The General Government was set up on 26 August 1914, when Field Marshal Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz was appointed as military governor of Belgium.

[1] Soon after Bissing's appointment, the German High Command divided Belgium into three distinct administrative zones.

[2] The second zone, under the control of the German Fourth Army, included the cities of Ghent and Antwerp and was known as the Etappengebiet ("Staging Area").

[2] The occupation pushed to the breaking point what few constraints international law then imposed on an occupying power.

A heavy-handed German military administration sought to regulate every detail of daily life, both on a personal level with travel restraints and collective punishment as on the economical level by harnessing the Belgian industry to the German advantage and by levying repetitive massive indemnities on the Belgian provinces.