![Louvain1915](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0b/Louvain1915.jpg)
The Rape of Belgium was a series of systematic
war crimes, especially
mass murder and
deportation and enslavement, by
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
troops against
Belgian civilians during the
invasion
An invasion is a Offensive (military), military offensive in which large numbers of combatants of one geopolitics, geopolitical Legal entity, entity aggressively enter territory (country subdivision), territory owned by another such entity, gen ...
and
occupation of Belgium
Occupation commonly refers to:
*Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment
*Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces
*Military occupation, th ...
in
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.
The neutrality of Belgium had been guaranteed by the
Treaty of London (1839)
The Treaty of London of 1839, was signed on 19 April 1839 between the Concert of Europe, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Belgium. It was a direct follow-up to the 1831 Treaty of the XVIII Articles, which the Nether ...
, which had been signed by
Prussia
Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved by an em ...
. However, the German
Schlieffen Plan
The Schlieffen Plan (german: Schlieffen-Plan, ) is a name given after the First World War to German war plans, due to the influence of Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen and his thinking on an invasion of France and Belgium, which began on ...
required that German armed forces pass through Belgium (thus violating Belgium's neutrality) in order to outflank the French Army, concentrated in eastern France. The German Chancellor
Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg
Theobald Theodor Friedrich Alfred von Bethmann Hollweg (29 November 1856 – 1 January 1921) was a German politician who was the chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He oversaw the German entry into World War I. According to biog ...
dismissed the treaty of 1839 as a "scrap of paper". Throughout the war, the German army systematically engaged in numerous atrocities against the civilian population of Belgium, including the intentional destruction of civilian property; German soldiers murdered over 6,000 Belgian civilians, and 17,700 died during expulsion, deportation, imprisonment, or death sentence by court.
[Annuaire statistique de la Belgique et du Congo Belge 1915–1919. Bruxelles. 1922 p.100](_blank)
/ref> The Wire of Death
The Wire of Death ( nl, Dodendraad, german: Todesdraht, french: Fil De La Mort) was a lethal electric fence created by the German military to control the Dutch–Belgian frontier after the occupation of Belgium during the First World War.
Ter ...
, maintained by the German Army to kill civilians trying to flee the occupation, was used to murder over 3,000 Belgian civilians, and 120,000 were enslaved and deported to Germany. German forces destroyed 25,000 homes and other buildings in 837 communities in 1914 alone, and 1.5 million Belgians (20% of the entire population) fled from the invading German army.[Lipkes J. (2007) ''Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914'', Leuven University Press]
War crimes
In some places, particularly Liège
Liège ( , , ; wa, Lîdje ; nl, Luik ; german: Lüttich ) is a major city and municipality of Wallonia and the capital of the Belgian province of Liège.
The city is situated in the valley of the Meuse, in the east of Belgium, not far from b ...
, Andenne and Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...
, but firstly Dinant
Dinant () is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia located in the Namur Province, province of Namur, Belgium. On the shores of river Meuse, in the Ardennes, it lies south-east of Brussels, south ...
, atrocities were premeditated. In Dinant, the German army believed the inhabitants were as dangerous as the French soldiers themselves.[Beckett, I.F.W. (ed., 1988) ''The Roots of Counter-Insurgency'', Blandford Press, London. ]
Victimization of civilians
German troops, afraid of Belgian guerrilla fighters, or ("free shooters"), burned homes and murdered civilians throughout eastern and central Belgium, including Aarschot (156 murdered), Andenne (211 murdered), Seilles
Seilles ( wa, Seye) is a village of Wallonia and a district of the municipality of Andenne, located in the province of Namur, Belgium.
The village church is dedicated to Saint Stephen. Its tower and nave
The nave () is the central part ...
, Tamines
Tamines ( wa, Tamene) is a village of Wallonia and a district of the municipality of Sambreville, located in the province of Namur, Belgium.
During the Middle Ages, there was a seat of an alderman in the village, which had strong connections to t ...
(383 murdered), and Dinant
Dinant () is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia located in the Namur Province, province of Namur, Belgium. On the shores of river Meuse, in the Ardennes, it lies south-east of Brussels, south ...
(674 murdered). German soldiers murdered Belgian civilians indiscriminately and with impunity, with victims including men, women, and children. In the Province of Brabant
The Province of Brabant (, , ) was a province in Belgium from 1830 to 1995. It was created in 1815 as South Brabant, part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1995, it was split into the Dutch-speaking Flemish Brabant, the French-speak ...
