Only via Belgium into Northern France is there a level pathway, clear of obstacles, of imposing breadth for most of the distance, and laced with every facility for the rapid deployment and continuing supply of large military forces. Highways, railroads and canals all stream in the decisive direction.¹

    On August 4, 1914, the German army began its march to Paris. But the march was not a direct one, for in Europe the shortest distance between two points is often not a straight line. ² Count Alfred von Schlieffen's strategic memorandum of 1905 discussed several military options for an invasion of France, and concluded that the most expedient route wound through the small, neutral country of Belgium. Almost a decade later, German General Helmuth von Moltke put his predecessor's ideas into action. Belgium's unfortunate position made it the arena for the first key battles of World War One. On August 7th, the Germans attacked the fortress city of Liege, the gateway to the rest of the nation. Two months later, they occupied virtually all of Belgium, including the capital city of Brussels and the bustling port city of Antwerp, taken under siege. The rest of the march to Paris did not go so smoothly, however. The German advance stalled at the Marne river in Northern France, and four long years of trench warfare loomed ahead for both sides.

    At the time, the German government had no official policy for the occupation of Belgium.³ They had several options. The Germans could annex Belgium or part of it outright, they could form some sort of economic union through German domination and exploitation of Belgian industry, or they could retain Belgium's pre-war status with certain limitations designed to guarantee Belgium's loyalty to Germany in the future.⁴ The interplay between these ideas, and the differences of opinion between the military, the German political leaders, and the General-Governor of Belgium tell one part of the story of the German occupation. The Belgian people tell the other part. Close examination of how German policy affected them and how it was influenced by them allow a clearer view of what went on in Belgium under German rule. By wading through the swamp of war propaganda produced by Germany, England, France, and Belgium, and by sifting through the multitude of personal narratives written by soldiers and observers, an overall picture of the Belgian nation during the First World War begins to take shape.

    Belgium was not entirely crushed by the Germans, nor were they spared hardship and strife. The Germans needed Belgium and its resources for their war effort, but the people (mostly military leaders and industrialists) who advocated total exploitation did not achieve their goals. This is not to say that the Belgians were not exploited in other ways. The Germans formed a policy of administrative separation to utilize French/Flemish animosity to their advantage, and they used their superior financial strength to forge close economic ties between the two nations.⁵ Because of military considerations, Germany did not respect Belgium's sovereignty or its neutrality. ⁶ But after the invasion, when it became possible to exchange Belgium's future for short-term gains, Germany did not take full advantage of the situation. This paper is devoted to an analysis of the political, social, and economic forces acting both in Belgium and in Germany that produced this reality.

    Once the Germans gained control of the Belgian frontier, they needed some sort of plan for the occupation of Belgium. On August 26, 1914, a direct order from the Imperial Cabinet created the first Governor-General of Belgium, Field Marshall Freiherr Colmar von der Goltz, and the first Civil Administrator, Dr. Wilhelm von Sandt. General Moltke was the driving force behind these appointments. In a letter to the Imperial Cabinet, he "proposed that Belgium be treated as a conquered territory to be used to meet the requirements of the military forces."⁷ Moltke went on to describe an administrative system capable of accomplishing these ends. The General-Governor would have unlimited power, and would cooperate with the civil administrator to "organize rationing and supplying the troops as well as the provisioning of the civilian population."⁸ Moltke had no plan for the long-term occupation of Belgium, and he advocated no coherent policies save for the exploitation of Belgium to meet the immediate needs of the advancing German army and the appeasement of the civilian population to prevent revolt.

    Moltke's plan seemed sufficient at a time when German armies were streaking towards Paris and when Belgian field armies were fighting Germans only a few miles outside the gates of Brussels.[9] By late November, however, the situation was vastly different. The battle in France was stagnant, and Belgium was, for the most part, securely in German hands. Goltz resigned his office and took command of the German armies in Turkey. On November 28, General Freidrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bissing became the second General-Governor of Belgium. Bissing held the post for almost three years and was the single greatest influence on German policy in Belgium. He used his unlimited power and virtual autonomy to shape the structure and scope of the occupation administration, shuffling conflicting interests to form a coherent policy that served the interests of his nation while protecting against the total destruction of Belgium.

    Soon after Bissing's appointment, the German High Command split Belgium into three zones. The first (and largest) zone was the General Government, controlled by Bissing. This zone included the capital city of Brussels and most of the Belgian countryside. Bissing further divided his zone by appointing nine military governors to replace the Belgian provincial governors. Each of the military governors had his own group of officers to arrange the self-administration of the Belgian towns and provinces. The second zone included the cities of Ghent and Antwerp and was under the military supervision of the German Fourth Army. The third zone was very small and included coastal areas under the auspices of the German Navy. Laws and statutes of the General Government were enforceable in the military zones only with the approval of the military commander in charge.¹⁰ At least in these regions, the military exerted a powerful influence on Bissing and his policies.

    The new situation on the Western Front necessitated a large civil bureaucracy to supplement the efforts of Bissing and the military. A major problem Bissing faced in this regard was a severe lack of personnel. Some officials were imported from Germany, but there were few available people with either the linguistic skills or the administrative knowledge needed to run the complex machinery of a foreign state. So Bissing combined his small group of officers (including Dr. Sandt, still the Chief Civil Administrator) with the pre-existing Belgian set of ministries and offices, which covered the fields of Education, Labor, Finance, Trade, and Industry. He kept the Belgian system intact as much as possible, and grafted his team of workers onto it.¹¹ All the Belgians he employed had to take a loyalty oath, which said:

I herewith promise to continue to administer my office conscientiously and loyally, in accordance with the Hague convention of October 18, 1907, and not to perform or omit any acts which could be harmful to the German administration in the occupied Belgian territories.¹²

    It is interesting to note that this loyalty oath does not require an expression of allegiance to Germany or a denouncement of Belgium, but rather attempts to guarantee that the Belgian nation will run as smoothly as possible under the circumstances. This idea served German interests because it gave Germany an efficient civil administration in Belgium, and it served Belgian interests because it gave Belgium sympathetic and knowledgeable personnel to do the everyday jobs that kept the nation running.

