Dutch Crossing

Journal of Low Countries Studies

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The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950) and the Anti-

Communist Campaign in Belgium

Emmanuel Gerard

To cite this article: Emmanuel Gerard (2016) The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)
and the Anti-Communist Campaign in Belgium, Dutch Crossing, 40:1, 54-67, DOI:
10.1080/03096564.2016.1129193

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dutch crossing, Vol. 40  No. 1,  March, 2016, 54–67

The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)

and the Anti-Communist Campaign in
Belgium
Emmanuel Gerard
KU Leuven - University of Leuven

On 18 August 1950, two unidentified men shot the communist leader Julien Lahaut
at the front door of his house in Seraing near Liege. The crime was never solved by
the Belgian justice apparatus, and until recently the motives of the assassination still
remained a subject of speculation. At regular intervals, the case surfaced in Belgian
political discussions. In this paper, we will look at the results of new research,
discuss clandestine anti-communist action and situate the murder in a broader
political and Cold War context.

KEYWORDS:  Belgian Communism, Belgian Royal Question, Korean War.

A cold case
Julien Lahaut was a popular figure of the Parti Communiste de Belgique (PCB), the
Belgian communist party. A man of humble origin, he engaged very early in the social-
ist movement and became a union secretary. A war volunteer in 1914, he was excluded
from the socialist Workers’ Party after the conflict due to his radical positions and he
instead joined the nascent communist movement. In the 1930s, he was elected Member
of Parliament for the PCB and a member of the party presidium. Arrested and deported
with the rest of the party leadership by the German occupiers in World War II, he returned
in May 1945 as one of the few communist leaders who survived the Nazi concentra-
tion camps. At that moment, the PCB had joined the Government, ministerial positions
had been filled and the secretariat, the directing body of the party, was in new hands.
In these circumstances, the PCB created the honorary position of party president for
Lahaut, uncommon for a communist party. Although Lahaut remained very popular in
workers’ milieus and a feared strike leader in the industrial belt of Liege, he did not play

© 2016 Taylor & Francis DOI 10.1080/03096564.2016.1129193

 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    55

a significant role in the design of PCB strategy after 1945. Lahaut became a symbolic
leader rather than a decision-maker.1
The killing of Lahaut in August 1950 provoked strong reactions. Steel factories and
coal mines in the Liege industrial region went on strike as an act of protest against the
crime. Some 150,000 people attended the funeral on 22 August. Leaders of friendly
organizations from France, Britain, Poland, the Netherlands, Sweden and Italy took the
stage, in addition to numerous prominent Belgian left-wing figures, socialists as well as
communists. It was a further indication of Lahaut’s popularity.
The leaders of the three traditional political parties, the Christian democrats, socialists
and liberals, condemned the murder as a cowardly act – under the Belgian rule of law,
a different position would have been quite difficult – but between the lines of the offi-
cial statements, one could feel an aversion to the communist ideology that Lahaut had
embraced. Nonetheless, Prime Minister Joseph Pholien announced in a radio speech on
19 August that the perpetrators would be traced ‘sans relâche ni répit’ (without respite).
In August 1950, the Liege prosecutor’s office began an investigation. In spite of the
strong declaration of the Prime Minister and the intensive inquiry of four successive
judges, the Liege court had to close the case in 1972, more than 20 years after the murder,
without results. It was a disappointing and unconvincing conclusion for an investigation
of the only case of political assassination ever perpetrated in Belgium. The reaction of
the Communist daily Le Drapeau Rouge was fully legitimate:
We do not wish to write a systematic indictment against the justice authorities. They have
done things to find the assassins of Lahaut, many of them with care. But in a case like this
we were entitled to expect more. One had to do everything and go to the end.2

Although the motives for the assassination remained a source of speculation, commen-
tators for the most part connected the crime to the ‘Royal Question’.3 In the summer of
1950, Belgium was on the brink of civil war. The reason for the violent unrest was the
controversial return to the country of King Leopold III. In May 1940, the king had clashed
with the Government. Unshakable partisan of neutrality in World War II, Leopold III had
decided to capitulate to the superior German forces and to stay in his country, whereas
the Government chose to leave Belgium and to continue the war alongside France and
Britain. Leopold’s accommodation to German rule and his authoritarian ideas offended
many people. In September 1944, when allied troops liberated Belgium, Leopold III was
not in the country. The Germans had deported him after the Normandy landings to
a compulsory residence in Austria. In May 1945, when the war was over, the political
struggle for his return began, and would trouble Belgian politics for five years. The left,
including socialists, liberals and communists, demanded the resignation of Leopold III
who they saw as a collaborator, but the right wanted his unconditional return. The
conflict culminated in 1950 when the Government announced a referendum to end the
dispute. The communists campaigned for a republic – the monarchy should be abolished.
Although the referendum offered only lukewarm support for the return of the king, the
Christian Democrats, who gained an absolute majority in the subsequent June 1950
elections, decided to persevere in having him return. The king’s arrival in Belgium on
56   Emmanuel Gerard

22 July brought the polarization in the country to a boiling point. Strikes, sabotage and
a threatened revolution, especially in the Walloon region, eventually forced Leopold III
to step down. On 1 August, he accepted the transfer of his powers to his son Baudouin.
When Baudouin took the oath in parliament on 11 August, the communists, led by Julien
Lahaut, disturbed the ceremony by shouting ‘Long live the republic.’ It was not good
enough to replace the king; the monarchy had to go. For most people, the connection
between this incident and the murder was very clear.

