User:Brigade Piron/sandbox

Background

Belgium formally gained its independence in 1831 as a state in perpetual neutrality, guaranteed by the Treaty of London. It was nonetheless invaded and occupied by the German Empire in World War I (1914–1918). In the conflict's aftermath, Belgium repudiated its pre-war policy and entered into close military ties with France but abandoned this policy in 1936 and resumed a policy of armed neutrality. In spite of this, Belgium was again invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in May 1940. The experience of the ensuing four-year occupation (1940–1944) convinced many of the need for closer political and military collaboration with the former Western Allies, particularly the United Kingdom and the United States, as the basis of its post-war foreign policy. At the same time, the country began gradually to move towards closer European integration.

Belgium was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945. It maintained a system of national service and a large military presence in West Germany.

Although the country recovered from the occupation remarkably quickly, the country's politics remained turbulent. The Royal Question, a major political crisis over the constitutional role of the former monarch Leopold III, culminated in a general strike and riots in August 1950.

Belgium had few ties to South-East Asia at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.

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Stanley describes Léopoldville in April 1882 in The Congo and the Founding of Its Free State:

Léopoldville, with its one-story block-house, commanding from its windows all approaches, impregnable to musket-armed natives, and proof against fire, despite its grass roof, because, un- derneath that grass roof, there was an earth roof two feet thick, on which the fire might burn itself out harmlessly, offered a safe refuge should trouble arise. The terrace was long and wide — the native village was formed of one broad street — flanked by a row of clay huts on either side. Starting from a point thirty feet below the blockhouse, and sloping gently down to the landing place, gardens of young bananas and vegetables extended beyond these huts. Water was handy; fuel was abundant. The agricultural Wambunda were our landlords as well as our good friends. (p383)

• Gotovich, José (September 1982). "La Belgique et la guerre civile espagnole: Une état des questions" (PDF). Journal of Belgian History: 497–532.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

British tanks entering Brussels on 4 September 1944 greeted by local civilians.

In Belgium, the Liberation (French: Libération, Dutch: Bevrijding) from German occupation during World War II occurred between September 1944 and February 1945. Belgium, which had been occupied since May 1940, was invaded by Allied forces, predominantly from the United Kingdom and Canada, who had begun a westward advance after the D-Day landings in northern France in June 1944. Entering the country on 1 September, the capital Brussels was captured on 4 September and the Belgian government returned from exile in London on 8 September, beginning the process of re-establishing the Belgian state.

Historian Martin Conway writes that "the military liberation of Belgium proved to be an event, not a battle" in which most of the major urban centres fell to Allied forces rapidly in September 1944 with minimal resistance from the retreating Axis forces.

Background

See also: German occupation of Belgium during World War II and Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine

In May 1940, Belgium had been attacked by German forces, despite its neutral status, and placed under military occupation. A German military government was installed in Brussels.

• German occupation policy, struggles between SS, Army and Nazi Party, The Holocaust in Belgium

• Replaced by Reichskommissariat in 1944. Loss of control, rise of resistance activity, increasing violence, collaborators abandoned etc. Courcelles massacre

British, American and Canadian forces landed in Normandy on 6 June 1944. After fierce fighting around bridgeheads, the Allies managed to break through the German front lines and began advances towards Paris and along the Channel coast.

With the Allies nearing the border of the Reichskommissariat of Belgium and Northern France, the German governor Josef Grohé gave the order for a general withdrawal of the German administration from the territory on 28 August. On 1 September, the Allies broadcasted a coded message on the radio to the resistance, ordering it to intensify its activities.

• Liberation of Paris (19–25 August 1944)
• Siege of Dunkirk (1944–45)
• Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine

• German and collaborators withdraw. Establishment of various Reichsgaus in exile, retrospectively incorporating Belgian territory into Nazi Germany.

