Following Belgium’s surrender in May 1940, the Belgian socialist leader Hendrik (Henri) De Man was convinced the Germans would be victorious in Europe. In his “Manifesto” of 28 June 1940, he disbanded the socialist party and aimed, as soon as Belgium had gained a degree of independence from Hitler, to establish an authoritarian, corporative structure around King Leopold III.
When it became clear that Belgium would not recover its political sovereignty and that De Man was politically useless to the Nazis, he went into voluntary exile, first in Vichy France and later Switzerland.
In 1946 he was convicted in absentia of treason and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
quoted from Wouter Steenhaut, 'The Archives of Hendrik de Man. A Tragedy' in: A Usable Collection (Amsterdam 2014) 170-186