Hubert Marie Eugène Pierlot (, 23 December 1883 – 13 December 1963) was a Belgian politician and Prime Minister of Belgium, serving between 1939 and 1945. Pierlot, a lawyer and jurist, served in World War I before entering politics in the 1920s. A member of the Catholic Party, Pierlot became Prime Minister in 1939, shortly before Belgium entered World War II. In this capacity, he headed the Belgian government in exile, first from France and later Britain, while Belgium was under German occupation. During the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, a violent disagreement broke out between Pierlot and King Leopold III over whether the King should follow the orders of his ministers and go into exile or surrender to the German Army. Pierlot considered Leopold's subsequent surrender a breach of the Constitution and encouraged the parliament to declare Leopold unfit to reign. The confrontation provoked a lasting animosity between Pierlot and other conservatives, who supported the King's position and considered the government's exile to be cowardly.
While in exile in London between 1940 and 1944, Pierlot served as both the prime minister of Belgium and minister of Defence and played an important role in wartime negotiations between the Allied powers, laying the foundation for Belgian post-war reconstruction. After the liberation of Belgium in September 1944, Pierlot returned to Brussels where, against his wishes, he headed a fresh government of national unity until February 1945. Criticism from the political left and the failure of the new government to deal with the serious issues facing the country following the liberation led to the fall of the government in February 1945 and he was replaced by the socialist Achille Van Acker. Pierlot's stance against Leopold III during the war made him a controversial figure during his lifetime and he was widely disliked in the same royalist and conservative circles from which his own Catholic Party (later the Christian Social Party) drew most of its support. He retired from politics in 1946 amid the crisis of the Royal Question, surrounding whether Leopold could return to the Belgian throne, and died peacefully in 1963. After his death, Pierlot's reputation improved as the decisions he took during the war were reconsidered by historians.
Birth and early career
Pierlot was born in Cugnon, a small village between Bertrix and Bouillon, in the Belgian Province of Luxembourg on 23 December 1883. His parents belonged to an eminent and wealthy Catholic family which was part of the Belgian conservative establishment. His brother, Jean Pierlot, would later become a member of the Belgian Resistance during the war and died in a German concentration camp in 1944.
Hubert Pierlot was educated in religious schools in Maredsous and later attended the prestigious Jesuit Collège Saint-Michel secondary school in Brussels. He studied at the Catholic University of Louvain where he received a licence in Political Science and a doctorate in Law. During his early life, he travelled to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. He later married Marie-Louise ( De Kinder) and had seven children. With the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914, he volunteered for the Belgian infantry as a private. He served at the Battle of the Yser and on the Yser Front where he was decorated for valour. By the end of the war, he had reached the rank of Lieutenant and was serving in the 20th Regiment of the Line.
After the war, Pierlot joined the Catholic Party (Parti catholique), the main centre-right party in Belgium and one of the three that dominated Belgian political life. The Catholic Party, which was considered the party of stability and the establishment, was extremely electorally successful during the interwar period and headed a series of coalition governments. On 23 December 1925, Pierlot entered parliament as a member of the Chamber of Deputies representing Neufchâteau-Virton but left just a week later to become a senator. He served as provincial senator for Luxembourg from 1926 to 1936 and as directly elected senator for the same province between 1936 and 1946. He received a reputation for his oratorical abilities and for personal sincerity during the late 1920s.
In the successive Catholic government of the interwar period, he served as the minister of Internal Affairs (1934–35), minister of Agriculture (1934–35; 1936–39), and minister of Foreign Affairs (1939). He first led a coalition of Catholics and Socialists, and then one of Catholics and Liberals.