German occupation of Belgium during World War I

Beginning in August 1914 with the invasion of neutral Belgium, the country was almost completely overrun by German troops before the winter of the same year as the Allied forces withdrew westwards.

The German occupation administration repressed political dissent and launched numerous unpopular measures, including the deportation of Belgian workers to Germany and forced labour on military projects.

As a result, numerous resistance movements were founded which attempted to sabotage military infrastructure, collect intelligence for the Allies or print underground newspapers.

News of the atrocities, also widely exaggerated by the Allied press, raised considerable sympathy for the Belgian civilian population in occupied Belgium.

The German invasion, together with the Allied blockade meant that as early as September 1914, various Belgian organisations had been preparing for the onset of famine in the occupied territory.

After negotiations with both the Allies and Central Powers, the CNSA managed to secure permission to import food from the neutral United States.

The organisation fulfilled much of the day-to-day running of a welfare system and generally prevented famine, although food and material shortages were extremely common throughout the occupation.

[18] Historians have described the CNSA itself, with its central committee and local networks across the country, as paralleling the actions of the official Belgian government in peacetime.

To offset the costs of occupation, the German administration demanded regular "war contributions" of 35 million Belgian francs each month.

[21] The contribution considerably exceeded Belgium's pre-war tax income and so, in order to pay it, Belgian banks used new paper money to buy bonds.

[20] Fiscal chaos, coupled with problems of transportation and the requisition of metal led to a general economic collapse as factories ran out of raw materials and laid off workers.

From 1915, the Germans encouraged Belgian civilians to enlist voluntarily to work in Germany but the 30,000 recruits of the policy proved insufficient to meet demands.

With the appointment of Erich Ludendorff to commander of the General Staff, the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL), in August 1916, the German administration began actively considering the idea of forcibly deporting Belgian workers to Germany to resolve the problem.

[32] The policy, encouraged by the high levels of unemployment in occupied Belgium, marked a wider turn towards more oppressive rule by the German administration.

[36] In 1915, the Governor General decided to launch the Flamenpolitik (Flemish Policy) to use the animosity between the two language groups to facilitate the administration of the territory and to portray the occupation regime as the liberation of Flanders.

[38] The policy was especially advocated by pan-Germanists, like the Alldeutscher Verband, who believed that the Flemish shared racial traits with the Germans that the Walloons did not.

On 22 December 1917, without prior consultation with the occupation authorities, the RVV declared Flanders to be independent and dissolved itself to prepare for elections for a new Flemish government.

[43] The Belgian court of appeal sent out warrants for the arrest of two leading members of the council, Pieter Tack and August Borms, but the Germans freed them and instead deported the judges responsible.

[47] Numerous high-profile Belgian figures, including Adolphe Max, the mayor of Brussels, and the historian Henri Pirenne, were imprisoned in Germany as hostages.

The aftermath of the Battle of Verdun in 1916 marked a turning point in the occupation and was followed by more repressive measures by the administration, including the deportation of workers to Germany.

Famously, Edith Cavell, a British nurse who had lived in Belgium before the war, was arrested after helping Allied soldiers to escape the country and was executed by a German firing squad in 1915.

Around 6,000 Belgian civilians were involved in gathering intelligence on German military installations and troop movements and communicating it back to the Allied armies.

[50] Alongside intelligence gathering were similar organisations which helped men wishing to join the Belgian Army on the Yser Front to escape occupied Belgium, usually across the Dutch border.

[51] Some underground papers, most notably La Libre Belgique (The Free Belgium) and De Vlaamsche Leeuw (The Flemish Lion), could reach large numbers of people.

[53] The celebration of nationalist public holidays, like 21 July (National Day), which were officially banned by the Germans, were also often accompanied by protests and demonstrations.

One of the most notable acts of passive resistance was the Judges' Strike of 1918, which managed to gain concessions from the German occupiers under considerable public pressure.

The early successes of the Ludendorff Offensive (21 March – 18 July 1918) were believed to have made liberation virtually impossible in the foreseeable future.

[54] With the German police no longer keeping order, anarchy broke out in the city, which was restored only when Belgian troops arrived.

The ceasefire did not, however, lead to the immediate liberation of Belgium: the terms of the armistice set a timescale for German withdrawal to avoid clashes with the retreating army.

[56] Subsequently, some of the notable activisten from the RVV were put on trial, but although the body had professed as many as 15,000 followers, only 312 individuals were convicted of collaboration with the enemy.