Belgium
Fabrice Maerten
The Belgian resistance never developed into an open struggle against the invader.1 It was, nevertheless, relatively well developed, particularly during the last two years of the occupation.2 The long-term impact of the resistance on the nation was, however, very limited. This was linked to the lack of will, as well as the lack of means available to its leaders, who failed to use the forces gathered together during the resistance for any other purpose than assisting in the immediate struggle to rid the territory of the occupier.
Belgium was among the most densely populated countries of Europe. In 1938 there were more than 8,400,000 inhabitants over 30,528km2. More than 90 per cent lived in the highly built up low-lying areas in the west and centre of the country. The hilly and heavily forested Ardennes region, which constitutes the eastern third of Belgium, was much less populated with only one sizeable city, Verviers. Because of this concentration of people and land, Belgium did not lend itself to the establishment of the maquis. On the other hand, her position between Germany, France and Great Britain as well as her extraordinarily dense network of communications made her a key strategic theatre. Belgium was also characterized by its heavy industry, particularly advanced in the areas of coal mining, steel production, metalworking, textiles and chemicals.
The importance of the secondary sector meant that more than half of the active population was employed in these activities, with the majority of them working as labourers. It is hardly surprising, then, that the socialists in the Belgian Workers’ Party (POB) won more than 30 per cent of the votes in 1939. The POB was, however, beaten into second place by the Catholic Party, which received around 33 per cent of the votes in the same elections. The Catholic Party was particularly powerful in the Flemish part of the country where it was supported by a significant section of the working class, whereas in the Walloon industrial areas the working class tended to vote socialist.3
Moreover, the tensions between the Dutch-speaking majority and the francophone minority led, in the interwar period, to the increase of a nationalist current in Flanders which demanded the independence of that region. The political embodiment of that current, the Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond (VNV), won more than 15 per cent of the votes in Flanders in 1939. Another party of the extreme right, on this occasion the Belgian nationalist Rex Party, appeared in francophone Belgium in 1936 before collapsing soon afterwards. The Liberal Party represented the third political force in the country with 17 per cent of the vote in the 1939 election, while the Belgian Communist Party (PCB), though only achieving 5.4 per cent of the vote nationally, had considerable support in Brussels and around the Walloon industrial basins.
Occupied Belgium and the Netherlands, 1940–4.
* * *
On 10 May 1940 Germany invaded Belgium for the second time in just over a quarter of a century. Forced to retreat towards the west following the French rout on the Meuse, the Belgian army had to lay down its weapons as early as 28 May. The campaign came to an end with the death of around 6,000 soldiers and an equal number of civilians. But the political toll was just as heavy, as King Leopold III decided to stay in the country, while his ministers fled to France to continue the battle. The majority of them reached London in October 1940. Little by little, this group, led by Hubert Pierlot, came to be seen in the eyes of the Allies as well as in the eyes of the majority of the populace, as the embodiment of official Belgium. All the movements and networks of Belgian resistance ended up under their umbrella.
In the meantime, the occupier imposed his power on the country. On 1 June 1940 a military administration, led by General Alexander von Falkenhausen, was installed to manage Belgium and the French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais. The Militärverwaltung was above all a surveillance organization. At the time the Nazi leaders did not have a precise idea as to the role of Belgium in the future Reich. Over the short to medium term, the German authorities wished to maintain order and security in order to facilitate the support of the German military effort. This largely involved employing a minimum of personnel and army equipment in the delivery of agricultural and industrial products. Approximately 12,000 soldiers and German civilians—not counting those soldiers who passed through at the beginning and the end of the occupation—administered and controlled the country. They were distributed fairly evenly among administrative personnel, members of the agencies of the Reich, the police and territorial guards.
From 1942 onwards, the army and the German administration that led the country saw their powers steadily undermined by more radical elements in the Nazi regime. But the actual removal from office of the military, which was replaced by a civilian administration in the hands of the SS, did not take place until 19 July 1944, only a few weeks before the rapid liberation (from 2 to 17 September) of most of Belgian territory by Allied troops. The turn of events allowed the country to get off relatively lightly, with fewer than 3,000 civilian victims over the duration of the occupation, but left few opportunities for the resistance to rise to the surface. It should be added that the terrible Battle of the Ardennes, which saw Germans and Americans in combat between 16 December 1944 and the end of January 1945, inflicted severe casualties upon the Belgian population of that region, encompassing widespread destruction and the deaths of at least 2,500 civilians.
The military administration was not hugely different from the Nazi bureaucracy. Indeed, as a partial reproduction of the German elites, the Militäverwaltung participated in the ideological transformation of society. Liberal democracy was rapidly abolished and replaced by a technocratic and corporatist system. The execution of hostages and the racial exclusion of Jews and Gypsies, among others, bear witness to the criminal nature of the Militäverwaltung’s policies.
In order to achieve their ends, the Germans relied on the co-operation of the already existing administration. At the beginning of the occupation, this did not create too many problems, as the administrative, judicial and economic elite that remained in Belgium hoped to manage affairs in such a way that, it was hoped, foreign interference in the country would be limited. From 1941 onwards, these same elites, realizing the possibility of a Nazi defeat, practised a policy of avoidance of German instructions. The occupying authorities made increasing use of those elements which collaborated, particularly the VNV in Flanders and Rex in Wallonia. This allowed the occupier to penetrate various levels of the Belgian state.
This tendency became particularly evident following the introduction of compulsory labour in Germany in October 1942. The threat, to all men between 18 and 50 years of age and all unmarried women from 21 to 35 years, of being sent to Germany to work there in the service of the occupier encouraged the great majority of the Belgian population to take a definitive stand against the invader. Faced with the clear reluctance of civil servants to enact this measure, the military administration decided to concentrate on matters at a local level. Essentially, from the beginning of 1943, the German authorities, assisted by politically radical elements in Belgian society, imposed a concept of total war, hunting out all those who avoided forced labour or who fought in the resistance, which by then they were no longer able to control.4 By this time opposition to the occupier was no longer the preserve of a few relatively harmless groups.