First phase of liberation (September–October 1944)

Tanks of the 1st Polish Armoured Division enter the town of Tielt, in West Flanders, under artillery fire

On 1 or 2 September, Allied forces crossed the Belgian border for the first time, beginning the start of the first phase of the liberation of Belgium. The first Allied unit to enter the country has been debated, but may have been the Free Belgian 5th Special Air Service (SAS) serving as a jeep-borne reconnaissance unit. During this phase of liberation, which lasted until approximately 16 September, most of Belgium's major populated areas were liberated. The advance was rapid and met little firm opposition. The capital, Brussels, was liberated on 3 September and Antwerp the day after. Ghent, Ostend, and Liège were all liberated between 6 and 8 September. Bruges was liberated on 12 September.

Allied troops did fight major actions against German forces at at Geel near Antwerp in mid September. In the period between 2-16 September, around 3,000 civilians were killed.

On the 1 November 1944, Edmond Ronse, Belgian Minister of the Interior, announced that the country had been fully liberated. The announcement, however, proved premature as the Germans began a second offensive into Belgium on 16 December, re-occupying parts of the south of the country.

Liberation of Brussels, 3–4 September 1944

Free Belgian troops arrive in Brussels, 4 September 1944

In the evening of 3 September, the first Allied unit the Welsh Guards of the Guards Armoured Division arrived in Brussels along the Avenue de Tervueren. There were minor skirmishes with the town's German garrison during the afternoon, but the incoming soldiers were enthusiastically welcomed by the population:

On and on we drove towards Brussels, the excitement getting more intense every hour. The people were getting frantic! The route was a blaze of colour and my arm fair ached with waving to the excited crowds. At times it was almost impossible to move through the seething masses, for they climbed on to the trucks kissing us and crying. These people had been four years beneath the Nazi yoke, suffering, unhappy and now they were free. The Allies had fulfilled their promise. Liberation was theirs.

— Frank William Clarke, Soldier in the Welsh Guards, 7 September 1944.

The crowds in the roads slowed the British advance and by the evening the Allies were still not in full control of the city. During the night, the last German soldiers withdrew from the city. Before leaving, they set fire to the Palais de Justice, hoping to destroy the records stored within. Though the dome collapsed and the records destroyed, the building survived largely intact, although the column of smoke could be seen from the suburb of Woluwe several miles away.

On 4 September, the celebrations in the town continued. The Free Belgian Brigade Piron, which had been held in reserve by the Allies because of its symbolic importance, arrived in the city on the 4th and took part in the liberation. The Brigade Piron participated in the last fighting in the city against isolated German snipers. Its role in the liberation was, however, chiefly symbolic and has been compared with that of the Free French 2nd Armored Division in the Liberation of Paris. By the afternoon of the 4th, the city was fully liberated.

Liberation of Antwerp, 4 September 1944

Main article: Battle of the Scheldt

Antwerp was the largest city in Flanders and of great strategic importance because of its deep-water port, connected to the sea by the Scheldt river.

Since their resources were located in the United Kingdom, the Allies were reliant on intact ports to transport equipment to their armies at the front. The port of Cherbourg had been captured soon after D-Day, but as the Allies advanced eastwards, they became more and more reliant on continual road convoys, dubbed the "Red Ball Express", and their supply lines became increasingly stretched. The ports at Boulogne, Dieppe and Calais were either still in German hands or partly demolished by their German garrison before their capture and so, as a major port, the capture of Antwerp was a high priority.

The 11th Armoured Division, commanded by Brian Horrocks, reached the town of Antwerp by 4 September. Realising that the German garrison would attempt to sabotage the docks, the [Armée Secrète] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) had organized a force of 600 dockworkers to seize the docks, and the bridges across the nearby Albert Canal. Though the resistance succeeded in securing both the dock and a bridge over the canal, but the British were only under orders to secure the port itself and the bridge was not exploited, allowing the German 15th Army to retreat. With little support from the Allies, the resistance managed to hold the docks intact for 16 days until the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry of the 2nd Canadian Division arrived. Together with the resistance, the Canadians held the port against German attacks and consolidated their control over them.

Despite the intact nature of the port, the Allied ships could not reach Antwerp because the Scheldt, in Dutch territory, was still in German hands. The Battle of the Scheldt was fought to liberate the area by November 1944 and the river was cleared by Free Belgian minesweepers, allowing the port to be put to use from November 1944.

