Flemish Waffen-SS Brochure – “Vlamingen op!”

The brochure “Vlamingen op!” (“Flemings, arise!”) was produced during the German occupation of Belgium in the Second World War, following the German invasion of Belgium. After Belgium’s capitulation, the occupying authorities sought to recruit volunteers from Flanders into German military formations, particularly the Waffen-SS.

Flemish collaborationist movements—most notably the Vlaams Nationaal Verbond—played a role in encouraging enlistment by promoting anti-communism, Flemish nationalism, and the idea of a “New Europe” under German leadership. Publications such as “Vlamingen op!” were part of a broader propaganda effort designed to appeal to these sentiments and to present service in the Waffen-SS as both an ideological and patriotic duty.

Printed in Brussels by Drukkerij Steenlandt and distributed through Waffen-SS recruitment offices (Ergänzungsstelle), such brochures combined political messaging with imagery and rhetoric aimed at mobilizing Flemish men for the Eastern Front. Today, these items are studied as primary-source material illustrating occupation-era propaganda and the mechanisms of recruitment within German-controlled Europe.