After eighteen days of resistance against the German invasion, King Leopold III capitulated without consulting his government, ordering all Belgian forces to lay down arms at 4 a.m. The surrender exposed the left flank of British and French forces retreating toward Dunkirk, hastening the desperate evacuation that would begin days later and deepening the political rift between the king and his ministers, who fled to continue the war from exile.
Belgium had tried desperately to remain neutral in the years before 1940, only to be overrun regardless when Germany's Wehrmacht smashed through the Low Countries on May 10 as a prelude to the invasion of France. King Leopold III personally took command of the Belgian army, an unusual move for a modern constitutional monarch, and fought alongside his troops rather than fleeing abroad as his government urged.
By May 28, with Belgian forces pushed into an ever-shrinking pocket near the coast and German panzers threatening encirclement, Leopold concluded further resistance was futile. He requested an armistice and ordered a ceasefire at 4 a.m. without first informing his own cabinet ministers, a decision they regarded as a betrayal and a violation of constitutional norms.
The surrender's timing proved disastrous for the Allies. British and French forces retreating toward the port of Dunkirk suddenly found their eastern flank uncovered, forcing a scramble to plug the gap as the 'Miracle of Dunkirk' evacuation began just two days later. Leopold remained in occupied Belgium as a prisoner of the Germans in his own palace, a decision that permanently tainted his reputation and led to a bitter postwar constitutional crisis over his fitness to remain king.
Key people: Leopold III, Adolf Hitler