    In addition to the military and civil branches of the new government, there were three other major departments. The first was the political department, whose responsibilities included propaganda, foreign publications, and analysis of political and cultural issues concerning Flanders and Flemish-German relations.¹³ The second, the Banking Department, controlled Belgian capital and assets, and strictly supervised foreign-owned corporations in Belgium.¹⁴ Both departments existed independently of the civil administration and were subject, at least in theory, only to Bissing himself. The third department was a conglomerate of technical bureaus that dealt with economic affairs, such as the condition and availability of factories and resources like coal, oil, gas, water, and electricity.¹⁵ The Reich government in Berlin exerted its influence on each department in several ways. One of the most notable examples of this was the policy of administrative separation of the Flemish and French regions of Belgium.

    One of the things that makes Belgium unique is that it contains two distinct ethnic groups, each of which comprises about half of the nation. The Flemish Belgians, like many other Scandinavian peoples, have a language and culture similar to Germany's. The French Belgians (or Walloons), by contrast, are linguistically and culturally aligned with the French. The two peoples have struggled with each other in various ways since the establishment of the Belgian state in 1831. One of the major themes in Belgian history since 1831 is the development of a French-oriented government and political structure by an upper-class, politically powerful Walloon minority at the expense of a lower-class, disenfranchised Flemish majority. When the German occupation began, French was the official language throughout Belgium, and it prevailed in all international commerce and correspondence as well as in all institutions of higher education. Flemish language and culture played no official role, although elementary schools in some Flemish towns sought to preserve it. This official disappearance of Flemish was an impetus for the development of several Flemish activist groups, which fought for "the equality of the Flemish language in all areas of public life," and other related ideas.¹⁶ Although some evidence exists that indicates a change in this reality in the months before the war, the existence of racial tension in Belgium provided an excellent opportunity for the Germans to step in and use Flemish frustrations to their advantage.¹⁷ A policy that separated the administrations of Flanders and Wallonia, the regions of Flemish and French dominance, respectively, might win the support of the Flemish people and accomplish some long-standing German war aims in the process.¹⁸

    On April 5, 1916, German Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg gave a speech about the future actions of Germany in Belgium, in which he said:

We will obtain sure guarantees in order that Belgium should not become a vassal state of England and France and should not be used as an economic and military bulwark against Germany. Germany cannot abandon to Latin influence the Flemish people which have for so long been brought under subjection. We will secure for them a sound development, according to their resources, founded on the Flemish language and character.¹⁹

   These words show that some of the pre-war German plans for Western Europe still prevailed, even though many of the conditions they required (i.e. the defeat of France) were not present. The German High Command still envisioned two Belgiums. One would become a German protectorate (Flanders) while the other (Wallonia) was exploited for industrial materials and free labor along with most of France.²⁰ Administrative separation was a convenient way to begin the process of dividing Belgium in a way that was consistent with these war aims.

    The German government began to implement its plan by creating an office called the Flemish Bureau in the Belgian political department. Its main responsibilities were to distribute foreign and domestic propaganda about Flemish autonomy and to meet with Flemish leaders and activists to ascertain what specific policies might win their support. The office organized a mass meeting of all Flemish activist groups in Brussels on February 4, 1917, with the purpose of discussing Flemish grievances. This assembly of 200 people elected a small body of officers to serve on a new representative body, the Council of Flanders. The council then adopted a series of resolutions indicating their desire for the separation of Belgium into autonomous regions and for the promotion of Flemish language and culture in general. The German government claimed that the Council was freely elected and that it represented the views of millions of Flemish people in Belgium.²¹ This would prove to be an exaggeration at best. Nevertheless, on March 21, 1917, the German government announced the official beginning of administrative separation in Belgium and affirmed the Council of Flanders as "an advisory body" and "a collaborator in building up Flemish political life and Flemish officialdom."²²,²³

    When the German government finished its official proclamations and actions, it quickly faded from the scene. It was now up to Bissing and the General Government to implement the policy in Belgium. But Bissing and Dr. Sandt, the Chief of the Civil Administration, did not share Berlin's enthusiasm for the immediate and complete division of Belgium into Flanders and Wallonia. In fact, they both had strong opinions against any kind of accelerated procedure for separation.²⁴ This is not to say that Bissing sympathized with Flemish desires for total sovereignty without German influence. On the contrary, he was of the opinion that Germany "cannot, under any circumstances, allow the Flemings to become entirely independent....they will, by their opposition to the Walloons, become a valuable reinforcement."²⁵ Bissing's lack of enthusiasm is understandable when one analyzes his thoughts about the occupation in general. He expressed some of these thoughts in an official statement he made early in his tenure as General-Governor:

Even in regard to the enemy, and with much more insistence where the inhabitants of the occupied territory are concerned, justice must prevail; in such circumstances a firm hand and a sense of justice must be combined for the governance of a country. All exaggerated mildness, all sentimentalism, should be, and is, avoided; but the ruling power must always be just, severe on occasion, but never needlessly harsh. In acting upon these principles the invader also serves his personal interests.²⁶

   Bissing's emphasis of the justness and firmness of a leader comes through both in this quotation and in his reaction to the policies of the German government. He was certainly a supporter of administrative separation, but he didn't have the concern for the greater war aims of the German nation that drove Bethmann and his ministers in Berlin to strive for a quick and ruthless division of Belgium. Because of these beliefs, he tolerated several acts of Flemish resistance and went about implementing administrative separation in a slow and deliberate manner.

