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==Belgian army operations==
==Belgian army operations==
The total of Belgian soldiers killed came to about 2.0% of its eligible young men (compared to 13.3% in France and 12.5% in Germany).<ref> Niall Ferguson, ''The Pity of War'' (1999) p 299</ref>
The king was disappointed that so few young men joined his army, and avoided any major attacks. The Germans had nothing to gain from an attack, so the short Belgian front was an island of calm as gigantic battles raged elsewhere on the Western Front. The total of Belgian soldiers killed came to about 2.0% of its eligible young men (compared to 13.3% in France and 12.5% in Germany).<ref> Niall Ferguson, ''The Pity of War'' (1999) p 299</ref>
===Battle of the Yser===
===Battle of the Yser===
:''See also [[Battle of the Yser]]''
:''See also [[Battle of the Yser]]''

Revision as of 23:29, 15 December 2012

American poster using the "Rape of Belgium" as a way of selling War Bonds.

The history of Belgium in World War I traces Belgium's role between the German invasion in 1914, through the continued military resistance and occupation of the territory by German forces, known as the Rape of Belgium, as well as the role played in the international war effort through its African colonies and small force on the Eastern Front.

German invasion

When World War I began, Germany invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg as part of the Schlieffen Plan, in an attempt to capture Paris quickly by catching the French off guard by invading through neutral countries. It was this action that technically caused the British to enter the war, as they were still bound by the 1839 agreement to protect Belgium in the event of a war. To this day, the Belgian army is remembered for their stubborn resistance during the early days of the war, with the army - around a tenth the size of the German army - holding up the German offensive for nearly a month, giving the French and British forces time to prepare for the Marne counteroffensive later in the year. The German invaders treated any resistance—such as sabotaging rail lines—as illegal and subversive, and shot the offenders and burned buildings in retaliation.

Flanders was the main base of the British army and it saw some of the greatest losses of life on both sides of the Western Front.

German Occupation 1914-18

German stamp, overprinted with Belgien (Belgium) for use in the occupied country

The Germans governed the occupied areas of Belgium through a General Governorate of Belgium, while a small area around Ypres remained under Belgian control. The two provinces of Wast and West Flanders comprised a war zone under the direct control of the German army. Elsewhere martial law prevailed. Each province had a German governor; each locality was in charge of a German officer.[1]

Many civilians fled the war zones to safer parts of Belgium. Many refugees from all over Belgium went to the Netherlands (which was neutral) and about 300,000 to France. Over 200,000 went to Britain, where they resettled in London and found war jobs. The British and French governments set up the War Refugees Committee (WRC) and the Secours National, to provide relief and support; there were an additional 1500 local WRC committees in Britain. The visibility of the refugees underscored the role of Belgium in the minds of the French and British. [2][3]

On the advice of the Belgian government in exile, civil servants remained in their posts for the duration of the conflict, carrying out the day-to-day functions of government. Belgian workers were conscripted into forced labour projects, by 1918, the Germans had deported 120,000 Belgian workers to Germany.[4]

The Rape of Belgium

Main article: Rape of Belgium

The German army was outraged at how Belgium had frustrated the Schlieffen Plan to capture Paris. From top to bottom there was a firm belief that the Belgians had unleashed illegal saboteurs (called "Francs-tireurs") and that civilians had tortured and maltreated German soldiers. The response was a series of multiple large-scale attacks on civilians and the destruction of historic buildings and cultural centers. The German army executed between 5,500 and 6,500[5] French and Belgian civilians between August and November 1914, usually in near-random large-scale shootings of civilians ordered by junior German officers. Individuals suspected of partisan activities were summarily shot. Historians researching German Army records have discovered 101 "major" incidents--where ten or more civilians were killed-- with a total of 4,421 killed. Historians have also discovered 383 "minor" incidents that led to the deaths of another 1,100 Belgians. Almost all were claimed by Germany to be responses to Franc-tireur (guerrilla) tactics.[6] In addition some high profile Belgian figures, including politician Adolphe Max and historian Henri Pirenne, were imprisoned in Germany as hostages.

