Political Testament: Part VII

In the seventh section of his Political Testament, King Leopold III addressed the problem of the punishment of Nazi collaborators. 

Il faut craindre que la fin des hostilités ne s'accompagne du déchaînement de la vindicte publique et de l'assouvissement d'innombrables rancunes publiques et privées.

Les détenteurs provisoires de l'autorité auront à maintenir les manifestations de l'opinion dans les limites légales. Ils auront aussi cependant à provoquer et à éxécuter les sanctions que comportent les attentats commis par d'aucuns contre la défense du Pays et contre l'unité de l'État. 

Les auteurs de ces crimes contre la Nation ont assez proclamé, voire célébré, leur trahison pour que les répressions nécessaires ne s'en prennent qu'aux véritables et grands coupables.

Il convient que les châtiments soient prononcés et infligés sans délai, mais selon les procédures régulières.

It is to be feared that the end of hostilities will be accompanied by the unleashing of public vengeance, and by efforts to satisfy public and private hatreds.

Those who will be exercising authority in the interim period will have to keep demonstrations of opinion within legal limits. They will also, however, have to insist upon and carry out the punishments called for by the crimes which some have committed against the safety of the country and the unity of the state. 

The authors of these crimes against the nation have proclaimed, or rather, celebrated, their treason, sufficiently to enable the necessary retribution to apply only to the genuine, major offenders.

Sentences should be pronounced and carried out without delay, but according to regular procedures.

Blankenberge

The beach at Blankenberge, West Flanders, ca. 1900. 

Princess Josephine of Belgium

Princess Josephine of Belgium (1872-1958), one of the sisters of King Albert I. Josephine and Albert, the two youngest children of the Count and Countess of Flanders (like their older counterparts, Baudouin and Henriette), were particularly close to one another. Due to Josephine's marriage to a Hohenzollern relative, Albert and his sister were tragically separated during World War I, but the return of peace in 1918 made possible family reunion. Sadly, however, Josephine lost her husband a year later. In the 1930's, after the death of her brother, King Albert (a tragedy which caused her immense grief), she entered a convent in Namur. Her prayers surely aided the royal family!

"La Question Royale"

Royalist demonstrations and news reporting from the period of Belgium's post-war "Royal Question." Includes scenes of King Leopold III and Crown Prince Baudouin in exile in Switzerland.

The King & His Daughter

Here we see King Albert I of Belgium with his daughter, Marie-José, the future Queen of Italy, during the First World War. The little Princess adored her father. 

It is touching to see how the King, despite the innumerable preoccupations of war, took care to attend to his paternal role. In her memoirs, Marie-José quotes a few letters he sent her during this period. With gentleness, with the noble simplicity for which he was famous, he sought to assist her in her moral and religious growth.

In 1915, the King wrote to his daughter, then 9 years old, while she was in a convent school in England: 

"Il faut être sage et bien travailler. Quand on fait ce qu'on doit, on sert le Bon Dieu et on est heureux dans la vie...Ici il n'y rien de nouveau. La guerre est terrible et dure longtemps. Il faut prier pour qu'elle cesse bientôt." 

"You must behave well and do good work. When one does one's duty, one serves the good God and one is happy in life... Here there is nothing new. The war is terrible and drags on. We must pray that it end soon." 

As the date of Marie-José's First Communion approached, in 1916:

Prépare-toi avec soin pour ta Première Communion, c'est un grand jour de ta vie. Moi, je me rappelle toujours ma Première Communion comme un heureux événement de mon existence." 

"Prepare yourself with care for your First Communion, it is a great day of your life. I still remember my First Communion as a happy event in my life." 

Marie-José returned to Belgium for her First Communion. As the day of the ceremony drew near, the King, with great care, personally instructed her in the catechism. Yet, she later recalled, overwhelmed by the joy of seeing her father, she could not attend to his words. 

During the tragic years of the war, Marie-José's tender affection was surely a great consolation to her father. 

