Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
During World War I several Flemish soldiers were punished for their active or passive involvement in the Flemish Movement. Ten of these soldiers were sent to a penal military unit in 1918 called the Special Forestry Platoon in Orne, Normandy, France. They were forced to work as woodchoppers in hard living conditions until several months after ...
The Flemish showed a real zest for settling elsewhere, discarding the social fabric that was in place: they were "a brave and robust people, but very hostile to the Welsh and in a perpetual state of conflict with them". [3] The Normans and the Flemish built a line of over 50 castles – most of them earthworks – to protect south Pembrokeshire.
The German occupying authorities, under Von Bissing and influenced by pre-war Pan-Germanism, viewed the Flemish as an oppressed people and launched a policy to appeal to the demands of the Flemish Movement which had emerged in the late 19th century. These measures were collectively known as the Flamenpolitik ("Flemish Policy").
Flamenpolitik (German: "Flemish policy") is a policy practiced by German authorities occupying Belgium during World War I and World War II. The ultimate goals of these policies was the dissolution of Belgium into separate Walloon and Flemish components and Germanisation.
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".
Examples of mimeograph machines used by the Belgian resistance to produce illegal newspapers and publications. Among the first members of the Belgian resistance were former soldiers, and in particular officers, who, on their return from prisoner of war camps, wished to continue the fight against the Germans out of patriotism. [11]
200,000 Belgian military prisoners of war, who had been captured in 1940, were also transported to Germany. [27] 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 ...
These units were all commanded by General Ernst August Köstring (1876−1953). [9] A lower estimate for the total number of foreign volunteers that served in the entire German armed forces (including the Waffen SS) is 350,000. [10] These units were often under the command of German officers and some published their own propaganda newssheets.