August Borms

August Borms
Borms (left) and Frans Daels giving the Nazi salute (22nd IJzerbedevaart, 24 August 1941)
Born	(1878-04-14)April 14, 1878 Sint-Niklaas, Belgium
Died	April 12, 1946(1946-04-12) (aged 67) Etterbeek, Belgium
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Occupation	Academic, politician
Home town	Antwerp
Political party	Frontpartij
Movement	Flemish Movement
Criminal charge	Collaborationism
Criminal penalty	Death penalty
Criminal status	Commuted after the First World War Carried out after the Second World War

August Borms (14 April 1878 in Sint-Niklaas – 12 April 1946 in Etterbeek) was a Flemish nationalist politician active in Belgium during the first half of the twentieth century. He belonged to the far right of the Flemish movement. Borms collaborated with Germany during both the First and Second World Wars and was sentenced to death at the end of each conflict. He was not however executed until 1946, having had his sentence quashed the first time.

Borms was a prominent figure in Antwerp and served as a professor at the Royal Lycee in the city. He was part of a Flemish delegation to Berlin in 1917 that sought to work with the Germans and was instrumental in the establishment of the Raad van Vlaanderen, a provisional assembly body that ratified collaboration with Germany by asking them to oversee the separation of Flemish government apparatus from that of Belgium. In 1918 this body declared the independence of Flanders with Borms as the leader of the new government. Although he collaborated closely with Germany, Borms did not support unity with that country, insisting that he was working with the Germans only to facilitate the establishment of a fully independent Flanders that would nonetheless be allied to Germany.

Borms was initially sentenced to death for his collaboration was the Germans. After an intervention from a sympathetic cleric attached to the German Foreign Ministry, Papal nuncio Eugenio Pacelli intervened in support of Borms, writing a letter to the Belgian authorities that presented the Flemish leader as an idealist and argued that his frequent visits to Germany during the war had been to see Flemish prisoners rather than to discuss collaboration. He added that Borms was a staunch Roman Catholic who had never attacked the church, something that should be taken into account by an avowedly Catholic country like Belgium. As a result of this and other campaigns his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.