Brothers, Sisters, & Cousins

King Leopold III of the Belgians with his wife, Queen Astrid, and their children.
Leopold's sister, Queen Marie-José of Italy, with her husband, King Umberto II, and their children. 

The Royal Palace of Brussels

A photograph of the Royal Palace of Brussels by Matthias Zepper. Licensing information here.

Not to be confused with Laeken Castle (the residence of the Belgian royal family on the outskirts of Brussels), this is where the King performs his official functions. 

Belgium's Lost Prince

Above, we see a photograph of King Albert's older brother, Prince Baudouin of Belgium (1869-1891). Baudouin was the first child of the Count and Countess of Flanders. As the only legitimate son of his uncle, Leopold II, died as a child, Baudouin was raised as the heir to the Belgian throne. A young man of great promise, he died tragically of pneumonia (according to some accounts, complicated by renal hemorrhage) at age 22. He was deeply mourned by his family and people.

Baudouin was particularly close to his eldest sister, Henriette (pictured below). As their niece, Marie-José, describes in her memoirs, the two siblings shared a sense of family, and a love of religion, duty, country, and tradition. According to Henriette:

À vingt-et-un ans, Baudouin avait déclaré qu'il serait toujours un traditionnaliste, que seule dans la tradition subsiste la force. Il se déclarait: ni révolutionnaire, ni libéral, ni moderne... Il fallait du courage pour avouer cela dans notre démocratique Belgique!

At 21, Baudouin had declared that he would always be a traditionalist, that strength lay in tradition alone. He declared himself neither revolutionary, nor liberal, nor modern... It took courage to say this, in our democratic Belgium!

In contrast to his shy younger brother, Albert, Baudouin moved with ease in high society and enjoyed the companionship of his peers. Whereas Albert hated hunting and lacked interest in riding and dancing, Baudouin excelled in the traditional aristocratic pursuits.

In her diary, Henriette described Baudouin in the highest terms:

Baudouin était né chef. Depuis son enfance, il nous tenait tous trois en main. Comme il serait complété avec son frère Albert s'ils avaient été deux à servir leur patrie. Le cadet, Albert, a toujours préféré être le second et servir un chef plutôt de l'être lui-même... Albert a un coeur d'or, mais dès sa plus tendre enfance, il était coléreux et d'une extrême susceptibilité, tandis qu'en Baudouin nous n'avons jamais pu découvrir un seul défaut, à part sa trop grande modestie.

Baudouin was a born leader. From his childhood, he held all three of us by the hand. How well he would been complemented by his brother, Albert, if the two had been able to serve their country together! Albert, the younger one, has always preferred to take second place, and to serve a leader rather than to be one himself... Albert has a heart of gold, but, from his earliest childhood, he was irascible, and extremely sensitive, whereas, in Baudouin, we were never able to find a single fault, apart from his excessive modesty.

Henriette also discussed the similarities between the two brothers:

Albert a, comme Baudouin, cet instinct de la recherche: voir pour lui-même afin de ne pas être dupe et d'être armé pour gouverner... Tous deux parlaient le flamand et le wallon que ni le conte de Flandre ni le roi Léopold II ne connaissaient, et ils s'amusaient à s'exprimer en marollien et d'autres patois.

Albert, like Baudouin, has this instinct for finding things out: to see them for himself so as not be duped and so as to be equipped to govern... Both brothers spoke Flemish and Walloon, which neither the Count of Flanders nor King Leopold II knew, and enjoyed expressing themselves in Marollian and other dialects.

Albert greatly admired, and regretted, his older brother. During World War I, he told Henriette:

"Ah! Si Baudouin avait vécu, comme notre vie eût été differente et plus heureuse! Quelle force d'être deux au lieu d'un! Il aurait tout mieux fait que moi."

"Ah! If Baudouin had survived, how different our life would have been, how much happier! What strength to be two instead of one! He would have done everything better than I."

