After 18 days of fighting, the Belgian army, along with King Leopold III, surrendered and the country was placed under German occupation. The Belgian government fled, first to France and then to the United Kingdom, where it formed a government in exile in London. The national Belgian radio station, the Institut National Belge de Radiodiffusion (INR) sabotaged its transmitters and was banned by the Germans[3] though many of INR's employees followed the government to London.[4]