20th-century pro-Waffen-SS lobbying group in West Germany
HIAG
Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS
Approximation of the logo used by HIAG
Successor
War Grave Memorial Foundation "When All Brothers Are Silent" (informal)
Formation
1951
Founded at
Bonn, West Germany
Dissolved
1992 nationally, some local groups remain active
Purpose
Legal, economic and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS
Methods
Lobbying Historical negationism Propaganda
Membership
20,000 in the early 1960s
Key people
Paul Hausser Otto Kumm Felix Steiner Kurt Meyer Herbert Gille Sepp Dietrich Wilhelm Bittrich Erich Kern Hubert Meyer
Main organ
Der Freiwillige ("The volunteer")
HIAG (German: Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS, lit. 'Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members') was a lobby group and a denialist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel in West Germany in 1951. Its main objective was to achieve legal, economic, and historical rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS.
To achieve these aims, the organisation used contacts with political parties, and employed multi-prong historical negationism and propaganda efforts, including periodicals, books, and public speeches. A HIAG-owned publishing house, Munin Verlag, served as a platform for its publicity. This extensive body of work, 57 book titles and more than 50 years of monthly periodicals, has been described by historians as revisionist apologia.
Always in touch with its members' Nazi past, HIAG was a subject of significant controversy, both in West Germany and abroad. The organisation drifted into open far-right extremism in its later history; it disbanded in 1992 at the federal level, but local groups continue to exist into the 21st century. Its monthly periodical, Der Freiwillige, survived until 2014. While HIAG only partially achieved its goals of legal and economic rehabilitation of the Waffen-SS, its propaganda efforts led to the reshaping of the image of the Waffen-SS in popular culture.
HIAG (German: Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS, lit. 'Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members')...
After the war he became a founding member and the first spokesperson of HIAG, a lobby group and a revisionist veterans' organisation, founded by former...
active in HIAG, a lobby group organised by former high-ranking Waffen-SS men, after his release. Meyer was a leading Waffen-SS apologist and HIAG's most effective...
of the war. After the war, Gille opened a book store and became active in HIAG, a lobby group and a revisionist veteran's organisation founded by former...
crimes against humanity. After the war, Kumm became one of the founders of HIAG, a lobby group and a revisionist organization of former Waffen-SS members...
sentenced to five years in prison. Following his release, he became active in HIAG, a revisionist organization and a lobby group of former Waffen-SS members...
Upon his release from Landsberg Prison in 1955, Dietrich became active in HIAG, a lobby group established by former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel. He...
former high-ranking Waffen-SS personnel, Steiner was a founding member of HIAG, a lobby group of negationistic apologists formed in 1951 to campaign for...
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Freiwillige was a German magazine, published from 1956 as the official organ of HIAG, a lobby group and a denialist veterans' organisation founded by former high-ranking...
Hitlerjugend in 1944. After the war, he became active in HIAG, a Waffen-SS negationist lobby group, and was HIAG's last chairman before the group dissolved in 1992...
a member of, and worked with the denialist Waffen-SS veteran lobby group HIAG. In recent assessments, some of Klink's work has been questioned due to his...
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and therefore had fought as "honourably" as it. Its veterans organisation, HIAG, attempted to cultivate a myth of their soldiers having been "Soldiers like...
revisionist account of the division's history, produced under the auspices of HIAG, a Waffen-SS lobby group in post-war West Germany. Born in 1914, Otto Weidinger...
the lobby group and revisionist organisation of former Waffen-SS members, HIAG, concluded with "comrades gathering around [Siebken's] tomb" and laying a...
Hohenstaufen and SS Polizei Division. After the war, Harzer became active in HIAG, a lobby group established by senior Waffen-SS men in 1951 in West Germany...
astonishing if there hadn't been." Germanic SS Glossary of Nazi Germany HIAG List of SS personnel List of Waffen-SS divisions Myth of the clean Wehrmacht...
and publisher affiliated with the pro-Waffen-SS revisionist history group HIAG, while the latter is a prolific author who lauded decorated Waffen-SS men...
time. He became chairman of the CSU in 1961. Strauss stated in a letter to HIAG in March 1957: "I think you know how I personally think about the front line...
involved with the construction of the tunnel are listed. David Emory Die Spinne HIAG Nazi gold Secretaría de Inteligencia (SIDE) Special Intelligence Service...
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