Belgians return to Antwerp

On 19 November 1918, according to the British chronology of the war, Belgian troops reoccupied Antwerp. The Germans were leaving it under the terms of the armistice, which gave them 15 days to withdraw from the whole of Belgium. Soldiers of the army that four years earlier had defended the city as the country’s last fortress returned to it. The day before, the Belgians had returned to Brussels.

The fortress of 1914

Antwerp, surrounded by two rings of forts, was meant in the event of war to be the last refuge of the Belgian army and government. And so it proved: in August 1914 the Belgian troops withdrew into it, and from 27 September the Germans laid siege to it. Heavy siege artillery smashed the forts of the outer ring within a few days. During the night of 6–7 October the field army slipped away westwards to the Yser, and on 10 October 1914 the governor of the fortress, General Victor Deguise, signed the capitulation. Thousands of soldiers who had not managed to withdraw crossed into neutral Holland and were interned there.

Throughout the occupation Antwerp, though Belgium’s largest port, was of little use to the Germans as a naval base. The mouth of the Scheldt, via the Western Scheldt, passed through the waters of neutral Holland, so German warships could not use it. As a result the port and its installations survived the war almost intact, which made the rebuilding of the Belgian economy easier after the war.

The last line, never manned

At the beginning of November 1918 Antwerp once again figured in military plans, this time German ones. The German command had long been preparing the rear Antwerp–Meuse position, which began at the Antwerp fortifications, ran through Dendermonde along the river Dender to Ninove, then towards Nivelles and Charleroi, and from there behind the Meuse through the Ardennes to Mézières and Sedan. The commanders of the German army groups had earlier been pressing for a long retreat, but at the end of October Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was still putting off the decision. He believed that giving up further territory would weaken Germany in the armistice negotiations, make a bad impression at home and abroad, and cost the army a great deal of valuable equipment and stores. The Supreme Army Command issued the order for a general retreat to the Antwerp–Meuse position only just after midnight on 5 November, after the defeat on the Sambre.

The Antwerp–Meuse position, however, no longer played any part. Six days later the Armistice of Compiègne was signed, and the German troops, increasingly demoralised by the revolutionary soldiers’ councils, set off for home. Following in their wake, over the next few days the Belgians took over one town after another. The liberation was celebrated with ceremonial entries of King Albert I and the army into the provincial capitals, among them Antwerp, Ghent, Liège and Mons, and on 22 November the King rode into Brussels at the head of his troops.