Committee of Secretaries-General

The Committee of Secretaries-General (French: Comité des Sécretaires-généraux, Dutch: Comité van de secretarissen-generaal) was a committee of senior civil servants and technocrats in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. It was formed shortly before the occupation to oversee the continued functioning of the civil service and state bureaucracy independently of the German military occupation administration.

The Committee formed an integral part of the policy of "lesser evil" (moindre mal) collaboration in which Belgian officials were required to seek compromises with German military demands in order to maintain a degree of administrative autonomy. It comprised the Secretaries-General of each of the major government departments. However, the German administration began to introduce new members from August 1940 including those such as Victor Leemans and Gérard Romsée [nl] who were sympathetic to authoritarianism. They helped to facilitate the more radical administrative reforms demanded by the Germans, although the Committee refused to involve itself in the deportation of Belgian Jews. As the visible face of the German administration, the Committee became more and more unpopular as the war progressed. Several of its members were prosecuted for collaboration after the Liberation of Belgium in September 1944 but several, including Leemans, subsequently pursued political careers in post-war Belgium.