The Reichskommissariat was established on 13 July 1944 by Hitler's "Erlaß des Führers über die Errichtung einer Zivilverwaltung in den besetzten Gebieten von Belgien und Nordfrankreich vom 13.

[4] On 15 June it was joined with the two French départements of Nord and Pas-de-Calais (included on the grounds that part of this territory belonged to Germanic Flanders, as well as the fact that the entire region formed an integral economic unit[5]) as the Military Administration in Belgium and North France (Militärverwaltung in Belgien und Nordfrankreich).

[13] When the German military launched the Ardennes Offensive on 16 December 1944, the Nazi collaborators had renewed hopes of carrying out their ideals.

[14] In a 20 December 1944 interview with a pro-Nazi newspaper, Degrelle said no decision had yet been taken about the future of Belgium: 'The issue of the transformation of the States of the West is not current.

[15] Meanwhile, van de Wiele's Vlaamsche Landsleiding, a self-proclaimed Flemish collaborator government-in-exile which had fled to Ústí nad Labem (German: Aussig) in November 1944[16] and had been designing statutes for a future Reichsland Flandern,[17] in late December 1944 moved to Wahn near Cologne to prepare for the 'liberation' of Flanders as it was building a combat group of Flemish collaborators to join the Ardennes Offensive.