< Back to previous page

Project

The war propaganda beyond borders. The activities of the German propaganda services in occupied Belgium and North-France. (1940-1944)

In May-June 1940, the Germans impose to Belgium and North France the same military administration based in Brussel (Militärbefehlshaber in Belgien und Nordfrankreich). This administration depends of the Wehrmacht up until July 1944. Under the direction of the general von Falkenhausen and Eggert Reeder, it set up a propaganda service (Propaganda-Abteilung Belgien or PAB) with its direction in Brussel and local undersections (Antwerp, Charleroi, Ghent, Liège, Lille). The PAB is in touch with the ministry of foreign affairs of the III. Reich, the SS and especially the propaganda ministry of Joseph Goebbels which has a subsequent influence. The PAB, under the military authority, is mainly composed of civilians, recruited in the propaganda ministry or the NSDAP according to they professional competencies. The services of the PAB are organised in 7 sections: political propaganda, film, culture, press, radio, literary activities and folklore.  The thesis has several objectives: 1) the institutional and organisational analysis of the PAB 2) the prosopographic analyse of the members of the PAB 3) the analysis of its activities and their adaption to different public of the occupied territory, particularly on a linguistic level 4) the analysis of theimpact of this activities on the population (case study), especially compared to the activities of the Resistance. The research relating to the propaganda during the Second World War and the Nazi propaganda comprehensively is a well-worked part of the contemporary history. They were the object of sustained attention of the linguists, political scientist, sociologist and other researchers (Baines & O’Shaughnessy, 2013). Surprisingly, few researchers mentioned the PAB within the framework of their specialization: press history (De Bens 1973), cinema (Vande Winkel 2011, Vande Winkel 2017) , radio (Rase 2017), literary production (De Geest et al. 1997, De Vos et al. 2009) or cultural policy (Beyen et al. 2002). However, none of these specialists conducted a general study focusing on PAB. The same observation can be made in France: E. Dejonghe wrote an article on the PAB in Lille (Dejonghe 1991) and referred to the propaganda services in the North-France (Dejonghe 1983, Dejonghe & Le Maner 1999), without providing a complete picture of the PAB’s activities. It should be noted that this works focused on Belgium or on North-France never established a comparison while these two regions depended of the same administration. This these has as objective to achieve a first global activity analyse of the German propaganda services in the occupied regions of Belgium and North-France, between 1940 and 1944.

Date:1 Oct 2020 →  Today
Keywords:Propaganda, Second World War, film, radio, print journalism, censorship, occupied territory
Disciplines:Media and communication policy, Modern and contemporary history
Project type:PhD project