Military administration in Belgium and northern France

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Map of the occupation of France and Belgium

The German military administration in Belgium and northern France was established in 1940, shortly before the end of the western campaign in World War II , as the occupation authority of the German Wehrmacht under the military commander General Alexander von Falkenhausen and was under General Martin Grase from July 15, 1944 . It comprised Belgium and the French departments of Nord and Pas-de-Calais , including the interdite zone ( prohibited zone ), a narrow strip of territory along the French northern and eastern borders. Plans to transfer military administration to civil administration were promoted by the SS . The SS had proposed Josef Terboven or, alternatively, Ernst Kaltenbrunner as Reich Commissioner for Civil Administration. On June 12, 1944, six days after D-Day , the German military administration in Belgium and Northern France was transformed into the civil administration of the Reichskommissariat Belgium and Northern France .

Because of their involvement in the crimes of the persecution of Jews , the shooting of hostages and forced labor during their time in Belgium, General von Falkenhausen and his head of administration, SS-Brigadführer Eggert Reeder , were sentenced by the Brussels War Council to 12 years of forced labor in 1951 and pardoned shortly afterwards.

See also

literature

  • Etienne Dejonghe: Un mouvement séparatiste dans le Nord et le Pas-de-Calais sous l'occupation (1940-1944): le "Vlaamsch Verbond van Frankrijk" . In: Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine . 17, No. 1, January-March 1970, pp. 50-77. JSTOR 20527887 .
  • Marc Sueur: La Collaboration Politique dans le Département du Nord (1940-1944) . In: Revue d'histoire de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale et des conflits contemporains . 34, No. 135, September, pp. 3-45. JSTOR 25729197 .
  • Jay Howard Geller: The Role of Military Administration in German-Occupied Belgium, 1940-1944 . In: The Journal of Military History . 63, No. 1, January 1999, pp. 99-125. JSTOR 120335 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerd de Coster, Dirk Martin: The indexing and digitization of criminal prosecution files from the post-war period , Francia. Research on Western European History , 39, 2012, p. 387