    The major problem with the implementation of administrative separation was that, contrary to the official statements of the Council of Flanders and the German government, the Flemish people did not support it to any great degree. Several examples support this conclusion and illustrate some of the more specific problems involved. The first deals with German prison camps in Belgium, where new inmates had to state their precise nationality for prison records. Almost all of the prisoners wrote "Belgian" on their forms. German officers approached them and demanded a more accurate answer. When their request met with resistance and confusion, the officers promised special treatment to anyone who admitted he was Flemish. Only then did a small fraction of the prisoners step forward.²⁷

    Other examples of Flemish reactions to administrative separation show more active forms of resistance to German policy. In one Flemish town, the Germans required townspeople to remove all road signs and placards written in French, and to replace them with Flemish signs. But the townspeople had other ideas. They replaced the signs, but the writing on them was German, not Flemish. The purpose was to mock the Germans and to show them that they saw through the veil of propaganda distributed by the Flemish Bureau.²⁸ Flemish resistance also occurred in response to a German statute declaring that the official language of the University of Ghent would change from French to Flemish. Although many Flemish activist groups supported this measure, Flemish scholars and intellectuals opposed it, and were unwilling to accept positions as faculty members in the new school.²⁹

    Even though administrative separation met with substantial resistance from both Bissing's government and the Flemish people, by the end of 1917 there were two separate governments and civil administrations in place in Belgium. By the time the Germans left Belgium in 1918, the Walloon and Flemish districts existed in relative harmony, each promoting its own interests, culture, and language in its own distinct way.³⁰ But Germany failed to achieve its war aims in the process, in part because Germany was too busy dealing with internal problems at the end of the war to deal with Belgium decisively, and in part because Bissing did not make a strenuous effort to realize them. Although the system of administrative separation came about as an attempt to further German interests, it ended up serving Belgium's interests as well. The best evidence for this conclusion is that the core of the system survived and lives on in present-day Belgium. The motives of the Germans in formulating the policy were at best questionable, but its requirements forced Belgians to finally take concrete action to improve the Flemish situation. The Flemish people were Belgians then, and they are Belgians today. Those that resisted the Germans did not do so because they disliked the policies, but instead because they knew the Germans were trying to exploit an internal Belgian problem for their own benefit. After the war, Belgium had the chance to create a new society without any German influence, and it looked surprisingly similar to the wartime society in many ways. Belgium, somewhat ironically, grew together as much as it grew apart as a result of the German policy of administrative separation.

    Taken as a whole, German political policy in occupied Belgium illustrates a compromise between the interests of the German government and military and the objections of Governor Bissing and the Flemish people to those interests. Bissing implemented every policy of the German government faithfully and diligently, but he did so in a way that made the occupation as bearable and comfortable for the Belgian people as he could without jeopardizing his country's position. This balance between opposing forces carried over to the economic arena as well, where conflicting ideas about the scope of economic policy in Belgium sparked a bigger conflict between Bissing and Berlin, with results that greatly affected the Belgian people.

    The German occupation of Belgium created a multitude of economic problems for both nations. The Germans needed monetary resources to supply their military garrisons and to support their new governmental structure in Belgium. They also needed any material resources they could get their hands on to support the war effort. Belgium offered both of these, as well as a promising supply of free labor. There were a number of ways Germany could go about using these Belgian resources. Germany could plunder and pillage the Belgian nation, taking all of its land, labor, and capital for its own use. The German military-industrial complex and the Reich government supported this general policy, which promised to transform Belgium from a stable nation into an economic wasteland. Another option was to allow the Belgians some degree of economic freedom while making sure their actions did not harm Germany. This option, however, is very inappropriate and unrealistic for an occupying power to take, and it had few adherents in Germany. A third alternative, advocated by Bissing and his government, was to use Belgium to Germany's advantage without totally destroying it in the process. This would allow the future annexation of Belgium (or Flanders) as a viable part of the German empire. Germany's economic policy in Belgium, like its political policy, did not come from one source but instead was a synergy of several forces acting in concert. The result, once again, ameliorated the situation for the Belgian people.

    Shortly after the occupation began, the Germans started to take the money and supplies they needed to support their troops in Belgium. At first, they attempted to justify their actions by citing the Hague Convention, an international treaty signed in 1907 by many European nations, including England, Germany, France, and Belgium. This document contained precise rules governing the conduct of future wars. One provision stated that an occupying army could require financial support from an occupied nation.³¹ The Germans used this justification to impose fines on and to requisition materials from several Belgian cities early in the occupation period. The argument soon disappeared, however, in part because the Germans wanted to go beyond the stipulations of the convention, and in part because Germany's credibility in this area was questionable anyway, given their violation of Belgian neutrality in the recent past.

    When the German army arrived in Brussels in August, 1914, it required the city to pay 50 million francs as a "war contribution."³² In addition, it charged the province of Brabant 450 million francs for the privilege of being invaded. The military commanders also used fines and taxation to punish cities and provinces for resistance, and to make the Belgians pay for infrastructure improvements. In one instance, a violent crowd attacked two German Secret Service agents, who received no help from the municipal police. The city was fined 5 million francs for this incident. In another case, the cities of Brussels and Antwerp paid 500,000 German marks for the repair of a highway damaged during the invasion.³³

    The German army was also not shy about requisitioning supplies. The following table shows the types and estimated worth of supplies taken from Antwerp in December, 1914.

Item	Value (in francs)
Cereals	18,000,000
Oilcake	5,000,000
Nitrate	4,000,000
Oils-Animal and Vegetable	2,000,000
Oils-Petrol and Mineral	3,000,000
Wools	6,000,000
Rubber	10,000,000
Foreign Leathers	20,000,000
Hair	1,500,000
Ivory	800,000
Wood	500,000
Cacao	2,000,000
Coffee	275,000
Wines	1,100,000

   It should be noted that, when the Germans took supplies, they usually agreed to pay for them at a later date. This rarely happened, but in the case above about one-fourth of the total amount made its way back to Antwerp within a few months.³⁴

    Once the occupation administration took shape and the bulk of the military forces left for the front lines in France, German industrial leaders began to push for further exploitation of Belgium to include resources like coal, oil, petroleum, iron, steel, and precious metals. Although initially they experienced limited success, they soon had allies at key places in the German political structure. They found success mainly by latching onto a political ideology called Pan-Germanism.

