| rdfs:comment | - After its successful invasion in May 1940, a German military government was established in Belgium, bringing the territory under the direct rule of the . Thousands of Belgian soldiers became prisoners of war, and many were not released until 1945. The German administration in Belgium juggled the competing objectives of maintaining order while also extracting material from the territory to use in their war effort. They were assisted by the Belgian civil service, which believed that limited co-operation with the occupiers would result in the least damage to Belgian interests. Belgian Fascist parties, established before the war, in both Flanders and Wallonia collaborated much more actively with the occupiers, helping to recruit Belgians for the German army and were given more power themselves
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| abstract | - After its successful invasion in May 1940, a German military government was established in Belgium, bringing the territory under the direct rule of the . Thousands of Belgian soldiers became prisoners of war, and many were not released until 1945. The German administration in Belgium juggled the competing objectives of maintaining order while also extracting material from the territory to use in their war effort. They were assisted by the Belgian civil service, which believed that limited co-operation with the occupiers would result in the least damage to Belgian interests. Belgian Fascist parties, established before the war, in both Flanders and Wallonia collaborated much more actively with the occupiers, helping to recruit Belgians for the German army and were given more power themselves by the end of the war. Food and fuel were tightly rationed, and all official news was closely censored. Belgian civilians living near possible targets such as railway junctions were also in danger from Allied aerial bombing. From 1942, the occupation became more repressive. Systematic persecution and deportation of Jews to concentration camps began, as did repressive measures against potential political opposition. Despite vigorous protests, the Germans began deporting Belgian civilians to work in factories in Germany. At the same time, the resistance, which had been formed in late 1940, expanded vastly. From 1944, the and Nazi Party began to gain much greater control in Belgium, particularly after the military government was replaced in July by the , a Nazi Civil Administration. In December 1944, the territory was incorporated only de jure into the Greater German Reich as the new Reichsgaue of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels and with its leaders already in exile in Germany, territory was liberated soon afterwards in February 1945. In total, 40,690 Belgians (over half of them Jews) were killed during the occupation and around 8% of the country's pre-war GDP was destroyed or removed to Germany.
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