From Royal Question to Cold War

Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen published the first scholarly study of the Lahaut murder
in 1985, throwing light on private and official anti-communist underground activities.4
Besides that, they were able to reveal the identity of one of the perpetrators and situated
him in known anti-communist circles, though they could not establish whether the murder
was an individual act or whether Belgian authorities were involved in any substantive
way. For the authors, the Royal Question was still at the core of the Lahaut murder, as
many Leopold supporters considered the monarchy to be a bulwark against communism.
Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen discussed four hypotheses that might explain the assas-
sination. The first and most popular was that the assassination was an act of revenge by
Leopold supporters for the insult inflicted on the king at the oath taking ceremony of
11 August. This was, incidentally, also the interpretation of the American ambassador
when he informed Washington of the dramatic events: ‘Socialist [newspaper] Le Peuple
reports crime indignantly under headlines “Fascist Customs”. This reflects widespread
and doubtless well-founded assumption that assassination [was] committed by pro-Leo-
pold extremists similar to Count Looz-Corswarem who threw [a] smoke bomb from
gallery towards Socialist benches in Chamber.’5
A second- and less-plausible hypothesis, rumoured at the time, was that the murder
represented an ‘internal settlement’ within the communist party, although there was no
further indication of the persons or the reasons involved. The third hypothesis placed
the murder in the context of the Cold War. Van Doorslaer and Verhoeyen saw a possi-
ble connection to similar attempts in the same period on communist leaders in other
countries such as Italy (Palmiro Togliatti, 14 July 1948) and France (Jacques Duclos, 10
October 1950), and the scholars pointed to the American Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) as the instigator of these attempts. The fourth hypothesis, which they favoured,
considered the murder as part of a ‘strategy of tension’. The assassination of Lahaut,
they argued, was designed to provoke chaos through the expected violent retaliation of
the communists, and this would create the conditions for the return of Leopold III and
the installation of a strong regime. The weak point in this argument was the lack of
evidence of any support in the higher levels of the state for such an action, and the lack
of a link between Belgian authorities and the underground activities Van Doorslaer and
Verhoeyen had unearthed.
The Lahaut murder, and especially the failure of the Belgian justice system, contin-
ued to surface as a symbol of ideological division in political debates, even after the
 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    57

1985 publication. As a result of an unexpected public confession of one of the aged

perpetrators in 2007, the affair acquired renewed public interest. The consternation over
that declaration provoked another debate in parliament. In a resolution, 18 December
2008, the Senate expressed the wish that the affair be investigated by a selected group
of historians. This research project was undertaken under the umbrella of Cegesoma, a
Belgian federal scientific institution, and the results were published in May 2015.6 The
findings were based on an extensive exploration of judicial and political archives, as well
as corporate documentation. The researchers could also count on the cooperation of the
State Security Service and gained access to rarely accessible sources.
The most important conclusion of this new research is that the murder was commit-
ted by a clandestine anti-communist network with connections to the highest levels of
the political and financial worlds and to the judiciary. The murder can be explained by
the increasing Cold War tensions, which reached a climax after the onset of the Korean
conflict in June 1950. The Royal Question, and especially the 11 August incident of
Baudouin’s swearing in ceremony, was no more than a welcome excuse for the conspir-
ators to act. Lahaut was ‘executed’ as a ‘traitor’ because he was ‘an agent of the Soviet
Union against which country we are at war par personne interposée’ – these are the words
of André Moyen, leader of the Network.7

The underground Network

The Network – referred to as Milpol, Belgian Anti-Communist Bloc, Crocodile in the
Belgian Congo or simply Le Réseau – was commanded by André Moyen (1914–2008),
a professional spy who from February 1948 onwards operated under cover as first a
journalist and later as a private detective. Moyen was born in the Luxemburg province,
studied at the école normale of Carlsbourg, and became a teacher in 1935 at the Cardinal
Mercier College in Braine-l’Alloeud. In that same year, he was recruited by the newly
created military intelligence service for espionage work in Germany. René Mampuys,
the officer who headed Belgian counterintelligence from 1935 until 1951, recommended
him as suited for ‘all secret counterespionage’. He stayed in close contact with Moyen
and protected him. During the German occupation, Moyen left his job at the college
in Braine-l’Alloeud and accepted employment as an inspector at the Corporation for
Agriculture and Food. Under that cover, he played a crucial role in the military intelligence
resistance network Athos. In the last months of the war, after the liberation of Belgian
territory, he operated for the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the US Army during
their advance towards and crossing of the Rhine. He resumed his intelligence activity
after the war, but against a new enemy: communism.8
The exact circumstances under which his post-war intelligence activity took shape are
not well known, but from October 1947, there was a notable expansion of his Network.
Sections were created in Luxemburg, Namur, Hainaut, Brabant and Antwerp. Moyen
enrolled his former resistance companions. The war experience is important to under-
stand the spirit and the attitude of these agents. They had fulfilled dangerous missions,
had stolen information and had even executed collaborators. As they believed a new
58   Emmanuel Gerard

