Extract from : https://www.proquest.com/docview/304791727 (mp me if you want the pdf)

WWI

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Beginning on 23 October 1916, deportation went into effect as official policy in all of German-occupied Belgium.

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Belgian mayors had no interest in sending the best workers to Germany. Many mayors simply refused. Several were arrested and fined for noncompliance.105 In towns where mayors provided lists, the Germans had unintentionally given them wide latitude in the use o f their new power. Because the Germans provided no specific test of “unemployed,” the term was open to liberal interpretation. As a result, the lists given to the Germans routinely included the chronically ill, criminals, and derelicts. Most o f those deported in the first weeks were physically unfit Meanwhile many unemployed ablebodied men were shielded from deportation by mayors, who made them special constables or special members of the CN.

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Likewise, men who were only recently employed were assumed to have been hired only to avoid deportation and were taken anyway. Men who were unable to prove that they were too young or too old were deported.

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The most complete account of the selection process was a report given to the American minister in Brussels on 17 January by foreign service officer Christian H. Herter. According to this report, the 4 January deportation from Mechelen (seat of the Cardinal o f Belgium) took three days. On the first day all males between seventeen and fifty-five presented themselves at a central station: “ ... each man must bear his identity card and [was] allowed to bring with him any documentary evidence which [could] go to prove that he [was] actually employed or unfit for hard labor.”

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Nonetheless, impressive numbers of men were conscripted. Official figures given to the Belgian Parliament for total deportees indicated 58,500 from the Central Government and a further 62,155 sent to building projects in the War Zone. The official German figures vary. One set, which take no account of deportations from the War Zone and run only from 23 October 1916 until 20 January 1917, gives a total of 58,432. According to other figures the total number was 61,000. The official 1928 Reichstag report sets the total at 66,150. Although there was disagreement about the exact number, all estimates fall within this eight thousand deportee variance.

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WWII

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During the spring of 1941 the occupation government began to force changes in Belgian social legislation to make contract labor in Germany more appealing. The first change was lengthening the work day in coal mines to 10 hours so that fewer miners were required.

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Hendriks held that all men had the obligation to work and that if there was insufficient work in Belgium they should emigrate to Germany.

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Individuals who refused compulsory work within Belgium were classified as “asocials” and those who stopped reporting to the job site or left Germany before their contracts ran out were classified as “contract breakers.” In unilateral violation o f all the 1940 agreements Hendriks saw to it that all “contract breakers” and “asocials” were refused unemployment benefits. The only way “asocials” could be rehabilitated was for them to volunteer for work in Germany. Theirs was the choice between penal labor in Belgium or “voluntary” work in Germany.

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During the next two years Belgian labor was conscripted in three phases. The first, a short-lived continuation o f “combing out” with compulsory deportation, ran from fall 1942 into mid spring o f 1943. By the beginning o f 1943, however, the pool o f skilled workers had begun to run dry. In the wake o f the February defeat at Stalingrad, the Germans began to revamp the Arbeitseinsatz, shifting from combing out to simply conscripting Belgian workers by age group. Men bom in 1920 and 1921 were drafted for one year’s mandatory service in Germany. Initially combing out and birth year conscription overlapped, but this overlap ended on 6 September 1943, and in a virtual return of First World War methods workers were dragooned by age. Each stage was more nakedly compulsory and less successful than its predecessor.

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The peoples they respected least suffered the greatest deportation o f their female populations. The largest percentage o f women deportees (51% o f the total) came from the despised Soviet Union. The lowest percentage (3% of all deportees) came from Germany’s former ally Hungary.

15,000 Belgian women volunteered for labor in Germany. Later, a further 21,826 were conscripted, so that women comprised 11% of all Belgian deportees. In contrast to men who were sought for their skilled labor, most women were unskilled: their labor was less sought after and relatively poorly paid. The overwhelming majority went into domestic service. There was also a sizeable contingent in the textile industry.