence of his guilt for the arrest of 83 members of the resistance in German hands, of whom at least 34 were executed. Experts are convinced that the number of people extradited to the SD by Van der Waals is many times higher. For example, there is evidence that 72 resistance fighters from Delft were arrested as a result of Van der Waals turning them in and they were executed at Sachenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin on May 3, 1943. He was sentenced to death and executed on the Waalsdorp Vlakte on January 26, 1950.