war was coming, they wanted to prepare themselves in the same way. The undercover
operations were geared to framing the communists as the new enemy once the Cold War
set in. In 1947, in Belgium, as in other West European countries, the situation changed
dramatically to the disadvantage of the party of the extreme left. With the communists
no longer in the Government, a latent anti-communism was soon being expressed more
forcibly.9
In February 1948, Moyen left the Ministry of Agriculture. From then on, there is clear
evidence that his activity was funded by the two largest holding companies in the country,
the Société Générale and the Brufina group, both controlling vital sectors of the Belgian
economy. But it remains unclear whether Moyen offered his services to these industri-
alists, or whether they hired Moyen to oversee their intelligence activities. Whatever
the case, the anti-communist activity of these companies was not new. Before 1940, the
Société Générale and the other big companies had already funded an anti-communist
intelligence service.10
While Moyen organized his underground activity (a first attempt on Lahaut was dis-
cussed in May 1948, after the coup in Prague), he also wrote under a pseudonym in a
variety of right-wing periodicals such as Septembre, Vrai and Europe Amérique. The
emergence of a Cold War discourse was certainly not limited to the diplomatic elite.
His pieces were mostly diatribes against communism, denouncing their alleged criminal
activities and the threat to national security. That anti-communist rhetoric turned into
a kind of hysteria with the start of the Korean War. Anti-communism was a broadly
supported attitude in Belgium, and in the traditional political parties, it was part of
mainstream thinking. However, the periodicals in which Moyen published were at the
fringe of politics. They not only considered communism a threat to democracy, but also
questioned democracy itself. They were the mouthpieces of small and extremist groups,
who used less temperate language.

A campaign of military and moral rearmament

It is not the existence of underground anti-communist activity in itself that is sur-
prising, it is rather the size of the Moyen Network, its entrenchment in official
institutions and, to a certain degree, their common action. Among the correspond-
ents of the Network, whose identity we know, we find the Minister of the Interior,
the director-general of the Ministry of the Interior and the chiefs of the political
sections of the judicial police in Brussels and Antwerp. The links between this pri-
vate network and the services of the judicial police in the big police departments of
Brussels, Liege and Antwerp are especially striking, and can only be explained by a
certain convergence in objectives: fighting subversive action, as it was called. These
linkages explain why the Lahaut murder would not be solved. The judicial police
received hundreds of reports from Moyen denouncing suspect people and organiza-
tions, further tracked and identified those people and filed the information in their
records. In turn, these judicial police offered their services to the network. In other
words: there was collusion.
 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    59

One might be surprised when reading the reports by Moyen and the sometimes gro-
tesque language which he used to identify the communist danger. The Network’s internal
reports and Moyen’s journal articles inflated the communist threat to unnatural pro-
portions. Yet he was not a madman. Since the communists had left the Government in
March 1947, anti-communist attacks had been growing. Communism was more and more
dubbed as the enemy within, as a fifth column. The Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri
Spaak was rhetorical but certainly not at ease in a speech of September 1948 before the
General Assembly of the United Nations in Paris: ‘Nous avons peur, we are afraid’.11
A remarkable incident in the early months of 1949 showed the extent of the ‘national’
consensus in the fight against communism. The communist leaders of Western Europe,
among whom was the Belgian secretary-general Edgard Lalmand, had denounced the
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) as a war machine, and declared that they
would welcome Soviet troops as liberators in the case of war. That declaration provoked
indignant reactions on all sides. The Belgian Senate became the scene of an uncommon
interpellation, not against the Government but against the Communist Party. The speak-
ers criticized the communists as traitors, and urged the Government to take the neces-
sary measures: ‘The Communist Party has showed its true face and lost its right to be
acknowledged as a national party and treated as such.’12 Christian Democrats, Socialists
and Liberals, crossing the divide between majority and opposition, unanimously voted a
resolution opposing the Communist Party. The communists could not escape their Cold
War villainization.
As long as the Royal Question remained unresolved, the communists were not com-
pletely isolated because they still stood in line with the liberals and the socialists against
the return of King Leopold III. The arrival of a homogenous Christian Democrat cabinet
and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 (the immediate effects of which were
delayed by the domestic July crisis) opened the way for an uninhibited anti-communism.
The new Government formed by the conservative catholic politician Joseph Pholien on 16
August pushed forward an anti-communist campaign. The Prime Minister outlined a new
Government programme that emphasized military and moral rearmament, improving
the West’s military capabilities and combating Soviet supporters at home. The assassi-
nation of Lahaut on 18 August was not the end of a crisis (the Royal Question), but the
beginning of a campaign against communism.
The war in Korea served as a strong catalyst. For many people, a new world war was
only a question of time. Following Winston Churchill, Western politicians considered
the conflict in East Asia as a diversion from the real war the Soviets were devising for
Western Europe. The sense of urgency created by this assumption made the defence of
Western Europe a hotly debated issue in the last months of 1950, resulting in drastic
decisions. The Americans were only willing to commit themselves to European defence
on the condition that their allies would deliver a substantial military contribution. The
need to maintain a line of defence at the Elbe River also raised questions about German
rearmament, which met with strong resistance, and not only from the French. As Marcel
Grégoire, a former Belgian minister and resistance leader, commented in the Brussels
newspaper Le Soir on 1 September 1950: ‘The fear of the USSR and of communism,
60   Emmanuel Gerard

