The Pittsburgh Press (September 6, 1944)
Simms: Leopold will be accepted as King of the Belgians
Monarch’s 1940 surrender to Germans called loyal act of immense sacrifice
By William Philip Simms, Scripps-Howard foreign editor
Washington –
Not all the crowned or uncrowned heads of governments-in-exile can hope to return to their capitals with prestige unimpaired. But the chances are that King Leopold III of Belgium will be among the first to make the grade.
Seldom has a monarch been more widely misunderstood or more maligned. On May 28, 1940, I was in the Café de la Paix, Paris. Over the radio came an announcement by Premier Paul Reynaud of France. He said:
I must announce to the French people a grave piece of news. The event occurred last night. France can no longer count on the Belgian Army. King Leopold, without a word to the French and British, laid down his arms. It is without precedent in all history.
There was a stunned silence. At the table next to me sat an old man with a white mustache. Tears were running down his cheeks. Turning to me – a total stranger – he said:
I am a Belgian industrialist. I have already lost my factories, my home, some of my family, even. That I can stand. But to think that my King should do this…
Merely relaying news
Little by little, however, we have found that the story was not quite as Premier Reynaud pictured it. Not that he deliberately distorted it. On the contrary, it appears that he were merely relaying the news as he had received it.
The U.S. military attaché who witnessed the Battle of Belgium reported that:
Capitulation was the only possible solution for Leopold. Those who say otherwise did not see the battle. I did.
Adm. Sir Roger Keyes, British liaison officer – and the British were among the hardest hit in that battle – immediately exonerated the King. He was with Leopold throughout the night of May 27 when the decision to surrender was reached, yet he stated on his return to England that the young ruler had “proved himself to be a gallant soldier and loyal ally.”
U.S. Ambassador John Cudahy said the same with documentation, and ex-President Herbert Hoover, after an exhaustive investigation, announced that “history will declare that he acted loyally and with immense sacrifice.”
Began in 1936
The truth is that Leopold’s tragedy began when Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland in 1936 and his neighbors, France and Britain, failed to stop the Nazis. From that moment on, war was inevitable and the two great European democracies failed to take effective measures to stop it.
The beginning of the end came on May 17, 1940, when Germany’s panzer divisions annihilated the French 9th Army, broke through at Sedan, and got behind the Allied armies then rushing into Belgium. Pocketed, their backs to the sea at Dunkerque, the jig was up. Further split into pockets by thrusts of the panzers, some of the Allies capitulated and some, by miracle, got away to England, without weapons and in tatters.
There was vast bitterness at the time, of course, especially in France. Some military men, with reputations at shake, naturally sought a scapegoat and Leopold seemed a logical one. But today, apparently, most Belgians – even those who at first were most outspoken against him – are demanding unity around the King.