Leopold was keen to find an accommodation with Germany in 1940, hoping that Belgium would remain as a unified and semi-autonomous state within a German-dominated Europe.[1] As part of this plan, in November 1940, Leopold visited Adolf Hitler, the Führer of Germany, in Berchtesgaden to ask for Belgian prisoners of war to be freed.[19] An agreement was not reached and Leopold returned to Belgium.[17] This fueled the belief that Leopold, who had expressed anti-Semitic views before the war, was collaborating with the Nazis rather than defending his country's interests.[20]