Brussels Occupied: Nazi Expansion Sweeps Belgium

German tanks rolled into Brussels on May 17, 1940, meeting no resistance from a city whose defenders had already retreated toward the coast. The Belgian capital fell just one week after Germany launched its western offensive, a pace of conquest that stunned military observers worldwide. The grand boulevards and government buildings of one of Europe's wealthiest capitals passed into German hands without a shot fired, as the Belgian army fell back to join British and French forces attempting to form a defensive line along the Escaut River. The German attack on Belgium, launched on May 10, combined the airborne seizure of the fortress of Eben-Emael with armored thrusts through the Ardennes that bypassed the strongest Allied positions. Belgian forces, despite fighting bravely at the Albert Canal and around Liege, could not hold against the speed and coordination of the German advance. The fall of Eben-Emael, considered the strongest fortress in Europe, in just twenty-seven hours shattered Belgian defensive planning. King Leopold III made the controversial decision to remain with his army rather than flee to Britain or France with his government. The cabinet departed for Paris and eventually London, establishing a government in exile. Leopold's choice placed the monarch in an impossible position. When Belgium surrendered on May 28, Leopold became a German prisoner, and his government in exile branded him a collaborator, igniting a constitutional crisis that would not be resolved until 1950. Brussels under German occupation endured four years of rationing, forced labor conscription, and the deportation of over 25,000 Belgian Jews to extermination camps. A resistance network developed that provided intelligence to the Allies, sheltered downed airmen, and sabotaged German logistics. The city was liberated on September 3, 1944, by British armored forces, greeted by crowds lining the same boulevards the Germans had entered unopposed four years earlier. The speed of the 1940 collapse haunted Belgian military and political thinking for decades.