Antwerp in the First World War

Antwerp, Belgium’s largest port, on the Scheldt, was in 1914 its national redoubt, the last fortress in which the army, the King and the government were to take refuge in the event of invasion. And so it happened: for almost two months the Belgians sallied out from behind its forts against the rear of the Germans marching on France, until heavy siege artillery forced them to leave. The fall of the city in October 1914 set off a mass flight of civilians to the Netherlands, and the German occupation lasted until November 1918.

Port and fortress

Before the war Antwerp had about 320,000 inhabitants and was a cosmopolitan city, open to the world through its port. Some 20,000 Germans lived there, with great influence in trade and shipping: the managers of the Red Star Line, which carried emigrants from Europe to the United States, were German, for instance. In August 1914 feeling turned against them, and after anti-German riots in Antwerp between 60,000 and 80,000 Germans living in Belgium fled across the Dutch border.

The city was surrounded by two belts of forts, an older one a few kilometres from the centre and an outer one 10–15 kilometres out. Under the country’s defence plan the army, the government and the King were to hold out here until the powers guaranteeing Belgium’s neutrality came to their aid. On 17 August the government moved here from Brussels, and after the fighting on the Gete the field army arrived, resting on the fortress’s forts from 20 August.

The national redoubt (August–September 1914)

The army of King Albert I did not wait passively. On 25–27 August it attacked the Germans at Mechelen, and on 9–13 September, while the Battle of the Marne was being fought in France, it sallied out of the fortress a second time. The sorties forced the Germans to keep considerable forces in Belgium. The war reached the city itself too: on the night of 24–25 August, or of 25–26 August according to some accounts, a German airship dropped bombs on the city centre, and one fell near the palace where the royal family was staying. From Antwerp British naval airmen took off on 22 September and 8 October on the first raids on airship sheds in the Rhineland.

Siege and flight (September–October 1914)

After the retreat from the Marne Erich von Falkenhayn decided to take the fortress. The siege, conducted by General Hans von Beseler, lasted from 27 September to 10 October. German shells smashed the outer belt of forts, and neither the arrival of Winston Churchill nor that of the British Royal Naval Division could help any more. On 7 October the government moved to Ostend, and the army slipped out of the fortress to the west, to the Yser, where it stood to fight. On 9 October the burgomaster, Jan De Vos, signed an act of surrender at Kontich, and on 10 October the fortress formally capitulated.

Late in the evening of 7 October German guns began shelling the city itself. Panic-stricken inhabitants crowded the docks to get aboard overcrowded ferries and barges, or fled across the Scheldt by a pontoon bridge. In the following days, by estimates, about a million Belgians crossed the Dutch border. Some 30,000–40,000 soldiers crossed it as well, and the Dutch interned them until the end of the war. About 900,000 refugees went home within a few weeks, but in May 1915 there were still 105,000 Belgians in the Netherlands, and they stayed there until the end of the war.

Under occupation

Antwerp was damaged by the bombardment, but the Germans did not destroy it deliberately, as they had Louvain. It became a rear base for them: a supply depot, a centre of industry and shipbuilding, and a place for soldiers to rest. As a seaport, however, it was of little use, because the mouth of the Scheldt ran through the waters of the neutral Netherlands, closed to military traffic. Instead, small submarines, brought in sections by rail from Germany, were assembled there, while German ships caught in the port by the war were refused permission to sail out through Dutch waters.

Food from the American Commission for Relief in Belgium passed through Antwerp: it was shipped to Rotterdam and from there reached the city, one of the main distribution points, by rail and barge. The nearby border drew spies and smugglers, so in 1915 the Germans sealed it with an electrified wire fence. The occupier also tried to rebuild the German colony in the city and backed the Flemish activists: on 3 February 1918 a crowd in the streets of Antwerp demanded independence for Flanders.

Liberation (November 1918)

At the beginning of November 1918 the Antwerp–Meuse position, a rear line, began at Antwerp’s fortifications, and just after midnight on 5 November the German Supreme Army Command ordered a general retreat to it. After the armistice of Compiègne, however, the Germans left the whole of Belgium. On 19 November Belgian troops returned to the city, and King Albert I and Queen Elisabeth reviewed a parade of their army in its streets.

The port and its installations came through the war almost intact, which made it easier to rebuild the country’s economy. The city’s German community, on the other hand, vanished. From 10 November 1918 the Belgian government sequestrated German property, and after the war a mere 300 Germans were registered in Antwerp.