The German position was that widespread sabotage and guerrilla activities by Belgian civilians were wholly illegal and deserved immediate harsh collective punishment. Recent research that systematically studied German Army sources has demonstrated that they in fact encountered no irregular forces in Belgium during the first two and a half months of the invasion. The Germans were responding instead to a phantom fear they had unconsciously created themselves.[7]

Bryce Report and international response

The British were quick to tell the world about German atrocities. Britain sponsored the "Committee on Alleged German Outrages" known as the Bryce Report. Published in May 1915, the Report provided elaborate details and first-hand accounts, including excerpts from diaries and letters found on captured German soldiers. The Report was a major factor in changing public opinion in neutral countries, especially the United States. After Britain shipped 41,000 copies to the U.S., the Germans responded with their own report on atrocities against German soldiers by Belgian civilians.[8]

The German Report was ridiculed in the 1920s and 1930s and afterwards as highly exaggerated wartime propaganda. It relied too heavily on unproven allegations of refugees and distorted interpretations of diaries of German soldiers.[9] Recent scholarship has not tried to validate the statements in the Bryce Report. Instead research has gone into the official German records and have confirmed that the Germans committed large-scale deliberate atrocities in Belgium.[10]

Wartime politics

The prewar Catholic ministry remained in office with Charles de Broqueville continuing as prime minister and also taking on the war portfolio. Viscount Julien Davignon continued as foreign minister until 1917, when de Broqueville gave up the war ministry and took over foreign affairs. The government was broadened to include all parties, as politics were suspended for the duration; of course, no elections were possible. The two main opposition leaders, Paul Hymans of the Liberal party and Emile Vandervelde of the Socialist party, became ministers without portfolio in 1914. In a cabinet shakeup in May 1918, de Broqueville was excluded altogether. The government and parliament was based in the French city of Le Havre, but communications with the people behind German lines were difficult and roundabout. The government in exile did not govern Belgium, and so the politicians instead squabbled endlessly, and plotted unrealistic foreign policy moves, such as the annexation of Luxembourg after the war.[11]

Belgium was not officially one of the Allies. In turn they did not consult with Belgium, but Britain, France, and Russia in 1916 formally pledged in 1916 that "when the moment comes, the Belgian government will be called to participate in the peace negotiations and that they will not put an end to the hostilities unless Belgium is re-established in its political and economic independence and largely indemnified for the damages which she has undergone. They will lend their aid to Belgium to assure her commercial and financial rehabilitation."[12]

Flemish identity

File:11-07-1917.jpg
Flemish soldiers commemorate a Flemish holiday, 1917.

Flemish consciousness of their national identity grew through the events and experiences of war. The German occupying authorities viewed the Flemish as an oppressed people and had taken several Flemish-friendly measures, known as Flamenpolitik. This included introducing Dutch as the language of instruction of all state-supported schools in Flanders in 1918. This prompted a renewed Flemish movement in the years following the war. The Flemish Frontbeweging (Soldiers' Movement) was formed from Flemish soldiers in the Belgian army to campaign for greater use of the Dutch language in education and government, though it was not separatist.[13]

International relief

Main articles: Commission for Relief in Belgium and American Relief Administration

Belgium faced a food crisis and an international response was organized by an American engineer based in London, Herbert Hoover.[14] It was unprecedented in world history. Hoover's Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) had the permission of Germany and the Allies for their activities.[15] As chairman of the CRB, Hoover worked with the leader of the Belgian Comité National de Secours et Alimentation (CN), Emile Francqui, to feed the entire nation for the duration of the war. The CRB obtained and imported millions of tons of foodstuffs for the CN to distribute, and watched over the CN to make sure the German army did not appropriate the food. The CRB became a veritable independent republic of relief, with its own flag, navy, factories, mills, and railroads. Private donations and government grants (78%) supplied an $11-million-a-month budget.[16]

At its peak, the American arm, the American Relief Administration (ARA) fed 10.5 million people daily. Great Britain grew reluctant to support the CRB, preferring instead to emphasize Germany's obligation to supply the relief; Winston Churchill led a military faction that considered the Belgian relief effort "a positive military disaster." [17]

Belgian army operations

The king was disappointed that so few young men joined his army, and avoided any major attacks. The Germans had nothing to gain from an attack, so the short Belgian front was an island of calm as gigantic battles raged elsewhere on the Western Front. The total of Belgian soldiers killed came to about 2.0% of its eligible young men (compared to 13.3% in France and 12.5% in Germany).[18]

Battle of the Yser

See also Battle of the Yser

King Albert I stayed in the Yser as commander of the military to lead the army while Broqueville's government withdrew to Le Havre in France.

Belgian soldiers fought a number of significant delaying actions in 1914 during the initial invasion. At the Battle of Liège, the town's fortifications held off the invaders for over a week, buying valuable time for Allied troops to arrive in the area. Additionally, the German "Race to the Sea" was stopped dead by exhausted Belgian forces at the Battle of the Yser. The dual significance of the battle was that the Germans were unable to complete their occupation of the entire country, and the Yser area remained unoccupied, providing a propaganda coup to the Belgian forces on the Western Front for the duration of the war.

Belgian Congo and the East Africa Campaign

Native soldiers from the Belgian Congo ford a river during the African Campaign, 1916
See also Force Publique in World War One

German presence in Africa posed no direct threat to the Belgian Congo; however, in 1914 a German gunboat sank a number of Belgian vessels on Lake Tanganyika.[19] Congolese soldiers of the Force Publique, under Belgian officers, occupied about a third of German East Africa.

