German occupation of Belgium during World War II

incurred during the fighting in May 1940 Belgium had pursued a policy of neutrality since its independence in 1830, successfully avoiding becoming a belligerent in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). In World War I, the German Empire invaded Belgium. During the ensuing occupation, the Allies encouraged Belgian workers to resist the occupiers through non-compliance, leading to large-scale reprisals against Belgian civilians by the German army. As political tensions escalated in the years leading to World War II, the Belgian government again announced its intention to remain neutral in the event of war in Europe. The military was reorganised into a defensive force and the country left several international military treaties it had joined in the aftermath of World War I. Construction began of defences in the east of the country. When France and Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, Belgium remained strictly neutral while mobilising its reserves. Without warning, the Germans invaded Belgium on 10 May 1940. During the Battle of Belgium, the Belgian army was pushed back into a pocket in the northwest of Belgium and surrendered on 28 May. The government fled to France, and later the United Kingdom, establishing an official government in exile under pre-war Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot. They were responsible for forming a small military force made up of Belgian and colonial troops, known as the Free Belgian Forces and which fought as part of the Allied forces. ==Administration and governance==

and all of Belgium except Eupen-Malmédy. Shortly after the surrender of the Belgian army, the (a "Military Administration" covering Belgium and the two French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais) was created by the Germans with Brussels as administrative centre. Germany annexed Eupen-Malmedy, a German-speaking region that Belgium had seized after the Treaty of Versailles of 1919. The Military Government was placed under the control of General Alexander von Falkenhausen, an aristocrat and career soldier. Under von Falkenhausen's command, the German administration had two military units at its disposal: the ("Field Gendarmerie", part of the ) and the Gestapo (the "Secret State Police", part of the SS). The section of the Military Government that dealt with civil matters, the , commanded by Eggert Reeder, was responsible for all economic, social and political matters in the territory. The committee also hoped to be able to prevent the implementation of more radical German policies, such as forced labour and deportation. Leopold III Leopold III became King of the Belgians in 1934, following the death of his father Albert I in a mountaineering accident. Leopold was one of the key exponents of Belgian political and military neutrality before the war. Under the Belgian Constitution, Leopold played an important political role, served as commander-in-chief of the military, and personally commanded the Belgian army in May 1940. On 28 May 1940, the King surrendered to the Germans alongside his soldiers. That violated the constitution, as it contradicted the orders of his ministers, who wanted him to follow the example of the Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and flee to France or England to rally resistance. His refusal to leave Belgium undermined his political legitimacy in the eyes of many Belgians, and was viewed as a sign of his support for the new order. He was denounced by the Belgian Prime Minister, Hubert Pierlot, and declared "incompetent to reign" by the government in exile. Leopold was keen to find an accommodation with Germany in 1940, hoping that Belgium would remain as a unified and semi-autonomous state within a German-dominated Europe. No agreement was reached, and Leopold returned to Belgium. For the rest of the war, Leopold was held under house-arrest in the Palace of Laeken. In 1941, while still incarcerated, he married Mary Lilian Baels, undermining his popularity with the Belgian public, which disliked Baels and considered the marriage to discredit his claim to martyr status. While imprisoned, he sent a letter to Hitler in 1942 credited with saving an estimated 500,000 Belgian women and children from forced deportation to munitions factories in Germany. In January 1944, Leopold was moved to Germany where he remained for the rest of the war. Despite his position, Leopold remained a figurehead for right-wing resistance movements and Allied propaganda portrayed him as a martyr, sharing his country's fate. Attempts by the government in exile to pursue Leopold to defect to the Allied side were unsuccessful; Leopold consistently refused to publicly support the Allies or to denounce German actions such as the deportation of Belgian workers. After the war, allegations that Leopold's surrender had been an act of collaboration provoked a political crisis over whether he could return to the throne; known as the Royal Question. While a majority voted in March 1950 for Leopold's return to Belgium as king, his return in July 1950 was greeted with widespread protests in Wallonia and a general strike which turned deadly when police opened fire on protesters, killing four on 31 July. The next day Leopold announced his intention to abdicate in favour of his son, Baudouin, who took a constitutional oath before the United Chambers of the Belgian Parliament as Prince Royal on 11 August 1950. Leopold formally abdicated on 16 July 1951 and Baudouin ascended the throne and again took a constitutional oath the following day. ==Life in occupied Belgium==

