Belgium in World War II  

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Despite being neutral at the start of World War II, Belgium and its colonial possessions found themselves at war after the country was invaded by German forces on 10 May 1940. After 18 days of fighting in which Belgian forces were pushed back into a small pocket in the north-east of the country, the Belgian military surrendered to the Germans, beginning an occupation that would endure until 1944. The surrender of 28 May was ordered by King Leopold III without the consultation of his government and sparked a political crisis after the war. Despite the capitulation, many Belgians managed to escape to the United Kingdom where they formed a government and army-in-exile on the Allied side.

The Belgian Congo remained loyal to the Belgian government in London and contributed significant material and human resources to the Allied cause. Many Belgians were involved in both armed and passive resistance to German forces, although some chose to collaborate with the German forces. Support from far right political factions and sections of the Belgian population allowed the German army to recruit two divisions of the Waffen-SS from Belgium and also facilitated the Nazi persecution of Belgian Jews in which nearly 25,000 were killed.

Most of the country was liberated by the Allies between September and October 1944, though areas to the far east of the country remained occupied until early 1945. In total, approximately 88,000 Belgians died during the conflict, a figure representing 1.05 percent of the country's pre-war population, and around 8 percent of the country's GDP was destroyed.

Collaboration

During the period of Nazi occupation of Belgium, some Belgians collaborated with their occupiers. There were pro-Nazi political organizations in both Flemish and Walloon communities before and during the war. The most significant were DeVlag, Verdinaso and Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV) in Flanders as well as the Catholic Rex movement in Wallonia. Each of these movements had subtly different ideologies, their own paramilitary forces and printed their own newspapers. These organisations were also instrumental in encouraging Belgians to enlist into the German Army. Unlike the German-style National Socialist agenda of DeVlag, VNV appealed directly to a Flemish separatist agenda, though this message was never the main source of their popularity. Infighting between the groups, particularly VNV and DeVlag, was considerable.

On the whole, the Belgian administrative system was very pliant and became an instrument of collaboration. In a 2007 report by a Belgian research institute, Cegesoma, a panel of historians concluded that Belgium had offered "maximum administrative collaboration" with the German occupation forces. The same report also commented on the apparently higher levels of collaboration in Flanders as part of an attempted integration into a "German-Flemish New Order". The towns of Brussels and Liège, the report added, "remained [generally] patriotic-Belgian and decisively hostile to Germany". The report also found that many Belgian authorities had been compliant, even active, in the deportation of Jews.

Two separate units of the Waffen-SS, the Flemish Legion and the Walloon Legion, were recruited from Belgium during the occupation. Léon Degrelle, founder of the Rexist Party, served as commander of the Walloon Legion, which fought against the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. A total of 15,000 Belgians in the "divisions" (neither ever greater than brigade strength) fought on the Eastern Front where the Walloon Legion was nearly annihilated in the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket in 1944.

After the war, a total of 400,000 Belgians were investigated for collaboration. Of these, around 56,000 were prosecuted. The majority received prison sentences although several hundred were executed.

See also

• Order of battle of armour units of the Belgian Army in May 1940
• Faux Soir – a 1943 resistance spoof of the collaborationist newspaper Le Soir
• Commemorative Medal of the War 1940–1945 – medal awarded to all Belgian veterans of the war
• Belgian annexation plans after the Second World War
• The Sorrow of Belgium – a novel by the Flemish writer Hugo Claus about growing up in occupied Belgium.
• Belgium in World War I
• History of Belgium
• Eastern Front (World War II)
• German occupation of Belgium during World War II
• The Holocaust in Belgium
• Attack on the twentieth convoy