To understand somewhat the fate of these ‘forced conscripts’ it is necessary to take a brief glance at what the current German speaking community was at the end of the 1930s. This society was then split between pro-Belgians, amongst which were found all those who had reconciled themselves to the new nation, and pro-Germans, who readily dreamed of being reintegrated into the original Heimat. The latter were represented by the Heimattreue Front, a revisionist party of which a certain number of leaders and members were given over to Nazi ideology, whilst the pro-Belgians were represented by a Katholische Union worried by the anti-Catholic attacks of the NSDAP and which was supported by the Bishop of Liège and the Grenz-Echo newspaper. The gnawing opposition between the two camps, a genuine ‘communication barrier,’ took another radical turn following the more and more aggressive foreign policy of Hitler’s Germany. And it was in this very tense context that the elections of April 2, 1939, took place.

Five months after this election there began the ‘phoney war’ in a region with an unstable identity, ‘the new Belgian nation’ in the throes of delicate conflicts of allegiance. Military service within it was certainly a not insignificant vector of integration, in particular for the sons of German soldiers in the 1914-18 conflict, to the point that the military question in no way constituted a bone of contention. But at the end of December 1939 things changed: the military chief of staff having allocated to the Army’s Auxiliary Troops – in principle lightly armed – reservists mobilised within their units, a movement of desertions got under way which saw around 10% of the youth of Eupen, Malmedy and Saint-Vith in military service cross across the Rhine to join a battalion which went under the name of Brandenburger; these deserters would help the Wehrmacht to enter onto Belgian soil. To these deserters from the very beginning were added between May 1940 and the Summer of 1941 no less than 700 volunteers, also enlisted in enemy troops.

The granting of German nationality had a more important impact in other ways: in the Eupen and Malmedy Kreise military service became obligatory. And if it was generally accepted as a logical outcome of annexation it was not the case for the ten surrounding local authorities attached to the region by the Nazi administration and who had for their part always been under the Belgian authorities. It is not thus surprising that those who resisted enrolment were more numerous there than amongst the very close Germanophone neighbours. Just like the Resistance carried out during the same period by the population of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. Whatever the case, once their training had been completed, the majority of the soldiers from Eupen and Malmedy found themselves on the Eastern front, where, as the rare witness statements show, certain amongst them took part in the battle of Stalingrad and the siege of Leningrad. Were they involved, in Russia, in war crimes and the murder of civilians? It is difficult to respond to the question, as the documentary sources are often cruelly lacking.