Living standards in occupied Belgium decreased significantly from pre-war levels. Wages stagnated, while the occupying authorities tripled the amount of money in circulation, leading to rampant inflation. The occupying authorities tightly controlled which newspapers could be published and what news they could print. Newspapers of pro-Nazi political parties continued to be printed, along with so-called "stolen" newspapers such as Le Soir or Het Laatste Nieuws, which were published by pro-German groups without their owners' permission. Most Belgians continued their pre-war professions during the occupation. The Belgian cartoonist Hergé, whose work since 1928 had contributed to the popularisation of comics in Europe, The German occupying authority used Belgium's reliance on food imports as a bargaining tool. The amount of food permitted to Belgian citizens was roughly two-thirds of that allowed to comparable German citizens and was amongst the lowest in occupied Europe. On average, scarcity of food led to a loss of five to seven kilograms of weight per Belgian in 1940 alone. A Belgian citizen was entitled to of bread each day, Allied bombing Lancaster bombers attack the Belgian town of St. Vith in the Ardennes, 1944. Factories, ports and other strategic sites used by the German war effort were frequent targets of Allied bombers from both the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and American United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Many of these were located in towns and cities, and inaccuracy of the bombing resulted in substantial civilian casualties. In the early years of the occupation, Allied bombing took the form of small-scale attacks on specific targets, such as the ports of Knokke and Zeebrugge, and on airfields. The Germans encouraged the building of 6,000 air-raid shelters between 1941 and 1942, at a cost of 220 million francs. From 1943, the Allies began targeting sites in urban areas. In a raid on the Erla Motor Works in the town of Mortsel (near Antwerp) on 5 April 1943, just two bombs dropped by the B-17 Flying Fortresses of the U.S. 8th Air Force fell on the intended target. The remaining 24 tonnes of bombs fell on civilian areas, killing 936 and injuring 1,340 more. ==Economic situation==

The German government levied the costs of the military occupation on the Belgians through taxes, while also demanding "external occupation costs" (or "Anti-Bolshevik charges") to support operations elsewhere. In total, Belgium was forced to pay nearly two-thirds of its national income for these charges, equalling 5.7 billion Reichsmarks (equivalent to billion euros) over the course of the occupation. The value of the Belgian franc was artificially suppressed, further increasing the size of the Anti-Bolshevik charge and benefitting German companies exporting to the occupied country. The considerable Belgian gold reserves, on which the Belga had been secured, were mostly transported to Britain, Canada and the United States before the German invasion. Over 198 tonnes, however, had been entrusted to the Banque de France before the war, and shipped to Dakar in French West Africa. Under the pro-German Vichy régime, the gold was seized by the Germans, who used it to buy munitions from neutral Switzerland and Sweden. Galopin Doctrine Before fleeing in May 1940, the Belgian government established a body of important economic figures, under the leadership of Alexandre Galopin, known as the "Galopin Committee". Galopin was the director of the Société Générale de Belgique (SGB), a company which dominated the Belgian economy and controlled almost 40 percent of the country's industrial production. The committee was able to negotiate with the German authorities and was also in contact with the government in exile. The policy hoped to prevent a repeat of World War I, when the Allies had encouraged Belgian workers to passively resist the Germans by refusing to work. The Germans instead deported Belgian workers and industrial machinery to German factories, benefitting their economy more. Between 1941 and 1942, the German authorities began to force Belgian businessmen to make an explicit choice between obeying the Doctrine (and refusing to produce war materials, at risk of death) and circumventing the doctrine as collaborators. Deportation and forced labour near Ostend, constructed by Before 1941, Belgian workers could volunteer to work in Germany; nearly 180,000 Belgians signed up, hoping for better pay and living conditions. About 3,000 Belgians joined the (OT), and 4,000 more joined the paramilitary German supply corps, the (NSKK). The numbers, however, proved insufficient. Despite the protestation of the Secretaries-General, compulsory deportation of Belgian workers to Germany began in October 1942. At the beginning of the scheme, Belgian firms were obliged to select 10 percent of their work force, but from 1943 workers were conscripted by age class. Working conditions for forced workers in Germany were notoriously poor. Workers were paid little and worked long hours, and those in German towns were particularly vulnerable to Allied aerial bombing. Following the introduction of compulsory deportation 200,000 Belgian workers (dubbed or ) went into hiding for fear of being conscripted. The were often aided by resistance organisations, such as Organisation Socrates run by the , who provided food and false papers. Many went on to enlist in resistance groups, swelling their numbers enormously from late 1942. ==Belgian prisoners of war==

After the Belgian defeat, around 225,000 Belgian soldiers (around 30 percent of the total force mobilised in 1940) The majority of those in captivity (145,000) were Flemish, and 80,000 were Walloons. ==Repression==

