Occupied Territories and Refugees

Pictured - The detritus of war, in 1915 or 2015 - here it is a Belgian mother and her two daughters.



Propaganda posters in France warned civilians to be careful about careless talk. “Loose lips sink ships” - you never knew who might be a German spy. The government’s insistence on the omnipresence of enemy infiltrators may have bolstered moral vigilance, but it also caused a sense of constant paranoia. 60,000 citizens of the Central Powers in France were placed in internment camps during the course of the war. The British did the same with 100,000 Germans and Austrians living in the UK. As humans so often do, people also suspected anyone who was in any way an outsider. The Roma people were constantly accused of espionage, as were prostitutes and anyone from Alsace or Lorraine, even though they were often the fiercest French revanchists.



But indiserables were not always from enemy countries. The opening moves of the world war had driven thousands of Belgians and French inhabitants of Pas-de-Calais from their homes, to seek refuge in unoccupied France, in Britain, or in neutral Holland. In the heady atmosphere of August 1914, these first victims of the war, who had lost everything to the German advance, were viewed with great sympathy and solidarity. Paris streets were re-named in honor of famous Belgian, in honor of the heroic defense the Belgians had made in the face of mighty odds, and people willingly donated goods and food to help the displaced. But solidarity did not last indefinitely. As the war grew longer, and harsher, and as everyone began to feel victimized by hardships, sympathy for refugees waned. “Parasites,” accused newspapers, “cowards, profiteers,” as though the tiny allowance of 1,95F the refugees were accorded per day was too much. In the streets, people accused them of pusillanimity. “Why didn’t you defend your own country,” spat passers-by at refugees from the north of France, as though France was not their home too. “Les Boches du Nord,” became a common insult.



Unwelcome, speaking with a different accent, or sometimes only a regional patois, misplaced French families must have felt that they really were in a foreign country. Those who hadn’t fled the occupied zone virtually were. Citizens of the occupied zone were prisoners in their own villages, suppressed by what was in reality a military dictatorship. In the German zone, people were not allowed to leave their own villages without Auweis, official permission. It was forbidden to go out after dusk, or to meet in groups larger than three. Families were forced to share their homes and their food to lodge German soldiers. German military authorities squeezed every last resource they could from occupied France and Belgium. Those who hoarded it risked imprisonment - even rabbits and chickens had to be declared to the local Kommandatur.



Those luckless enough to displease the Germans faced severe consequences. If a German soldier contracted a venereal disease in a town, the people were punished, and anyone who forgot to salute a German officer was subjected to a harsh fine. Those who refused to pay could be shot, a method that many German officers did not refrain from using. Street names changed, re-titled in honor of German heroes, and busts of Marianne were destroyed in favor of statues of Wilhelm II. Over 50,000 young men were forcibly sent as laborers to Germany. In every way, it was a brutal system, reliant on propaganda, starvation, and terror, totally designed to pacify occupied regions behind the front and destroy every vestige of their independence.