After Baudouin's death, the press launched a lurid campaign to slander his reputation. Malicious rumors circulated, to the effect that he had been killed over a love affair. In her grief and indignation, Henriette wrote:

Comment a-t-on lancé, après sa mort, ces tragiques et douloureux mensonges? C'est incompréhensible. Il est vrai qu'on ne peut admettre la vertu des princes et qu'on croit si facilement le mal! Il était le plus fort de nous tous, mais il a été terrassé en deux jours! Le tort a été de n'avoir pas annoncé qu'il s'était alité avec une forte fièvre. On inventa des histoires de rixes, d'assassinat même... pour une femme. On fit des rapprochements avec le drame de Mayerling, alors que Baudouin devenait agressif et violent lorsqu'il parlait de Rodolphe. Il avait ressenti une impression de dégoût dans ce qu'il avait vu à Vienne lors de l'enterrement de l'archiduc...

How could they launch, after his death, these tragic and painful lies! It is incomprehensible. It is true that people cannot recognize the virtue of princes, and that they so easily believe evil! He was the strongest of us all, but he succumbed in two days! The mistake was not to announce that he had been taken to bed with a high fever. People invented stories of brawls, even of murder... over a woman. They made comparisons with the drama of Mayerling, although Baudouin became agressive and violent whenever he spoke of Rudolf. He had experienced an impression of disgust at what he saw in Vienna during the Archduke's funeral...

Baudouin's fate prefigured that of his family; for years to come, tragedy and calumny would continue to stalk the Belgian royal house.

(above: one of the artistic works of the Countess of Flanders, dated not long after Baudouin's death; the sombre tones, perhaps, express his mother's grief)

The Belgian Countryside

In the Ardennes. 
Polders on the Yser River.
The Semois valley, near Bouillon, close to the French border.

(Credits and licensing information here, here, and here)

King Leopold & the Deportation of Belgian Workers

All too often, in discussions of the Nazi occupation of Belgium, King Leopold III is portrayed as taking a weak and passive stance in regard to his country's oppressors. On the internet, I have seen claims such as "The King failed to protest against any of the measures of the Nazi occupiers... he did not, for example, raise his voice against the deportation of Belgian workers to Germany." Similarly, during the campaign to force Leopold's abdication, his enemies spoke of the "Silences of Laeken."

This is sheer calumny. General Alexander von Falkenhausen, the military governor of Belgium during the German occupation, (and, in fact, an important anti-Nazi, who did his best to moderate the treatment of the Belgians during the occupation), asserted in an interview many years after the war: "... A single preoccupation dominated (Leopold's) thoughts during the war: alleviating the miseries of his people." He described how Leopold repeatedly intervened on his people's behalf, sometimes using the General himself as an intermediary.

The truth is that Leopold had to walk a tightrope. As a conscientious and dedicated Sovereign, he wished to protect his people, to the best of his ability, from oppressive measures. Yet, public protests carried the risk that the Nazis, in retaliation, would institute an even harsher regime in Belgium. As Jean Cleeremans describes in his book, Léopold III, sa famille, son peuple, sous l'occupation, this was a very real danger; in the Netherlands, for example, when the Dutch bishops protested openly against the Nazis' racial policy, it merely led to an intensification of anti-Jewish persecution. The King, in his vulnerable position as a prisoner of war, also had to weigh the personal risks he would take by protesting publicly. Grand gestures of defiance might simply lead to his deportation - or worse - without benefiting his people, whom he would no longer be able to help. In this delicate and dangerous situation, the King avoided public protests, seeking to aid the Belgians in more discreet ways that - while still involving serious risk - seemed better advised. Nonetheless, Leopold certainly did "raise his voice" against the "measures of the Nazi occupiers," repeatedly, in very firm letters to Hitler, and in personal protests addressed to Von Falkenhausen. The deportation of the Belgian workers, in particular, is one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of Leopold's wartime humanitarian interventions.