* * *
Following the defeat of the spring of 1940 there were only very few individuals who dared to refuse to submit to the law of their conqueror. The first combatants in the shadow war, as with the thousands of others who joined them later, were inspired in the first place by two values: anti-fascism and, above all, patriotism. But in addition to these two fundamental concepts other elements were needed, such as pro-communism, Anglophilia, the love of liberty and of justice, the commitment to democracy, a sense of solidarity and above all hatred of the German. On the other hand, Anglophobia, anti-communism and Germanophilia constituted powerful obstacles to action against the occupier, and could even in some circumstances lead to collaboration.5
This interpretative framework allows a better understanding of why the resistance, from its very start, was particularly well developed in the middle and lower levels of the French-speaking middle classes, close to the environment of the First World War veterans, who espoused, from the beginning of the occupation, a patriotism that was characterized by a strong anti-German feeling. This sentiment, which was further encouraged by the fear that the middle classes might lose their relatively privileged situation within the Belgian state, explains why the mere appearance of the enemy, together with a sense that Great Britain was not on the point of collapse, encouraged a number of middle-class Belgians to initiate clandestine combat in the autumn of 1940. Some examples of the early activities of this initial nucleus of resistance are the aid given to British soldiers trying to return to their homeland, the establishment of nascent information services and the creation of large numbers of underground newspapers. But the most tangible sign of its development was the success, particularly in Brussels, of the campaign to commemorate 11 November 1918.
What could have constituted a second nucleus of resistance, that is to say those members of the anti-fascist struggle from the second half of the 1930s, collapsed in the wake of events. Its leaders, who were positioned on the moderate left (some Christian Democrats, but above all liberals and socialists), were profoundly shaken by the collapse of Western democracies and began asking themselves questions about the value of parliamentary regimes. The Pierlot government of the time hardly represented a suitable model for them. Only a few were willing to collaborate openly with the occupier, but there was a temptation to accommodate the Germans, in the absence of anything better. This was strengthened by the fact that the military administration showed a certain moderation and willingness to compromise. Only a few small groups made an effort to shake the general apathy, but they were too isolated to constitute a real force.
The communists of the extreme left felt that they must adopt a wait and see policy following the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939.6 The gradual decay of the socialist organizations, however, provided the communists with the opportunity to occupy the social terrain where, little by little, discontent grew as a result of the degradation of daily living conditions. This restlessness surfaced as early as September 1940 in the shape of sporadic wildcat strikes in the great Walloon industrial basins. These actions were very quickly controlled by the PCB which, little by little, mixed social and national claims with the hope of wresting domination of the working classes from the socialists. Confronted by ever harsher repression, the workers engaged in these movements realized that the occupier was an even more redoubtable adversary than the bosses. It is hardly surprising, then, that this campaign came to a head in a large-scale strike which began on 10 May 1941. This action, which lasted more than a week, involved many thousands of workers, particularly in the town of Liège, where tensions with the occupier, but also between socialists and communists, ran high.7
The invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany on 22 June 1941 completely changed the outlook of the PCB. There were no longer any ambiguities. With the party pursued by the occupier, and spurred on by the Kremlin to attack the enemy from behind, the PCB now made the struggle for the liberation of Belgium its absolute priority. The PCB was, however, aware of its marginal position in the Belgian political landscape. This prevented it from gathering under its own flag the ever increasing number of opponents to the occupation regime. As a result, in autumn 1941 the party launched the ‘Independence Front’ (FI).8 The movement dressed itself in the cloak of patriotism in the hope of bringing together all resistance initiatives, but only partially succeeded in this. The various networks created before the war in the context of the struggle against fascism, coupled with the voluntarist state and populist characteristics of the organization, allowed it to attract many willing individuals from the moderate left. The organized socialists, however, like the patriotic right, kept their distance.
At the same time, a section of the patriotic right was wooed by a grouping that came, on this occasion, from certain military milieus. From its beginnings in the autumn of 1940, the Belgian Legion, which espoused an extreme nationalist ‘belgicist’ ideology, did not regard the fight against the occupier as an objective. Characterized by authoritarian ideals, the Belgian Legion considered itself an elite body which had the self-ordained task of protecting the King from attack by the communists, the Rexists and the Flemish nationalists in the event that the Reich gave Belgium a limited form of autonomy. The inanity of this position, and the growing popular irritation with a regime perceived as ever more oppressive, slowly transformed the Belgian Legion into an opposition movement which would provide support to the Allies as the liberation approached.9
* * *
By now the principal elements of the resistance were in place. But at the beginning of 1942 it comprised only a few hundred groups concentrated above all in the large cities of the country and the industrial regions of Wallonia. It slowly developed so that by the summer of 1944 it covered the entire territory of Belgium and numbered between 100,000 and 150,000 participants. Different elements contributed to this development.
First of all, in a state with democratic traditions like Belgium, people were generally speaking not prepared to embark on a ‘shadow’ war in the immediate aftermath of defeat. As a result, it took many months for resistance to develop into a clandestine organization capable of carrying out actions that could genuinely do damage to the invader. The huge numerical superiority of the enemy meant that, from the outset, all initiatives of this type were particularly difficult. It is easy to understand why, from the very start, the resisters relied on the logistical support of the Allies on the other side of the Channel.10
From the summer of 1940 the British, aware of the benefits of co-operation with the ‘interior forces’, sought to make alliances with the first opposition cells, who tried in vain to make contact with ‘London’. In contrast, the Belgian State Security Service, which had been set up in the British capital in November 1940, only sent its first agent to Belgium in June 1941. The Belgian State Security Service did not, furthermore, establish permanent contact with the networks established on the ground until the end of 1941.11 The inefficiency of the Belgian State Security Service at the beginning can in large part be explained by the lack of interest in the resistance shown by the Belgian government-in-exile. Matters began to change from the second half of 1941 with the development of closer contacts between the Belgian exiles in London and the British government, who were happy to rely on individuals with a perfect knowledge of the terrain. From that moment onwards the Allied missions, which became more and more frequent, gained in efficiency.
From the summer of 1942, however, the Belgian State Security Service and the second section of the National Defence Ministry, together with SOE, were in open opposition. The Belgian State Security Service was supported by the leading members of the Belgian government-in-exile, and linked to the SIS, while the Second Section was theoretically in charge of the collection of military information. The SIS and SOE clashed over issues of strategy, such as the question of whether information gathering should prevail over action. There were also issues over efficiency, with the failure of a large number of attempts carried out from the spring of 1941 onwards by SOE to set up sabotage cells in Belgium.12 The conflict between the Belgian State Security Service and the second section, in other words between civilians and the military, was of a political nature. The Belgian State Security Service wished to exercise control over all the missions decreed by the military for fear that they might support a resistance of the extreme right, which would favour a system where strong powers would be invested in the King.
