government approved a reduction of his sentence to fourteen years. When he returned to Germany in 1951, he told a reporter that nationalism was past and that "a united Europe is now the only answer". HIAG activities and death Meyer became active in HIAG, the Waffen-SS lobby group formed in 1951 by former high-ranking Waffen-SS men including Paul Hausser, Felix Steiner and Herbert Gille, when he was released from prison. He was a leading Waffen-SS apologist. Meyer announced at a 1957 HIAG rally that although he stood behind his old commanders, Hitler made many mistakes and it was time to look to the future rather than the past. He said to about 8,000 ex-SS men at the 1957 HIAG convention in Karlsberg, Bavaria, "SS troops committed no crimes, except the massacre at Oradour, and that was the action of a single man". According to Meyer, the Waffen-SS was "as much a regular army outfit as any other in the Wehrmacht". Meyer's memoirs, Grenadiere (1957), were published as part of this campaign and were a glorification of the SS's part in the war and his role in it. The book, detailing Meyer's exploits at the front, was an element of Waffen-SS rehabilitation efforts. He condemned the "inhuman suffering" to which Waffen-SS personnel had been subjected "for crimes which they neither committed, nor were able to prevent". Historian Charles W. Sydnor called Grenadiere "perhaps the boldest and most truculent of the apologist works". The book was part of HIAG's campaign to promote the perception of the Waffen-SS in popular culture as apolitical, recklessly-brave fighters who were not involved in the war crimes of the Nazi regime, a perception which has since been refuted by historians. In July 1958, Meyer shook hands with SPD politician at a HIAG meeting. The event was widely discussed, with HIAG regarding it as good publicity. Many SPD members criticised Lohmar, saying that Meyer remained unapologetic about SS crimes and was an enemy of democracy despite his claims to the contrary. One of HIAG's de facto leaders, Meyer was appointed the organization's spokesperson in 1959. He presented himself in this capacity as pragmatic and loyal to the West German state, and HIAG as an apolitical group. Even though elements of HIAG increasingly aligned with extreme right-wing groups such as the Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP), Meyer continued to push for a more moderate image in the public. In a television