Louis Fortemps & Vincent Gabriel. La police secrète de la Wehrmacht en Belgique (1940-1944). Weyrich édition, 2023.
Summary
The Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP), the secret police of the Wehrmacht, is largely unknown to historians and the general public today. We generally associate German repression during World War II with the sinister image of the "Gestapo." However, this police force was not the only one operating on Belgian soil. The GFP, the secret police of the Wehrmacht, also wreaked havoc among the ranks of the Resistance. In four years of activity in Belgium, the Geheime Feldpolizei was responsible for the arrest of several thousand resistance fighters, the dismantling of numerous networks, and acts of torture and other forms of violence that largely went unpunished.
For the first time, this book offers a thorough study of the actions of this police force during the Second World War in occupied Belgium. Based on German sources, Belgian judicial archives, and historiography, the narrative traces the progressive radicalization of this repressive actor throughout the occupation, from the early months of 1940 to the descent into hell in the summer of 1944.
The genesis of the Geheime Feldpolizei, its actions during the First World War, the daily life of these police officers, and their relations with their colleagues from the Gestapo and the Abwehr are all aspects illuminated by the book. It also analyzes the activities and methods of this police force, illustrated with notable examples such as the dismantling of the Martiny-Daumerie network or the actions of the notorious Prosper Dezitter.
In this sense, the study presented here by Louis Fortemps and Vincent Gabriel aims to lay the first stone on the path that will allow us, by shedding light on hitherto unknown actions of our history, to one day fill what remains a gaping void in our memory of the Second World War.