The consequences of these misunderstandings were catastrophic. From August to November 1942, the Belgian government broke all links with the SOE, leaving many agents on the ground without any contact with London. The Belgian Legion was on the point of disappearing entirely. In the end the stand-off was won by the Belgian State Security Service which became from then on the obligatory point of contact between the British and the resistance networks and movements in the occupied country. The Second Section, renamed the Second Bureau, had to content itself with information supplied by the Belgian State Security Service and the business of planning missions relating to military action. In essence, it only had powers over the Belgian Legion.
In 1943 lines of escape were consolidated, and above all information services, thanks to the frequent deployment of operatives and radio officers equipped with transmitters. Furthermore, from 1943 onwards, a greater amount of experience, enhanced coordination between the Belgians and the British, an increased willingness to engage in armed actions and, above all, the priority given to supporting resistance organizations on the ground in accordance with the potential assistance they could provide to Allied landings, all considerably enhanced the efficiency of military style missions. Indeed, from the beginning of the summer of 1943, agents who had been parachuted into Belgium provided precise instructions for close-working relations, and money for the principal resistance movements. These same agents, or others, enabled dozens of weapons drops in the spring and summer of 1944. Some of them attempted to coordinate the actions of the largest organizations at the heart of a National Committee for the Coordination of the Resistance, but the split between the FI and the Secret Army—the new name for the Belgian Legion—caused the project to fail.
Generally speaking, the co-operation between Belgians based in London and the British, and in particular the nearly 300 agents sent to the occupied country, were from 1942 onwards a precious source of help to the resistance organizations. Nevertheless, the resistance fighters themselves frequently claimed that they were not listened to and above all not given sufficient materiel assistance by London.
While it was essential for the resistance, this exterior support was not enough to move these opposition groups out of their marginal position. A certain degree of agitation may be observed after the introduction of the Star of David for the Jews and their deportation in the summer of 1942. However, the Jews’ concentration in four Belgian cities—Antwerp, Brussels, Charleroi and Liège—and above all their already marginalized position in Belgian society ensured that such measures only provoked a very minor reaction. The introduction from 1942 of compulsory labour in Germany elicited a response of an entirely different order.13 Once the first period of shock was over, a vast movement of civil resistance was set in motion, organized by the large resistance movements, in particular the FI, but also by various traditional sections of society, such as the Young Christian Workers. Their aim was to encourage young males, the principal victims of the forced labour measures, to go into hiding and provide them with material assistance. From the summer of 1943, this activity was co-ordinated by the Socrates mission, which had been put in place by agents sent by the Belgian government-in-exile in London.14 Assisted financially by Belgian industrialists and financiers, Socrates employed the services of the FI and other resistance organizations, but above all traditional Catholic and socialist networks, to dis- tribute funds to the roughly 40,000 young people who avoided the call. At a general level, the inclusion of a certain number of these young people in clandestine organizations and above all the large amount of solidarity required to come to the aid of many thousands of people on the run contributed greatly to an enlargement of the resistance base, which from then on spread to the countryside and to the forest areas.
The increasing number of people who joined the active resistance owed a great deal to the growth in anti-German feeling and to popular hatred of the collaborators. As the occupation regime grew harsher there were mounting problems and privations, as well as ever more cases of repression organized by the occupation forces working together with Belgians on their payroll. These factors led to large numbers of patriots and/or anti-fascists joining the struggle. Finally, it goes without saying that the evolution of the international situation from the end of 1942 onwards, and in particular the events that heralded the eventual demise of the Third Reich—the Soviet victory in Stalingrad at the beginning of 1943, the Italian capitulation in the summer of 1943 and, above all, the landings on the Normandy beaches of June 1944—further encouraged people to join the clandestine organizations.
The arrival of new blood did not, however, radically change the power struggles at the top of the resistance which were described above. At the end of the occupation there was still an array of organizations dominated by the lower and middle French-speaking bourgeoisie, the group of organizations gravitating around the FI, and the equally powerful Secret Army. Put simply, the significant expansion of the FI and AS meant that they represented the broad spectrum of public opinion, with the FI on the left and the AS on the right.
Indeed, the French-speaking bourgeoisie were over-represented in the roughly 20,000 Belgians who participated in information gathering. But for obvious reasons pertaining to the accessibility of information, numerous employees in the public administration, in the telephone and telegraph sector and above all in the railways were also involved. Information on the displacement of troops and weapons, the identification of potential bombing targets (aerodromes, factories, centres of communication) as well as the description of the results obtained by the bombing, were of precious importance to the British. The thirty-seven information networks that were officially recognized after the war were also useful to the Belgian government, which thus accrued many economic and political benefits in preparation for the post-war period. Of these networks, four—Luc-Marc, Zero, Clarence and Bayard—had more than 2,000 agents.15
The sociological profile of the thousands of Belgian resisters has not been studied in detail. It is known, however, that the most important escape line, Comet, which from August 1941 to spring 1944 came to the aid of around 700 aviators, had among its 2,000 members a relatively high number of nobles and young women. Generally speaking, the aristocracy had a noteworthy presence in the resistance, above all in the movement’s more military style elements as well as in the information and escape networks.16 Women were less involved except when, as was frequently the case among the bourgeoisie, they were relatively emancipated vis-à-vis their husbands or fathers, and to the extent that they stuck to the relatively traditional roles of assistance and liaison. One can perhaps better understand the role that they played in Comet for these reasons.17
Originating in the autumn of 1940 from within the lower and middle French-speaking bourgeoisie, the Belgian national movement (MNB) had, like the FI, the ambition to become a mass organization involved in all types of resistance activities. It was active above all, however, in the areas of the clandestine press, information gathering and providing assistance to people who were on the run. Impressed by the large numbers of recruits to the resistance (15,000 members were officially recognized) and by its professionalism and devotion to duty, the Belgian government-in-exile in the autumn of 1943 hoped to make it one of its principal points of reference for maintaining order at the time of the liberation. But a wave of arrests carried out in the upper echelons of the MNB in February 1944 deprived it of a large number of its key players, and prevented it from later playing the role that the government-in-exile had initially assigned to it.18
Conversely, the FI had by the liberation become the mass movement hoped for when it had been set up. That said, two factors mitigated the apparent success of the PCB. First, if the FI was relatively well established in Brussels and in the Walloon industrial basin, it was much less so in the rural regions to the south of the country and above all in Flanders.19 Secondly, the renewal of the party leadership, which had been regularly decimated, was not fast enough to ensure sufficient control of the movement. This was particularly the case from the spring of 1943, a period when the FI attracted more and more women and men from different backgrounds and when the PCB was frequently ravaged by waves of arrests. Of the many different elements in the FI, two were particularly visible in September 1944, the Patriotic Militias and the Belgian Partisan Army (with respectively 22,000 and 13,000 recognized combatants).
