1,492 Days—The Enemy Occupation of Antwerp

German Troops on Parade at Antwerp's Grote Market

The first German troops entered the city proper on the evening 10 October 1914, by which time the main remnants of the Belgian field army had regrouped around Ghent. The entry was by and large a calm affair with no resistance offered anywhere in the city itself. The German news media afterward printed movingly heroic scenes of street combat in the narrow streets of Antwerp, but these were (as often the case) simply confabulations, a news editor's fantasy. Inhabitants of Antwerp who hadn't fled the bombardment came out to look at the columns and columns of German and Austrian cyclists, infantry, cavalry, artillery, naval riflemen, and territorials. Musters and parades were held in front of the city hall.

The capture of Antwerp was heralded throughout Germany as a great victory and was celebrated by the ringing of church bells and displays of captured Belgian artillery in several cities. German estimates give 106 civilian houses destroyed during the bombardment of the city with fewer than 100 civilian deaths, 1300 Belgian artillery pieces taken intact, and food and military supplies worth several tens of millions of German marks captured. The German and Central Powers press made much of the fall of the city, for it was after all one of the largest harbors on the continent, with extensive shipyards and manufacturing facilities, not to mention a heavily fortified area. In the end, for the Germans, Antwerp was not much more than a consolation prize for failing to take Paris.

Military traffic downriver was completely closed off by the neutral Dutch authorities. This was strictly enforced, with no exceptions made of any kind. Commercial river traffic and trans-Atlantic emigration were allowed, but here the British blockade came into play.

Surveying the Damage from the Siege of the City

During the occupation years, Antwerp was used as a logistical hub, a military supply depot and manufacturing center, and also as an administrative location for a separate military occupation entity apart from the Etappe area and General Government. Due to the proximity to the Dutch border, it was also a notorious location for "spies," secret agents, persons of dubious allegiance, members of various resistance cells, and black market smugglers. So porous was the border between occupied Belgium and the Netherlands that in 1915 the Germans constructed an electrified barbed wire fence between the two countries, a world premiere of dubious accomplishment.

Belgium had never been self-sufficient in supplying adequate amounts of food for its ever-growing population, and the occupation years were especially lean, as not only imports were cut off but also local agricultural production was faced with requisitions. If not for Herbert Hoover's Committee for the Relief of Belgium, starvation would have been rampant in the country instead of "merely" severe shortages. Foodstuffs donated by this committee were mainly shipped to Rotterdam and from there transported by railway or inland barge to Antwerp as one of the main distribution points in Belgium. It was in many ways an asset for the German Army.

As an ocean port, not much at all happened during the war due to the effective British blockade. However, Antwerp was also an important inland waterway port, with barges running all over the place into northern France and the Netherlands and Germany itself. So that was still in business but at a lower key of course. And then there was heavy manufacturing in Antwerp, shipyards (e.g. the Cockerill Yards in Hoboken), heavy metal machinery production such as the Minerva Motor Company that built luxury cars before the war and armored cars during the siege, and all kinds of ship repair facilities and other manufacturing facilities that could be put to use supplying German armed forces in one way or another, even breweries and industrial-scale bakeries.

Antwerp's Occupiers at Work and Play

There were railways leading to the Etappe and frontline areas and canals as well. Antwerp had grain storage facilities, mills, sugar refineries. It had had an oil storage capacity in Hoboken with huge tanks that were both shelled by the Germans during the siege and afterward destroyed by the Belgian Army during the retreat to the sea.

Antwerp was also a welcome location for German soldiers to be stationed for periods of recuperation or to go on leave. As mainly a self-respecting harbor city, it boasted a gratifyingly abundant number of legal brothels as well as cafés and drinking houses galore. During the war German authorities also established an official spy school in the city, taking over a teaching institute for nurses in a fashionable city suburb in which to house the personnel. Its most famous, or infamous, member was a female German officer named Elsbeth Schragmueller, nicknamed "Frau Doktor" by her adversaries. She was credited with being an unscrupulous and immoral instructor in the fine arts of espionage, employing all manner of (mostly imagined) lewd and amorous techniques to extract information from unsuspecting and naive Allied officers and statesmen. Antwerp loomed large in the often feverish imagination of many a British or French counter-espionage officer, and tall tales of the escapades of the mysterious "Frau Doktor" abounded both during and after the war. (A highly fictionalized movie about her adventures as a spy was made in the 1930s.)

The last German troops evacuated Antwerp on 9 November 1918. King Albert would make a ceremonial state entry into Antwerp 10 days later.

Source: St. Mihiel Trip-Wire, June 2021