Other Dutch forced laborers told him that if he joined the Germanic SS, he could ask for an assignment in the Netherlands and be trained as a police officer on the Avegoor estate near Ellecom.

He was arrested and imprisoned in Port Natal near Assen, an abandoned psychiatric hospital that had been turned into a work camp by the Nazis.

After the general election of 1977, Aantjes was offered the Ministry of Justice in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Dries van Agt.

[6] In 1978, Loe de Jong of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation was confronted with stories about Aantjes's alleged sympathies for Nazism.

[7] On 6 November 1978, De Jong announced in a press conference that Aantjes had signed up for the Waffen-SS in World War II, and that he had been a camp guard in Port Natal.

Aantjes argued he had joined the Germanic SS because he believed that this was the only legal way to escape from forced labor in Güstrow.

A later investigation showed that Aantjes was right and had instead been interned at Port Natal, and De Jong admitted to having made a mistake.