Unión Nacional Flamenca

Unión Nacional Flamenca is depicted as an ultranationalist, pro-Nazi Flemish party whose rapid electoral rise helps Jan Schmitt de Wandaleer feel at home in Europe and whose political milieu leads him toward armed collaboration. The novel connects its promise of Flemish belonging to a larger project of a Europe united under Hitler, showing how national identity becomes a route into the Nazi cause.

Political Character and Electoral Rise

In May 1936, only about twenty days after Jan had arrived in Europe, Unión Nacional Flamenca won sixteen seats in the general election. The result was striking for a newly formed party, though its Walloon counterpart, Partido Rex, performed even better with twenty-one seats. Together, the parties’ success seemed to Jan a promise of future glories and confirmation that he had found his place.

The party is characterized as ultranationalist and pro-Nazi. Its appeal is therefore presented not merely as a matter of Flemish identity: Jan understands it as part of a political vision of Europe under the Führer’s authority. The narrative places the party’s electoral success at the point where his personal search for belonging meets an expanding fascist movement.

Jan Schmitt de Wandaleer and the Party

Jan is associated with Unión Nacional Flamenca through his membership in the same party as a military officer who processes his enlistment. When questioned about his German father and his double surname, Jan insists that he was born in Buenos Aires and had always used the name Schmitt de Wandaleer there. He declares himself equally German and Flemish, and explains that, although he could have joined another SS division, he chose the Flemish Legion out of pride in both sides of his ancestry.

That answer turns family background into a political claim. Jan’s Flemish identity does not displace his German identity; he presents the two as complementary, and his choice of military formation makes that combined inheritance a reason for service. The officer’s familiarity with him through their shared party membership helps make the enlistment process straightforward.

From Political Belonging to Military Service

Jan’s attachment to the party gives him the signal he had been waiting for: a reason to feel at home in Europe. He soon decides that Antwerp is as good a place as any from which to fight for a Europe unified under Hitler, abandoning his earlier thought of moving to Hamburg. The party’s success thus precedes and accompanies a shift from political identification to a more direct commitment to the Nazi project.

After Jan becomes a soldier in the Flemish Legion, he returns home, embraces his mother Marijke, and asks whether she is proud of him. She is not. The contrast makes clear that Jan’s sense of political belonging does not restore the family bonds damaged by his choices: for Marijke, he had been her sole comfort after his sister Josefine left, while he interprets enlistment as fulfillment and imagines that his father would have been proud.

Narrative Significance

Unión Nacional Flamenca links an electoral moment to an individual passage into collaboration. Its sixteen seats matter to Jan less as a parliamentary tally than as evidence that the political future he desires is arriving. The novel traces how the promise of a unified Europe under Nazi authority can be experienced as personal belonging, while the party’s association with the Flemish Legion gives that allegiance a military consequence.

The party’s role is shown through Jan’s choices and their effects rather than through an account of its internal organization. That narrow focus keeps the emphasis on the conversion of ancestry and political affiliation into a claim to serve: Jan calls himself German and Flemish, and the enlistment officer accepts those identities as grounds for his chosen formation.