which in its excessive form is of American import, operates as a storm that drives away
sound judgment’.13 Yet this was a minority position. To prevent the resurrection of a
German army, the French prime minister René Pleven launched his plan for a supra-
national European army on 24 October; it could contain small German units but no
German divisions and certainly not a German general staff. After much arm wrestling
the NATO Council, presided over by the Belgian foreign minister Paul Van Zeeland,
approved German rearmament in principle in December. The approval depended on the
realization of a so-called European Defence Community, and required the immediate
integration of the Western armed forces in Europe under a NATO commander, General
Dwight Eisenhower. NATO, until then an organization without body, became the frame
for the reorganization of national armies.14
The Belgian Government did not question the underlying Cold War assumptions of
this episode. ‘The defence of the West should be established at any price, for only on
this condition can we prevent a catastrophe’ – these were the strong words of foreign
minister Van Zeeland behind closed doors.15 Under American pressure, the Government
stepped up its military policy. It ordered a drastic increase of the military budget, the
prolongation of military service and the sending of an expeditionary corps to Korea.
On 31 August 1950, the Prime Minister announced these measures on the radio, after
having discussed the text with the American ambassador.16 Implementation was not
delayed. On 24 October, the cabinet decided to lengthen military service from 12 to
24 months. On 18 December, an 800-man battalion left Antwerp heading for Korea. In
his New Year speech, the Prime Minister was explicit: ‘Insecurity and fear suffocate the
world (…). Our essential mission, at this moment, is an effort of rearmament, which we
take with our allies of the Brussels pact and the Atlantic pact’.17 If the prolongation of
military service was a far-reaching move and met with fierce domestic opposition, the
Belgian contribution to the Western military built-up was still criticized as minimal by
the Americans, as indeed it was.18
Moral rearmament was a euphemism used to describe the necessary response to the
subversive activities of the communists. Under this umbrella, the Government wanted to
fight the enemy at home. That fight was wholly framed by the global Cold War and its
military implications. Moreover, the Government did not act in a vacuum in this respect,
since other western countries also took restrictive measures against communist activists.
Without going as far as McCarthy in the US, the Pholien Government started what
some have called a witch hunt.19 On 12 September 1950, the Prime Minister announced
the ejection of communists from the public administration. ‘In this hour, when it asks
the whole nation to defend democracy in the world, the Government has also the duty
to strengthen democratic institutions at home.’20 In the following months, the cabinet
took a variety of measures aimed at containing communist activity. Distribution of their
publications in military installations was forbidden and communist broadcasts on the
radio were censured. The Government studied measures to restrict the right to strike,
strengthened the competences of the police, and coordinated the intelligence services. It
conceived the creation of a special regime between the state of war and the state of peace
that would allow the authorities to restrict individual liberties in times of ‘international
 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    61

tension’. A civil defence corps were constructed that could fight the enemy behind the
front lines. The tendencies were clear. In December 1950, with the blessing of the general
prosecutor Camille Pholien (the brother of the Prime Minister), State Council member
Henri Buch was suspended from this assembly, the highest judicial body in the country.
He was accused of being the teacher of a course for communist militants. Finally, after
much internal debate, the Government published a royal decree in February 1951 stating
that civil service employment and communist party membership were incompatible.
In light of these measures, it is not surprising that the Moyen Network, although
engaged in illegal action, was not perceived as a danger or threat to the rule of law. On
the contrary, its work complemented the actions of the state, and covert cooperation took
place between Moyen and some sections of the police. When Moyen was denounced by
the State Security Service for having usurped a public function, Camille Pholien decided
in October 1950 that prosecution was not opportune. There may also have been a tie
between the murder of Lahaut and the announcement of the first restrictive measures
against communist functionaries on 12 September. In his 31 August report to the cor-
respondents of the Network, Moyen stated that those responsible for the ‘execution’
of Lahaut would ‘continue their work unless the Government decided to act against
the soviet supporters.’21 It is not impossible that even Prime Minister Joseph Pholien
was associated with the network, as a note in his diary shows.22 Whatever the case, the
Network was never disturbed and the reason, once again, was the convergence between
its objectives and those of the organs of the state.

The US connection
The Lahaut research project that was carried out to implement the Senate’s resolution of
December 2008 mainly focused on the Belgian aspect of the affair and did not discuss all
related issues. One of the intriguing questions that still needs to be answered concerns
the possible role of the Americans in these underground anti-communist activities in
Belgium. If Italy and France were of major concern for the Americans, Belgium was not
completely at the periphery of their attention, for the country had a strategic importance
because of the uranium production in its African colony, the Belgian Congo.23 For that
reason, the Americans considered the Royal Question as an unwelcome and disturbing
factor. They did not like Leopold III, but they also feared cooperation between the social-
ists, whom they considered a stable factor (they held Paul-Henri Spaak in great esteem),
and the communists. The US embassy closely followed the activities of the PCB, as we
can see from the many files kept in their archives. Did they assess Belgian communism
as a dangerous threat? To what extent were they informed about, or even implicated in
underground anti-communist activities?
Communist strength in Belgium had been sharply declining since the end of the war.
The PCB, which was part of the Belgian coalition Government between 1944 and 1947,
became more and more isolated at the end of the 1940s. In 1948, the communists were
excluded from the leadership of the General Trade Union Confederation, although
they would keep union strongholds at the Antwerp port and in the Walloon industrial
62   Emmanuel Gerard

centers.24 The broad sympathy the communists enjoyed after the liberation had vanished
by 1950. In 1946, the PCB won 23 seats (out of 202) in parliament, more than the liberal
party. That number was reduced to only seven in the 13 June 1950 elections. The Cold
War and the framing of the communists as the internal enemy had undermined their
support. A CIA report from July 1950, just before the Lahaut murder, mentioned the
many problems (particularly financial) the party and its front organizations were facing.
In conclusion, the US embassy noted: ‘it would appear that the Belgian Communist Party
is one of the weakest in Western Europe.’25 But at about the same time, the American
ambassador in Brussels received the message from the State Department to stay vigilant:
I believe we are all aware that we must not be misled by the fact that the number of Communists
in the Belgian Parliament for example is insignificant. Any CP cell, no matter how slight the
political representation may be, has potential power. That any unfavorable turn of events may
unleash mass emotions which will be immediately exploited is apparent from the near-rev-
olution upon Leopold’s return and the assassination of CP Chairman Lahaut. Off-setting
and reducing Communist influence is, of course, our number one target.26