    The main goal of the Pan-German movement was to promote territorial expansion for the purpose of safeguarding Germany against future attacks and establishing Germany as a dominant world power. This alliance of two powerful political forces resulted in the creation of a Bureau of Raw Materials in the German War Ministry. Walter Rathenau, the President of the General Electric Company of Germany, played an integral role in the bureau's formation. He articulated its role in a public lecture by saying:

It was necessary to be sure of an increase in the reserve of raw materials both by purchase in neutral countries and by monopolizing all stocks found in the occupied territory...A system of collecting stations, of depots and of organizations for distribution was arranged which solved the difficulties of transportation, infused new blood into industry at home, and gave it a firmer and more secure basis.³⁵

   These ideas, when put into practice in Belgium, formed a new aspect of German economic policy, the industrial exploitation of Belgium.³⁶

    The general ramifications of this new policy were that central offices for the development of coal, oil, gas, and other resources appeared in the General Government of Belgium. These offices set about the task of finding raw materials in Belgium and using them for the German war effort. German companies bought controlling interests in Belgian and foreign industrial corporations at little or no cost, and German bankers seized Belgian and foreign capital to finance their operations.³⁷ Two examples of German industrial exploitation show the extreme effort that German government officials and army commanders made to extract useful materials from Belgium. The first example illustrates the German effort in terms of the amount of material confiscated. In a one month period of 1915, the Germans took 74,000 tons of coal, 6,100 tons of phosphates, 1,350 tons of ore, over 10,000 tons of other minerals like lead and pyrites, and over half the total production capacity of Belgian textile mills.³⁸ The second example shows the scope of the German effort. In a proclamation issued in Brussels on December 13, 1916, the Germans required citizens to turn over any household item made of brass, copper, tin, nickel, bronze, or tombac. Articles the proclamation listed as examples included kitchen utensils, bathtubs, and doorknobs, among other things.³⁹ It appears, however, that despite these efforts by the Germans, Belgium remained at least somewhat economically viable in the years following the war. It is difficult to obtain an accurate description of the damage done, mainly because of unreliable and inflated damage estimates created by the Allies to justify heavier reparation payments.⁴⁰ A reasonable estimate of the data shows that somewhere between 12-15 percent of Belgium's pre-war national wealth or approximately 22 billion francs, left the country or was destroyed by the Germans during the war.⁴¹ Although this is a large sum, it is certainly smaller than the amount one would expect if the Germans tried to take everything they could use. In addition, the majority of the money taken came from the seizure of Belgian railroads (only 81 of 3,470 locomotives were left in the country) and other infrastructure for troop transport, as well as from the seizure of foreign investments and stock certificates of the Belgian government.⁴² After deducting these amounts, one finds that a relatively small amount remains to account for German requisitions of food and exploitations of natural resources. Although the economic impact of the German occupation was substantial, Belgium clearly did not become an economic wasteland as a result of German policy.

    The economic exploitation of Belgium was not a myth or a creation of Allied propaganda, and there is substantial evidence that it happened all over Belgium. But it is only one part of the story, and only one element of German economic policy in Belgium. Bissing and the General Government could only watch and obey as the German military-industrial complex took anything it wanted from Belgium. Bissing himself vehemently opposed this wanton destruction of Belgian industry, but was powerless to act against such a powerful alliance. He gave several reasons for his opposition. First of all, total economic exploitation went against his conception of the fairness and justice an occupying power must exercise, if at all possible, in the occupied nation. Furthermore, a policy of exploitation would render administrative separation unnecessary, because the policy applied to both Flanders and Wallonia. The interests of the German empire would not be served by the addition of a weak and devastated Flanders, but an economically stable Flanders could in time prove a valuable commodity for the German nation. The other part of the Belgian economic story concerns the actions Bissing took to strengthen Belgium from within while it was being destroyed from without.⁴³

    Although Bissing could not stop what he felt were harsh examples of economic exploitation, he did use his power to mitigate some of the economic conditions present in Belgium as result of his countrymen's actions. The major problems created by economic exploitation were food shortages and unemployment. The German government proved to be accommodating in the resolution of the first problem, and Bissing fought hard for an equitable solution to the second. Their combined policies in these areas helped to offset some of the effects of economic exploitation. Bissing also chose to make a stand on an important issue facing many Belgians, the deportation of Belgian workers for forced labor in Germany. Bissing's actions certainly did not win him any new friends in the German government, but they did make conditions in Belgium more bearable (and less brutal) than Allied propaganda led people to believe.

    It is clear that German actions were directly responsible for much of the suffering the Belgian people endured during the war. Military commanders took vast amounts of food and supplies to feed, clothe, and equip their troops. Large industrial corporations and banks took over factories and natural resources, creating poverty and unemployment. There was no food, money, or supplies in Germany to replace what was taken, because the Germans and their army needed it for themselves. However, it is also important to consider the impact of the British blockade on the Belgian economy. The British attempt, throughout the war, to keep any overseas shipments from reaching Germany effectively isolated Belgium from any foreign trade or imports. Although it is understandable that the British would impose this blockade and keep it in operation, it is unwise to conclude that it was only the Germans who caused a shortage of food, supplies, and raw materials during the war. The Germans were forcibly exporting resources from Belgium, and the British were making sure nothing got in. This situation surely spelled doom for the Belgian economy if it persisted throughout the war. It did not largely because of German willingness to allow outside aid, supervised by a neutral party, to enter Belgium and benefit the Belgian people.

