AHC: Fascist Belgium

After stumbling across the SOLE thread dedicated to fascism in Belgium and doing a tiny bit of reading on the subject I found out that a fascist Belgium seems somewhat likely.

Here are a few statistics and pieces of info which solidify this.

In the 1936 general election the Rexist party (a Catholic fascist party) gained 11.5% (or 23 out of 202 seats) in the Chamber of Representatives, as well as 10.9% (or 8 out of 101 seats) in the Senate. The Flemish fascist party VDV (Flemish National Union) gained 7.1% of the Chamber of Representatives vote (or 16 seats) and 7.0% in the Senate (5 seats). Combined these two fascist parties have 18.6%/18% of votes.

Now a small section coming from the German Wikipedia article about the Catholic Party (the key Belgian conservative party):

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katholische_Partei said:
In 1921 the party changed its name to Catholic Union (Katholieke Unie / Union catholique) of Workers, Citizens, the Middle Class and Farmers. After Woeste's death in 1922 the party became less relevant and after the defeat at the polls of the 1936 general election it was renamed to Catholic Bloc (Katholieke Blok / Bloc catholique) and split into a French-speaking Parti catholique social and a Dutch-speaking Katholieke Vlaamse Volkspartij (KVV. The KVV approached the extreme right-wing fascist Vlaams Nationaal Verbond (VNV) in order to create a pooling of all Flemish and Catholic forces. This met the resistance of Flemish politicians like Frans Van Cauwelaert and Staf De Clercq, as well as the General Christian Employee Association and the Farmers Association. In the end the cooperation between the KKV and the VNV was prevented by Catholic bishops, which however did not exclude cooperation in local politics.

So how can we exactly achieve a fascist Belgium? The potential for a Catholic-Fascist alliance was considered after 1936, so how can it become a reality. Any Belgium experts out there who can help?

PS: Also Leopold III. had a repuation of being quite power-hungry (to some extent at least), so what may his part be? Could he "install" a Fascist government in the hope of expanding his powers and his beloved army?
 
LeVraiVisage


What killed Rexism in the water was the stigma of collaboration and the fact that not only did Leon Degrelle collaborate (who was a man of almost Hitler level charisma and whose youthful good looks may have inspired the appearance of Tintin) and seem to forget all his monarchist and Catholic principles upon becoming a Nazi lackey, he also promptly lost all interest in actually leading the party and ran off to have adventures with the SS on the Eastern front. This is important because some Rexists resisted the Germans, and if Degrelle had joined them he could have had something of a Post-War career.

If you avoid the war or delay it's outbreak events could lean towards a Rexist coup or victory at the ballot box.
 
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LeVraiVisage


What killed Rexism in the water was the stigma of collaboration and the fact that not only did Leon Degrelle collaborate (who was a man of almost Hitler level charisma and whose youthful good looks may have inspired the appearance of Tintin) and seem to forget all his monarchist and Catholic principles upon becoming a Nazi lackey, he also promptly lost all interest in actually leading the party and ran off to have adventures with the SS on the Eastern front. This is important because some Rexists resisted the Germans, and if Degrelle had joined them he could have had something of a Post-War career.

If you avoid the war or delay it's outbreak events could lean towards a Rexist coup or victory at the ballot box.
Nope the rexist party lost popullarity before the war by 1939 they were fairly minor. He admired Hitler I doubt Degrelle would become resistant. We should have hunted him down to bring him to justice.
 
Invent a type of fascism that is explicitly not pro-Nazi. Collaboration is what necked the Fascists in OTL; not helped by the fact that the Nazi occupiers forced all local fascist groups to unite into one banner, giving them greater control over their fascist lackeys.

But, let's stay out of the war for a bit. Belgium was (and still is) divided along linguistic lines; getting the fascists on both sides of the language barrier to unite will be the hardest challenge. Even in each language zone there were multiple parties; apart from the aforementioned VNV, there were the DeVlag (Greater Germany folks) and Verdinaso (Dietsland).

Interestingly, the latter clashed quite vehemently with the Nazis. The main Dutch Nazi party was itself (naturally) pro-Dietsland, and so on several occasions tried to approach Flemish Dietslanders, but the Germans put a stop to that after the invasion. The concept of a greater Netherlands clashed tremendously with the (somewhat secret) policy of Germanisation; while similar in essence Greater Germany and Dietsland were at odds with one another.

Eking out a Dutch-Flemish Dietsland-nationalism that was at odds with the Germans (and thus would have to exist in secrecy, or perhaps form resistance units on its own) would be a very 'interesting' development, with a big chance to succeed after any German occupation. Of course, that would lead to the end of Belgium, so it wouldn't be a perfect answer to this challenge.
 
Invent a type of fascism that is explicitly not pro-Nazi. Collaboration is what necked the Fascists in OTL; not helped by the fact that the Nazi occupiers forced all local fascist groups to unite into one banner, giving them greater control over their fascist lackeys.

But, let's stay out of the war for a bit. Belgium was (and still is) divided along linguistic lines; getting the fascists on both sides of the language barrier to unite will be the hardest challenge. Even in each language zone there were multiple parties; apart from the aforementioned VNV, there were the DeVlag (Greater Germany folks) and Verdinaso (Dietsland).

Interestingly, the latter clashed quite vehemently with the Nazis. The main Dutch Nazi party was itself (naturally) pro-Dietsland, and so on several occasions tried to approach Flemish Dietslanders, but the Germans put a stop to that after the invasion. The concept of a greater Netherlands clashed tremendously with the (somewhat secret) policy of Germanisation; while similar in essence Greater Germany and Dietsland were at odds with one another.

Eking out a Dutch-Flemish Dietsland-nationalism that was at odds with the Germans (and thus would have to exist in secrecy, or perhaps form resistance units on its own) would be a very 'interesting' development, with a big chance to succeed after any German occupation. Of course, that would lead to the end of Belgium, so it wouldn't be a perfect answer to this challenge.
If you speak of the linguistic border was drawn in 1963 before that the country was an unitary state.
 
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