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In the early phases of the war, following German occupation of much of Europe, Germany also found itself unprepared for the number of POWs it held, and released many (particularly enlisted personnel) on parole (as a result, it released all the Dutch, all Flemish Belgian, nine-tenths of the Poles, and nearly a third of the French captives).
The Flemish Legion (Dutch: Vlaams Legioen, pronounced [ˈvlaːms leːɣiˈjun]) was a collaborationist military formation recruited among Dutch-speaking volunteers from German-occupied Belgium, notably from Flanders, during World War II.
Most were used as forced labour and paid only a nominal sum. [46] About 80,000 (mainly Flemish) prisoners were returned to Belgium between late 1940 and 1941, [27] but many remained in captivity until the end of the war. They were often kept in very poor conditions and around 2,000 died. [25]
Gradually, more prisoners were released, but around 64,000 Belgian soldiers were still in captivity by 1945, of whom just 2,000 were Flemish. [6] According to estimates compiled for the Nuremberg Trials , 53,000 were still incarcerated in 1945 at the end of the war, [ 11 ] but there could have been as many as 70,000 according to some estimates ...
German cavalry parade past the Royal Palace in Brussels shortly after the invasion, May 1940. The German occupation of Belgium (French: Occupation allemande, Dutch: Duitse bezetting) during World War II began on 28 May 1940, when the Belgian army surrendered to German forces, and lasted until Belgium's liberation by the Western Allies between September 1944 and February 1945.
Since these parties were promised more rights for the Flemings by the German government during World War II, many of them collaborated with the Nazi regime. After the war, collaborators (or people who were Zwart , "Black" during the war) were prosecuted and punished, among them many Flemish nationalists whose main political goal had been the ...
Flemish people also emigrated at the end of the fifteenth century, when Flemish traders conducted intensive trade with Spain and Portugal, and from there moved to colonies in America and Africa. [28] The newly discovered Azores were populated by 2,000 Flemish people from 1460 onwards, making these volcanic islands known as the "Flemish Islands".
The Flemish Guard (Dutch: Vlaamsche Wacht) was a collaborationist paramilitary formation which served as an auxiliary police in parts of German-occupied Belgium during World War II. It was founded as an independent formation in May 1941 at the initiative of the Union of Flemish Veterans [ nl ] ( Verbond van Vlaamsche Oudstrijders , VOS) and the ...