The military forces of the German Empire occupied Belgium(, ) during World War I between 1914 and 1918. Beginning in August 1914 with the invasion of neutral Belgium, the country was almost completely overrun by German troops before the winter of the same year as the Allied forces withdrew westwards. The Belgian government went into exile, while King Albert I and the Belgian Army continued to fight on a section of the Western Front. Under the German military, Belgium was divided into three separate administrative zones. The majority of the country fell within the General Government, a formal occupation administration ruled by a German general, while the others, closer to the front line, came under more repressive direct military rule.
The German occupation coincided with a widespread economic collapse in Belgium with shortages and widespread unemployment, but also with a religious revival. Relief organisations, which relied on foreign support to bring food and clothing to Belgian civilians, cut off from imports by the Allied naval blockade and the fighting, also became extremely important to the social and cultural life of the country.
The German occupation administration repressed political dissent and launched numerous unpopular measures, including the deportation of Belgian workers to Germany and forced labour on military projects. It also supported the radical Flemish Movement by making numerous concessions as part of the Flamenpolitik in an attempt to gain support among the country's Flemish population. As a result, numerous resistance movements were founded which attempted to sabotage military infrastructure, collect intelligence for the Allies or print underground newspapers. Low-level expressions of dissent were common but frequently repressed.
From August 1918, the Allies advanced into occupied Belgium during the Hundred Days Offensive, liberating some areas. For most of the country, however, the occupation was only brought to an end in the aftermath of the armistice of November 1918 as the Belgian Army advanced into the country to replace evacuating German troops in maintaining law and order.
Background
Following its independence in 1830, Belgium had been obliged to remain neutral in perpetuity by an 1839 treaty as part of a guarantee for its independence. Before the war, Belgium was a constitutional monarchy and was noted for being one of the most industrialised countries in the world. On 4 August 1914, the German army invaded Belgium just days after presenting an ultimatum to the Belgian government to allow free passage of German troops across its borders. The German army advanced rapidly into Belgium, besieging and capturing the fortified cities of Liège, Namur and Antwerp and pushing the 200,000-strong Belgian army, supported by their French and British allies, to the far west. Large numbers of refugees also fled to neighbouring countries. In October 1914, the German advance was finally stopped near the French border by a Belgian force at the Yser and by a combined Franco-British force at the Marne. As a result, the front line stabilised with most of Belgium already under German control. In the absence of any decisive offensive, most of Belgium remained under German control until the end of the war.
While most of Belgium was occupied, King Albert I continued to command the Belgian Army along a section of the Western Front, known as the Yser Front, through West Flanders from his headquarters in Veurne. The Belgian government, led by Charles de Broqueville, established itself in exile in Le Havre, in northwestern France. Belgium's colonial possession in Africa, the Belgian Congo, also remained loyal to the Allies and the Le Havre government.
The Rape of Belgium
During the course of their advance through Belgium, the Germans committed a number of war crimes against the Belgian civilian population along their route of advance. The massacres were often responses to towns whose populations were accused of fighting as francs-tireurs or guerrillas against the German army. Civilians were summarily executed and several towns deliberately destroyed in a series of punitive actions collectively known as the Rape of Belgium. As many as 6,500 people were killed by the German army between August and November 1914. In Leuven, the historic library of the town's university was deliberately burned. News of the atrocities, also widely exaggerated by the Allied press, raised considerable sympathy for the Belgian civilian population in occupied Belgium. The sympathy for the plight of Belgian civilians and Belgian refugees continued in Allied newspapers and propaganda until the end of the war.
Administration and governance
By November 1914, the vast majority of Belgian territory (2,598 out of 2,636 communes) was under German occupation. From November 1914, occupied Belgium, together with the occupied French border areas of Givet and Fumay, was divided by the Germans into three zones. The first, the Operationsgebiet (Operational Zone), covered a small amount of territory near the front line in the far west of Belgium. Near this zone was the Etappengebiet (Staging Zone), covering most of East and West Flanders provinces along with parts of Hainaut and Luxembourg provinces. The remainder of the country, the largest of the zones, the Generalgouvernement (General Government) covered the majority of the country and the French territories. Unlike the Operational and Staging Zones, the General Government was intended to be a total administration and so was markedly less repressive that the other two zones whose governance was based on military concerns alone. Civilians in the Operational and Staging Zones were officially classed as "prisoners" by the German military.
