Brave Little Belgium

1914. Europe lives in prosperity, but war is in the air. That war starts when the Austrian Crown Prince Franz-Ferdinand is killed in Sarajevo by a Serbian student. Germany chooses the side of Austria and wants to attack France. Belgium refuses free passage which causes Germany to invade Belgium in the early morning of August 4th 1914. The invasion happens very violent. Luik falls, Leuven burns. The Belgian Army retreats to the fortified Antwerp. When German 'Big Bertha's' destroy the forts around Antwerp, The Belgians have to retreat and abandon Antwerp. Behind the river Ijzer they will keep ground.

At the Yser the Belgian Army tries a last effort to stop the Germans. They only succeed when the Belgians open the locks in Nieuwpoort and flood the Yser estuary. The front is now locked down. The living conditions in the trenches are terrible. Diseases like Tyfus and Dysentery are killing almost as many as the German shootings do. In April 1915 the Germans use the first Gas Attack in history. Before the war is over, the battle of the Ypres Salient takes more than 500.000 victims. More than 1.5 million Belgians take refuge in the Netherlands, France and Great-Brittain. In Belgium the population can only survice with support of the National Food- and aidcommittee and the American Committee for Relief.

Around Verdun and the river Somme several 100.000 soldiers give their lives. In Belgium the people are living severely repressed by the German occupier. It is raining rules and ordinances. The Germans close the border with an electrical 'Dead Wire', which makes more than 1000 casualties. Belgium is plundered for the German War industry. In Brussels the Germans shoot the British nurse Edith Cavell. The language problems in the Belgian Army ask for more resistance with a lot of Flemish people. At the Western front solders die by the 1000's during useless offensives. The battle of Passchendaele gets stuck in the flemish mud. Again there are 10's of thousends of casualties

New weapons appear on the battlefield: planes, flamethrowers, tanks, U-boats! At the field hospitals, radiography and plastic surgery are introduced. In 1918 the American troops come to massively reinforce the allies. On the 11th of November 1918 the French and the Germans sign the truce. The Spanish Flue kills 40 to 70 million people worldwide. In Versaille the map of Europe is redesigned: 4 empires cease to exist. Belgium is destroyed. In Maritime Flanders the battlefields are being cleaned up and 1000's of casualties are being buried in more than 160 military graveyards.