Eastern Front

An armoured car unit, known as the Belgian Expeditionary Corps, was sent to Russia in 1915 and fought on the Eastern Front. The Minerva armoured cars were used for reconnaissance, long distance messaging and carrying out raids and small scale engagements. 16 Belgians were killed in action.[20]

Postwar settlements

King Albert I went to the Paris Peace Conference in April 1919 to argue to the Big Four leaders that Belgium's main goal was to obtain total compensation for all its war costs and thereby rebuild the Belgian economy using German reparations.[21] Belgium was given much less than it wanted, with an annual payment of 3 billion German gold marks (about $500 million). The payments stopped in 1931 and did not stimulate the lethargic Belgian economy of the 1920s. Belgium also received a small slice of German territory. Its demands for a slice of the Netherlands were rejected and led to ill will. Britain was willing to guarantee Belgian borders only if it committed to neutrality, which Albert rejected. Instead Belgium became a junior partner with France in an occupation of part of Germany. Belgium was also given a League of Nations trusteeship over the former German colonies in Africa of Ruanda and Burundi.[22] On the whole, Belgian diplomacy was poorly handled and ineffective.[23]

Commemoration

Flanders Poppies recalled in the wreaths of the Royal British Legion's Remembrance Day commemoration.

Due to the hundreds of thousands of casualties, the poppies that sprang up from the battlefields which were immortalized in the Canadian poem In Flanders Fields, have become an symbol of human life lost in war.

The suffering of Flanders is still remembered by Flemish organizations during the yearly Yser pilgrimage and "Wake of the Yser" in Diksmuide at the monument of The Yser tower.

British veterans and civilians created in the 1920s a sacred memory of sacrifice in Belgium. The city of Ypres was made the symbol of all Britain was fighting for and was given an almost sacred aura. The Ypres League transformed the horrors of trench warfare into a spiritual quest in which British and imperial troops were purified by their sacrifice. After the war Ypres became a pilgrimage destination for Britons to imagine and share the sufferings of their men and gain a spiritual benefit.[24]

Notes

  1. ^ Léon van der Essen, A short history of Belgium (1920) pp 174-5
  2. ^ Pierre Purseigle, "'A Wave on to Our Shores': The Exile and Resettlement of Refugees from the Western Front, 1914-1918," Contemporary European History (2007): 16#4 pp 427-444, [online at Proquest]
  3. ^ Peter Cahalan, Belgian Refugee Relief in England during the Great War (New York: Garland, 1982);
  4. ^ Bernard A. Cook, Belgium: a history (2002) pp. 102-7
  5. ^ John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (Yale U.P. 2001)
  6. ^ Horne and Kramer. German Atrocities 1914. pp. 74–75.
  7. ^ Horne and Kramer. German Atrocities 1914. p. 77.
  8. ^ Patrick J. Quinn (2001). The Conning of America: The Great War and American Popular Literature. Rodopi. p. 39.
  9. ^ Trevor Wilson, "Lord Bryce's Investigation into Alleged German Atrocities in Belgium, 1914-1915," Journal of Contemporary History (1979) 14#3 pp 369-383.
  10. ^ John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (Yale University Press, 2002); Larry Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I (NYU Press, 2004); Jeff Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (Leuven University Press, 2007)
  11. ^ Sally Marks, Innocent Abroad p 21-35
  12. ^ Sally Marks, Innocent Abroad p 24
  13. ^ Cook, Belgium : a history pp. 104-5
  14. ^ George H. Nash, The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian, 1914–1917 (1988)
  15. ^ Burner, p. 74.
  16. ^ David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (1996) p. 79.
  17. ^ Burner, p. 82.
  18. ^ Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (1999) p 299
  19. ^ Spencer C. Tucker and Priscilla Mary Roberts, eds. (2005). World War I : A Student Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 1056. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)
  20. ^ "Belgian Armoured Cars in Russia". Retrieved 3 November 2012.
  21. ^ Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919 (2003) pp 106, 272
  22. ^ Sally Marks, Innocent Abroad: Belgium at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (1991)
  23. ^ Kossmann, The Low Countries pp 575-8, 649
  24. ^ Mark Connelly, "The Ypres League and the Commemoration of the Ypres Salient, 1914-1940," War in History (2009) 16#1 pp 51-76, online

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Belgium in World War I.

Further reading

Primary sources

Contemporary sources (full text online)

  • H-Net Review of Horne & Kramer, The German Atrocities of 1914: A History of Denial
  • H-Net Review of L. Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I
  • HistoryOfWar.org Review of J. Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914
  • H-Net Review of J. Lipkes Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 by Jeffrey Smith
  • Prof. John Horne, German War Crimes
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