Chairman of the International Socialist Bureau who led the Second International and joined Belgium’s wartime government in 1914
At the 1919–20 Paris Peace Conference, he secured treaty clauses favouring labour, including an eight-hour day. As Belgium’s foreign minister, he helped negotiate the 1925 Pact of Locarno.
A leader of the Belgian Labour Party and a jurist, he chaired the International Socialist Bureau from 1900 and became the face of the Second International. When Germany invaded neutral Belgium in August 1914 he entered the government as minister of state and backed national defence, trying to hold the Bureau together against the Zimmerwald movement. After the war he served as justice and foreign minister, signing the Locarno treaties in 1925, and chaired the Labour and Socialist International from 1923.
Career timeline
- 1889Joined the Belgian Workers’ Party and became a party leader.
- 1894Entered parliament as a Socialist.
- 1914Named minister of state and served in the wartime cabinet.
- 1919–1920At the Paris Peace Conference treaty negotiations, secured labour clauses, including one advocating an eight-hour day.
- 1919As minister of justice, sponsored penal reforms.
- 1925–1927As foreign minister, helped negotiate the Pact of Locarno.
- 1936–1937Served as minister of public health.
Secretary of the Second International from 1905 to 1922 who kept its Bureau alive in the war and later became Belgian prime minister
In 1917, the Socialist International’s Bureau, led by Huysmans, sought to mediate among socialists in the belligerent countries through a Stockholm peace conference; Allied governments’ refusal to issue passports prevented it from taking place.
A Flemish teacher and journalist, he was secretary of the International Socialist Bureau from 1905 to 1922. When war came he moved the Bureau to the neutral Netherlands, tried to bring the belligerent parties back together and prepared the Stockholm conference of 1917. Between the wars he was a Belgian deputy and education minister; in the Second World War he fled to London and again served as the International’s secretary. He was prime minister of Belgium in 1946–1947.
Career timeline
- 1905–1922Secretary of the Second International
- 1910–1965Member of Belgium’s House of Representatives
- 1925–1927Minister of Education
- 1933Became mayor of Antwerp
- 1936–1939President of Belgium’s House of Representatives
- 1946–1947Prime Minister of Belgium
- 1947–1949Minister of Education
A royal military adviser who tested wartime warnings with caution
After examining the Mechelen documents, he treated the warning as a basis for defence without dismissing the possibility of attack.
Raoul Van Overstraeten was a Belgian general who served in both world wars and also wrote on military history and operations. As King Leopold III’s military adviser from 1938 to 1940, he examined the German attack plan recovered after the Mechelen incident and helped turn the warning into practical defensive measures. His caution meant testing the intelligence without dismissing the possibility of a German attack. After the war, he used royal and military records to write about Belgium’s wartime policy.
Career timeline
- 1907Commissioned as an officer in the Belgian Army
- 1914Fought at Liège and Halen, in the siege of Antwerp, and in the Race to the Sea
- 1916Volunteered for the Belgian Congo campaign and fought at Tabora
- 1933–1934Commanding officer of the horse artillery
- 1934–1938Aide-de-camp to the minister of defence
- 1938–1940Commandant of the War College and military adviser to the king
- 1940–1945Prisoner of war under German captivity
- 1946–1977Writer on military history after the war
Belgian Rexist leader and Nazi collaborator who fought on the Eastern Front with the Walloon Legion
Born in Bouillon, Belgium, he entered politics through Catholic Action and journalism while a student at Leuven. In the early 1930s he took over a Catholic publishing house and turned it into the Rexist Party, which won 11 percent in the 1936 election before declining. After Germany occupied Belgium in 1940 he made Rex a collaborationist mass movement, and in 1941 he organised and joined the Walloon Legion of the German army on the Eastern Front. The Legion passed to the Waffen-SS in 1943, and his decorations after the Cherkassy pocket in 1944 made him a model for foreign collaborators. Sentenced to death in absentia, he fled to Francoist Spain, published neo-Nazi and Holocaust-denying writings and died in Málaga in 1994.