Originating at the end of the summer of 1941, the partisans began with small sabotage attacks. From the spring of 1942, these actions developed further—including a campaign of strikes against collaborators which continued to grow until the moment of liberation. From the autumn of 1942 the partisans began to attack the members of the army of occupation, a development that the occupier could not tolerate. From then on, the number of hostages, chosen from arrested partisans suspected of communist sympathies, increased.20 In order to avoid the loss of its best forces, the PCB decided to suspend attacks against the invader. In exchange, the Germans decreased the number of executions. But the relentless pursuit of the partisans continued. The aggressive enquiries of the SS-Police, between the spring and the summer of 1943, led to a vast raid, the effects of which were felt at the top of the partisan command and in the PCB.
The PCB and the partisans put in place new leaders at the end of the summer of 1943. From then on the partisans increased the number of sabotage acts and other attacks throughout the country. These were carried out despite the constant repression and the lack of equipment—only three weapons drops were made by the Allies in the period. Indeed, the majority of the 850 killings of collaborators were carried out by these forces.21 Nevertheless, the partisans never constituted a mass movement: even close to the liberation, they were an elite group whose main function was to support the organization that was supposed to represent the armed population, the Patriotic Militias (MP). This body, which only really took on this guise in June 1944, recruited the majority of its members from the ample resources of the FI. The MP initially had a strong Walloon element,22 which was quickly erased by a Belgian communist party keen to present a pro-Belgian image. The MP supported partisan-style operations from 1942 onwards, as well as non-violent forms of engagement, an example of which was the establishment of an organization that provided aid to the families of the victims of repression. This was called Solidarity and it officially affiliated itself to the FI in November 1942. From then on, thousands of men and, above all, women committed themselves selflessly to the collection and distribution of funds to the relatives of FI resisters captured by the enemy.
Propaganda was another activity widely carried out by the FI. Thousands of members mobilized to compose, print and/or distribute the roughly 150 newspapers that were either directly or indirectly linked to the FI. A further hundred or so newspapers were produced by the Committees for Trade Union Struggle (CLS), which were linked to the movement. As with the numerous papers claiming a direct link to the PCB, the FI clandestine press also encouraged direct action and ferocious attacks on the collaborators. In contrast, the other half of the 700 prohibited journals that were printed during the occupation, products of the moderate left or right, supported less violent forms of resistance (assistance to illegal operatives, collection of information); furthermore, they trusted the postwar justice system to carry out a firm, yet controlled, purge of collaborators.
While it did contain a number of discussions about the future organization of society, the clandestine press sought from the very start to boost the morale of the population and to counteract German propaganda. The press also helped recruitment to the nascent formations. Written mostly in French, these papers, which appeared above all in Brussels, only usually appeared once a month and rarely comprised more than a few pages. Moreover, they were rarely printed, so each issue did not often exceed 1,000 copies. Finally, the dangers linked to production and above all distribution frequently led to the dismantling of the production teams. Only twenty or so clandestine papers survived the entire course of the occupation.23
In addition to propaganda and assistance to families, the FI committed itself from the end of 1942 to the fight against deportation. From the spring of 1943, following the appeals to the young workers not to go to Germany, the FI set up assistance committees for those avoiding forced labour. From the summer of the same year, the Socrates mission was subsumed into the movement. But just as it was on the point of taking charge, the FI was obliged by the Belgian notables who financed Socrates to adopt a relatively minor role.
The MP attempted to maintain its own network for gathering and distributing funds for the draft evaders, with the clear aim of keeping them under their control until an insurrection could be launched. But this was not enough to turn the MP into the large-scale organization that its adherents hoped it would become. First, many draft-dodgers simply refused to get involved in the action; secondly, movements like the AS had superior leaders and were better equipped to attract those who wished to prepare for battle. Essentially, the majority of members of the MP were members of the FI who had previously been involved in non-violent forms of activity. The lack of means and of men, the instructions from London to remain cautious and the rapid liberation of the country all limited the involvement of MP members in the armed struggle and deprived the PCB of a decisive bargaining chip at the moment that the Belgian authorities regained control of the country.
The PCB also created other organizations under the control of the FI, such as the CLS. Launched at the beginning of 1942, the CLS encouraged workers and employees to claim better work conditions, but also to rail against the occupier. Their patriotic gestures and actions of protest (diffusion of slogans, production-line sabotage and strikes) attracted the sympathies of large numbers of workers who had been sorely tested by the occupation and deprived of any contact with an efficient socialist trade-union organization. In the Walloon industrial basins they even threatened the socialists’ control.24 Indeed, the socialists were not heavily involved in direct acts of resistance. They preferred to concentrate on drawing up a plan of future reforms, and negotiating a social security plan with State representatives, employers and Catholic trade unions. Concerned not to lose too many of their best people, they essentially fought the Nazi regime by producing and distributing clandestine newspapers, and by supporting the Socrates organisation.25 This strategy was only likely to be politically profitable after the war was over, but the CLS disappeared in the storm that carried off the PCB once peace was established.26
Finally, after the large-scale Jewish round-ups of summer 1942 in Antwerp and Brussels, some communist Jews and some left-leaning Zionists decided to join forces to assist those who had avoided deportation and created the Committee for the Defence of the Jews (CDJ). People from all walks of life joined this organization which was, from the beginning, affiliated to the FI. This allowed for the development of a multitude of contacts which helped gather funds, make false documents and offer shelter to people on the run. The CDJ helped save several thousand Jews, including more than 2,000 children.27
The FI was thus the main creator of a humanitarian resistance which, in addition to the families of political prisoners and clandestine resisters, helped many French soldiers who had escaped from Germany, huge numbers of Russian and Polish prisoners, tens of thousands of draft-dodgers and around 30,000 Jews who, with its help, escaped certain death.
