De Groote Oorlog

Despite king Albert I's desperate efforts to keep out of the looming Great War, neutral Belgium was run-over by the Germans on the way to France, except the Yser corner at sea, which was flooded, created the least comfortable trenches for four years, but at least the Belgian troops were spared senseless mass wave attacks on enemy lines. The 'king-knight' achieve popularity, and after the German capitulation spear-headed some social reforms, especially the general single vote for men, while the scarcity of labor finally allowed better conditions from the reconstruction, even paid holidays and restricting working hours. Hobbies became popular, and u-youth movements, part of the fertile ground for the rise the 1930s of right-wing movements ready to side with Fascism in World War II, spurred by the Great Depression after the 1929 stock crash caused world economy to go in a downward spiral with mass unemployment.