In October, 1942, the Nazis began to organize the deportation of Belgian men between the ages of 18 and 50, and of single Belgian women between the ages of 21 and 35. The intention was to use them as forced labor to further the German war effort. Penal measures and reprisals were inflicted upon those who failed to appear when summoned for deportation, and upon their families.  The Belgians, naturally enough, dreaded the prospect of forced labor; girls began to contract mariages blancs to avoid deportation. The upper echelons of the civil service, which had remained in Belgian hands, addressed a courageous protest to the German military administration. The Court of Cassation indicated that the deportations violated the Hague Convention.

On November 3, the King wrote a letter of protest to Hitler:

L'annonce de cette déportation massive cause dans toutes les couches de la population un émoi dont il est aisé de mésurer l'ampleur. Ma conscience m'interdit de passer sous silence le mal qu'entraîne, pour les ouvriers, l'obligation d'abandonner leurs foyers, leurs terres, leurs usines, pour metter en pleine guerre leur activité au service direct de l'Allemagne. J'ajoute que la population belge a gardé des déportations de 1916-1917 un souvenir exécré et que si, sous l'une ou l'autre forme, elles se renouvelaient, elles soulèveraient ... une haine ineffaçable contre l'Allemagne. 

The announcement of this massive deportation is causing, throughout the population, an emotion whose amplitude it is easy to measure. My conscience forbids me to pass over in silence the harm which the workers will suffer if they are obliged to abandon their homes, their land, their factories; in order to put their activities, in the midst of the war, at the direct service of Germany. I add that the Belgian people continues to remember, with execration, the deportations of 1916-1917, and that if, under one form or another, they were renewed, they would arouse ... an ineffaceable hatred of Germany. 

The King's protest was unsuccessful; Hitler, not surprisingly, merely responded that the deportations were necessary for the German war effort. At this point, the Belgian government-in-exile succeeded in conveying a message to Leopold, urging him to protest publicly against the deportations, whatever the consequences, while admitting that the chances of any positive result were extremely slim:

...Son intervention produira-t-elle un résultat? C'est extrêmement douteux... Mais la question n'est pas de réussir, elle est d'accomplir ce qui est ... un devoir de la fonction royale. Sous quelle forme l'intervention du Roi devrait-elle se traduire? Elle devait être publique, affichée sur les murs. S'il devait en résulter une réaction de l'ennemi et un attentat de sa part contre la liberté de la personne royale, malgré la gravité de ses conséquences, pareille perspective ne devrait pas motiver une hésitation... En écrivant ces lignes, le gouvernement se rend compte combien il est délicat de donner pareil conseil, alors qu'il se trouve à l'étranger et que, par conséquent, il ne partage pas les risques de la résistance.

Would (the King's) intervention produce a result? It is very doubtful... But it is not a question of succeeding, but rather of accomplishing... a royal duty. What form should the King's intervention take? It should be public, posted on all the walls. If there resulted a reaction and an assault on the enemy's part upon the liberty of the royal person, despite the gravity of its consequences, such a prospect should not inspire hesitation... In writing these lines, the government realizes how delicate it is to give such advice, as it is abroad, and, in consequence, does not share the risks of resistance.

The King feared that such a gesture would merely lead to Nazi reprisals against Belgium. To decide upon the appropriate course of action, he convened, at Laeken Castle, a meeting of representatives of Belgian industrial workers and entrepreneurs, on December 15, and sought their counsel. After a careful discussion, all the representatives advised against a public protest.

Leopold, however, continued to defend his people through other means. The day after the conference at Laeken, he addressed a letter to Dr. Nolf, a physician of the royal family and the President of the Belgian Red Cross. I find the letter, and the patriotic devotion it expresses, very dignified and touching:

Le pays connaît la nouvelle et cruelle épreuve du travail forcé, qui oblige nos ouvriers et nos ouvrières à quitter la Belgique pour mettre leur activité au service de l'Allemagne en guerre. Le sort des femmes surtout est digne de pitié: des jeunes filles isolées, envoyées dans une terre étrangère dont elles ignorent jusqu'à la langue, sont exposées à des dangers dont ceux d'ordre moral ne sont pas les moindres... 