Before moving on to the military resistance, and in particular the Secret Army, it is useful to discuss an atypical movement, the G Group. With its origins in the anti-fascist milieus of the Free University of Brussels, and with the support of the Belgian authorities in London, this elite group, with 4,000 recognized members, was led by outstanding individuals. It began in the autumn of 1943 and developed methodically and efficiently, taking hold of some rail and waterways, as well as some power sources. Despite relatively little external support and, above all, the loss of 20 per cent of its members during the struggle, it carried out its mission until the arrival of the Allies, and even managed to increase its acts of sabotage on railway lines following the Normandy landings.28
G Group was joined in its activities by the Secret Army (AS), the most fully developed movement on the eve of the landings (54,000 recognized members). The AS, however, had a chequered history. The desire to contribute to the liberation of the country and the quality of the leadership established in the summer of 1941 allowed the group to grow until the spring of 1942. But wave after wave of arrests from the summer of 1942 to April 1943, linked to a lack of experience in clandestine combat, almost annihilated the organization. It was disavowed in autumn 1942 by the Belgian authorities in London, who suspected it was an instrument for reinforcing the power of the King.
Some leaders, however, did escape from the German police. Their efforts to rebuild the movement were henceforth encouraged by the government-in-exile in London which, in summer 1943, sent it both instructions and funds. Even greater sums were provided, beginning in March 1944. In the same month, the first drops of arms and explosives took place since the first wave in May 1943. In total, from the beginning of 1943 to the liberation, 1,789 containers full of military materiel were dropped.29
Now protected from financial problems and with a relatively rich arsenal at its disposal, the AS also enjoyed a permanent radio link with London from May 1944. The following month, on the instructions of the Belgian government, it began a series of actions against the road, rail and communications networks used by the German army. The AS thereby contributed to the increase in sabotage attacks throughout the country. The number went from 100 to 250 per month from September 1943 through to May 1944, when such attacks were primarily the work of the partisans and G Group, to between 400 and 600 per month from June to August 1944. These attacks went a long way to increasing the occupier’s difficulties.30
As the liberation approached the AS harried the enemy with a series of guerrilla actions. During the first fortnight of September, the AS provided precious assistance to the advancing Allies by carrying out numerous liaison missions and flushing out small pockets of German resistance. The AS contributed, together with the FI and the National Royalist Movement (a group even further to the right than the AS),31 to the rapid liberation of the town and above all the port of Antwerp, the only Atlantic port to be recaptured virtually intact from the Germans.32
With its military backbone, the AS recruited from all levels of society, even if the workers who joined it were less numerous than they were in the FI. Moreover, its development in Flanders was remarkable given that the struggle arrived there later and was fought with less intensity. Indeed, several reports drafted by the Belgian Secret Service in London during the course of the occupation lament the lack of resistance activity in Flanders. The statistics for armed actions by region back up these claims, since 72 per cent took place in Wallonia, 14 per cent in Brussels and only 14 per cent in Flanders. Finally, several analyses underline the under-representation of the Flemish in the resistance as compared to the Walloons or the Brusselians. While they constituted 54 per cent of the Belgian population, they only provided around a third of the resisters.33
The Flemish had little interest in anti-fascism before the war—indeed they were more taken in by authoritarian and corporatist ideas at the time. Above all, the Flemish seemed to have more difficulties than the people of Brussels and the Walloons in fighting for a Belgian nation for which they had suffered and made great sacrifices during the First World War, and which, as far as many of them were concerned, refused to give them what they felt was legitimately theirs, or else gave it grudgingly.34
That said, during 1943 and above all 1944, the resistance acquired considerable capital throughout the Belgian population, which was increasingly exasperated by the rigours of the occupation. Yet despite everything, the resistance was a minority phenomenon, encompassing no more than 2 to 3 per cent of the population of ‘resistance age’ (roughly 16 to 65 years). The truth is that the real risks involved required courage—or a spirit of adventure—which not everyone possessed; furthermore, the clandestine style of existence, which many of those who actively opposed the occupier were forced to adopt, had considerable consequences for working and family life. It is understandable why it was a phenomenon that affected above all men from 20 to 40 years of age, more desirous of distinguishing themselves, more invested with a strength of mind, more impulsive—perhaps more careless even—than their elders, and less restricted by domestic grind than women of the same age.
Among the resisters was a sizeable proportion of foreigners, particularly in the markedly anti-fascist organizations. Furthermore, the middle classes were overrepresented. This can perhaps be explained by their high level of involvement in democratic life. By extension, state employees were more involved than other workers, perhaps because the workers themselves felt less directly threatened by the establishment of a new order. Furthermore, in the business world, the social struggle seemed, for evident reasons of survival, to be more significant than the patriotic struggle. The worsening of living conditions increasingly attributable to the occupier and the deportation measures brought in from October 1942 did, however, persuade more and more workers to get involved in the struggle. The agricultural workers, lastly, only started to intervene from 1943, the year in which more than 10,000 figures—Allied airmen, Russian prisoners, Jews, resistance fighters on the run and above all draft evaders—left the cities where informers were rife and difficult to pick out from the crowd. From the miserable conditions in the cities, they moved to the countryside, which was far more secure and better able to provide them with what they needed.
The case of the peasants underlines the fundamental importance of the concept of utility.35 Since, essentially, involvement demanded great sacrifices, it had to be seen to be profitable for the common good. In particular, it had to meet the principal aspiration of the majority, which was to see the country liberated. And in the first years of the occupation at least, the majority of Belgians did not see the point of gathering information for some hypothetical liberators, nor could they conceive how distributing the clandestine press might contribute in a tangible way to a favourable outcome for the conflict.
Nevertheless, several thousand people judged the ‘civil action’ of the movements sufficiently useful to be worth the risk of participation. Utility does not therefore constitute an absolute value, it has a subjective quality also, which reflects a political culture. Thus, the communists acquired a wide experience in the interwar period in different activities that were relevant to resistance (propaganda, solidarity and even certain forms of violence such as street confrontations) which were aimed at contesting the powers that be. It was therefore entirely natural that they used these methods to attempt to unite the population against the occupation and destabilize it. Conversely, it was much more difficult for those who were generally associated with running the country to go against the automatic response of submitting to the established order. In order to do this, it was necessary for the planned act of resistance to have a legitimacy which could make it appear almost legal in their eyes. The support for the draft avoiders developed by the socialists and the Catholics clearly fell into this category. Furthermore, the experience gained during the First World War by some members of the francophone bourgeoisie in terms of the clandestine press, escape lines and information gathering eased the path to illegality among those who belonged to this section of society. As far as the military were concerned, when they were not disconcerted by the passivity of their supreme commander, the King, they were only capable of preparing large-scale battle plans. This was a dangerous tactic in the context of the shadow war, and one which would go on to cost them dearly.
