Page 391 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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Civilians and occupation: the Belgians in the maelstrom
of total war 1940-1944

German policy and the reactions of Belgian elites and population

PATRICK NEFORS

One can argue a lot about the concept of total war, but there is no denying that the way
civilians are involved is one of its key characteristics: they have to sustain the war economy,
are ideologically mobilised or become a victim to one of the nationalisms or other “isms”
that caused the conflict.
this paper will examine how the Belgians reacted to the second German occupation in
less than half a century. What fate did the Germans have in store for the Belgian population,
what role was it supposed to perform in the German war economy, and how did Belgians
adapt, resist or collaborate?
the legacy Of the first wOrld war

For a good understanding of the second German occupation, one has to grasp fully the
consequences of the previous one. Although Belgium suffered fewer military victims than
the major belligerents because its army, under the command of King Albert, took on a more
or less passive role behind the Yser River, the impact of the war on politics and society was
considerable.
1

1) During the invasion, the German Army committed a number of atrocities on Belgian
soil: more than 5,000 civilians were killed in a terror campaign as the German army had
allegedly been fired upon by franc-tireurs. The memory of these events would linger
2
on, especially in Wallonia where most of the incidents had taken place, thereby firmly
entrenching Germanophobia in Wallonia’s mental framework.
2) Second: the Reich wanted to exploit Belgium’s economic potential for its war economy.
Belgium, the pioneer of the Industrial Revolution in mainland Europe, then indeed still
took sixth place in world industrial production. Its economic assets were part of the de-
clared war aims . Three currents struggled for priority in German policy: rational ex-
3
ploitation, economic “annexation”, and brutal and direct exploitation. The third of these
4
1 Sophie de Schaepdryver’s superb La Belgique et la Première Guerre Mondiale, P.I.E.-Peter Lang, 2004
(originally published in Dutch, 1997) was the first major synthesis on Belgium in the First World War since
Henri Pirenne (La Belgique et la Guerre Mondiale, Paris, 1928). An English translation is in the making.
2 alan Kramer, John Horne, German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial, New Haven and London, Yale
University Press, 2001, 608 + xvpp. See also Prof. Kramers article in these Acta. Recently published is: Jeff
lipkes. Rehearsals. The German Army in Belgium 1914. Leuven University Press, 2007.
3 The seminal work remains Soutou, Georges-Henri, L’Or et le sang. Les buts de guerre économiques de la
Première Guerre mondiale. Paris, 1989.
4 See Jens Thiel. “Menschenbassin Belgien”. Anwerbung, Deportation und Zwangsarbeit im Ersten Wel-