To reduce communist influence, the American embassy stepped up its public diplomacy,
through its Information Service, using a broad array of instruments to win the hearts
and minds of the Belgians and to create support for the war effort in Korea.27 Did the
US and its embassy also engage in covert operations? In September 1950, a Belgian civil
servant from the Ministry of Economy proposed the creation of a ‘dummy corporation
to finance the anti-communist underground during the coming war, with American
dollars.’ The secretary of the embassy noted:
The current situation seems to bring down a spate of such proposals and some of them make
a lot of sense (…) Maybe we should be doing more along this line than we are. Or maybe
we are doing more than I know.28

There is no evidence of American involvement in the Lahaut affair as such. Was the
embassy informed of the existence of the Network? Yes it was, at least of its Congolese
section. Based on the available written sources, it cannot be confirmed that André Moyen
himself was in direct contact with American intelligence officers or embassy personnel.
According to his own private testimony he was, but since he often indulged in innuendo
and duplicity, this should be taken with some caution. However, there is no doubt that
Robert Murphy, who was appointed American ambassador in Brussels at the end of
1949, had excellent relations with the two main sponsors of the Network, Marcel De
Roover and Herman Robiliart. The first public performance of Murphy in Brussels was
his speech before the ‘Mars et Mercure’ society – an association of army officers and
reserve officers, most of them engaged in business and industry – at the invitation of the
chairman, Marcel De Roover.29 De Roover is one of those intriguing figures in the world
of anti-communism. He graduated as an engineer from the Royal Military Academy
and served as an officer with the Engineering Corps during World War I. He was an
envoy of the Belgian Government to General Anton Denikin, commander of the White
Army during the Russian civil war, and became a diplomat in the League of Nations
before entering the world of business in 1926. A CEO of several Congolese companies
 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    63

belonging to the Société Générale, in 1941, he moved to the Brufina holding company.
De Roover was a key person in the interwar anti-communist network SEPES (Société
d’Etudes Politiques, Economiques et Sociales), and played the same role in similar ini-
tiatives after 1945. He was one of the sponsors of the Moyen Network, and the man
behind the Belgian section of the anti-communist organization ‘Paix et Liberté’, which
focused on psychological warfare.30 He was deeply involved in the activity of Russian
exiles and in the anti-Soviet resistance in Byelorussia. In 1967, after he had retired from
business, he became the Belgian representative to the World Anti-Communist League.
We may assume that in 1950, an open line of communication existed between De Roover
and the American embassy. Murphy and De Roover certainly shared information about
communist personalities.31
There were also close relations between Herman Robiliart and the American ambassa-
dor. Robiliart was, in 1950, Edgard Sengier’s successor as CEO of the mining company
Union Minière du Haut-Katanga. Union Minière, a subsidiary company of the Société
Générale, was one of the largest copper producers in the world. More importantly, the
uranium from the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga, Belgian Congo, was crucial for the
nuclear capacity of the US after 1945. In September 1944, an exclusive contract had
been signed between the Belgian Government, the US and Britain for the delivery of
uranium.32 Robiliart had access to the highest American circles – after all, not all Belgians
visiting the US were received by the Secretary of State.33 The Robiliart papers show
his intensive, almost obsessive, involvement with the underground Network of Moyen.
Moyen considered Robiliart as his chief, and created at his suggestion a section in the
Belgian Congo to protect the uranium trade. The US embassy was well aware of Moyen’s
Congolese intelligence activity. In January 1950, embassy personnel and Robiliart dis-
cussed a controversial Moyen report on communist infiltration in the Congo. As a result
of this report and under American pressure, the Belgians would strengthen the security
in the Katanga mines.34
The American embassy did not act light-heartedly, as we can see in the case of
Emile Delcourt. At the end of 1949, Delcourt founded the Front National Belge de
l’Indépendance (FNBI). This group was a dissenting offshoot of the communist-dom-
inated Front de l’Indépendance, one of the most important resistance organizations
during the war.35 From the end of 1950, the FNBI was publishing a weekly L’Unité belge,
which attracted attention through its virulent anti-communism. Delcourt cooperated
with ‘Paix et Liberté’, as did André Moyen, and was responsible for some spectacular
events such as the publication of a false Drapeau Rouge and the throwing of pamphlets
from a plane on communist demonstrators. Delcourt had plenty of financial resources
thanks to the generosity of a catholic priest, but when this source dried up in March
1952, he got into financial trouble and hoped for American support. The US embassy had
worked with him before – at the end of 1951, it had used his organization for the distri-
bution of 300,000 copies of the brochure Le Paradis soviétique, secretly sponsored by the
Economic Cooperation Administration (the Marshall Plan headquarters). Nevertheless,
the Americans were uneasy when rumours spread that they supported the weekly pub-
lication L’Unité belge, which they did not.36 Whatever the case, in the summer of 1952,
64   Emmanuel Gerard

