Chapter 12

(MAY 1940 – BELGIUM SURRENDERS)

“Hitler, accompanied by Keitel, Jodl and others of the OKW staff, arrived at headquarters, which he had named Felsennest (Eyrie), near Muenstereifel just as dawn was breaking on May 10. Twenty-five miles to the west German forces were hurtling over the Belgian frontier. Along a front of 175 miles, from the North Sea to the Maginot Line, Nazi troops broke across the borders of three small neutral states, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, in brutal violation of the German word, solemnly and repeatedly given.”

“The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer”

The following is an interesting side story of the Belgium invasion that might prompt a Historical Fiction tale of those dangerous years. (Of course, this is all true and not fiction at all.)

THE SAGA OF THE BELGIUM GOLD

In the late 1930s the danger of war was increased drastically.

With Hitler now firmly in charge of the German nation, the surrounding countries in Europe could literally feel the tension building day by day.

Belgium decided it was time to transfer most of its stocks of gold to England for safekeeping. The transfer of the gold did not go as smoothly as they had hoped and part of the gold reserves was diverted from their intended destination.

(Author’s Note: This appears to be SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for countries that feel they are about to be taken over by an enemy or subjected to internal revolt and loss of authority. A case in point would be the transfer of several billions of American dollar value gold stocks from Venezuelan banks to other countries by an ex-President that refuses to leave office. That gold has been impounded until the International banking and legal systems determine actual ownership.)

It has been estimated that prior to the Blitzkrieg invasion of Belgium along with several other European countries in May 1940 that the Belgium gold reserves were slightly over 600 tons.

One-third was transferred to Britain, a second third was sent to the United States and the remaining third was kept in Belgium to cover banking requirements. In early 1940, the prospect of imminent attack seemed almost a certainty. As a result, the Belgium Finance Minister ordered the remaining gold to be transferred to the Banque de France. Almost 200 tons of pure gold was shipped to the South of France. It was stored in the vaults of the Banque de France.

At the start of the Nazi invasion of Belgium on 10 May 1940, only a small fraction of the Belgium gold remained in the Belgium banking system.

The speed of the German invasion was so swift that the Banque de France contacted the French Navy to quickly transfer the stored gold from the harbor at Lorient, the nearest seaport, to the United States. The French ship was diverted from its destination and landed in Dakar, West Africa. The French military command in the French base at Thies, about 65 kilometers inland agreed to store the gold until further instructions. It was decided that the base was too risky and the gold was further transported inland to Kayes in the middle of the Sahara desert. That French base was almost 500 kilometers from Dakar. The National Bank of Belgium notified the Banque de France with a “notice of default” that they had violated the contract by not delivering the gold to the United States.

With the Fall of France, the Nazis and the French acting Prime Minister agreed reluctantly to transfer the gold to German hands.

The transfer of the gold from Central Africa to Algiers and then on to Marseille was extremely difficult. The transfer was completed in May 1942 and reluctantly given to the German authorities.

With the gold now in the possession of the Nazi Reichsbank, Reich Marshall Hermann Goring confiscated all the gold and had it melted down into German gold coins with the dates of 1936 and 1937. Goring hoped that this would convince others that this was gold from before the war and not subject to punitive repossession.

At the end of the war in April 1945, in the town of Merkers, American troops discovered a massive store of treasures including a large part of the missing gold that belonged to the Bank of Belgium. They found the Reichsbank’s records that indicated a portion of the gold was changed into hard currency and used to purchase weapons from neutral countries such as Spain, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland. All of the gold found in Germany was pooled together along with reparations from the neutral countries for compensation to the claims of the countries whose assets had been plundered.

Eventually about sixty percent of the lost gold was returned to the Bank of Belgium from the pooled gold returned.

I had originally had a poor opinion of the true feelings of the Belgium government against the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Then, I realized that there were definitely competing agendas in that important and strategic country that was a linchpin for the defense of Old Europe.

On the one hand, you had the proliferation of youthful pro-Nazi groups that saw the rise of the Third Reich as an opportunity for them to throw off the shackles of royalty and bureaucratic interference with their nationalistic ambitions. From the advantage of my time-traveling research, I was able to look at the fact that the German SS had managed to organize two full divisions of Waffen SS from the ashes of a fallen Belgium state. Those divisions along with the full cooperation of the Belgium police and other para-military units operated within the country to hunt down and turn over most of the Jewish population for deportation to Nazi concentration camps in other countries. The core government had no choice but to relocate to Britain and function as a government in exile and oppose the takeover of their native land.

Strangely, they had appointed a caretaker government made up of lower ranking officials to take care of things in their absence and as it turned out those replacements managed to make the Nazi’s job of “purifying” the country of unwanted elements much easier. These bureaucrats put a Belgium face on the Nazi tactics and most of the populace accepted it as appropriate rather than the actions of an occupying force. Similar systems had been used by the Nazis in other countries with great success. It was, no doubt, imagined by the minister of propaganda that if, and when, they finally arrived in London, they would put Scotland Yard and the entire legal apparatus of the British government to work for the Nazi party with very little opposition from the populace.