Belgium in the First World War--the first country invaded, the longest occupied, and when the war finally ended, the first forgotten. In 1914, Belgium was home to a large American colony which included representatives of American companies, artists, writers and diplomats with the American Legation. After the invasion, American journalists and adventurers flocked there to follow the action; military restrictions on travel were less stringent than in England or France. As the most industrialized country in Europe, Belgium depended upon trade and food imports to support its economy. The war isolated Belgium and wholesale starvation was imminent by the fall of 1914. Herbert Hoover and his Commission for Relief in Belgium raised funds to purchase and import food to sustain Belgium and, eventually, Occupied France as well. Idealistic American volunteers (including some Rhodes scholars) supervised food distribution in the occupation zone. Along the Western Front in Belgium, hundreds of Americans served (illegally) in the British and Canadian armies. This book tells the story of the German invasion, occupation and retreat from the perspective of Americans who were there.

The author presents a compelling and untold story of Germany's occupation of Belgium after WW1. It's a great, trade history book from a wonderful storyteller.

During WWI, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) initiated, organized, and supervised the largest food and relief drive the world had ever known. Working in concert with its counterpart in Belgium, the Comité National, the CRB fed and clothed for four years more than 9 million Belgians and northern French trapped behind German lines. Because the United States had declared its neutrality at the start of the war, young idealistic Americans volunteered to be CRB delegates and go into German-occupied Belgium to guarantee the imported food would not be taken by the Germans. The interlacing stories of German brutality, Belgian resistance, and the Americans of the CRB, all began back in those chaotic days of August 1914, when the Germans attacked Belgium on their way to France. Few could have guessed it then, but the invasion was a topping domino that caused a tumbling together of extraordinary people into a chain reaction of life-and-death situations far from the trenches and killing fields of World War I. And hanging in the balance were millions of civilian lives. It is a story that few have heard. The nonfiction Behind the Lines covers the time from August through December 1914. Using lively personal details, the book follows a handful of young CRB delegates; a twenty-two-year-old Belgian woman; two U.S. diplomats; a Belgian businessman and a priest who team up to fight the German occupation; and the head of the CRB, Herbert Hoover.

Winner, 2021 Colorado Book Awards, History Winner, 2021 American Fest’s Best Book Awards, History: Military “This is a powerful work of history, as informative as it is dramatically gripping. An impressive blend of painstaking historical scholarship and riveting storytelling.”—Kirkus Reviews More than nine million soldiers died in World War I. At the same time, a US-led effort saved nearly ten million civilians from starvation behind the lines during the German occupation, yet one of America’s greatest humanitarian efforts is virtually unknown today. In this gripping book, Jeffrey B. Miller tells the remarkable history of two American and Belgian citizen-created organizations that led a massive food relief program for civilians trapped in German-occupied Belgium and northern France. Herbert Hoover, then a successful international businessman, was the driving force behind the effort, coercing and bullying the governments of Germany, Great Britain, France, and the United States to allow a group of idealistic young volunteers to organize in occupied Belgium and coordinate the distribution of tons of food and clothing to desperate Belgians. These crusaders, known as CRB delegates, had to maintain strict neutrality as they watched the Belgians suffer under the harsh German regime. Miller tells compelling stories of German brutality, Belgian relief efforts, and the idealistic Americans who went into German-occupied Belgium from October 1914 up to May 1917, when they were forced to leave after the April entry into the war of the United States. Yanks interweaves the history of the time with fascinating personal stories of volunteers, diplomats, a young Belgian woman who started a dairy farm to feed Antwerp’s children, the autocratic head of the Belgian relief organization, and the founder of the American organization, who would become known to the world as the Great Humanitarian and later, largely because of his work in Belgium and post-war Europe, would become the thirty-first president of the United States. Visit the book’s website here: www.YanksBehindTheLines.com Watch the book trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0YKJRrSe4o

"Belgium in the First World War: the first country invaded, the longest occupied, and the last liberated. Belgium was home to a large American colony: people working for U.S. corporations, diplomats with the American Legation and Americans armies. This book tells the story of the German invasion, occupation and retreat from the perspective of Americans who were there"-

This volume presents original research on the military, social and cultural history of the First World War. Inspired by the reinvigoration of this subject area in the last decade, its chapters explore the stresses of waging a war, whose “totalizing logic” issued formidable challenges to communities, accounted for the pervasion of the conflict into the private sphere, and brought about specific intellectual responses. Subjects included are race and gender relations, shellshock, civil-military relations, social mobilization and military discipline. It encompasses an unusually broad geographical range, including papers on Britain, France and Germany, but also Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria-Hungary and Latin America. This collective undertaking will interest those who are dedicated to the comparative history of modern warfare. Contributors include: Olivier Compagnon, Emmanuelle Cronier, Anne Duménil, Stefan Goebel, Hans-Georg Hofer, Jean-Yves LeNaour, Andre Loez, Jenny Macleod, Jessica Meyer, Michelle Moyd, Michael Neiberg, Tammy Proctor, Pierre Purseigle, Matthew Stibbe, Ismee Tames, Susanne Terwey.

Mary Thorp, an English governess working for a Belgian-Russian family in German-occupied Brussels, kept a secret war diary from September 1916 to January 1919. This long-forgotten diary sheds light on an important aspect of the First World War: civilian life under military occupation in a transnational conflict.