Commission for the Belgian Aid Organization

The Commission for the Belgian Aid Organization (Commissie voor Hulp aan België), also known as the Belgian Aid Organization, was an organization set up by US volunteers and internationally anchored by honorary chairmen or patrons, which focused on the food supply of the civilian population during the First World War of Belgium occupied by German troops .

Emile Francqui explains the situation

Despite its neutrality, Belgium was occupied by the Germans shortly after the outbreak of war, and part of the harvest and thousands of cattle were confiscated. Since the country only produced the food itself for a third of the population, a supply bottleneck quickly arose, especially in the cities. In the American embassy in London, the Belgian banker Emile Francqui was able to convince some of the people who were already involved in the evacuation of American civilians of the need for immediate relief. The mining engineer Herbert Hoover - later President of the United States - was seen as a suitable man to lead the project which, if the war was expected to be short, would have to save the Belgians over the next eight months until the next harvest. In the short term, Belgian foreign assets could raise $ 10 million . In fact, the action was to continue for four years, raise a billion dollars and ship five million tons of concentrated food. The United States had not yet been drawn into the war and its London ambassador, Walter Hines Page, was an ideal honorary chairman, but the neutral character of the aid organization could be preserved throughout the war by setting up aid committees around the world.

Clarification of the financing

A grueling situation with a blockade and an occupying army arose when the military leaders narrowed their perspective on their goals: the British were initially of the opinion that a starving Belgian people could only cause the Germans more trouble, so they had to wrest the approval of each supply ship individually become. The Germans pretended that it was entirely possible for the Belgians to support themselves and that the tense situation would allow nothing more than to feed their own people - despite the obligation under international law to provide for the civilian population. Hoover sought conversation and first got things moving on the German side. David Lloyd George quickly realized that if the Germans assumed the costs, they would be able to publicly portray their war opponent as a country that is starving its own allies through a blockade. So on February 18, 1915, the British decided to donate one million pounds (about $ 4.82 million) a month to the Hoover Fund. In addition to the entire Belgian people, the emergency also affected three million people in northern France. A request for support made by Hoover to the French Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé initially led to nothing, but Hoover was contacted by a French banker immediately after the meeting and the result was support of three million dollars a month, just not officially, but indirectly. From 1917 on, the US government participated in the financing, so that monthly sales increased from an initial 10 million dollars to 25 million in recent years. Less than 0.5% were all expenses of the commission, which involved more than 300 volunteers.

Often by a thread

The kinds of obstacles one faced were varied. Someone accused Hoover of violating the so-called “Logan Act”, enacted a hundred years earlier, which criminalized negotiations between private individuals and foreign governments in government matters. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge opened an investigation but was relieved with the help of President Woodrow Wilson . The British and French constantly suspected that the food they delivered could benefit the German army; conversely, the Germans often suspected spying activities among aid workers. A conflict that arose at harvest time in 1916 was particularly delicate, as the Germans were managing abandoned farms and were supposed to deliver a harvest replacement to the relief organization. The Quartermaster General, General Traugott von Sauberzweig , then announced that they were considering a complete abolition of the cooperation, the reason being the effect of the blockade on the German supply situation. Sauberzweig had personally been hit by two blows, his son had recently been blinded by war gas, and he himself was responsible for bringing Edith Cavell to court and executing him, which aroused resentment in him that he had been “portrayed as a monster to the whole world ". Hoover managed to convince the general that a decision against the Belgian Aid Organization could kill millions and that the damage to his reputation would be considerably greater than after the Cavell case.

The existence of the aid organization was equally at risk after the British government was unable to provide tonnage for transports between neutral states in the spring of 1916 against the backdrop of the submarine war . On June 26, 1916, the Lloyd Royal Belge company was founded as a merger of shipping companies to address this shortcoming. Around 60 cargo ships with a total of around 300,000 register tons were needed to maintain supplies , Belgian ones were confiscated, others chartered. The ships wore the Belgian Relief Commission lettering extending almost from bow to stern and were flagged with a flag bearing the letters CRB. This might for the most part ensure compliance with the guaranteed safe conduct , but even before the unrestricted submarine war, 19 ships were lost mainly to sea mines , then another 12, eight of them to submarines, for example the ships Euphrates and Lars Kruse . Even so, an overseas shipment of 200,000 shiploads of relief supplies from the United States, Canada, India and Argentina came together.

The conclusion

After the United States entered the war in May 1917, President Wilson asked Herbert Hoover to farm the food for the war. After Hoover's return to his home country, William B. Poland became head of the relief organization in Europe , politically supported only by the Spanish ambassador Marqués de Villalobar , the Spanish ambassador in London and the Dutch officials. At the end of the war, the Belgian and French governments asked the relief organization to continue working until July 1919. It now turned out to be an oversized food company with ten million customers, generating profits totaling $ 34 million. The money was made available to Belgian universities and educational institutions. The Comité National, which had headed the aid organization on Belgian soil and comprised 90 leading Belgian personalities alongside the leading Americans, met in August 1919 to dissolve the aid organization.

The United States then used its experience in a relief agency for Europe and its reconstruction until Hoover and the administration of the American Relief Agency faced the largest humanitarian non-war or epidemic disaster of recent history during the Russian famine of 1921 .

proof

Herbert Hoover: Memoirs (Vol. 1). Years of Adventure 1874–1920 , Matthias Grünewald Verlag, Mainz 1951

literature

Vernon Lyman Kellogg: Fighting Starvation in Belgium , Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City / New York 1918
George I. Gay / HH Fisher: Public Relations of the Commission for Relief in Belgium - Documents , Stanford University Press , 1919
George I. Gay: The Commission for Relief in Belgium, a Statistical Review of Relief Operations , Stanford University Press, 1925
Frank M. Surface / Raymond L. Bland: American Food in the World War and Reconstruction Period. Operations of the Organizations Under the Direction of Herbert Hoover 1914 to 1924 , Stanford University Press, Stanford 1931, pp. 12-14 u. 989–990 (CRB bibliography)
Hermann Stöhr: This is how America helped. The Foreign Aid of the United States 1812-1930 , Ökumenischer Verlag, Stettin 1936, pp. 146–151
Mommen, Andre: Belgian Economy in the Twentieth Century . Routledge, 1994, ISBN 0-415-01936-2 .