Ganshof and the "suspects"
From the very outbreak of the invasion, Belgium feared internal sabotage and espionage. The Auditor General , charged with state security, had to decide the fate of individuals deemed dangerous: far-right militants favourable to the Reich, "enemy" aliens, and various suspects.
The security logic was powerful: in the midst of an offensive, leaving potential sympathisers of the enemy at large seemed irresponsible. But the emergency procedure — mass administrative arrests, without trial — was fraught with the risk of abuse, especially amid a rout and a psychosis of the fifth column.
Ganshof could order the broad internment of suspects, then their transfer to the rear (France) as the front receded, to keep them out of enemy hands. He could instead sort them carefully, case by case, at the risk of letting genuine agents slip through. Or he could refrain from transferring them, to keep the detainees under Belgian control. Yet moving these internees away, handing them over en route to panic-stricken French soldiers, carried a mortal danger.
Belgium, May 1940, you are the Auditor-General responsible for state security: how to handle the 'suspects' deemed dangerous?
Ganshof settled on A: between 10 and 15 May 1940, hundreds of "suspects" (including Van Severen and Degrelle) were interned — notably at the Pandreitje prison in Bruges — then deported to France. The measure, justified by the urgency of security, then escaped all control: handed over to French escorts gripped by the psychosis of the fifth column, some of these internees were summarily shot at Abbeville on 20 May. The episode illustrates how an administrative security decision, taken in panic, can lead to a crime — and the difficulty of reconciling state security with individual rights in a time of rout.
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