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1918 American poster used to encourage the purchase of War Bonds. The history of Belgium in World War I traces Belgium's role between the German invasion in 1914, through the continued military resistance and occupation of the territory by German forces to the armistice in 1918, as well as the role it played in the international war effort ...
Oct 11, 2024 · Belgium - WWI, Neutrality, Invasion: As international tensions heightened during the summer of 1914, Germany made plans to besiege France by crossing Luxembourg and Belgium, despite their neutrality. The two countries refused free passage to the German troops and were invaded on August 2 and August 4, respectively. The Belgian army retired behind the Yser (IJzer) River in the west of Flanders ...
The German invasion of Belgium was a military campaign which began on 4 August 1914. On 24 July, the Belgian government had announced that if war came it would uphold its neutrality. The Belgian government mobilised its armed forces on 31 July and a state of heightened alert (Kriegsgefahr) was proclaimed in Germany.
- Introduction
- Belgium on The Eve of The War
- Invasion
- 1915-1916: Settling Into A War Routine
- German Designs on Belgium, 1914-1918
- 1917-1918: War-Weariness and Renewed Resolve
- Aftermath
- Brief Conclusion
During the war, the importance of “Belgium” as an issue inspired heated discussions. In a 1928 monograph, the historian Henri Pirenne (1862-1935) presented the restoration of Belgium as the vindication of the liberal idea. Though no such synthesis was attempted in the next three-quarter century, the 1950s through the 1980s saw groundbreaking monogr...
In 1914, Belgium was the most densely populated state in the world, with as many inhabitants as Canada (7.6 million) on a small landmass.1 Condensed and complex, it attracted considerable attention: the German historian Karl Lamprecht (1856-1915) called it a “microcosm of Europe”; the French sociologist Henri Charriaut (1873) called it a compressed...
As early as 26 July, German Chief of Staff Helmuth von Moltke (1848-1916) drafted an ultimatum to the Belgian government, demanding the right of passage for German troops en route to France. On 2 August, the German envoy in Brussels delivered the ultimatum; the Belgians had twenty-four hours to respond. In a nocturnal meeting, the government and Al...
A Segmented Society-at-war
Because of invasion, occupation, and mass flight, Belgium-at-war was a constellation of dispersed constituencies, strapped for cash, out of their depth, and in only intermittent touch with each other, which led to misunderstandings. The army, the occupied civilians, the refugees, the government, and the king experienced the war in different worlds. The army held the Yser front in the northwestern corner of Belgium, where the king, its de facto commander, also resided. The cabinet and its thre...
The Situation in November 1914
In late November 1914, Belgium, as a belligerent, was in bad shape. On the Yser, the 52,000 men of the field army (down from 117,500) were lacking in all resources and desperate at the lack of news from their loved ones. The nearness of the intensely popular royal couple – Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of the Belgians (1876-1965) adopted a persona as nurse – provided some consolation. Meanwhile, the Belgian government (now a government “of national unity” with the addition of one Socialist and...
Front
Through 1915-1916, the Belgian army regrouped.13 It dug in – or, rather, in this waterlogged terrain, it used sand-bags to buttress its front, which extended to thirty-two kilometres from June 1916. In August 1915, the troops received new khaki uniforms; later on, Adrian helmets. The hinterland was built up with a portable light-railway system, telephone lines, barracks, and other amenities; medical and other services improved markedly. All of this was largely on credit from the Entente (as w...
Meanwhile, German plans for Belgium took further shape. Imperial Germany had not gone to war to capture Belgium, but it became a war aim once stalemate set in. Even so, designs on Belgium fluctuated with the military situation, and no consensus existed among imperial decision-makers. Yet two conditions remained in force until the last moment. First...
For all that occupied civilians largely rejected activism, the consolations of patriotism were wearing thin. In 1916, Brussels celebrated the forbidden national holiday of 21 July; no such effort was made a year later. In occupied Belgium as elsewhere, 1917 marked a crisis of war legitimacy. The failed allied offensive on the Somme, the fall of Buc...
The end of the war meant the reuniting of the different segments of Belgium-at-war; the return of the Belgian state; and the return – or reconquest – of legitimacy through a renegotiated social contract. Starting before the Armistice, King Albert entered a succession of just-liberated Belgian cities, from Ostend – where the royal couple made an imp...
Belgium’s war experience, and the lessons that could be drawn from it, went, as it were, underground. Yet, as a segmented society-at-war, the particularities of this war experience shed a specific light on the war’s dynamics of cultural and social mobilization. Those particularities are also instructive with regard to the security conundrums of sma...
Nov 5, 2023 · 18 October 1914. The Germans have reached the IJzer, and heavy fighting has broken out in West Flanders, particularly in the villages of Keiem, Tervaete and Schoorbakke. Belgian and French troops are defending Diksmuide with great determination in the face of continuous bombardment.
The German occupation of Belgium (French: Occupation allemande, Dutch: Duitse bezetting) of World War I was a military occupation of Belgium by the forces of the German Empire between 1914 and 1918. Beginning in August 1914 with the invasion of neutral Belgium , the country was almost completely overrun by German troops before the winter of the same year as the Allied forces withdrew westwards.
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Nov 2, 2018 · First Battle of Ypres, (October 19–November 22, 1914), first of three costly World War I battles centred on the city of Ypres (now Ieper) in western Flanders. Attempted flank attacks by both the Allies and the Germans failed to achieve significant breakthroughs, and both sides settled into the trench warfare that would characterize the ...
