Hubert Pierlot
Hubert Marie Eugène Pierlot was a Belgian politician and Prime Minister of Belgium, serving between 1939 and 1945. Pierlot, a lawyer and jurist, served in World War I before entering politics in the 1920s. A member of the Catholic Party, Pierlot became Prime Minister in 1939, shortly before Belgium entered World War II. In this capacity, he headed the Belgian government in exile, first from France and later Britain, while Belgium was under German occupation.
During the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, a violent disagreement broke out between Pierlot and King Leopold III over whether the King should follow the orders of his ministers and go into exile or surrender to the German Army. Pierlot considered Leopold's subsequent surrender a breach of the Constitution and encouraged the parliament to declare Leopold unfit to reign. The confrontation provoked a lasting animosity between Pierlot and other conservatives, who supported the King's position and considered the government's exile to be cowardly.
While in exile in London between 1940 and 1944, Pierlot served as both the prime minister of Belgium and minister of Defence and played an important role in wartime negotiations between the Allied powers, laying the foundation for Belgian post-war reconstruction. After the liberation of Belgium in September 1944, Pierlot returned to Brussels where, against his wishes, he headed a fresh government of national unity until February 1945. Criticism from the political left and the failure of the new government to deal with the serious issues facing the country following the liberation led to the fall of the government in February 1945 and he was replaced by the socialist Achille Van Acker. Pierlot's stance against Leopold III during the war made him a controversial figure during his lifetime and he was widely disliked in the same royalist and conservative circles from which his own Catholic Party drew most of its support.
He retired from politics in 1946 amid the crisis of the Royal Question, surrounding whether Leopold could return to the Belgian throne, and died peacefully in 1963. After his death, Pierlot's reputation improved as the decisions he took during the war were reconsidered by historians.
Birth and early career
Pierlot was born in Cugnon, a small village between Bertrix and Bouillon, in the Belgian Province of Luxembourg on 23 December 1883. His parents belonged to an eminent and wealthy Catholic family which was part of the Belgian conservative establishment. His brother, Jean Pierlot, would later become a member of the Belgian Resistance during the war and died in a German concentration camp in 1944.Hubert Pierlot was educated in religious schools in Maredsous and later attended the prestigious Jesuit Collège Saint-Michel secondary school in Brussels. He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain where he received a licence in Political Science and a doctorate in Law. During his early life, he travelled to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. He later married Marie-Louise and had seven children. With the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914, he volunteered for the Belgian infantry as a private. He served at the Battle of the Yser and on the Yser Front where he was decorated for valour. By the end of the war, he had reached the rank of Lieutenant and was serving in the 20th Regiment of the Line.
After the war, Pierlot joined the Catholic Party, the main centre-right party in Belgium and one of the three that dominated Belgian political life. The Catholic Party, which was considered the party of stability and the establishment, was extremely electorally successful during the interwar period and headed a series of coalition governments. On 23 December 1925, Pierlot entered parliament as a member of the Chamber of Deputies representing Neufchâteau-Virton but left just a week later to become a senator. He served as provincial senator for Luxembourg from 1926 to 1936 and as directly elected senator for the same province between 1936 and 1946. He received a reputation for his oratorical abilities and for personal sincerity during the late 1920s.
In the successive Catholic government of the interwar period, he served as the minister of Internal Affairs, minister of Agriculture, and minister of Foreign Affairs. He first led a coalition of Catholics and Socialists, and then one of Catholics and Liberals.