, nuns were forcibly stripped naked under the pretext that they were spies or men in disguise. In and around Aarschot, between August 19 and the recapture of the town by September 9, German soldiers repeatedly raped Belgian women. Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ag ...
was nearly as ubiquitous as murder, arson and looting, if never as visible.
Sack of Leuven
On 25 August 1914, the German army ravaged the city of Leuven
Leuven (, ) or Louvain (, , ; german: link=no, Löwen ) is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the historic ...
, deliberately burning the university library
An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution and serves two complementary purposes: to support the curriculum and the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic librar ...
, destroying approximately 230,000 books, 950 manuscripts, and 800 incunabula
In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum (plural incunables or incunabula, respectively), is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were pro ...
. German soldiers burned down civilian homes and shot citizens where they stood, with over 2,000 buildings destroyed and 10,000 inhabitants displaced. The Germans looted and transferred large quantities of strategic materials, foodstuffs and modern industrial equipment to Germany during 1914. These actions brought worldwide condemnation. (There were also several friendly fire
In military terminology, friendly fire or fratricide is an attack by belligerent or neutral forces on friendly troops while attempting to attack enemy/hostile targets. Examples include misidentifying the target as hostile, cross-fire while en ...
incidents between groups of German soldiers during the confusion.)[
]
Death toll
The Germans were responsible for the deaths of 23,700 Belgian civilians, (6,000 Belgians murdered, 17,700 died during expulsion, deportation, in prison or sentenced to death by court) and caused further non-fatalities of 10,400 permanent and 22,700 temporary victims, with 18,296 children becoming war orphans. Military losses were 26,338 killed, died from injuries or accidents, 14,029 died from disease, or went missing.
Industrial dismantlement
As raw material usually imported from abroad dried up, more firms laid off workers. Unemployment became a major problem and increased reliance on charity distributed by civil institutions and organizations. As many as 650,000 people were unemployed between 1915 and 1918.
The German authorities used the unemployment crisis to loot industrial machinery from Belgian factories, which was either sent to Germany intact or melted down. The German policies enacted by the Imperial German General Government of Belgium
The Imperial German General Government of Belgium (german: Kaiserliches Deutsches Generalgouvernement Belgien) was a German Army occupation administration which administered one of the three separate occupation zones established in German-occu ...
would later create major problems for Belgian economic recovery after the end of the war.
Wartime propaganda
Agreeing with the analysis of historian Susan Kingsley Kent, historian Nicoletta Gullace writes that "the invasion of Belgium, with its very real suffering, was nevertheless represented in a highly stylized way that dwelt on perverse sexual acts, lurid mutilations, and graphic accounts of child abuse of often dubious veracity." In Britain, many patriotic publicists propagated these stories on their own. For example, popular writer William Le Queux
William Tufnell Le Queux ( , ; 2 July 1864 – 13 October 1927) was an Anglo-French journalist and writer. He was also a diplomat (honorary consul for San Marino), a traveller (in Europe, the Balkans and North Africa), a flying buff who officia ...
described the German army as "one vast gang of Jack-the-Rippers", and described in graphic detail events such as a governess hanged naked and mutilated, the bayoneting of a small baby, or the "screams of dying women", raped and "horribly mutilated" by German soldiers, accusing them of mutilating the hands, feet, or breasts of their victims.
Gullace argues that "British propagandists were eager to move as quickly as possible from an explanation of the war that focused on the murder of an Austrian archduke and his wife by Serbian nationalists to the morally unambiguous question of the invasion of neutral Belgium". In support of her thesis, she quotes from two letters of Lord Bryce
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce, (10 May 1838 – 22 January 1922), was a British academic, jurist, historian, and Liberal politician. According to Keoth Robbins, he was a widely-traveled authority on law, government, and history whose expe ...
. In the first letter Bryce writes "There must be something fatally wrong with our so-called civilization for this Ser an cause so frightful a calamity has descended on all Europe". In a subsequent letter Bryce writes "The one thing we have to comfort us in this war is that we are all absolutely convinced of the justice of the cause, and of our duty, once Belgium had been invaded, to take up the sword".
Although the infamous German phrase "scrap of paper" (referring to the 1839 Treaty of London) galvanized a large segment of British intellectuals in support of the war, in more proletarian circles this imagery had less impact. For example, Labour politician Ramsay MacDonald upon hearing about it, declared that "Never did we arm our people and ask them to give up their lives for a less good cause than this". British army recruiters reported problems in explaining the origins of the war in legalistic terms.
As the German advance in Belgium progressed, British newspapers started to publish stories on German atrocities. The British press, "quality
Quality may refer to:
Concepts
*Quality (business), the ''non-inferiority'' or ''superiority'' of something
*Quality (philosophy), an attribute or a property
*Quality (physics), in response theory
*Energy quality, used in various science discipli ...
