Flemish National League

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FLEMISH NATIONAL LEAGUE.

The Vlaams Nationaal Verbond was a Flemish nationalist political party of the extreme Right from 1933 to 1945. Flemish nationalism arose during World War I as a reaction against the absence of a language rights settlement for Dutch-speaking Flemings in the Belgian state, which was dominated by Francophones. Despite the fact that some postwar language laws met several of the Flemish demands, Flemish nationalism developed a strong anti-Belgian streak. The rejection of the Belgian state went hand in hand with a growing aversion to democracy. The Flemish National League was the most important emanation of this development.

The party was founded in 1933 when Staf De Clercq, a prominent Flemish nationalist politician, united a number of anti-Belgian, Flemish nationalist organizations into one party. The new party's program was inspired by the German Nazi party and other European nationalist movements of the extreme Right. The FNL had a pan-national goal: it wanted to annex Flanders to the Netherlands because all speakers of Dutch were considered to form one "Diets" people. This remained a merely theoretical point because interest was lacking in the Netherlands, even in Anton Mussert's National Socialist Movement (Nationaal Socialistische Beweging; NSB), which was theoretically in favor of "Dietsland." The FNL saw itself as the revolutionary vanguard of the "Diets" Flemish and as not bound by the laws of the Belgian state, which was depicted as an unnatural and unnational construction to be destroyed. In reality the FNL stayed within the bounds of Belgian lawfulness, and it tried to gain power by participating in elections. The party was succesful. In the last prewar elections in 1939 it rallied 15 percent of the Flemish votes (8 percent of the Belgian electorate). On the local level, the party had formed coalitions with branches of the Catholic Party, on the basis of a pro-Flemish and right-wing program.

The socialists, liberals, and the Christian labor movement fought the FNL as a fascist and pro-German party. For good reason. Staf De Clercq and other FNL leaders had secret contacts with the Abwehr, the German military secret service. They offered their services to the German army in case of war. Concrete arrangements were never made, but a few days after the German invasion De Clercq contacted the Abwehr. On 4 June he offered the German occupation administration his party's cooperation. De Clercq wanted to realize the FNL program with the occupier's help, obtaining total power, founding Dietsland, and destroying the Belgian state. This last wish was never granted as Berlin did not want a new state on its western border. Yet the FNL became the privileged partner of the occupation administration because Hitler wanted to favor the "Germanic" Flemings as opposed to the "Latin" Walloon. With German help the country's administration was massively infiltrated by FNL members, though the occupation administration kept the Belgian state structure formally intact because Hitler did not want to make a definitive decision about Belgium's political future. The FNL remained outside important centers of power such as the Belgian judiciary, the economic centers of decision, and the Catholic Church. In return for its rather limited acquisition of power, the FNL had to engage itself completely in the German war effort, many of its members joining the Waffen-SS on the eastern front.

From very early on, the FNL rank and file questioned the political guarantees that were offered for their efforts. Talking about Dietsland was prohibited, and the Belgian state remained intact. They also saw how the Walloon-Belgian collaborationist Léon Degrelle and his Rexist movement gained influence. At the same time, the SS leaders in Berlin and Flanders started building a Greater German movement against the FNL. The German-Flemish Labor Community became an important pawn in the imperialist agenda of the Nazi leadership. When Hitler decided to annex Flanders as Reichsgau to Germany on 12 July 1944, the FNL was ousted from power. At that moment thousands of FNL members were enlisted in German military or paramilitary organizations or were engaged in the administration of the country. The FNL leaders could not offer them any way out. This partly explains why the party kept collaborating until the very end.

After the war the FNL was outlawed by the Belgian authorities as a collaborationist organization. FNL members in high administrative positions and in German military service were severely punished. Many ordinary members lost their civil rights. After some years a generous mercy policy set most punished FNL members free and gave them back their political rights. Some became politically active in postwar Flemish nationalist political parties that followed a democratic path to gain political autonomy for Flanders. However, ideologies of the extreme Right survived latently and resurfaced in 1979, when the Flemish Bloc (Vlaams Blok) was founded as a Flemish nationalist party with an explicitly xenophobic program.

See alsoBelgium; Flemish Bloc.