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NewsvineLEUVEN, Belgium — With his presidency tarred by the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover ‘1895 is a scapegoat in the United States. His substantial humanitarian accomplishments, however, are not forgotten in Belgium, which remembers him for his efforts in wartime relief, postwar reconstruction and leadership of an organization that continues to promote relations between the two countries.
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Hoover is especially honored in the university city of Leuven, 17 miles east of Brussels, which constructed Herbert Hooverplein (Herbert Hoover Plaza) adjacent to the library he helped rebuild after the First World War.
In the first strokes of World War I, the German army executed the Schlieffen Plan, which sought to outflank the French army by crossing through neutral Belgium. This blatant disregard for an international treaty — which one German official referred to as “a scrap of paper” — enraged the British, who almost immediately declared war on Germany.
Belgian resistance against an army ten times its size was instrumental in preventing a quick defeat at the hands of the German Empire, but the country suffered terribly; Germany destroyed Belgian forts in the north of the country and shelled the western city of Ypres to rubble. The crisis continued throughout the war, as the British navy’s blockade of the North Sea threatened to starve the country.
Leuven itself became a symbol for German military brutality. Mistaking a friendly-fire incident for Leuven snipers, German troops gave into paranoia about Belgian guerrillas (francs-tireurs) and terrorized the city. More than a thousand buildings in the city’s inner ring were set ablaze, and allegations of systematic killing of civilians in reprisals surfaced. Soldiers also set fire to the city’s world-famous university library and its 300,000 volumes.
After arranging for the safe return of over 100,000 Americans stranded in Europe, Hoover organized the Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB).
Shipping supplies across the Atlantic Ocean was a risky operation due to the German practice of sinking Allied merchant ships. (It was this policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that eventually brought the United States into the war in 1917.)
Hoover traveled to Berlin to lobby German authorities and worked with Belgian leaders to distribute resources throughout the country. At the end of the war, Hoover assisted American relief efforts in central Europe.
The former president also insisted that the CRB’s surpluses, in excess of $33 million, be bequeathed to the Belgian people and especially towards education. The Belgian American Education Foundation (BAEF) was thus established, distributing money to six Belgian universities and technical schools. Other monies were used to fund student-exchange fellowships between Belgium and the United States, a program that still exists today.
The remaining endowment was used for the rebuilding of two libraries — including the one in Leuven. American architect Whitney Warren was recruited to design the building, and a personal fundraising effort by Hoover helped finish the stalled project. The new library was dedicated on July 4, 1928, with a bronze bust of Hoover and a carillon of 48 bells, one for each state in the U.S.
BAEF returned the favor in 1938, granting $300,000 towards the establishment of the Hoover Library (now the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace) on the Stanford campus. When World War II exploded in 1939, Hoover repeated the act, raising funds for Belgium, Poland and Finland, all ravaged by invasion.
Leuven is pockmarked with reminders of the Great War. Each building rebuilt after the fire is marked with a symbol of the burning city. One of the city’s major intersections is named the “Maarschalk Fochplein” after French general Ferdinand Foch who commanded the Allied army in the last months of the war, and there is the library and Hoover’s park.
The war had another lasting impact on Leuven. The defense of the frontiers helped ignite Flemish nationalism among the Dutch-speaking Flemings of northern Belgium. Demand for Dutch-speaking services grew in a country where public administration and higher education had previously been conducted in French.
The language problem would not go away at the Catholic University of Leuven, where in 1968 the university was divided into two single-language institutions. A Francophone Universite Catholique de Louvain was established in Louvain-la-Neuve, a new town set up for the purpose. Flemish instruction became the norm at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the library’s stocks were divided in half by shelf number.
Now a majority of the country, the Flemish enjoy a university of their own with considerable international cachet.
Note: A previous edition of this story incorrectly identified the German Empire of 1914 as the Third Reich.