    The single most important action Germany took to address the problem of food shortages was its handling of the Commission for Relief in Belgium, an American-based relief organization that collected foodstuffs and supplies for Belgium's benefit. The Commission's work began shortly after the initial German invasion, when it secured permission from both the army and the German government to import food on a limited basis. The British and French then agreed to lift the economic blockade so that neutral ships, flying neutral flags, could deliver the aid. In 1915, all the nations involved expanded this general agreement to provide for an incredible influx of food and materials from all over the world.⁴⁴

    The Commission listed its minimum requirements for relief per month at 25,000,000 francs. It claimed that this amount of money would feed 7,000,000 people at one-third of a soldier's ration, making it a bare minimum indeed.⁴⁵ The distribution of such a huge amount of food required tremendous organization, as well as German cooperation, to make it work. The Committee had four offices, including one in Brussels, which supervised the distribution process. The German government extended its support and cooperated with the Commission on two different levels, one requiring sacrifice and one not. The first level of cooperation was simply German acquiescence to the Commission's plans and goals. There is no evidence in Commission documents to suggest that the Germans did not cooperate. Instead, the official handbook of the Commission from May, 1915 said:

There are no secrets in the commission's business. It is conducted with open doors and open desks. Its accounts and all its transactions are open to the public. Its important correspondence is conducted in rooms within hearing of dozens of ears. Its telegrams are sent without fear of censorship. The Commission rooms are visited by the Diplomatic Representatives of the Governments. Men are assigned from the various Governments concerned to look after and facilitate the multitudinous relations which the Commission has with Government Departments. Every Government concerned has been invited to place an attache of the Government in that particular office, and some have availed themselves of this.⁴⁶

   Although this evidence is compelling and indicates that the Commission cooperated with the General Government of Belgium without any problems, it only really proves that the Germans were willing to accept foreign money and give it to the Belgians. This required a minimal amount of effort and sacrifice on their part. This evidence alone does not illustrate the total extent to which the Germans cooperated with the Commission.

    The second level of German cooperation emerged when the Commission ran into difficulties later on in the war. Because of the increasing cost of supplies throughout the war, the Commission found itself at an impasse where it could not even supply a significant amount of the Belgian people with the same rations that the French and English gave their prisoners of war. They decided to ask the Germans to make concessions that would help their cause. The German government first agreed "not to acquire any locally produced foodstuffs that would have to be replaced by importations."⁴⁷ In March, 1916, the Germans agreed "not to permit the exportation of any food supplies whatsoever, regardless of their origin."⁴⁸ W.L. Honnold, an employee of the Commission, said that "these agreements have been on the whole faithfully observed, with a general tendency to correct incidental irregularities and misconstructions."⁴⁹ Germany's willingness to make these concessions permitted the continuation of the Commission's work, and benefitted the Belgian people tremendously. It seems illogical that a government obsessed with the total exploitation of Belgium would allow this to happen, especially when its own troops and citizens were starving and could have used the nourishment. Nevertheless, it is clear from this example that German economic policy had more forces acting on it than simply the single, driving force of the Pan-German military-industrial complex.⁵⁰

    In the case of unemployment, one of these other forces was Bissing himself. Although he played a large role in the German cooperation with the Commission for Relief in Belgium, he did so with the total support of his government back home. The German government's solution to the unemployment problem was not so acceptable to him. In March, 1915, there were approximately 500,000 unemployed workers in Belgium. Early the next year, the figure reached 650,000.⁵¹ German and English propaganda provided several explanations for these figures. The Germans claimed that the bulk of the responsibility belonged to the Belgian people, whose laziness and idleness made a major contribution to the large unemployment figures. They also blamed the English blockade, because it "depends on her good pleasure....and she is free to end it when, where, and how she likes."⁵² The English, understandably, did not mention the blockade in their writings. They focused on the exhaustion of Belgian economic resources and the seizure of Belgian businesses as the primary causes of unemployment, and lauded the Belgian people for their passive resistance to the Germans. There is certainly some validity to the claims of both nations, although passive resistance is probably a better reason than idleness to explain why many Belgians stayed home even when work was available. But the remedy to the situation, if there was one, would be provided solely by the Germans.⁵³

    A major factor to consider when examining the German remedy to Belgian unemployment is the German economic crisis of 1916. The German military faced a lack of manpower, because of severe casualties sustained over the years. It also faced a lack of equipment, because of an insufficient supply of labor in the armaments industry. Industrial leaders had long clamored for the use of forced labor from the occupied territories to replace German workers, who could then join the army. Their ideas slowly gathered support from the military, which was slowly losing its personnel and supplies. This trend culminated in September, 1916, when German General Ludendorff met with prominent industrial leaders and forged an informal alliance that profoundly influenced German policy. The military leaders wished to embark on an ambitious offensive in 1917, and they were ecstatic about the new soldiers and weapons they stood to gain from a forced labor policy. Together, both groups made a strong push for the deportation of workers from the occupied territories to Germany. Massive unemployment in Belgium made it a particularly suitable target, and by early October the German government was ready to implement a forced labor policy in Belgium.⁵⁴

    Bissing, however, saw the situation in a totally different light. He already had a remedy in place to solve the problem, although it was only partially successful. Robert Armeson's book, Total Warfare and Compulsory Labor, describes Bissing's unemployment policies before the labor crisis of 1916:

First, the unemployed Belgians were ordered to accept such work as was offered to them by the German authorities. Those who refused were compelled to give a reason which might be considered sufficient under international law, or else be sent to prison for one year. Anyone attempting to dissuade the workers from working for the German administration was fined. When the problem continued, the Governor General made an attempt to reduce unemployment by fixing the number of factory work hours at twenty-four per week.⁵⁵