As Prime Minister
During the interwar period, Belgium pursued a policy of political neutrality and attempted to avoid confrontation with Nazi Germany. When the Phoney War broke out, Pierlot became the leader of a tripartite national government of Catholics, Liberals and Socialists which stayed in power until the German invasion in May 1940.Break with Leopold III
During the fighting in May 1940, the Pierlot government came into conflict with King Leopold III who had taken personal command of the Belgian Army. The first confrontation between the government and the King occurred on 10 May, when the King, against the wishes of the government, left for his military headquarters without addressing the Chamber of Representatives like his father, Albert I, had done in 1914. Contact between the King and the government became sporadic while the government feared that the King was acting beyond his constitutional powers. Like his father, Leopold was subject to Article 64 of the constitution which specified that no act of the King was valid unless counter-signed by a government minister, yet also given supreme power in military matters under Article 68. The two clauses appeared to contradict each other and gave all the king's acts in military-political matters an unclear constitutional footing.As the Belgian forces, together with their French and British allies, were forced to retreat, Leopold decided that surrendering the army was the only viable course of action. On 24 May, as the government was leaving the country for exile in France, a group of ministers including Pierlot held a final meeting with Leopold at the Kasteel van Wijnendale. They called for him to follow the example of the Norwegian king, Haakon VII, and join them in exile as a symbol of continued resistance. Leopold refused, believing that as commander, he should surrender alongside his army, provoking real animosity. He also believed that, by leaving for France, the Belgian government would surrender its neutrality and become a puppet government. He also believed that, as a neutral power with no formal treaty of alliance with France or Britain, the Belgian army was not obliged to hold out as long as it possibly could if it incurred huge casualties and had no chance of defending its own territory. On 28 May, after a brief attempt to form a new government of sympathetic politicians under Henri de Man and after denouncing Pierlot and his government, Leopold surrendered to the Germans and was made a prisoner of war.
Leopold's decision to surrender was seized on by the British and French press who blamed him for the military situation. The Belgian government met in Paris on 26 May and invoked Article 82 of the Constitution, declaring the monarch unable to reign, and resolved to continue the fight against Germany. The following day, Pierlot held an important meeting with the French Prime Minister, Paul Reynaud, in which the French premier called for the Belgian government to publicly denounce the King and his surrender. Following the meeting, Pierlot gave a radio speech denouncing the King whom he accused of acting unconstitutionally and in sympathy with the Germans. Before being broadcast, Pierlot's speech was heavily edited by the French minister Georges Mandel to ensure a position favorable to the French. The denunciation of the King, who was popular across most strata of Belgian society and supported by the church, led to a big loss of public support and alienated Pierlot from his supporters and party.
Exile government in France
The government met in Limoges and then withdrew to Poitiers and Bordeaux, but as the French military situation deteriorated, became split over what should happen. The government was split between those who supported staying in France or staying with the French government and those who supported withdrawing to the United Kingdom. Pierlot supported retreating to London, but was keen to preserve the unity of his government, most of which supported remaining in France. Hoping to keep the Belgian Congo under Belgian sovereignty, Pierlot allowed the Minister of the Colonies, Albert de Vleeschauwer, to leave France while the government met to consider whether it should resign to make way for a new constitutional authority in occupied Brussels.Fearing a surrender to the Germans, Marcel-Henri Jaspar, a junior minister, left France for London where, together with Camille Huysmans, he appeared to form a rebel government or Belgian National Committee condemned by the official government. De Vleeschauwer arrived in London, where he was joined by Camille Gutt, the Minister of Finances, to deal with the threat. Pierlot remained in France. De Vleeschauwer travelled to neutral Spain where, at Le Perthus on the French-Spanish border, he met with Pierlot and Paul-Henri Spaak, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, to attempt to persuade them to join him in London. Pierlot refused. Continued negotiations with the new Vichy government of Philippe Pétain proved fruitless. In August 1940, under pressure from the Germans, the French broke off diplomatic relations with the Belgian government and ordered it to disband. On 22 August, Pierlot and Spaak received the permission of the government to leave for London while the rest of the government remained in France.
Pierlot and Spaak, together with Pierlot's family, crossed into Francoist Spain with an official visa, but were arrested in Barcelona and held under house arrest in a hotel. On 18 October, they escaped from confinement and headed for Portugal where the regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, although neutral, was more sympathetic to the Allied cause than Spain. They finally arrived in London on 22 October.