The famous German brutality of WWII was first practiced in Belgium during WWI. By the time of World War I, Belgium was the most industrialized country in Europe, and the most densely populated. It imported 75% of its food.
The Germans kicked off their war by marching through Belgium to get into France and capture Paris. They didn’t expect the Belgians to display nationalistic feeling when they were already divided ethnically, and the Germans were shocked when the Belgians resisted their advance.
Their occupation of Belgium became vicious. Men, women, and children were executed for resisting. Belgian industries were dismantled and transported to Germany, leaving massive unemployment in Belgium. Forty million francs per month was demanded as a contribution to the war. Thousands of men were deported for slave labor in Germany. Movement outside of one’s town or village was forbidden without difficult-to-obtain passes. Imports and exports were stopped, which meant starvation.
Belgian representatives traveled to London, looking for a way to avert the starvation of the country. Herbert Hoover, a wealthy American industrialist who was helping Americans stranded in Europe by the war, volunteered to lead the effort of getting food to Belgium. He was assisted by mostly young, adventurous men, many Rhodes scholars at Oxford.
Neither the British nor the Germans favored the relief effort. Both sides allowed it to continue because Hoover masterfully orchestrated a worldwide PR campaign to highlight the plight of the Belgians and gain universal sympathy that the belligerents couldn’t ignore.
When the American relief delegates had to leave Belgium in 1917 upon the US entry into the war, the still-neutral Netherlands and Spain kept the relief going to feed Belgium.
Fascinating account of Belgium’s WWI experience, much of which was unknown to me.