   These policies failed to achieve the desired results, mainly because localized depletions of raw materials and abandonments of factories created work in some areas and not in others. Bissing was beginning the process of documenting every unemployed person in Belgium and exploring the feasibility of their relocation within the country when the government announced its policy of deportation.⁵⁶

    It is clear, however, that Bissing could not take this last step. In March, 1916, he flatly rejected a demand of the German War Ministry for 400,000 Belgian laborers to work in Germany. He gave various political and economic reasons for his refusal, but his main objection was that the deportations would have an extremely negative effect on Belgian morale and on the Belgian nation as a whole. He instead proposed a reorganization of the General Government to increase the efficiency of his earlier policies and to begin a policy of voluntary recruitment. The War Ministry agreed to this plan in May, and the Belgian workers it requested remained in Belgium.⁵⁷

    Bissing's voluntary recruitment efforts yielded modest success, providing 21,000 new workers, but they were not fruitful enough for the military and industrial leaders, who made their push for deportations in September. Bissing once again made a negative response. In a letter to the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, he "once again exhaustively discussed the misgivings he had expressed on former occasions, and declared his inability to comply with the requests for a general deportation of Belgian workers to Germany."⁵⁸ Bissing played hardball as long as he could, but when Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg told him he was convinced that deportations meant so much to the nation that "possibly the very outcome of the war depends thereon," he caved in.⁶⁰ On October 26, 1916, the German government officially announced the policy of deportation. However, Bissing's delays would prove crucial in the succeeding months.

    From the very beginning, the deportation process met with a variety of internal and external obstacles. First of all, the policy outraged the international community, which sharply criticized Germany for its blatant disregard of international law. This kind of criticism usually did not concern the Germans, primarily because most of it came in the form of English and French propaganda. But in this case, British propaganda convinced both the Americans and the Dutch that the Germans had gone too far. The Dutch threatened to halt essential food imports to Germany if the policy continued, and the Americans came ever closer to entering the war on the side of the Allies. Both of these nations agreed in principle with the statements of Viscount Bryce, a prominent British diplomat, who likened the Germans to Arabian slave raiders, "who traveled across Africa rounding up Negroes to sell on the coast."⁶¹,⁶²

    The Germans also faced a variety of practical difficulties. The main problem of this type was that there was no coherent system in place to organize the mass movement of workers. The Germans soon found that there was nowhere to put the Belgians, and after only a month they reduced the number of workers deported to a trickle of the 20,000 a week they initially set as a goal.⁶³ The workers that did make it to German factories usually did not have the skills required to do the job correctly, or they simply refused to work. A few months earlier, these problems were solvable. But in the winter of 1916/1917, the German civil authorities and police had to deal with a domestic crisis of great magnitude. Strikes and riots ran rampant in factories across the Ruhr Valley and in the capital city of Berlin, and a decrease in the bread ration caused unrest in the towns and villages. The situation in Germany and the problems abroad forced the cancellation of the deportation policy in February, 1917. The repatriation of Belgian workers took place shortly thereafter. Although in the end Governor Bissing showed that loyalty to his nation superseded all other concerns, his desire to protect the Belgian people and the months of stagnation it caused wound up sparing the Belgian people a great deal of hardship.⁶⁴

    German economic policy in Belgium can be seen as a success or as a failure, depending on the perspective one is taking. Belgium was an occupied nation in a world war. The nation that occupied it needed natural resources, manpower, and supplies for its war effort. It is no surprise that the German government, and especially the military-industrial alliance, sought to exploit Belgium to meet these needs as well as their own. A Governor of Belgium who gracefully acquiesced to these plans very well might have sanctioned the total destruction of the Belgian nation in the process. Governor Bissing was not such a man. He was, first and foremost, an officer of the German army, and an active participant in the exploitation of Belgium for the benefit of Germany. But he was also committed to the idea that the German occupation of Belgium should be fair, if at all possible, to both parties involved. This commitment appeared several times in the formation of German political and economic policy in Belgium, when Bissing forced himself to weigh it against his loyalty to the wishes of the German government. The policies created as a result of these conflicting interests unquestionably made life in Belgium easier than it could have been for the Belgian people.

    The majority of German social policy in Belgium is best understood as a response to the effects of German economic and military policy. Thus, a brief look at relevant aspects of the German army's actions and organization in Belgium is necessary to fully comprehend the situation that Bissing and his government responded to. A great deal of literature about German war atrocities (or the lack thereof) appeared in Europe almost as soon as German troops crossed the Belgian frontier. For the most part, it is impossible to verify any of the individual accounts, but taken together they do give a general overview of the German army's initial march through Belgium and its aftermath.

    The simplest way to sort through the various English, French, Belgian, and German war propaganda is to look at one alleged incident to see how each side portrayed it. An excellent illustration of German atrocity propaganda at work appears in various writings about the German destruction of Louvain, a large Belgian town about 15 miles east of Brussels. The Allied story says that somewhere in the vicinity of 10,000 German troops marched into the city in broad daylight on August 25, 1914, meeting with little or no Belgian resistance. These German troops were apparently retreating in the wake of a valiant Belgian counterattack and hoped to regroup in the city that evening. A week later, the Germans decided to viciously loot and burn the city and to kill most of the civilian population, presumably in retribution for their military defeat. Albert Fuglister describes the beginning of this systematic process of destruction in his book, A Neutral Description of the Sack of Louvain.

