Page 397 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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Another crucial factor was the drop in foodstuff provision to about 1,300 calories per
head, which inevitably undermined workers’ productivity. In the first half of 1941, major
strikes broke out – the so-called strike of the 100,000 – as hungry workers protested against
insufficient rations. Some German industrialists observed that if rations were increased, Bel-
gium would be able to drive up its coal production by 10 to 15%. Analyses like these would
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however always falter on the general food deficit in Hitler’s Europe. Of course, set beside
the fate reserved for the population of the Soviet Union by Herbert Backe’s “hunger plan”,
the deprivations of the Belgian and Western European populations were relatively mild. It
is therefore ironic that a Belgian delegation of high officials and businessmen, travelling to
Berlin in March 1942, was slightly disappointed that it did not get to meet Herbert Backe.
A few months later, in October 1942, the occupiers would introduce the long-dreaded
measure of obligatory labour in Germany. It struck about 200,000 workers, 2.5 % of a total
of about 8 million foreign workers who were deported to the Reich by Sauckel. Though this
measure can initially appear to be counterproductive if one wanted to make the Belgian econ-
omy work for the Reich, it actually augmented the pressure; it was openly used as a means to
blackmail industry, e.g. by Hermann Röchling, who was in charge of Belgium’s iron and steal
production in the second half of the occupation, and under whose oversight this production did
indeed increase until the end of 1943. Enforced labour in Germany destroyed one of Galopin’s
arguments, yet at the same time provided an even stronger one to keep on producing.

resistance
The deportation of workers to Germany was the most important factor driving young
Belgians into the hands of the resistance. Yet even in 1943-1944 resistance would, just like
collaboration, always remain a minority phenomenon, actively involving only 2 or 3% of
the population in the age bracket of 16 to 65. The first town in which the Germans took hos-
tages in reprisal for acts of sabotage was to be Dinant, where the 1914 atrocities were still
a vivid memory. This took place on the 1 July 1940. This was typical for resistance: the
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occupiers were, at least in the early phases of occupation, seen through 1914 spectacles, as
the “Boches” rather than as Nazis; resistance was mainly the affair of francophone bourgeois
patriotic circles. Partly because the 1914 atrocities had made a stronger impact on the col-
lective memory, partly because of stronger feelings of patriotism and loyalty to the Belgian
State, resistance would always be a predominantly francophone affair: 80% of members of
intelligence networks, 71% of clandestine journals.
The resistance would receive a first major impetus from the German invasion of the So-
viet Union, when the Belgian Communist Party, hitherto bound by the Nazi-Soviet pact, now
unambiguously opted to resist; a second impetus, as already mentioned, was given by the
promulgation of obligatory labour in Germany.
The resistance embraced a range of activities: the clandestine press, aid to Jews or per-
sons in hiding, sabotage, intelligence networks, and armed resistance. time is too short to

20 adam tooze, The Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi economy, London, 2007, p.
413-414.
21 Wolfram Weber, Die Innere Sicherheit in besetzen Belgien und Nord-Frankreich 1940-1944. Düsseldorf,
1978, p.50.