Background
Leopold was born on November 3, 1901 in Brussels. He was the son of Albert I and his consort Elisabeth of Bavaria.
Leopold was born on November 3, 1901 in Brussels. He was the son of Albert I and his consort Elisabeth of Bavaria.
Prince Leopold, Duke of Brabant, was sent by his father to Eton College in the United Kingdom in 1915.
Leopold served as a private soldier during the final campaign of World War I.
Leopold became king of the Belgians following his father’s death on February 17, 1934. Favouring an independent foreign policy, but not strict neutrality, he withdrew Belgium from its defensive alliance with France and from the Pact of Locarno—a peace agreement among Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Great Britain—after German occupation of the Rhineland (1936).
Determined to resist aggression with help from Britain and France, he sponsored construction of a fortified defense line from Antwerp to Namur, facing Germany.
After the outbreak of World War II, Leopold assumed supreme command of the Belgian army.
In May 1940, as the Allies undertook the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of troops from the French seaport of Dunkirk, Belgian forces at the Leie (Lys) River in Belgium battled the advancing Germans. Leopold was forced to surrender his encircled forces on May 28. The Belgian government’s repudiation of his decision to remain with his troops, rather than join the London government in exile, laid the foundation for the postwar conflict over his claim to the throne. Leopold was held prisoner by the Germans at his royal château near Brussels until 1944 and then in Austria to the end of the war.
His letter to Adolf Hitler in 1942 is credited with saving an estimated 500, 000 Belgian women and children from deportation to munitions factories in Germany.
After his brother Charles was appointed regent in 1944, Leopold remained in Switzerland (1945–50), awaiting resolution of the “royal question, ” the controversy over his pending return to the throne.
In a plebiscite held March 12, 1950, nearly 58 percent of the voters favoured the king’s return, largely reflecting Catholic Fleming support. But unrest fomented by Liberal, Socialist, and Walloon opposition led Leopold to renounce his sovereignty on August 11, 1950, in favour of his son Baudouin, who became king the following year.
Leopold and the princesse de Réthy continued to live in Laeken, however, the traditional home of Belgian kings, until his son’s marriage in 1960.
Leopold died in 1983 in Woluwe-Saint-Lambert (Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe) following emergency heart surgery.
Leopold III was the king of the Belgians, whose actions as commander in chief of the Belgian army during the German conquest of Belgium (1940) in World War II aroused opposition to his rule, eventually leading to his abdication in 1951. Leopold's controversial actions during the Second World War resulted in a political crisis known as the Royal Question.
Leopold wrote his Political Testament in January 1944, shortly after this failed attempt at reconciliation. The testament was to be published in case he was not in Belgium when Allied forces arrived. The testament, which had an imperious and negative tone, considered the potential Allied movement into Belgium an "occupation", not a "liberation". It gave no credit to the active Belgian resistance. The Belgian government-in-exile in London did not like Leopold's demand that the government ministers involved in the 1940 crisis be exonerated. The Allies did not like Leopold's repudiation of the treaties concluded by the Belgian government-in-exile in London. The United States was particularly concerned about the economic treaty it had reached with the government-in-exile that enabled it to obtain Congolese uranium for America's secret atom bomb program, which had been developed for use against Germany (although, as it turned out, Germany surrendered before the first bomb was ready).
The Belgian government did not publish the Political Testament and tried to ignore it, partly for fear of increased support for the Belgian Communist party.
He was a Member of the Royal Victorian Chain.
He married Princess Astrid of Sweden in a civil ceremony in Stockholm on 4 November 1926, followed by a religious ceremony in Brussels on 10 November. The marriage produced three children.
On 11 September 1941, while a prisoner of the Germans, Leopold secretly married Lilian Baels in a religious ceremony that had no validity under Belgian law, as Belgian law required a religious marriage to be preceded by a legal or civil marriage. On 6 December, they were married under civil law. The reason for the out-of-order marriages was never officially made public.
Jozef-Ernest Cardinal van Roey, Archbishop of Mechelen, wrote an open letter to parish priests throughout the country announcing Leopold's second marriage on 7 December. The letter from the Cardinal revealed that the king's new wife would be known as Princesse de Réthy, not Queen Lilian, and that any children they had would have no claim to the throne (though they would be Princes or Princesses of Belgium with the style Royal Highness). Leopold's new marriage damaged his reputation further in the eyes of many of his subjects.
(8 April 1875 – 17 February 1934)
(25 July 1876 – 23 November 1965)
(17 November 1905 – 29 August 1935)
28 November 1916 – 7 June 2002)
( born 6 February 1951)
( born 30 September 1956 in Laeken, Belgium)
(11 October 1927 – 10 January 2005)
(18 July 1942 – 29 November 2009)
( 7 September 1930 – 31 July 1993)
His Royal Highness Prince Leopold of Belgium, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, His Royal Highness The Duke of Brabant, Prince of Belgium, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony, His Royal Highness The Duke of Brabant, Prince of Belgium, His Majesty The King of the Belgians, Sovereign of the Congo, His Majesty King Leopold III of Belgium