Delcourt insisted repeatedly on support but received no answer. In the meantime, his less
exemplary character provoked criticism in various milieus. De Roover was one of those
who warned the embassy not to engage with Delcourt, who appeared to be a common
crook. In November 1952, the embassy informed Delcourt that no subsidy would be given.
The Americans could find no other argument than that the US did not subsidize foreign
movements, which was clearly not true.37 In 1955, Delcourt was condemned to five years
in prison for forgery and swindle. This trial would play an important role in the judicial
investigation of the Lahaut murder, for Delcourt, in hopes that he would be released,
claimed to know the assassins and actually accused André Moyen of being implicated.
Moyen presented the four men who murdered Lahaut as part of a stay behind group
prepared to act as resistance fighters should the Soviet Union take over Belgium. As he
put it, ‘The group had first planned to become active only under Soviet occupation.’38
Since the discovery of the Italian Gladio Network, there have been many publications
on this issue, but their informative value is limited. Even the report of the Belgian par-
liamentary inquiry, conducted in 1990, which offers the most documented inquiry on the
Belgian case up to now, is disappointing in many respects.39 We know, from the parlia-
mentary inquiry, that from early 1949 on, with Paul-Henri Spaak as Prime Minister and
Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Tripartite Meeting, connecting Belgium, Britain and the
US, was established in order to coordinate stay behind activities. However, it seems that
only at the end of 1951, the Pholien Government did take more concrete steps to set up
the Belgian stay behind groups and coordinate efforts between the military intelligence
service and the civil State Security Service. The first years appear to be somewhat chaotic
in this respect. Following the coup in Czechoslovakia in early 1948, the Americans had
been looking for partners in Belgium.40 In those years, there were also amateurs – mostly
acting as ‘boy scouts’ – who spontaneously offered their ‘services’ to the Americans. In
some respects, the Moyen Network had the outlook of a stay behind group, but there is
no evidence for its integration into the official stay behind networks, except for the good
relations between André Moyen and General René Mampuys, who in December 1951
was given the official mission to coordinate the Belgian efforts.
Although the Cold War has not completely been neglected in studies on post-war
Belgian politics, it is the Royal Question that has received the most attention and framed
our interpretation of events. However, the Lahaut murder was, as we have seen, moti-
vated by Cold War concerns and part of an anti-communist offensive. It was led by an
underground network, with connections to the judiciary and the highest political and
economic circles. On the other hand, if we look at the rather limited Belgian efforts for
the western cause, compared to the intensity of anti-communist initiatives at home,
we might conclude that the Cold War also functioned as an alibi for right-wing and
conservative forces to clean up domestic politics in post-war Belgium, which until 1947
had been governed by the left and accepted democratic reforms. In 1951, an American
State Department official commented that ‘No amount of rationalization can completely
conceal the fact that by comparison with other, NATO countries in terms of economic
strength and resources Belgian effort is much less than it should be’ in respect to Korea.
At worst, the situation ‘might jeopardize the entire programme of developing an adequate

defence posture in Western Europe, and would, in any event, be damaging to Belgian
interests.’41 The worst did not occur, but the very different responses to communists in
Korea and to communists in Belgium shows the priorities of the Belgian elite.
Notes
 1 Maxime Steinberg, “Lahaut (Julien-Victor),” La
Biographie Nationale 39 (Brussels: Académie Royale
de Belgique, 1976): 569–584.
  2 Drapeau Rouge, December 8, 1972.
  3 For the Royal Question, see: Paul Theunissen, 1950:
ontknoping van de koningskwestie (Antwerp: De
Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1984); Jan Velaers and
Herman Van Goethem, Leopold III. De koning, het
land, de oorlog (Tielt: Lannoo, 1994).
  4 Rudi Van Doorslaer and Etienne Verhoeyen, De moord
op Lahaut. Het communisme als binnenlandse vijand
(Leuven: Kritak, 1985). A new edition was published
as: Verhoeyen and Van Doorslaer, De moord op Julien
Lahaut (Antwerp: Meulenhoff/Manteau, 2010).
  5 Robert D. Murphy to State Department, August
19, 1950, NA, RG 84, box 71. I thank Bruce
Kuklick, professor emeritus at the University of
Pennsylvania, for his help in exploring relevant US
material in the National Archives, College Park,
Maryland (hereafter NA).
  6 See Emmanuel Gerard, Widukind De Ridder, Françoise
Muller, Wie heeft Lahaut vermoord? De geheime
Koude Oorlog in België (Leuven: Davidsfonds, 2015);
Emmanuel Gerard, Widukind De Ridder, Françoise
Muller, Qui a tué Julien Lahaut? Les ombres de la
guerre froide en Belgique (Waterloo: La Renaissance
du Livre, 2015).
  7 “Un agent de l’URSS contre lequel nous sommes en
guerre par personne interposée,” [André Moyen],
“Activité du Réseau pendant le mois d’août 1950,”
August 31, 1950, published in Gerard, De Ridder and
Muller, Qui a tué Lahaut, 136.
  8 For this section: Gerard, De Ridder and Muller, Qui
a tué Lahaut, 145–219 (quote p. 149).
  9 Well-documented analysis of communist participation
in government in Martin Conway, The Sorrows of
Belgium: Liberation and political reconstruction,
1944–1947 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012).
10
Marc Swennen, “Les mouvements anticommunistes
dans les années 1920,” Courrier hebdomadaire du
CRISP 2059 (2010).
11
This speech marked Spaak’s definite turn to an
 de Belgique. Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres (2011):
Atlantic alliance under American leadership. Michel
Dumoulin, Spaak (Brussels: Racine, 1998). Maarten
van Alstein, “Nederland ... wereldorde,” in Nederland-
België. De Belgisch-Nederlandse betrekkingen vanaf
1940, ed. Duco Hellema, Rik Coolsaet and Bart Stol
(Amsterdam: Boom, 2012), 40 e.v.
12
“De communistische partij heeft eindelijk kleur
 Soir, September 13, 1950.
bekend, en heeft het recht niet langer als een nationale
The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    65
politieke partij herkend en aldus behandeld te worden,”
Proceedings of the Belgian parliament, Senate, Session
1948–1949, March 23 and 24, 1949, p. 1000–1018,
1029–1030 (quote p. 1002).
13
“La crainte de l’URSS et du communisme qui, dans sa
forme excessive, constitue une importation d’origine
américaine, est en train d’agir à la manière d’un
tornade, repoussant tous les raisonnements …”.
14
Jules Gérard-Libois and Rosine Lewin, La Belgique
entre dans la guerre froide et l’Europe (1947–1953)
(Brussels: crisp, 1992), 133–134; Fred van Staden
and Rik Coolsaet, “Nederland ... 1945,” in Duco
Hellema et.al. (eds.), Nederland-België, 144–155.
Press coverage of the Atlantic Council, 18 and 19
December 1950, in Le Soir: ‘La défense de l’Occident’
(December 19), ‘Eisenhower commandant suprême
de l’armée défensive d’Europe occidentale’
(December 20).
15
“La défense de l’occident doit être établie à