The port was of such importance to the Allies' later campaigns in German and the Netherlands that it was the ultimate objective of the German Ardennes Offensive in the winter of 1944.

Allied advance stalls

• Operation Market Garden
• Battle of the Scheldt

Return and restoration of the Belgian Government, September–November 1944

See also: Belgian government in exile

• George Erskine and Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force Mission in Belgium
• Civil Affairs
• Fusilier Battalions (Belgium)
• Social Pact
• November Crisis (1944)
• V-1 flying bomb and V-2 flying bomb (Antwerp, October 1944 to March 1945 and Liege, November 1944-). 159 killed in bombing of Teniersplaats on 27 Nov 1944 and 567 in bombing of the Cinema Rex on 16 Dec 1944

Second phase (November 1944–February 1945)

Main article: Ardennes Offensive

Role of the Resistance

A resistance nurse, wearing a Belgian Adrian helmet, pictured with Canadian troops during the fighting around the Port of Antwerp

See also: Belgian Resistance

In the months leading up to Allied landing in Normandy, the resistance in Belgium increased in size dramatically. In April 1944, the [Armée Secrète] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), the largest resistance group, started to adopt an official rank hierarchy and uniform (of white overalls and brassard) in order to give their organization the status of an "official army" of liberation.

Though they usually lacked the equipment and training to fight the Wehrmacht openly, the resistance played a key role in assisting the Allies during the liberation of Belgium in September 1944, providing information on German troop movements, disrupting German evacuation plans and participating in fighting. On 1 September, the resistance was alerted to the imminent liberation by a coded message broadcasted on BBC Radio Belgique. The message, "La Jonquille jaune est un fleur" (lit. "The yellow daffodil is a flower") was the symbol for the resistance to intensify its actions. The resistance was particularly important during the liberation of the city of Antwerp, where the local resistance from the [Witte Brigade] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) and [Nationale Koninklijke Beweging] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help), in an unprecedented display of inter-group cooperation, assisted Canadian forces in capturing the port of Antwerp intact, before it could be sabotaged by the German garrison. In the south, the Free Belgian 5th SAS deployed in to Belgium in advance of the Allied advance where it linked up with members of the local resistance during the Liberation and the Battle of the Bulge.

Across Belgium, 20,000 German soldiers (including two generals) were taken prisoner by the resistance, before being handed over to the Allies. All together, almost 4,000 members of the [Armée Secrète] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) alone were killed during the liberation.

Aftermath

Retaliation against collaborators

"Great problems will demand our immediate attention, but in this hour of joy let us not forget the traitors. They must be punished without mercy."

Joseph Van De Meulebroeck, burgomaster (mayor) of Brussels, 6 September 1944

Following the liberation, the resistance began rounding up collaborators, who rapidly became the focus of public hate.

• "Purging" (Épuration or Epuratie) of collaborators (inciviques) in a similar way to in post-war France

Re-establishment of the Belgian state

After four year in London, the government in exile returned to Brussels on 8 September 1944 to begin re-establishing the Belgian state.

The government feared that the resistance, which had always been politically active, would become ungovernable political militia after liberation and so began various inniticatives to disarm the various groups. The government also began to reform a national army, in the form of 57 "Fusilier battalions", with British supervision. The government also implemented "Operation Gutt", a plan devised by the Minister of Finance Camille Gutt to avoid rampant inflation by limiting the money supply, shortly after the liberation.

On 26 September, Pierlot formed a new government of national unity in Brussels. The new government included many of the ministers from London, but for the first time also including the Communists. In December 1944, a new triparate government was formed, with Pierlot still as Prime Minister. In 1945, having been Prime Minister since 1939, Pierlot was finally replaced by the Socialist Achille Van Acker.