These interpretative schemes were equally valid for those individuals who, in their own way, got involved in a form of resistance that they considered to be useful. If many Belgians helped the Jews, Allied airmen or draft evaders, it is undoubtedly because such actions required simple skills, involving familiar values (charity or fraternity) and leading to a result that was immediately understood. That said, the will to act is frequently thwarted by circumstances. Thus, after the Normandy landings, there were many people who felt it was useful to take up arms to help the Allies drive out the occupier. But the Germans’ strike power, the density of the population and the lack of available weapons meant that the majority of the leaders of the movements urged these resistance novices to play the waiting game.
Essentially, how does one become a resistance fighter in such a basically urban, complex and densely populated society?36 Commitment went from individual to individual, on the basis of mutual trust: either the person concerned asked his acquaintance to join the organization, or vice versa. The links that, initially, brought together the two protagonists could be family related or professional, associational, political, religious or trade union-related ones, or simply a matter of being neighbours. Most frequently there was a trial period during which, by means of minor tasks, the ‘resistance capacities’ of the new member were tested. If the results were convincing—the key criteria were organizational skills and resourcefulness, courage, sangfroid, discretion and prudence—and if the person accepted taking greater risks, then more significant activities were given to him or her, such as active participation in a sabotage attempt or escorting an Allied airman.
A relatively large number of resisters managed to maintain a fairly normal life, either because they simply restricted their activities or because they acted within their own work environment. This was the case, for example, with railway workers, postal employees, people who worked in administration or policemen. These were professionals who were regularly asked, because they were very useful in terms of assistance to those who were on the run, to gather information and/or get involved in armed actions. For other resisters, the days were frequently exhausting: either they combined their professional and their resistance activities, or, once they had gone underground for fear of being captured, they gave themselves entirely over to resistance. The clandestine fighters did not, generally speaking, have an exciting life. They were almost always required, for reasons of security, to spend most of the day and night alone. Furthermore, most of their time was taken up by difficult transfers from one place to another, either on foot or using other means of transportation such as bicycles, trams or trains, or else they were engaged in paperwork. All these tasks were necessary because of the danger the enemy, potentially lying in wait at every rendezvous, represented.
It is worthwhile recalling that everyone, from the individual who gave shelter to an airman to the head of a network, lived in justifiable fear of being arrested, tortured and killed by the occupiers, or by those who collaborated with them. In fact, around one in four resisters ended up in captivity, and one in eight died. Either they were executed or, more frequently, they perished from exhaustion or illness in a concentration camp. In absolute figures, that means that more than 30,000 combatants fell into the hands of the enemy and more than 15,000 of them did not have the chance to enjoy peace and liberty when they were reestablished.
The evolution of the pattern of arrests confirms the initial slow development of clandestine combat (less than 5 per cent of the resisters who were arrested were captured before the end of 1941), and its increasing intensity from 1942 onwards (the number of resisters apprehended in this period is five times that of 1941). By 1944 the struggle was very harsh, and more than half of the cases of imprisonment took place during the course of the last eight months of the occupation. This explosion in incarcerations was not only due to intensifying levels of confrontation, but also to the way that the struggle evolved. Indeed, if the forms of non-violent resistance—propaganda, assistance to those on the run and information gathering—continued to develop, this growth was nothing compared to the increase in armed actions—sabotage, attacks on individuals and requisitions—which, granted, had started from a relatively low base in 1942. The German authorities estimated that there was one act of sabotage every three days at the beginning of 1942. This figure rose to three a day at the end of 1942, ten a day from the autumn of 1943 and peaked at twenty-five a day in the summer of 1944. Involving greater risks, this type of activity was also subject to more severe repression by an enemy that increasingly had its back against the wall.
It is therefore not surprising that if the workers seemed to commit themselves less and later to the resistance than the middle classes, their tendency to choose outright struggle means that they were subject to greater repression. In contrast, women (around 15 per cent of the participants), who were for most of the time restricted to courier work or to dealing with supplies, were less frequently apprehended than the men (one in five rather than one in four). Above all, the death rate was much lower for them (between 2 and 3 per cent as compared to 10 per cent for their male comrades).37
* * *
Despite its many forms, the resistance did not leave behind anything more than a very modest legacy. Its reputation was tarnished by violent excesses—unjustifiable attacks and thefts with personal motives—which were often committed by peripheral groups. Furthermore, its image suffered from the artificial inflation of its numbers at the moment of liberation, as well as from some miscalculations and blunders committed at that time.38 Lastly, the activities of the resistance during the occupation were, in September 1944, largely unknown to the majority of the population who recognized the role of the Allied troops in liberating their country.39
More importantly, the resistance was foreign to the majority of the population for whom that sense of symbiotic co-operation, which was evident at the end of the occupation, was only short-lived and transient because it was solely linked to the struggle against the invader. The weakness of the political legacy of the resistance can also be explained by the insignificant position it occupied in the strategy of the three pillars of Belgian society, namely the Catholic, Socialist and Liberal parties.40 Without any political conduit—after a brief electoral success in 1946, the PCB collapsed in 1949—and also frequently divided, the resistance movement had many difficulties in getting its voice heard in the immediate postwar period.41
The defeat is, in fact, abundantly clear to those elements that had hoped to profit from their investment in the resistance so as to participate in a radical transformation of society. This is clearly the case for the communists, particularly those in the FI. Encouraged from Moscow, they committed themselves wholeheartedly to the struggle against the occupier, to the extent that they were the principal organizers of clandestine combat from the summer of 1941 to the D-Day landings. But they also lost a large number of their best people along the way. At the most, given its brief popularity, the PCB was able to function as a stimulus to those sections of society who in a way saw themselves obliged by the communists to proceed with important social reforms following the liberation.
The partisans of the extreme right, those who had been behind the creation of the Belgian Legion and later the National Royalist Movement, found themselves, in the face of impending Allied victory and the population’s distaste for authoritarian regimes, having to moderate their political programme. They also were forced to ally with the conservative right, notably the Secret Army, in order to counteract the rise of the left. This belgicist extreme right managed, despite everything, to preserve some precious assets in time for the liberation. Its ‘wait and see’ style of participation in the resistance had cost comparatively few lives, and left it relatively intact while at the same time acquiring a certain aura of respectability.
That said, among the pioneering currents of the Belgian resistance, there was at the end of the conflict one clear winner, the French-speaking middle-class patriots. Despite the concessions granted in social and, undoubtedly, linguistic terms, they managed to obtain what they had fought for, the re-establishment of an independent and united Belgium, built on liberal principles, and in which the francophone elite maintained an important place.
Translated by Philip Cooke.
