Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.
Eric Harold Portman was an English stage and film actor. He is probably best remembered for his roles in three films for Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger during the 1940s.
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.
Oscar Millard was an English writer who published two books set in Belgium before finding success in Hollywood as a screenwriter.
La Libre Belgique, currently sold under the name La Libre, is a quality French-language Belgian daily newspaper. Together with Le Soir, it is one of the most popular Francophone newspapers in both Brussels and Wallonia. La Libre was founded in 1884 and has historically had a centre-right Christian Democratic political stance. The papers is particularly celebrated for its role as an underground newspaper during World War I and World War II when Belgium was occupied. Since 1999, the newspaper has become increasingly liberal but is still considered more conservative than Le Soir.
Cornelia Hubertina "Neel" Doff was a writer of Dutch descent living and working in Belgium and mainly writing in French. She is one of the most important contributors to proletarian literature.
Arthur Crabtree was a British cinematographer and film director. He directed films with comedians such as Will Hay, the Crazy Gang and Arthur Askey and several of the Gainsborough melodramas.
The German Corpse Factory or Kadaververwertungsanstalt, also sometimes called the "German Corpse-Rendering Works" or "Tallow Factory" was one of the most notorious anti-German atrocity propaganda stories circulated in World War I. In the postwar years, investigations in Britain and France revealed that these stories were false.
Me and the Colonel is a 1958 American comedy film based on the play Jacobowsky und der Oberst by Franz Werfel. It was directed by Peter Glenville and stars Danny Kaye, Curd Jürgens and Nicole Maurey.
Edward Black was a British film producer, best known for being head of production at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which time he oversaw production of the Gainsborough melodramas. He also produced such classic films as The Lady Vanishes (1938).
The Prisoner is a 1955 British black and white psychological thriller film directed by Peter Glenville and based on the play of the same name by Bridget Boland. It stars Alec Guinness and Jack Hawkins. Although controversial at the time of its release, the film received five nominations at the 9th British Academy Film Awards: Best Film From Any Source, Best British Film, Best British Screenplay, and Best British Actor.
Flare Path is a play by Terence Rattigan, written in 1941 and first staged in 1942. Set in a hotel near an RAF Bomber Command airbase during the Second World War, the story involves a love triangle between a pilot, his actress wife and a famous film star. The play is based in part on Rattigan's own wartime experiences, and was significantly reworked and adapted for film as The Way to the Stars.
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.
During World War II, La Libre Belgique was one of the most notable underground newspapers published in German-occupied Belgium. This was partly a result of the success of a newspaper with the same title that had been produced in German-occupied Belgium during World War I. Though a number of editions appeared in 1940 and 1941, the most enduring La Libre Belgique published during the World War II was the so-called "Peter Pan" edition which ran to 85 issues with a circulation of 10,000 to 30,000 each.
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 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 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.
Various kinds of clandestine media emerged under German occupation during World War II. By 1942, Nazi Germany occupied much of continental Europe. The widespread German occupation saw the fall of public media systems in France, Belgium, Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Northern Greece, and the Netherlands. All press systems were put under the ultimate control of Joseph Goebbels, the German Minister of Propaganda.
Groupe Mémoire - Groep Herinnering (GM-GH) is a Belgian association set up in memory of the Belgian political prisoners of the Second World War.
Uncensored is a 1937 novel by British writer Oscar Millard. It takes place during the German occupation of Belgium in the First World War. It was inspired by the real-life underground newspaper La Libre Belgique run by the country's resistance movement.
