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More Responsibilities. One day in 1934, father Albert, an ardent mountain-climber, fell to his death from a cliff near Namur. A year and a half later the new King Leopold was motoring with Queen Astrid near Lucerne, he at the wheel and she with a map in her lap. When his wife asked a question, the monarch leaned over and the car swerved. It plunged down a grassy slope, hit two trees and fell into the lake. The Queen fractured her skull, died 20 minutes later. The King hurtled through the car's windshield. To the first policeman who came by asking his identity, he answered in a dazed voice: "Rethy, Mr. & Mrs. Rethy" (the name often used by the royal family when traveling).
Without his father's counsel and his Queen's popular touch, Leopold began to get himself into stupid situations. He insisted on writing his own speeches about colonial policy and economic affairs. Politicians groused that in England the constitutional monarch left speeches to his ministers. Leopold antagonized Parliament by refusing to grant its members the customary honors and titles.
He dressed down his ministers publicly and created a serious cabinet crisis by talking of firing them for a group of "technicians" who would carry out the royal policy. "Responsibilities are in wrong places," he complained. "The head of state is often obliged to sanction decisions in which he has no part."
He even made his own foreign policy. After Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland, he led in scrapping the old alliance with Britain and France for a new policy of neutrality.
To Rule or Reign. Leopold's biggest mistake was his conviction about the outcome of World War II. In March 1940 he told a visitor: "I am as anti-Hitler as you are. But keep in mind that Germany will win the war." The King seemed right when the German army engulfed Belgium after 18 hopeless days of resistance. He refused to follow his government to exile in England. He surrendered his army. In both these actions he showed his stubborn will to rule rather than reign.
Leopold's case has been summed up by wartime Premier Hubert Pierlot. "The King is not a traitor," he wrote in 1947. "We have never doubted his good intentions. There is nothing unconstitutional in a King's being wrong, provided he follows the advice of his government. In this case, his ministers take the responsibility for his acts. But the King has acted on his own against the advice of his government . . . What is even more serious, he refrained from informing his ministers of his intentions ... A minister who bears the responsibility has a right to know the intentions of his King."
Private Affair. The Germans interned Leopold in the royal chateau at Laeken. He regarded himself as a prisoner of war, refused to exercise royal functions. He visited Hitler at Berchtesgaden; his purpose, he later said, was to get better treatment for the Belgians. It was at Laeken, in September 1941, that he married Mary Liliane Baels.