Notes
1. For an excellent discussion of the precise meaning of resistance, see Pierre Laborie, ‘L’idée de Résistance, entre définition et sens: retour sur un questionnement’, in La Résistance et les Français: Nouvelles approches (Cahiers de l’IHTP, no. 37) (Paris, 1997), 15–27.
2. There is only a limited historiography on the Belgian resistance. See Fabrice Maerten, ‘L’historiographie de la Résistance belge. A la recherche de la patrie perdue’, in Laurent Douzou (ed.), Faire l’histoire de la Résistance (Rennes, 2010), pp. 257–76. For general studies, which although a little dated are still useful, see above all Henri Bernard, La résistance 1940–1945 (Brussels, 1969); George K. Tanham, Contribution à l’histoire de la résistance belge 1940–1944 (Brussels, 1971); the section dedicated to the resistance in Etienne Verhoeyen, La Belgique occupée. De l’an 40 à la Libération (Brussels, 1994), pp. 331–511; Peter Lagrou, ‘Belgium’, in Bob Moore (ed.), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford, 2000), pp. 27–63; Fabrice Maerten, ‘La Résistance en Belgique, 1940–1944’, in Le fort de Breendonk. Le camp de la terreur nazie en Belgique pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Brussels, 2006), pp. 33–59; Herman Van De Vijver, Rudi Van Doorslaer and Etienne Verhoeyen, Het Verzet (2) (Antwerp/Amsterdam/Kappellen, 1988).
3. For a perceptive account of the demographic geography of Belgium between the two wars see C. Mertens, La répartition de la population sur le territoire belge. Etude de démographie sociale (Louvain-Brussels, 1946). For the socio-political aspects see Emmanuel Gerard, La Démocratie rêvée, bridée et bafouée (Brussels, 2010).
4. On occupied Belgium see Jules Gérard-Libois and José Gotovitch, L’An 40. La Belgique occupée (Brussels, 1971); Verhoeyen, La Belgique occupée; and, above all, the two recent edited collections: Mark Van den Wijngaert (ed.), België tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Antwerp, 2004); Paul Aron and José Gotovitch (eds), Dictionnaire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale en Belgique (Brussels, 2008).
5. On the question of values see the analyses in Jean-Marie Guillon and Pierre Laborie (eds), Mémoire et histoire. La Résistance (Toulouse, 1995), and also in La Résistance et les Français. Nouvelles approches. Their ideas have been applied to the Belgian case in Fabrice Maerten, ‘Le poids du souvenir de 14–18 dans l’engagement résistant durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Le cas du Hainaut’, in Fabrice Maerten, Jean-Pierre Nandrin and Laurence van Ypersele (eds), Politique, imaginaire et éducation. Mélanges en l’honneur de Jacques Lory (Brussels, 2000), pp. 89–125.
6. On the PCB during the occupation, see José Gotovitch, Du rouge au tricolore. Les communistes belges de 1939 à 1944. Un aspect de l’histoire de la Résistance en Belgique (Brussels, 1992); idem, Du communisme et des communistes. Approches critiques (Brussels, 2012), in particular part 3, ‘Guerre, clandestinité, résistance’, pp. 201–316.
7. On the strike of May 1941, see José Gotovitch, ‘La grève des 100.000’, in Jours de lutte (Jours de guerre, 7), (Brussels, 1992), pp. 91–100; Dirk Luyten, ‘Stakingen in België en Nederland, 1940–1941’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, no. 15 (2005), 149–76.
8. On the composition of the FI, see also José Gotovitch, Du rouge au tricolore.
9. On the Belgian Legion and the Secret Army see Victor Marquet, Contribution à l’histoire de l’Armée secrète (6 issues) (Brussels, 1991–5).
10. On this support see Emmanuel Debruyne, La guerre secrète des espions belges, 1940–1944 (Brussels, 2008), in particular the chapter ‘Les rapports avec Londres’, pp. 107–224; M.R.D. Foot, SOE in the Low Countries (London, 2001); Verhoeyen, La Belgique occupée, in particular the chapter ‘Les liaisons secrètes avec Londres’, pp. 425–511.
11. For an encyclopaedic overview of the various Belgian networks see Fernand Strubbe, Services secrets belges, 1940–1944. Allemagne, Belgique, Espagne, France, Luxembourg, Pays-Bas (Brussels, 1997).
12. See Etienne Verhoeyen, ‘L’heure des saboteurs’, in Jours de lutte (Jours de guerre, 7) (Brussels, 1992), pp. 72–89.
13. On this policy and its consequences for the resistance see Le travail obligatoire en Allemagne 1942–1945 (Brussels, 1993).
14. See Etienne Verhoeyen, ‘Le gouvernement en exil et le soutien clandestin aux réfractaires’, in Le travail obligatoire en Allemagne, pp. 133–64.
15. See Debruyne, La guerre secrète.
16. See Marie-Pierre d’Udekem d’Acoz, Pour le Roi et la Patrie. La noblesse belge dans la Résistance (Brussels, 2002).
17. See Etienne Verhoeyen, ‘La ligne d’évasion Comète (août 1941–février 1943)’, Jours mêlés (Jours de guerre, 11-12-13) (Brussels, 1997), pp. 161–80.
18. On the MNB, see above all George K. Tanham, Contribution à l’histoire, pp. 51–9.
19. For an example of FI operations in industrial Wallonia see Fabrice Maerten, ‘Le Front de l’indépendance comme instrument du Parti communiste dans le Hainaut en 1940–1944. Entre réalité belge et rêve soviétique’, Annales du Cercle d’histoire et d’archéologie de Saint-Ghislain et de la région, Vol. 11 (2008), 437–518.
20. On this issue see, for example, Maxime Steinberg and José Gotovitch, Otages de la terreur nazie. Le Bulgare Angheloff et son groupe de partisans juifs, Bruxelles, 1940–1943 (Malines, 2007).
21. On the attacks see José Gotovitch, ‘Quelques réflexions historiques à propos du terrorisme’, in Réflexions sur la définition et la répression du terrorisme (Brussels, 1974), pp. 15–24; Jan Laplasse and Karolien Steen, ‘Het verzet gewogen. Een kwantitatieve analyse van politieke anslagen en sabotages in België, 1940–1944’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, no. 15 (2005), 227–62; Antoon Vrints, ‘Patronen van polarisatie. Homicide in België tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog’, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, no. 15 (2005), 177–204.