The country is experiencing the new and cruel ordeal of forced labour, which obliges our workers, both men and women, to leave Belgium in order to put their activity at the service of Germany's war effort. The fate of the women, above all, is worthy of pity: isolated young girls, sent to a foreign country where they do not even know the language, are exposed to dangers - not least of which are those of a moral character... 

The King then described his protest to Hitler, and its fruitless outcome. He continued:

....(J)e manquerais au devoir que me dicte ma conscience si je n'essayais d'alléger les souffrances qu'entraîne un travail forcé inéluctable. Dans le vif désir de venir en aide aux déportés et à leur famile, je m'addresse à la Croix Rouge et je lui demande d'étudier les moyens les plus appropriés pour réaliser cette oeuvre d'humanité. Je la prie d'examiner avec une sollicitude particulière un problème qui me tient profondément à coeur et de me faire connaître le plus tôt possible les mesures qu'elle préconise.

I would fail in the duty dictated by my conscience if I did not attempt to relieve the sufferings caused by this unavoidable forced labour. Keenly desirous of coming to the aid of the deportees and their families, I address myself to the Red Cross and I ask it to consider the most appropriate means of realizing this work of humanity. I implore it to examine, with particular care, a problem very close to my heart, and to let me know, as soon as possible, what measures it plans to take.

On January 5, 1943, the King met with Von Falkenhausen at Laeken. Leopold asked that all women be exempted from forced labour; or, if this were impossible, he insisted that the minimum age for deportation should be increased from 21 to 25 for women and from 18 to 21 for men. Von Falkenhausen, at great personal risk, tried to intervene with the Nazi hierarchy on the Belgians' behalf (he argued that the deportations and forced labour were unacceptable, and, in any case, would be counter-productive, merely increasing the chances of sabotage of German industry on the part of resentful deportees). On January 12, the King addressed another - long - letter to the Red Cross, insisting that the deported workers not be abandoned to their fate and recommending strenuous measures to assist them and their families.

Unfortunately, a copy of one of the King's letters to the Red Cross fell into Hitler's hands. Furious, he dispatched General Müller to Laeken to read the King a long tirade:

Your Majesty... it appears that you have completely forgotten that you are a prisoner. The assertions contained in your letter... are so monstrous that no rebuke can be harsh enough. By speaking of "cruel ordeals," "forced labour," and "deportation," you evince a disturbing incomprehension of the... worldwide duty of fighting Bolshevism. The tone of your letter is a vulgar insult to the Germans.... As to the moral dangers which, you seem to believe, the young Belgian girls, "isolated," "worthy of pity," would face in Germany ... the mistrust you thereby display in the matter of the conduct of your country's women ... (suggests) that the dangers in question would be, at least, equally great in your own country. I intend, Your Majesty, for you to avoid such unpardonable incidents in the future.... (or) I will be forced to assign you a different residence outside of Belgium.

Despite Hitler's violent, hysterical, and threatening reaction, Leopold won a partial victory: on March 25, the occupying regime suspended the deportation of Belgian women (with the exception of maids and hotel staff).

Clearly, Leopold was far from "passive" in his stance towards the Nazi occupiers. His response to the deportations is only one among many courageous interventions on his people's behalf. Protesting requisitions of food and supplies, seeking to alleviate the treatment of hostages and prisoners of war, petitioning for clemency for political prisoners, funding relief measures for the population, shielding the resistance activities of members of his entourage, Leopold defended his people throughout the Nazi occupation. It is shocking that the old calumnies of the "Silences of Laeken" persist to the present day.

Sources:

Jean Cleeremans. Léopold III, sa famille, son peuple sous l'occupation. 

Roger Keyes. Échec au Roi: Léopold III, 1940-1951.