page_title: German occupation of Belgium during World War II
section_title: Resistance
hierarchical_section_title: German occupation of Belgium during World War II / Resistance
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Het Vrije Woord - Oktober 1940 - Journal clandestin belge durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale
context_page_description: The German occupation of Belgium during World War II began on 28 May 1940, when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces, and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945. It was the second time in less than thirty years that Germany had occupied Belgium.
  After the success of the invasion, a military administration was established in Belgium, bringing the territory under the direct rule of the Wehrmacht. Thousands of Belgian soldiers were taken as prisoners of war, and many were not released until 1945. The German administration juggled competing objectives of maintaining order while extracting material from the territory for the war effort. They were assisted by the Belgian civil service, which believed that limited co-operation with the occupiers would result in the least damage to Belgian interests. Belgian Fascist parties in both Flanders and Wallonia, established before the war, collaborated much more actively with the occupiers; they helped recruit Belgians for the German army and were given more power themselves toward the end of the occupation.
context_section_description: Resistance to the German occupiers began in Belgium in the winter of 1940, after the German defeat in the Battle of Britain made it clear that the war was not lost for the Allies. Involvement in illegal resistance activity was a decision made by a minority of Belgians (approximately five percent of the population) but many more were involved in passive resistance. If captured, resistance members risked torture and execution, and around 17,000 were killed during the occupation.
  Striking was the most notable form of passive resistance and often took place on symbolic dates, such as 10 May (the anniversary of the German invasion), 21 July (National Day) and 11 November (anniversary of the German surrender in World War I). The largest was the "Strike of the 100,000", which broke out on 10 May 1941 in the Cockerill steel works in Seraing. News of the strike spread rapidly and soon at least 70,000 workers were on strike across the province of Liége. The Germans increased workers' salaries by eight percent and the strike finished rapidly. The Germans repressed later large-scale strikes, though further important strikes occurred in November 1942 and February 1943. Passive resistance, however, could also take the form of much more minor actions, such as offering one's seat in trams to Jews, which was not explicitly illegal but which subtly subverted the German-imposed order.
  Active resistance in Belgium took the form of sabotaging railways and lines of communication as well as hiding Jews and Allied airmen. The resistance produced large numbers of illegal newspapers in both French and Dutch, distributed to the public to provide news about the war not available in officially approved, censored newspapers. Some such publications achieved considerable success, such as La Libre Belgique, which reached a circulation of 70,000. Attacks on German soldiers were comparatively rare as the German administration made a practice of executing at least five Belgian hostages for each German soldier killed. At great personal risk, Belgian civilians also hid large numbers of Jews and political dissenters hunted by the Germans.
  Belgian groups such as the Comet Line specialized in helping allied airmen shot down by the Germans evade capture. They sheltered the airmen and, at great risk to themselves, escorted them through occupied France to neutral Spain from where the airmen could be transported back to Great Britain.
  The resistance was never a single group; numerous groups evolved divided by political affiliation, geography or specialisation. The danger of infiltration posed by German informants meant that some groups were extremely small and localised, and although nationwide groups did exist, they were split along political and ideological lines. They ranged from the far left, such as the Communist Partisans Armés or Socialist Front de l'Indépendance, to the far-right, such as the monarchist Mouvement National Royaliste and the Légion Belge, which had been created by members of the pre-war Fascist Légion Nationale movement. Some, such as Groupe G, had no obvious political affiliation, but specialised in particular types of resistance activity and recruited only from very specific demographics.
caption: Het Vrije Woord, a typical Dutch-language underground newspaper.
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