, a prison camp largely reserved for resistance members and political dissidents, near Mechelen In the first year of the occupation, the German administration pursued a conciliatory policy toward the Belgian people in order to gain their support and co-operation. This policy was, in part, because there was little resistance activity and because the demands the Germans needed to place on Belgian civilians and businesses were relatively small on account of their military success. From 1941, the regime became significantly more repressive. From August 1941, the Military Government announced that for every German murdered by the resistance, five Belgian civilian hostages would be executed. Although the German military command, the (OKW), had advised a ratio of 50 civilians for every one German soldier killed, von Falkenhausen moderated the policy and decreed that the hostages be selected from political prisoners and criminals rather than civilians picked at random. Jews made up the largest non-Christian population in the country, numbering between 70 and 75,000 out of a population of 8 million. Most lived in large towns and cities in Belgium, such as Antwerp and Brussels. The vast majority were recent immigrants to Belgium fleeing persecution in Germany and Eastern Europe and, as a result, only a small minority actually possessed Belgian citizenship. The Committee of Secretaries-General refused from the start to co-operate on passing any anti-Jewish measures and the Military Government seemed unwilling to pass further legislation. The German government began to seize Jewish-owned business and forced Jews out of positions in the civil service. In April 1941, without orders from the German authorities, members of the and other Flemish fascists pillaged two synagogues in Antwerp and burned the house of the chief Rabbi of the town in the so-called "Antwerp Pogrom". The Germans also created a in the country, the (AJB; "Association of Jews in Belgium") in which all Jews were required to inscribe. As part of the "Final Solution" from 1942, the persecution of Belgian Jews escalated. From May 1942, Jews were forced to wear yellow Star-of-David badges to mark them out in public. Among them was the celebrated artist Felix Nussbaum. From 1942 and the introduction of the Star-of-David badges, opposition to the treatment of the Jews among the general population in Belgium grew. By the end of the occupation, more than 40 percent of all Jews in Belgium were in hiding; many of them hid by gentiles and in particular Catholic priests and nuns. Some were helped by the organised resistance, such as the (CDJ), which provided food and safe housing. Many of the Jews in hiding went on to join the armed resistance. The treatment of Jews was denounced by the senior Catholic priest in Belgium, Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey, who described their treatment as "inhuman". The had a notably large Jewish section in Brussels. In April 1943, members of the CDJ attacked the twentieth rail convoy to Auschwitz and succeeded in rescuing many of the passengers. Political dissent Because of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, signed in 1939, the Communist Party was briefly tolerated in the early stages of the occupation. He was arrested at his home in Belgium in 1943 and deported to Buchenwald concentration camp where he died in 1944. In 1940, the German army requisitioned a former Belgian army fort at Breendonk and transformed it into an or prison camp. Initially, the prison camp was used for detaining Jews, but from 1941 most of those detained at Breendonk were political prisoners or captured members of the resistance. Though it was reasonably small, the camp was infamous for its poor conditions and high death rate. It was also where summary executions of hostages as reprisals for resistance actions occurred. Unusually, Breendonk was mainly guarded by Flemish collaborators of the , rather than German soldiers. Prisoners were often tortured, or even mauled by the camp commander's dog, and forced to move tonnes of earth around the fort by hand. Many were summarily executed and still more died as a result of the conditions at the camp. Of the 3,500 people incarcerated in Breendonk between November 1942 and April 1943, around 300 people were killed in the camp itself with at least 84 dying as a result of deprivation or torture. Few inmates remained long in Breendonk itself and were sent on to larger concentration camps in Germany. ==Collaboration==