At 8 o'clock in the evening, a signal was fired by the German soldiers occupying the Barracks at Saint Martin. Immediately and simultaneously, over all parts of the town, a violent fusillade commenced spreading terror among the confined population, who hid themselves in their cellars or in their backyards. The sky becomes red and the conflagration commences. I saw from my window three enormous conflagrations in three different parts of the town.⁶⁵

   These fires consumed the entire city, destroying the government buildings and reducing precious museum artifacts to piles of dust. But the Germans were just getting started.⁶⁶

    Other accounts produced by Allied sources tell more specific stories of brutal German atrocities in Louvain. Almost all of the men and a substantial amount of women, children and animals were slaughtered at the hands of the ruthless Germans. The Germans apparently had a particular affinity for Belgian clergy, who they specifically hunted down, tortured, and murdered. One such story talks about a group of German soldiers who assaulted a local priest in his home. The soldiers hung the 65 year-old man three times, each time cutting the rope prematurely to make him suffer. They left the man for dead, but miraculously, he survived and made it to Antwerp, where he "deposed to these facts himself before the Antwerp Commission of Inquiry."⁶⁷,⁶⁸ In another story, a group of German soldiers set fire to a group of houses, wait for the families to come out into the street, and shoot them at point blank range.⁶⁹ Still more outrageous accusations claimed that the Germans, as a matter of practice, amputated children's hands and women's breasts for their personal satisfaction, crucified Belgian soldiers, and used human bodies to manufacture fat.⁷⁰

    The Germans, as one would expect, tell a completely different story. As a general rule, German propaganda did not mention specific incidents in specific villages. It instead relied on a few general characterizations of Belgian citizens to make its point. The main thrust of the German argument was that the actions of the German army were necessary reactions to the threat of armed Belgian townspeople they called "Francs-Tireurs," or "irregular sharp shooters" in French.⁷¹ These civilian snipers waited until German soldiers turned their backs. Then they ran out in droves and gunned down defenseless Germans in the streets or even in their camps at night. Women and children also joined in the fun, and delighted in gouging out the eyes of sleeping soldiers, among other activities. The Germans failed to explain why these actions justified the burning of an entire village, a somewhat frequent occurrence, or how Belgian civilians (especially women and children) were able to sneak into German camps and attack sleeping soldiers. They simply claimed that the reprisals, when they took place, were unfortunate but necessary retaliations against Belgian terrorism.⁷²

    Some of the more extreme statements made by each side are most likely exaggerations or outright lies meant to stir up emotional reactions on the homefront. There clearly were Francs-Tireurs in Belgium who fought tenaciously to protect their country from the German onslaught, although the number and severity of their attacks is debatable. The Germans probably did not arbitrarily decide to murder civilians in their homes or cut off children's hands for fun, although individual cases of overzealousness on the part of German soldiers probably resulted in the unnecessary loss of Belgian life on more than a few occasions. The German invasion of Belgium unquestionably left its mark on the civilian population. One of the major challenges of the occupation administration in the aftermath of the invasion was how to effectively rebuild Belgium's infrastructure and bring some semblance of order to the Belgian countryside.

    The German military played much less of a role in Belgium after the initial invasion, and active army units began to move towards the front lines in France. Special divisions of the German army, called Landsturm units, served as replacements. These units contained men between the ages of 17 and 45 who, for various reasons, were unfit for active military duty. In Belgium, the permanent German military presence consisted of 90 armed Landsturm battalions, mostly concentrated in groups of 5 to 12 battalions near the major Belgian railway junctions of Brussels, Antwerp, Liege, Namur, and Ghent. Several units guarded the Dutch frontier, and made sure that nobody got into or out of Belgium without the proper authorization. Although many German towns supported a small garrison, usually housed in a public building of some sort, there were several parts of the country where one could travel for miles without seeing any German soldiers. The only regions of major military significance in Belgium were the two coastal military zones, which remained under military rule for the duration of the war. These zones served as training grounds for new troops and contained several active military units to defend the Belgian coast from possible attacks.⁷³

    This is not to say that war atrocities ceased simply because the military presence was sparse. Several personal accounts describe the harsh treatment of Belgian civilians by local military and Landsturm units. In many cases, overwhelming force acted as a deterrent for future Belgian actions. German soldiers made it clear that they would not hesitate to kill citizens and seize property if things got out of hand. For the most part, however, the German military played a quiet role in Belgium during the latter part of the war. This lack of a significant military presence in the majority of Belgium opened the door for a variety of corrective social policies aimed at improving Belgian morale and providing stability to the war-torn nation.

    The social policy pursued by Bissing and the General Government helped to address the effects of German economic and military policy on the Belgian people. It was a surprisingly active policy, given the circumstances, but when one considers that most of the people implementing the policies were Belgians in Bissing's administration, it becomes easier to understand. The general theme of German social policy is that it took existing pre-war structures and extended or modified them to fit the situation. The first major social policy initiatives dealt with protective labor legislation and social insurance. An ordinance of February 22, 1916, provided for safer working conditions that adhered to the International Labor Protective Conference of 1906, widely regarded as the standard of the day. Social welfare laws granting benefits to the sick, disabled, and unemployed remained until public money ran out. Governor Bissing then set up a special section of the Belgian Red Cross to act as the central office for social welfare. Although this office practiced discriminatory measures, giving over 75% of its money to Flanders and less than 25% to Wallonia, it was still a huge success. The money to fund this program came from private German and Belgian sources, as well the Commission for Relief in Belgium.

