On 12 May 1945 two British newspapers published an article by the end of the war in Europe, stating that Belgian education had functioned as a weapon in the hands of the German-occupying regime. According to journalists of the News Chronicle and the Daily Telegraph, the Nazi system had exerted such an influence on children that, after the war, Belgian authorities would have to submit them to a ‘scientific purge’. 1 At the opening ceremony of the Birkbeck College in London, even the English Minister of Education, Richard Austen Butler, claimed that Belgian education needed ‘a period of inoculation’. In his view, Belgian children had been the victims of a unilateral procedure of misinformation, since during the occupation ‘the individuality of children had not mattered’. 2 Not only this speech, but also the presence of the Belgian Minister of Education at the ceremony was fiercely criticised in Belgium, by Catholics in particular. In a note of 22 May 1945, the Provincial of the Walloon Province of the Society of Jesus, Victor Le Cocq, argued that the speech and articles damaged private and public education and that nothing could support these false allegations. Contrary to the situation in the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, he argued, collaborators or exponents of the German regime had never replaced Belgian educators. 3
Yet, immediate post-war debates identified education as a major political tool in the hands of the Nazis for bringing about acceptance of the regime, and the engagement of teachers and schools in the formation of ‘Fascists’ was questioned. In many ways, the Second World War was a watershed moment in thinking about the relationship between education, children, war and violence. In the immediate post-war era, awareness increased over the ways in which children were developmentally hindered by war and moral panic arose about the emergence of a ‘lost generation’. This awareness was not limited to psychologists who became increasingly interested in children’s war traumas. 4 Popular media, such as films, also triggered public awareness of these issues. 5 At the same time, however, children and youth formed an element of hope and questions were raised as to how education could contribute to the re-establishment of post-war European democracy. UNESCO, for instance, reserved a major role for education in the (re-)establishment of a democratic society on Europe’s Fascist ruins. In the spring of 1945, for instance, a commission was established to investigate the issue of re-education in the liberated territories. Furthermore, UNESCO and the Council of Europe initiated a plan to foster mutual understanding between different countries through (history) education.
In Belgium, however, the war drew the country apart, divided left and right, and manipulated tensions between the two linguistic communities, 6 and it continues to do so until today. After the weapons had gone silent, political debates about the war have mainly centred on amnesty for former collaborators. Francophone and Flemish politicians remain diametrically opposed when it comes to the memory of the Second World War, as witnessed by recent debates and controversies about the presence of two members of Parliament at a gathering for the birthday of a former collaborator. 7 Probably more than any other European country, different regions and communities in Belgium have gathered around ‘myths’ of collaboration and resistance, which are—although refuted by historians—continuously repeated in the public debate. As a result, the Belgian case offers a particular challenge to the project of the European Union to establish a critical European culture of remembrance and the creation of a common identity based on a common idea of ‘suffering’ during the Nazi era.
Although the function of education in the building of a Fascist or National Socialist community and as a tool for post-war reconstruction, reconciliation and peace building were much debated after the war, education policy and development in European territories occupied by Nazi Germany remains in large part a blind spot, both in the historiography of the Second World War and in history of education research. With the exception of Germany, Britain and the USA, the development of education in Europe during the war has largely escaped from scholarly interest. As a result, the question whether the British Minister of Education, R.A. Butler, was right about the German indoctrination programme of children and adolescents during the war in large part remains unanswered. In an attempt to fill this gap, this book aims to investigate how and to what extent the German occupation of Belgium impacted the organisation and development of education, as well as upon everyday life in schools.
A Political History of Belgian Wartime Education, 1940–1944
This book deals with the question as to how and to what extent the German occupier used the educational system as a tool for gaining acceptance of the new regime. Even before the war, schooling enjoyed the particular attention of political, social and religious elites, since it was an instrument in shaping the secular and religious values of the future generation and an important vehicle for social mobility. 8 During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, education had a major stake in the state-building process of a democratic nation. It was not only the subject of conflicts between different national groupings or political parties, but in the hands of totalitarian regimes, such as Fascism or National Socialism, education was used to challenge and dismantle liberal parliamentary democracy. So, did Belgian education really function as a political or ideological weapon in the hands of the German military regime? What were their aims in relation to the organisation of Belgian education, what were the pillars underpinning their educational programme, and what place did education take within the larger context of their culture policy?
