 When he first met with its leaders in 1951, Schumacher believed that 150,000 people were already members of HIAG, as evidenced by internal party correspondence; he considered that number to be "politically significant".In the same letter, Schumacher referred to the Waffen-SS as a "branch of the Wehrmacht".Later, the SPD defence policy expert Fritz Erler and Helmut Schmidt, a member of SPD parliamentary delegation and a future Chancellor of Germany, handled the relationship with HIAG.