The General Government was placed under the command of a German general who was accountable to the army. After a brief tenure by Colmar von der Goltz in 1914, command was held by Moritz von Bissing and later, from April 1917, by Ludwig von Falkenhausen. The German authorities aimed to use the occupation to benefit the German economy and industrial production but hoped to keep the Belgian state and economy functioning if it did not impede their main objectives.
Administratively, the German administration had a Zivilverwaltung (Civil Administration) tasked with dealing with day-to-day matters and a network of local Kommandanturen in towns and cities across Belgium. It could also call on up to 80,000 soldiers. In most cases, however, the administration was content to use the existing Belgian civil service and local government for much of its administration.
Life under the occupation Shortages and relief organisations
Before the war, Belgium had been a net importer of foodstuffs. The German invasion, together with the Allied blockade meant that as early as September 1914, various Belgian organisations had been preparing for the onset of famine in the occupied territory. Under the direction of a financier, Émile Francqui, and other philanthropists established the Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation (CNSA or the "National Relief and Food Committee") to secure and transport food to Belgium, where it could be sold to Belgian civilians. The profits from this part of the operation were then used to distribute aid. After negotiations with both the Allies and Central Powers, the CNSA managed to secure permission to import food from the neutral United States. Francqui used his acquaintance with Herbert Hoover, the future American president, to collect food and other relief through an American organisation, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), which was then distributed within Belgium by the CNSA. A number of smaller relief organisations affiliated to other neutral countries also worked within occupied Belgium.
The CNSA became a major part of everyday life and culture in occupied Belgium. The organisation fulfilled much of the day-to-day running of a welfare system and generally prevented famine, although food and material shortages were extremely common throughout the occupation. At its height, the CNSA had more than 125,000 agents and distributors across the country. Historians have described the CNSA itself, with its central committee and local networks across the country, as paralleling the actions of the official Belgian government in peacetime. In the eyes of contemporaries, the CNSA became a symbol of national unity and of passive resistance.
Economic life
At the start of the war, the Belgian government hurriedly removed silver coins from circulation and replaced them with banknotes. With the German occupation, these banknotes remained legal and their production continued. To offset the costs of occupation, the German administration demanded regular "war contributions" of 35 million Belgian francs each month. The contribution considerably exceeded Belgium's pre-war tax income and so, in order to pay it, Belgian banks used new paper money to buy bonds. The excessive printing of money, coupled with large amounts of German money brought into the country by soldiers, led to considerable inflation. The Germans also artificially fixed the exchange rate between the German mark and the Belgian franc to benefit their own economy at a ratio of 1:1.25. To cope with the economic conditions, large numbers of individual communes and regions began to print and issue their own money, known as Necessity Money (monnaie de nécessité), which could be used locally.
Fiscal chaos, coupled with problems of transportation and the requisition of metal led to a general economic collapse as factories ran out of raw materials and laid off workers. The crisis especially afflicted Belgium's large manufacturing industries. As raw material usually imported from abroad dried up, more firms laid off workers. Unemployment became a major problem and increased reliance on charity distributed by civil institutions and organisations. As many as 650,000 people were unemployed between 1915 and 1918. The German authorities used the crisis to loot industrial machinery from Belgian factories, which was either sent to Germany intact or melted down. The policy escalated after the end of the German policy of deportation in 1917 which later created major problems for Belgian economic recovery after the end of the war.
Religious life
The occupation coincided with a religious revival in Belgium, which had always been overwhelmingly Catholic. The Primate of Belgium, Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier, became an outspoken critic of the German occupation regime. Mercier published a celebrated pamphlet, Patriotisme et Endurance (Patriotism and Endurance), on Christmas Day 1914 which called for civilians to observe occupation laws if they were consistent with Belgian patriotism and Christian values. The pamphlet attacked the authority of the German occupying government, stating that any rule legitimised by force alone should not be obeyed.
In the absence of the King or government in occupied Belgium, Mercier became the predominant figure in the country and a symbol of resilience. Because of his status, he could not be arrested without an outcry, and although he was lured back to the Vatican in 1915 to remove him from the country, he soon returned. His writings were banned, however, and copies of their work confiscated. In 1916, Mercier was officially prohibited from publishing pamphlets but continued to campaign against the deportation of workers and various other German policies. Initially opposed by Pope Benedict XV, who was anxious to remain neutral, the Pope was supportive of the Belgian church but encouraged it to moderate its stance to avoid confrontation.
German policies Deportation and forced labour