Furthermore, the question arises as to how Belgian educational authorities, such as the Ministry of Public Education or the Roman Catholic Church, respectively, responsible for public and Catholic private schools, and several relevant interest groups, such as youth movements that were also affected by the German youth policy, responded to German education reforms. In other words, how did the multidimensional relationship between the Militärverwaltung, the administration of the Ministry of Public Education and Catholic institutions develop and evolve? Moreover, how did nationalistic collaborative groupings, such as the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (Flemish National Union, VNV), Verbond van Dietse Nationaal Solidaristen (Verdinaso) or Rex, which were closely intertwined with education already before the war, position themselves in this context?
These questions constitute a large part of the history of education during the Second World War, but to stop here would be to limit this study to the developments at the very top of the educational pyramid. Many historical studies of education have done this in the past. 9 Lowe, for instance, has argued that because of the global scale of the Second World War, historians are ‘confronted by the challenge of making sense of, and interpreting, an event in which any local or national development can only be fully comprehended within a much broader framework. Indeed it could be argued that to focus exclusively upon local responses to a war of this magnitude may be to distort them (…).’ 10 He rightly points to the importance of contextualisation, but when viewed from a different angle, can we really measure the impact of the Second World War on schooling systems merely by studying national or international developments? Do we not run the risk of presenting a ‘zero-sum’ image of the influence of the Second World War on school life? Therefore, this study is also concerned with educational developments at the level of classroom practice. More specifically, did the occupation and the German educational programme impact the organisation of Belgian schooling or the curriculum? How did teachers and pupils respond to the new political situation? Was the German occupation met with resistance or collaboration? Probably more than anything else, the period of the war was characterised by conflicts between several ideological groups. Focusing on these conflicts and ‘the role of educational systems in underpinning the national values at stake’ 11 offers an interesting perspective, since ‘the Second World War was seen at the time as a war of competing ideologies which seemed, at least to those living through it, to be more starkly contrasting than the issues which had divided combatants in earlier conflicts’. 12 Did the installation of a ‘New Order’ regime affect the relationships between teachers and pupils with different political or ideological backgrounds or convictions, and how did collaborating movements, such as the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond in Flanders or Rex in Wallonia, position themselves in this context? Did they organise propaganda in schools and how exactly did they try to win over adolescents to support their views?
Lastly, and in close connection with the previous questions, a fourth question is more concerned with the aspect of memory, which is taking an increasingly important place within the historiography of the Second World War, as well as within the history of education. 13 How did pupils and teachers remember their time in school during the war? Do they have specific recollections of the German occupation and do they have actual memories of repercussions of the Militärverwaltung’s education policy in their school? What was their own position during the war and that of their fellow pupils and teachers, and how do they remember their involvement or engagement?
A combination of these four angles can help to grasp the complexity of wartime education. Although this book gives a central place to the specificity of the war context, the war perspective is not too strictly defined either. More specifically, this contribution is also concerned with developments or issues, such as Flemish-nationalist involvement or the rivalry between public and private schools, that transcend the war context. Combined with the confrontation of developments on different levels of the educational pyramid and the use of different types of sources, this approach offers the possibility of finding out which developments during the war can be understood in terms of continuity and which in terms of discontinuity.
Wartime Education in Historiography
The development of education in the territories occupied by Germany during the Second World War remains an underdeveloped topic in both the recent history of education and the historiography of the Second World War. Although the war had serious ramifications for countries all over the world, historians of education have overlooked the war era as a critical period of scholarly analysis. 14 This gap is unfortunate, since precisely these territories form interesting cases in terms of measuring the impact of National Socialist policy on national educational systems in Europe, and for measuring the impact of changing political systems on education and schooling more generally. Conversely, the lack of literature on this subject presents a missed opportunity for historians of the Second World War as well, since the field of education offers possibilities for examining the interaction between occupied society and occupying authorities. Not only does schooling concern a large segment of society, it has always received the particular attention of political authorities and social or religious elites. Unsurprisingly, in the context of National Socialism, education presented an important means to steer the minds of the future generation.
Until today, there are only fou...