    A final example of German social policy that responded to the economic needs of the Belgian people was protective legislation against price gouging. The occupation administration worked to establish a fair market price for staple goods like oats, barley, beans, and flour so that both German and Belgian merchants could not rob Belgian workers of the little money they had. These policies, although by no means comprehensive, helped to dull the effects of economic exploitation.⁷⁴

    Another set of social policy legislation helped Belgians to deal with the aftermath of the German invasion. One of the most important ordinances of this type was a law that provided for the restoration of Belgian towns and villages. This law gave grants to building owners who wanted to rebuild their homes and businesses. In some cases, the grants supplied enough money to restore entire city blocks. Another welcome measure provided German subsidies for cemetery projects and for the care and maintenance of German and Belgian graves. Compulsory education laws and free medical care in elementary schools also encouraged a return to some degree of normalcy in Belgium. None of these social measures was inexpensive, and although much of the money came from private funds, the General Government worked hard to ensure that it was directed to the right places. An overall consideration of social policy indicates that Belgium was not left for dead in the aftermath of the German invasion, but rather was helped back onto its feet by Bissing and his administration. The social policy initiatives pursued by the General Government helped the Belgians to recover from the economic and military consequences of war, without seriously damaging German interests in the process.⁷⁵

    In order to add a final dimension to the study of the German occupation of Belgium, it is essential to compare Belgium with other regions under German control during World War One. The most relevant region for these purposes is the Departement du Nord of northern France. When the German offensive of 1914 halted at the Marne river, both sides started building trenches and fortifications to solidify their positions. Over the next three years, the front lines shifted only slightly, moving back and forth as each group of armies mounted massive offensive campaigns for only a few yards of soil. The situation on the battlefield gave Germany control of the rich, coal-producing regions of northern France for the duration of the war. The Germans needed a plan for the administration of this region soon after the war began. But the plan in France was very different than the plan in Belgium. All of the negative aspects of German policy in Belgium showed up in France, but there is no evidence that any of the positive ones did. This is mainly because the German army and, to a lesser extent, the German government, made the majority of German policy in France. A casual glance at the German occupation of France shows that, absent the balancing influences present in Belgium, it was outright brutal.

    The political organization of occupied France was simple enough. The military employed both active units and armed Landsturm to keep order and to enforce military policy in the towns. The military put no real governmental structure in place, simply providing a military commandant (usually a Major or Colonel) for each town or village. The commandants generally ran the towns as loose prison camps, in order to restrict civilian movement and, in some cases, to humiliate the hated French. Most towns had strict curfews, and anyone leaving their home needed a signed pass from a German officer. Even funeral convoys needed armed escorts.⁷⁶ Several instances of German brutality in France were also evident, and in many cases their severity was greater than in Belgium. The main difference, however, was that the atrocities occurred throughout the war, rather than being limited to the first few months, because the German army remained in northern France until 1918. In a broad sense, political policy in France was military policy, and this was bad news for the French.⁷⁷

    Economic and industrial exploitation took place in France just as it did in Belgium, and the availability of vast amounts of labor and resources only intensified the process in the Departement Du Nord. The population of the occupied territories was only 3.7 million, or 9.6 percent of the total French working population, but comprised almost 22 percent of the total French population employed in industrial labor. In fact, the Germans possessed nine of the seventeen departments in which the industrial population was over 40 percent.⁷⁸ These realities served to greatly accelerate the deportation process in France, which began as early as April, 1916, when posters placed all over the walls of Lille, a large town in northern France, told civilians to "prepare to be transported within an hour and a half." Anyone who refused to be transported would be killed on the spot.⁷⁹

    The availability of resources in France was also remarkable. The invaded French districts contained over 75 percent of French coal, coke, pig iron, copper, zinc, and steel outputs, based on 1913 figures. Over 80 percent of French sugar, wool, linen, and alcohol also came from the occupied territories.⁸⁰ Richard Cobb, in his book French and Germans, Germans and French, describes the initial reaction of the Germans to these economic realities:

Policies seem to have been directed towards the immediate satisfaction of short-term needs: vast indemnities, the removal of crops and fodder, the requisitioning of metal goods, bedding linen, even of factory equipment -- in short, a war economy of pillage, practiced, at first, at every level.⁸¹

    The general German economic policy in France was that the German soldiers took what they needed or wanted to take. Nobody questioned or stopped them, and the army took no measures to alleviate the situation to any great degree. The only act of mercy came from the German government, which finally stepped in and allowed aid from the Commission for Relief in Belgium to reach French towns.⁸² The impact of this aid is questionable, however, because France lacked a neutral distribution center for the relief agency. This meant that military personnel were free to keep the goods for themselves.

    It is clear from the above examples that German policy in France was not a combination of several forces acting in concert, but was rather a monolithic projection of one force, namely the German army. For this reason, the occupation of France shows no evidence of benevolence on the part of the occupying nation. What it does do, by contrast, is portray what the occupation of Belgium could have been like, and what it was not.

    The true story of Belgium during the first World War largely depends on the perspective one takes. Behind all the political, economic, and social policies lies one concrete fact. Belgium was an occupied nation, and Germany was its occupying power. This fact is essential to understanding the reality of the Belgian situation. Compared to other occupations in World War One, the occupation of Belgium was tame indeed. This tameness, however, was only present in relative terms. The Germans attempted to divide Belgium into two separate regions, exploiting Flemish nationalism for their own purposes. They also exploited Belgium's natural, financial, and industrial resources to support the German army and the general war effort. German troops deliberately set fire to and destroyed Belgian cities and factories on several occasions. To any Allied observer or Belgian citizen, these actions constituted horrible examples of German brutality and inexcusable violations of Belgian sovereignty under international law. No matter what other policies the General Government instituted to remedy the situation, it still could not change these basic facts.

    The other perspective of the Belgian situation yields a vastly different view. The Germans were involved in a major war that required all the strength, manpower, and resources at their disposal. To ignore Belgium was to hurt Germany's chances of winning the war. No rational leader from any country would fail to support the exploitation of an occupied territory if it increased his nation's chances of emerging victorious. Later in the war, the German situation was dire indeed, and new pressures from the military gave industrialists and Pan-German politicians a staunch ally in their fight for further exploitative policies. Even for Bissing and the General Government, when push came to shove, German interests prevailed over those of Belgium. After all, this was a military government in the midst of a fierce continental war. In the end, disagreements about the scope and severity of the exploitation helped shape German policy in Belgium, and resulted in a compromise between various ideologies. The often conflicting forces of the military-industrial complex, the German government, and the General Government of Belgium served as checks on each other and produced a Belgium that was unquestionably hurt yet not destroyed, by the German occupation.