Antwerp

King Leopold III, commander of the Belgian Armed Forces in 1940, had a strategic dilemma. Both the French and the Germans sought to make war with each other on his soil. Both had war plans that called for advancement into Belgium to fight the main force engagement that General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander, and General Erich von Manstein, the German commander, hoped would eliminate the other.

By the end of 1944 Germany was losing on all fronts. Her generals, faced with ever increasing armies armed with superior technology, fell back under the combined assaults in Italy, the Eastern Front, and France.