Page 392 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

392 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

would predominate in 1916, when Hindenburg and Ludendorff had gained power in the
Oberste Heeresleitung. Factories were now systematically closed down and dismantled
and about 60,000 workers deported to Germany. Though much is still unknown about
the Belgian economy in 1914-18, it appears that Belgian industry in the main refused to
work for the Reich . Indeed, because of the German requisitions and the fact it was cut
5
off from its clients and providers overseas, it lacked the necessary raw materials. Yet also,
both Belgian elites and the population adopted an attitude of principled refusal towards
les boches, as was demonstrated e.g. by the strike of the courts in 1917. The brutality of
German exploitation left a deep mark, and it would take Belgian industrial production
until 1923 to once again reach the level of 1913.
Belgian population actually survived the ordeal thanks to foreign food aid organised by
Herbert Hoover’s Commission for Relief in Belgium , and distributed in the kingdom by
6
the National Relief and Food Committee, led by major industrialists and bankers.
3) Thirdly: the occupier pursued a Flamenpolitik. Before 1914, a so-called Flemish Move-
ment strove for the linguistic emancipation of the Flemings (the overwhelming major-
ity of whom spoke Flemish, a form of Dutch), though firmly within the administrative
framework of the Belgian unitary state. The Reich wanted to pull Flanders into its sphere
of influence by detaching it from the Belgian state and creating a Flemish nationalism. In
1917 it imposed administrative scission and called a Flemish Parliament into life. Flem-
ish Nationalism was first and foremost a German creation . it would remain a divisive
7
element, split the Flemish movement and in the long run also Belgian politics. the con-
sequences are felt to this day.
8

the secOnd inVasiOn
When the German armies invaded Belgium for the second time, in May 1940, Belgium
was a democracy which for about twenty years, had enjoyed universal male suffrage. It was
not only a democracy under pressure, reeling from the electoral successes of the extremist
parties, such as the fascist Flemish Nationalist Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV), and anti-
democratic and corporatist currents amongst the traditional elites, but also a country where
business circles were strongly entwined with the political world. The (ageing) heavy indus-
9
tkrieg. (Schriften der Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte, Neue Folge, band 20). Essen, 2007, p.40-46.
5 There is no recent work that studies the question of the Belgian economy during the First World War in its
entirety. We still have to rely on such older works as: DE KERCHOVE DE DENTERGHEM, Charles, L’In-
dustrie belge pendant l’occupation allemande 1914-1918. Paris, 1927.
6 For an account in English see George NASH. Life of Herbert Hoover. Vol II. The humanitarian 1914-1917.
New York – London, 1988.
7 The great authority on the Flemish movement is Professor emeritus Lode WILS of the Katholieke Uni-
versiteit Leuven, who has been writing about the subject for some decades. He first made the argument in:
Flamenpolitik en aktivisme: Vlaanderen tegenover België in de Eerste Wereldoorlog . Leuven, 1974.
8 As Wils put it once in an interview: “the end of Belgium and the independence of Flanders will be the pos-
thumous triumph of Hitler.”
9 A very good recent account of Belgium’s troublesome interwar political history is provided in the relevant
chapters by Manu Gerard in: Nouvelle Histoire de Belgique, Vol. 2: 1905-1950. Sous la direction de Mi-
chel Dumoulin, Vincent Dujardin, Emmanuel Gerard & Mark Van den Wijngaert, Brussels, 2006. That