Both Flanders and Wallonia had right-wing Fascist parties which had been established in the 1930s, often with their own newspapers and paramilitary organisations. All had supported the Belgian policy of neutrality before the war, but after the start of the occupation began to collaborate actively with the Germans. Because of their different ideological backgrounds, they often differed with the Nazis on a variety of ideological issues such as the role of Catholicism or the status of Flanders. Though allowed more freedom than other political groups, the Germans did not fully trust these organisations and, even by the end of 1941, identified them as a potential "threat to state security". Around 15,000 Belgians served in two separate divisions of the Waffen-SS, divided along linguistic lines. In particular, many Belgians were persuaded to work with the occupiers as a result of long-running hostility to Communism, particularly after the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. By 1944, Belgian collaborationist groups began to feel increasingly abandoned by the German government as the situation deteriorated. As resistance attacks against them escalated, collaborationist parties became more violent and launched reprisals against civilians, including the Courcelles Massacre in August 1944. In Flanders in 1941 Before the war, several Fascist movements had existed in Flanders. The two major pre-war Flemish Movement parties, the (VNV) and , called for the creation of an independent authoritarian Flanders or "Dietse Staat" encompassing both Flanders and the Netherlands. Shortly after the occupation, VNV decided to collaborate with the Germans and soon became the biggest group in Flanders, gaining many members after disbanded in 1941 and after fusing with the Flemish wing of the nationwide Fascist . DeVlag was closely affiliated to the paramilitary ("General-SS Flanders"), which was stationed in Belgium itself and involved in the so-called Antwerp Pogrom of 1941. In Wallonia Though both Fascist and anti-Semitic, 's ideology had been more closely aligned with Benito Mussolini's than with the Nazi Party before the war. 's newspaper , which frequently attacked perceived Nazi anti-clericalism, had even been banned from circulation in Germany in the 1930s. With the German invasion, however, rapidly accepted the occupation and became a major force in collaboration in Wallonia. . The caption reads "You defend Belgium... by fighting on the Eastern Front". As a result of the , was not given the same favoured status accorded to Flemish Fascists. The were responsible for numerous attacks against Jews Léon Degrelle, the founder and leader of , offered to form a "Walloon Legion" in the Wehrmacht, but his request was denied by the Germans who questioned its feasibility. It was finally accepted in July 1941, after the invasion of Russia, and Degrelle enlisted. As part of the , the Germans refused Degrelle's demands for a "Belgian Legion", preferring to support the creation of separate linguistic units. After a brief period of fighting, it became clear that the Walloon Legion suffered from a lack of training and from political infighting. It was reformed and sent to the Eastern Front, and became part of the Waffen SS (as the 28th SS Wallonien Division) in 1943. During the fighting at the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket, the unit was nearly annihilated and its popular commander, Lucien Lippert, was killed. In order to make up numbers, and because of a lack of Belgian volunteers, the unit was allocated French and Spanish volunteers. ==Resistance==

Resistance to the German occupiers began in Belgium in the winter of 1940, after the German defeat in the Battle of Britain made it clear that the war was not lost for the Allies. Involvement in illegal resistance activity was a decision made by a minority of Belgians (approximately five percent of the population) but many more were involved in passive resistance. and around 17,000 were killed during the occupation. Striking was the most notable form of passive resistance and often took place on symbolic dates, such as 10 May (the anniversary of the German invasion), 21 July (National Day) and 11 November (anniversary of the German surrender in World War I). Attacks on German soldiers were comparatively rare as the German administration made a practice of executing at least five Belgian hostages for each German soldier killed. At great personal risk, Belgian civilians also hid large numbers of Jews and political dissenters hunted by the Germans. Belgian groups such as the Comet Line specialized in helping allied airmen shot down by the Germans evade capture. They sheltered the airmen and, at great risk to themselves, escorted them through occupied France to neutral Spain from where the airmen could be transported back to Britain. The resistance was never a single group; numerous groups evolved divided by political affiliation, geography or specialisation. The danger of infiltration posed by German informants meant that some groups were extremely small and localised, and although nationwide groups did exist, they were split along political and ideological lines. They ranged from the far left, such as the Communist or Socialist , to the far-right, such as the monarchist and the , which had been created by members of the pre-war Fascist movement. Some, such as , had no obvious political affiliation, but specialised in particular types of resistance activity and recruited only from very specific demographics. ==Liberation==

In June 1944, the Western Allies landed in Normandy in Northern France, around west of the Belgian border. After fierce fighting in the areas around the landing sites, the Allies broke through the German lines and began advances toward Paris and then toward the Belgian border. By August, the main body of the German army in Northern France (with the exception of the garrisons of fortified towns such as Dunkirk) was openly retreating eastward. By 4 September, Brussels was in Allied hands. The Belgian government in exile returned to the country on 8 September and began rebuilding the Belgian state and army. Leopold III's brother, Charles, was appointed Prince-Regent while a decision was made about whether the King could return to his functions. As the German army regrouped and the Allies' supply lines became stretched, the front line stabilised along Belgium's eastern border. Areas in the south-east of the country remained in German hands, and were briefly recaptured during the German Ardennes Offensive in the winter of 1944. This no more than delayed the total liberation of the country and on 4 February 1945, with the capture of the village of Krewinkel, the entire country was in Allied hands. Over the course of the occupation, a total of 40,690 Belgians were killed, over half of them Jews. Around eight percent of the country's pre-war GDP had been destroyed or removed to Germany. ==See also==