During World War II, Belgium was once again occupied by Germany. The Third Reich enacted laws to protect and encourage the Dutch language in Belgium and, generally, to propagate ill-feelings between Flemings and Francophones, e.g. by setting free only Flemish prisoners-of-war (see Flamenpolitik). The Nazis had no intentions of allowing the creation of an independent Flemish state or of a Greater Netherlands, and instead desired the complete annexation of not only Flanders (which they did de jure during the war through the establishment of a "Reichsgau Flandern" in late 1944), but all of the Low Countries as "racially Germanic" components of a Greater Germanic Reich.[18] Most [who?]