n’importe quel prix; c’est seulement sous cette
condition que nous pouvons encore éviter la
catastrophe,” minutes of the second meeting of
the cabinet, August 25, 1950, available online: <
www.arch.be/lang_pvminister.html>.
16
Le Soir, September 1, 1950. Murphy to State
Department, August 30 and 31, 1950, NA, RG 84, box
8 and 71.
17
“L’inquiétude et la peur étreignent le monde […].
La tâche essentielle, pour le moment, c'est l’effort de
réarmement que nous entreprenons avec nos alliés du
Pacte de Bruxelles et du Pacte atlantique,”Le Soir,
December 31, 1950.
18
US-memorandum, May 8, 1951, discussed at

cabinet meeting, May 18, 1951. See also cabinet
meeting, September 17, 1951, available online: <
www.arch.be/lang_pvminister.html>. For Belgium and
the Korean War: Jean-Pierre Gahide, La Belgique et
la guerre de Corée 1950–1955 (Brussels: Koninklijk
Legermuseum, 1991).
19
José Gotovitch, “Un procès en guerre froide: le

chemin torturé du conseiller Buch,” Académie Royale
113–146.
20
“… au moment où le gouvernement réclame un effort
particulier de la nation toute entière pour mieux
assurer la défense des institutions démocratiques sur
le plan extérieur, il se doit en même temps de raffermir
ses institutions démocratiques sur le plan intérieur,” Le
66   Emmanuel Gerard
21
“Nous pouvons ajouter que le groupe d’action qui parle
ainsi affirme qu’il continuera sa série jusqu’au jour où
le gouvernement se décidera à mettre fin lui-même
aux agissements de la 5e colonne soviétique. Lalmand
et Terfve sont maintenant visés, en même temps que
Vanden Branden d’Anvers,” [André Moyen], “Activité
du Réseau pendant le mois d’août 1950,” August 31,
1950, published in Gerard, De Ridder and Muller, Qui
a tué Lahaut, 136. Three copies of this report have been
found: one in the papers of Albert De Vleeschauwer,
Minister of the Interior until August 16, 1950, one in
the archives of the judicial police of Antwerp and one
in the papers of Herman Robiliart, CEO of Union
Minière (ibidem, p. 249–255).
22
The Pholien papers are kept at the Archives of the
Royal Palace in Brussels. Surprisingly, they contain
nothing in relation to the Lahaut murder. As for the
underground network, the December 19, 1950, entry
in his diary (Pholien papers, folder 3) indicates that
the Prime Minister must have been in contact with
André Moyen, alias Richard. For the Pholien brothers:
Gerard, De Ridder and Muller, Qui a tué Lahaut,
217–220, 267–269.
23
Pieter Lagrou, “US Politics of Stabilization in Liberated
Europe. The View from the American Embassy in
Brussels, 1944–6,” European History Quarterly 25
(1995): 211; Pieter Lagrou, “Een oorlog achter de rug,
een oorlog voor de boeg,” in Oost West West Best.
België onder de Koude Oorlog (1947–1989), ed. Mark
Van den Wijngaert et al. (Tielt: Lannoo, 1997), 124–
136; Frank Gerits, “Taking Off the Soft Power Lens:
The United States Information Service in Cold War
Belgium,” Journal of Belgian History 42 (2012): 10–49,
especially 23–25.
24
Rik Hemmerijckx, Van Verzet tot Koude Oorlog, 1940–
1949: machtsstrijd om het ABVV (Brussels: VUBPress,
2003): 313–352.
25
Embassy to State Department, September 21, 1950,
with enclosure “Current status of Belgian Communist
Party” (source: EO25x1 CIA), September 15, 1950,
NA, RG 84, box 73. See also McClintock to State
Department, June 27, 1950 (the PCB “has arrived at
the nadir of its strength in recent years”), ibidem,
box 74. Compare with the State Department’s policy
statement, May 8, 1950, in Foreign Relations of the
United States. 1950. Volume III: Western Europe,
(Washington, 1950), p. 1347–1355.
26
Edward W. Barrett, assistant secretary of state, to
ambassador Murphy, September 7, 1950, NA, RG 84,
box 74.
27
Gerits, “Taking off,” 18–20, 27–37. For a broad view
on the cultural agenda of the Cold War, see Giles Scott-
Smith and Hans Krabbendam (eds.), The Cultural Cold
War in Western Europe 1945–1960 (London: Frank
Cass, 2003).
28
Ruyle to McClintock, September 12, 1950, NA RG 84,
box 73.
29
 n December 7, 1950. “A Mars et Mercure. Le premier
O
discours officiel du nouvel ambassadeur des U.S.A.,”
La Dernière Heure, December 9, 1949. Murphy was
nominated to be ambassador to Belgium by President
Truman on September 8, 1949.
30
Founded in France with sections in Belgium, the