• November 1944 political crisis
• Social pact

To add

Dictionnaire

p.246:

• 1st (main) phase: 2-16 September
  • 3,000 civilians killed during this phase
• 2nd phase: 25 December-4 February
  • 2,500 killed, but much greater percentage of the small population in the areas in question

p.247:

• 1 September BBC message to resist ("La Jonquille jaune est un fleur"; lit. "The yellow daffodil is a flower")
• Grohé ordered general evactuation on 28 August

p.248:

• SIPO-SD quit...
• US take 25,500 POWs (with the help of the resistance) in "Mons Pocket" and kill 3,500 more

p.249:

• 90,000 men, 5,500 vehicals and 400 guns from the German 64th and 245th Infantry Divisions escape from the "Breskens Pocket" (on the Dutch-Belgian border) in good order.
• British general George Erskine named head of SHAEF mission in Belgium.

Liberation dates (also p.249): 6 September: Ghent 8 September: Ostende 8 September: Liége 12 September: Bruges 3 November: Zeebrugge & Knokke 6/7 ?: Ciney, Andenne and Huy 10 ?: Arlon

See also

• Belgium in World War II
• Liberation of Paris

Bibliography

• De Vos, Luc. La Libération, une Épreuve de Vitesse 2-12 Septembre 1944 (PDF). Belgian Defence. Retrieved 14 September 2013.
• Beale, Peter (2004). The Great Mistake: the Battle for Antwerp and the Beveland Penisula, September 1944. Stroud: Sutton. ISBN 0750932864.

See French language article fr:Libération de la Belgique et des Pays-Bas and nl:Bevrijding van de Duitse bezetting in België

Images for inclusion

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More refs

• Horn, Gerd-Rainer (2020). The Moment of Liberation in Western Europe: Power Struggles and Rebellions, 1943-1948. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-958791-9.
• Schrijvers, Peter (2012). "'A Modern Liberation'. Belgium and the Start of the American Century, 1944-1946". European Journal of American Studies. 7 (2). doi:10.4000/ejas.9695.
• Schrijvers, Peter (2009). Liberators: The Allies and Belgian Society, 1944-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521514828.
• Schrijvers, Peter (2005). The Unknown Dead: Civilians in the Battle of the Bulge. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 978-0813123523.
• Conway, Martin (2012). The Sorrows of Belgium: Liberation and Political Reconstruction, 1944-1947. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199694341.
• Conway, Martin (1998). "The Liberation of Belgium, 1944–1945". In Bennett, Gill (ed.). The End of the War in Europe 1945. London: HMSO. ISBN 978-0117020351.
• Hitchcock, William I. (2008). The Bitter Road to Freedom: A New History of the Liberation of Europe (1st Free Press hardcover ed.). New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-0743273817.
• Deák, István; Gross, Jan T.; Judt, Tony, eds. (2000). The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00953-8.
• Warner, Geoffrey (1978). "Allies, Government and Resistance: The Belgian Political Crisis of November 1944". Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 28: 45–60. doi:10.2307/3679200. JSTOR 3679200.
• Vanden Daelen, Veerle (2005). "Returning: Jewish Life in Antwerp in the Aftermath of the Second World War (1944–45)". European Judaism. 38 (2): 26–42. JSTOR 41443751.
• Hayes, Geoffrey (1995). ""Where are our Liberators?": The Canadian Liberation of West Brabant, 1944". Canadian Military History. 4 (1).
• Pauwels, J.R. (1985). "De Canadezen en de bevrijding van Belgie (1944-1945) : niet alleen een militaire geschiedenis". Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. 9: 1–122.
• Marquet, Victor (1990). "La sauvegarde du port d'Anvers". Cahiers d'Histoire de la seconde guerre mondiale. 13: 149–218.
• Maerten, Fabrice (1988). "Aspects de la libération dans le Brabant wallon (septembre 1944 - début février 1945)". Cahiers d'Histoire de la seconde guerre mondiale. 11: 121–160.
• Deloge, Pascal (2001). "Belgian Military Plans for the Post-War Period". In Conway, Martin; Gotovich, José (eds.). Europe in Exile: European Exile Communities in Britain, 1940-1945. New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 99–120. ISBN 1-57181-503-1.
• Jaumain, Serge (1995). "La présence des soldats canadiens en Belgique" (PDF). Bulletin d'histoire politique. 3 (3–4): 86. doi:10.7202/1063475ar.

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