The Belgian Resistance collectively refers to the resistance movements opposed to the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Within Belgium, resistance was fragmented between many separate organizations, divided by region and political stances. The resistance included both men and women from both Walloon and Flemish parts of the country. Aside from sabotage of military infrastructure in the country and assassinations of collaborators, these groups also published large numbers of underground newspapers, gathered intelligence and maintained various escape networks that helped Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines escape from German-occupied Europe.
Alexandre Galopin was a Belgian businessman notable for his role in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Galopin was director of the Société Générale de Belgique, a major Belgian company, and chairman of the board of the motor and armaments company Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre (FN). At the head of a group of Belgian industrialists and financiers, he gave his name to the "Galopin Doctrine" which prescribed how Belgian industry should deal with the moral and economic choices imposed by the occupation. In February 1944, he was assassinated by Flemish collaborators from the DeVlag group.
The Mechelen transit camp, officially SS-Sammellager Mecheln in German, also known as the Dossin barracks, was a detention and deportation camp established in a former army barracks at Mechelen in German-occupied Belgium. It served as a point to gather Belgian Jews and Romani ahead of their deportation to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust.
The Resistance Medal 1940–1945 was a Belgian war medal established by royal decree of the Regent on 16 February 1946 and awarded to all members of the Belgian armed resistance during the Second World War and to members of the intelligence service who operated in occupied territories and participated in combat actions aimed at the liberation of Belgium.
The Military Administration in Belgium and Northern France was an interim occupation authority established during the Second World War by Nazi Germany that included present-day Belgium and the French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. The administration was also responsible for governing the zone interdite, a narrow strip of territory running along the French northern and eastern borders. It remained in existence until July 1944. Plans to transfer Belgium from the military administration to a civilian administration were promoted by the SS, and Hitler had been ready to do so until Autumn 1942, when he put off the plans for what was intended to be temporary but ended up being permanent until the end of German occupation. The SS had suggested either Josef Terboven or Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the Reich Commissioner of the civilian administration.
The royal question was a major political crisis in Belgium that lasted from 1945 to 1951, coming to a head between March and August 1950. The question at stake surrounded whether King Leopold III could return to the country and resume his constitutional role amid allegations that his actions during World War II had been contrary to the provisions of the Belgian Constitution. The crisis brought Belgium to the brink of a civil war. It was eventually resolved by the abdication of Leopold in favour of his son King Baudouin in 1951.
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-west 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.
Dutch-Paris escape line was a resistance network during World War II with ties to the Dutch, Belgian and French Resistance. Their main mission was to rescue people from the Nazis by hiding them or taking them to neutral countries. They also served as a clandestine courier service. In 1978 Yad Vashem recognized Dutch-Paris's illegal work of rescuing Jews by honoring the line's leader, Jean Weidner as Righteous Among the Nations on behalf of the entire network.
The Secret Army was an organisation within the Belgian Resistance, active during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. With more than 54,000 members, it was by far the largest resistance group active in the country.
The Belgian National Movement was a major group in the resistance in German-occupied Belgium during World War II with politically centre-right leanings.
The White Brigade was a Belgian resistance group founded on 23 July 1940 in Antwerp by Marcel Louette, who was nicknamed "Fidelio". The group was originally known as "De Geuzengroep" and changed its name again after the Liberation of Belgium to Witte Brigade-Fidelio as the term "white brigade" had emerged as a generic term to describe the resistance.
The Holocaust in Belgium was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Out of about 66,000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.
The Committee of Secretaries-General was a committee of senior civil servants and technocrats in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. It was formed shortly before the occupation to oversee the continued functioning of the civil service and state bureaucracy independently of the German military occupation administration.
The German occupation of Belgium during World War II began on 28 May 1940, when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces, and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945. It was the second time in less than thirty years that Germany had occupied Belgium.
The Comité National de Secours et d'Alimentation was a relief organization created in 1914 to distribute humanitarian aid to civilians in German-occupied Belgium during World War I. It was directed by the Belgian financier Émile Francqui. The CNSA acted as the network by which the aid brought in by the international Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) could be distributed within Belgium itself.
The German occupation of Belgium of World War I was a military occupation of Belgium by the forces of the German Empire 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.
Events in the year 1944 in Belgium.
The Liberation of Belgium from German occupation began on 2 September 1944 when Allied forces entered the province of Hainaut and was completed on 4 February 1945 with the liberation of the village of Krewinkel. The liberation came after four years of German-occupied rule. The Belgian government was returned to power on 8 September 1944 after Allied forces had captured Brussels four days earlier.
The Belgian economic miracle was a period of rapid economic growth in Belgium after World War II, principally between 1945 and 1948.
Edmond Solomon "Moen" Chait (1912-1975) was a resistance leader of the Dutch-Paris Escape Line during the Second World War. Himself a Jew, Chait began his resistance career by helping other Jews to hide in the city of Antwerp, Belgium, as a member of the illegal Comité de Défense des Juifs. In mid-1942 he relocated to the city of Lyon, France, where he volunteered to lead Jewish refugees to neutral Switzerland. A year later in 1943, that escape line over the Swiss border expanded to reach from the Netherlands to Spain and Switzerland, going through Brussels, Paris, Lyon and Toulouse. Chait acted as one of the three leaders of the line, along with Jean Weidner and Jacques Rens. Chait took on the most dangerous missions such as carrying large amounts of cash across borders or escorting Jewish children to safety. He also arranged the escapes of prominent Dutch resisters, civilians wanting to join the Allies in England and downed Allied aviators.