Netherlands, West Germany, Italy and other western
countries. See Bernard Ludwig, “Paix et Liberté: the
formative transnational anti-communist network,”
in Luc Van Dongen, Stéphanie Roulin and Giles
Scott-Smith (eds.), Transnational Anti-Communism
and the Cold War. Agents, Activities, and Networks
(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2014).
31
De Roover to Murphy, April 26, 1950 (in response to
a telephone call from the ambassador), NA, RG 84,
box 158.
32
Jonathan E. Helmreich, United States Relations with
Belgium ant the Congo 1940–1960 (Newark: University
of Delaware Press, 1998): 42–61, 128.
33
On October 16, 1951. In a memo that prepares for
the meeting: ‘They [Sengier and Robiliart] are two of
our staunchest friends in Belgium. […] Not only have
M. Sengier and M. Robiliart been producing uranium
for us but they have been very helpful in connection
with our recent talks with Belgian Government officials
(Ryckmans) concerning a program of assistance
to Belgium in setting up an atomic energy research
program’ (NA, RG 59, box 44).
34
Anne-Sophie Gijs, Le pouvoir de l’absent. Les avatars
de l’anticommunisme au Congo (1920–1961) (Bern:
Peter Lang, forthcoming). In this well-documented
dissertation, the author offers a detailed analysis of
the Belgian-American negotiations regarding the
security of the uranium mine of Shinkolobwe that
started in August 1950, and the role played by Moyen’s
Congo Network in creating tension around a possible
communist danger in the colony.
35
For FNBI and Delcourt’s exploits: Gerard, De Ridder
and Muller, Qui a tué Lahaut, 80–96.
36
Henry McNulty, information officer, to Service,

confidential memorandum, October 30, 1951;
McNulty to Nielsen, secret memorandum, October
30, 1951, NA, RG 84, box 74. For ECA-CIA funding
of anti-communist propaganda: Giles Scott-Smith,
The Politics of Apolitical Culture: The Congress of
Cultural Freedom, the CIA and post-war American
hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002), 66 e.v.
37
Several letters in NA, RG 84, box 74.
38
“Il s’agit en tout cas d’un groupe apolitique et même
antipolitique, patriote et désintéressé, qui avait
cru d’abord n’entrer en lice qu’après l’occupation
soviétique,” [André Moyen], “Activité du Réseau
pendant le mois d’août 1950,” August 31, 1950,
published in Gerard, De Ridder and Muller, Qui a tué
Lahaut, 137.
39
Proceedings of the Belgian parliament, Senate, Session
1990–1991, October 1, 1991. Parlementair onderzoek
 The Murder of Julien Lahaut (1950)    67

40
met betrekking tot het bestaan in België van een
clandestien internationaal inlichtingennetwerk. Verslag
namens de onderzoekscommissie uitgebracht door de
heren Erdman en Hasquin. See for example Gladio,
ed. Jan Willems (Antwerp: epo, 1991); and the Belgian
41
chapter in Daniele Ganser, NATO’s Secret Armies:
Operation Gladio and terrorism in Western Europe
(London: Frank Cass, 2004).
or that purpose, they made contact in March
F
1948 – through the State Security Service – with the
Mouvement Léopold, a resistance group that still had a
functioning intelligence service. See Gerard, De Ridder
and Muller, Qui a tué Lahaut, 284.
US memorandum, May 8, 1951, discussed at Belgian
cabinet meeting, May 18, 1951, available online: <
www.arch.be/lang_pvminister.html>.

Notes on contributor
Emmanuel Gerard (1952) is professor of history at the KU Leuven. He has published on
different aspects of Belgian politics in the 20th century (social movements, parties, par-
liament, monarchy). He published, with Bruce Kuklick, Death in the Congo: Murdering
Patrice Lumumba (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2015). He conducted the research project
into the murder of Julien Lahaut and published, with Widukind De Ridder and Françoise
Muller, Qui a tué Julien Lahaut? (Waterloo: La Renaissance du Livre, 2015).

Correspondence to: Emmanuel Gerard, KU Leuven – University of Leuven, Parkstraat

47, B-3000 Leuven. Email: emmanuel.gerard@kuleuven.be