22. The Walloons who were most critical of the Belgian nation state identified with the ‘Free Wallonia’ movement, whose power bases were above all in Brussels and Liège. The principal activity of this organization was the publication of clandestine press hostile to Flanders, accused of monopolizing the levers of the State. On the resistance groupings in Wallonia see Marie-Françoise Gihousse, Mouvements wallons de résistance, mai 1940–septembre 1944 (Charleroi, 1984) and Chantal Kesteloot, ‘Belgique, Wallonie, Flandres: les identités déchirées du Mouvement wallon’, in Christian Bougeard (ed.), Bretagne et identités régionales pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Brest, 2002), pp. 353–68.
23. On the clandestine press see José Gotovitch, ‘Presse clandestine en Belgique, une production culturelle?’, in Bruno Curatolo and François Marcot (eds), Ecrire sous l’Occupation. Du nonconsentement à la Résistance France-Belgique-Pologne 1940–1945 (Rennes, 2011), pp. 97–114; idem, ‘Photographie de la presse clandestine de 1940’, in Cahiers d’histoire de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, no. 2 (1972), 113–56 José Gotovitch (ed.), Guide de la presse clandestine de Belgique (Brussels, 1991); Fabrice Maerten, ‘De sluikpers in bezet België’, in Tegendruk. Geheime pers tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Gand/Brussels/Antwerp, 2004), pp. 72–87.
24. See José Gotovitch, ‘Les relations socialistes-communistes en Belgique sous l’occupation’, in Etienne Dejonghe (ed.), L’occupation en France et en Belgique 1940–1944 (Villeneuve d’Ascq, Vol. 2, 1988), pp. 809–32.
25. On the socialists during the occupation see Chantal Kesteloot, ‘Du désarroi à l’engagement. Les socialistes et la clandestinité’, in Jours gris (Jours de guerre, 9) (Brussels, 1993), pp. 35–47; and José Gotovitch, ‘Ruptures et continuités: personnel dirigeant et choix stratégiques socialistes de la clandestinité à la Libération’, Socialisme, juillet–août (1984), 305–20.
26. On this trade-union rivalry and its outcome see Rik Hemmerijckx, Van Verzet tot Koude Oorlog, 1940–1949. Machtsstrijd om het ABVV (Brussels/Gand, 2003); idem, Le mouvement syndical unifié et la naissance du renardisme (Brussels, 1986).
27. On the CDJ see Maxime Steinberg, L’étoile et le fusil. La traque des Juifs 1942–1944 (Brussels, 1986), Vol. 1.
28. See William Ugeux, Le Groupe G (1942–1944). Deux héros de la Résistance: Jean Burgers et Robert Leclercq (Paris/Brussels, 1978).
29. Verhoeyen, La Belgique occupée, p. 423.
30. On the development of sabotage during the occupation see Laplasse and Steen, ‘Het verzet gewogen’.
31. See Francis Balace, ‘Le thème autoritaire dans la résistance belge—de “l’ordre national” au “retour à la démocratie”’, in Les courants politiques et la Résistance: continuités ou ruptures? (Luxembourg, 2003), pp. 335–64.
32. See Victor Marquet, ‘La sauvegarde du port d’Anvers’, in Cahiers du Centre de recherches et d’études historiques de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, no. 13 (1990), 149–218.
33. Jan Laplasse and Karolien Steen, ‘Het verzet gewogen’, p. 255; Fabrice Maerten, ‘Les courants idéologiques et la Résistance belge—Une adhésion limitée’, in Les courants politiques et la Résistance, pp. 319–21; Fabrice Maerten, ‘La Résistance en Belgique, 1940–1944’, p. 36.
34. On these differences in the levels of commitment to the resistance between the Flemish and French-speaking Belgians see, above all, Emmanuel Debruyne, La guerre secrète, in particular pp. 269–82; Laplasse and Steen, ‘Het verzet gewogen’; Fabrice Maerten, ‘L’impact du souvenir de la Grande Guerre sur la résistance en Belgique durant le second conflit mondial’, in Laurence van Ypersele (ed.), Imaginaires de guerre. L’histoire entre mythe et réalité (Louvain-la-Neuve), pp. 303–38; Patrick Temmerman and Bert Boeckx, Deportatie en verzet, een eerste globale statistische analyse op basis van de erkenningsdossiers Politieke Gevangenen (Brussels, 1995).
35. The reflections that follow are based on Fabrice Maerten, ‘Les courants idéologiques et la Résistance belge—Une adhésion limitée’, in Les courants politiques et la Résistance, pp. 302–34 ; and on Olivier Wieviorka, ‘A la recherche de l’engagement (1940–1944)’, Vingtième Siècle, no. 60 (1998), pp. 58–70.
36. See above all José Gotovitch, ‘Quelques aspects de la vie quotidienne d’un clandestin’, in 1940–1945. La vie quotidienne en Belgique (Brussels, 1984), pp. 228–35.
37. The information on the sociological aspects of the resistance and on its repression are mostly drawn from Emmanuel Debruyne, La guerre secrète; Fabrice Maerten, La Résistance politique et idéologique dans la province de Hainaut pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (mai 1940–septembre 1944), 3 vols (Mons, 1999); Fabrice Maerten, ‘La Résistance, une école d’émancipation pour les femmes? La réalité nuancée du Hainaut belge’, in Robert Vandenbussche (ed.), Femmes et résistance en Belgique et en zone interdite (1940–1944) (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 2008), pp. 165–98; Temmerman and Boeckx, Deportatie en verzet.
38. See Francis Balace, ‘Les hoquets de la liberté’, in Jours libérés II (Jours de guerre, 20), (Brussels, 1995), pp. 75–132.
39. See José Gotovitch, ‘Communistes et résistants: les (en)jeux de dupes d’une libération’, in Jours de paix (Jours de guerre, 22-23-24) (Brussels, 2001), pp. 49–100; and Geoffrey Warner, ‘Allies, Government and resistance; the Belgian Political Crisis of November 1944’, in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, no. 28 (1978), 45–60.
40. See Fabrice Maerten, ‘Les courants idéologiques et la Résistance belge—Une adhésion limitée’, in Les courants politiques et la Résistance, pp. 302–34.
41. On this period see Martin Conway’s excellent recent study, The Sorrows of Belgium. Liberation and Political Reconstruction, 1944–1947 (Oxford/New York, 2012).
Guide to Further Reading
Conway, Martin, The Sorrows of Belgium. Liberation and Political Reconstruction, 1944–1947 (Oxford/New York, 2012).
Lagrou, Peter, ‘Belgium’, in Bob Moore (ed.), Resistance in Western Europe (Oxford, 2000), pp. 27–63.