" and tabloid alike, showed less interest in the "endless inventory of stolen property and requisitioned goods" that constituted the bulk of the official Belgian Reports. Instead, accounts of rape and bizarre mutilations flooded the British press. The intellectual discourse on the "scrap of paper" was then mixed with the more graphic imagery depicting Belgium as a brutalized woman, exemplified by the cartoons of Louis Raemaekers
Louis Raemaekers (April 6, 1869 – July 26, 1956) was a Dutch painter and editorial cartoonist for the Amsterdam newspaper ''De Telegraaf'' during World War I, noted for his anti-German stance.
Early life
He was born and grew up in Roermond, ...
, whose works were widely syndicated in the US.
Part of the press, such as the editor of ''The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' and Edward Tyas Cook
Sir Edward Tyas Cook (12 May 1857 – 30 September 1919) was an English journalist, biographer, and man of letters.
Biography
Born in Brighton, Cook was the youngest son of Silas Kemball Cook, secretary of the Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich, ...
, expressed concerns that haphazard stories, a few of which were proven as outright fabrications, would weaken the powerful imagery, and asked for a more structured approach. The German and American press questioned the veracity of many stories, and the fact that the British Press Bureau did not censor the stories put the British government in a delicate position. The Bryce Committee was eventually appointed in December 1914 to investigate. Bryce was considered highly suitable to lead the effort because of his prewar pro-German attitudes and his good reputation in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, where he had served as Britain's ambassador, as well as his legal expertise.
The commission's investigative efforts were, however, limited to previously recorded testimonies. Gullace argues that "the commission was in essence called upon to conduct a mock inquiry that would substitute the good name of Lord Bryce for the thousands of missing names of the anonymous victims whose stories appeared in the pages of the report". The commission published its report in May 1915. Charles Masterman
Charles Frederick Gurney Masterman Privy Council of the United Kingdom, PC (24 October 1873 – 17 November 1927) was a British radical Liberal Party (UK), Liberal Party politician, intellectual and man of letters. He worked closely with such ...
, the director of the British War Propaganda Bureau Wellington House is the more common name for Britain's War Propaganda Bureau, which operated during the First World War from Wellington House, a building on Buckingham Gate, London, which was the headquarters of the National Insurance Commission b ...
, wrote to Bryce: "Your report has ''swept'' America. As you probably know even the most skeptical declare themselves converted, just because it is signed by you!" Translated in ten languages by June, the report was the basis for much subsequent wartime propaganda and was used as a sourcebook for many other publications, ensuring that the atrocities became a leitmotif of the war's propaganda up to the final "Hang the Kaiser
Hang or Hanging may refer to:
People
* Choe Hang (disambiguation), various people
* Luciano Hang (born 1962/1963), Brazilian billionaire businessman
* Ren Hang (disambiguation), various people
Law
* Hanging, a form of capital punishment
Arts, e ...
" campaign.
For example, in 1917 Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Colleg ...
published ''The German Terror in Belgium'', which emphasized the most graphic accounts of "authentic" German sexual depravity, such as: "In the market-place of Gembloux
Gembloux (; wa, Djiblou; nl, Gembloers, ) is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Namur, Belgium.
On 1 January 2006 the municipality had 21,964 inhabitants. The total area is 95.86 km², yielding a population dens ...
a Belgian despatch-rider saw the body of a woman pinned to the door of a house by a sword driven through her chest. The body was naked and the breasts had been cut off."
Much of the wartime publishing in Britain was in fact aimed at attracting American support. A 1929 article in ''The Nation
''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper tha ...
'' asserted: "In 1916 the Allies were putting forth every possible atrocity story to win neutral sympathy and American support. We were fed every day ..stories of Belgian children whose hands were cut off, the Canadian soldier who was crucified to a barn door, the nurses whose breasts were cut off, the German habit of distilling glycerine and fat from their dead in order to obtain lubricants; and all the rest."
The fourth Liberty bond
A liberty bond (or liberty loan) was a war bond that was sold in the United States to support the Allied cause in World War I. Subscribing to the bonds became a symbol of patriotic duty in the United States and introduced the idea of financi ...
drive of 1918 employed a "Remember Belgium" poster depicting the silhouette of a young Belgian girl being dragged by a German soldier on the background of a burning village; historian Kimberly Jensen interprets this imagery as "They are alone in the night, and rape seems imminent. The poster demonstrates that leaders drew on the American public's knowledge of and assumptions about the use of rape in the German invasion of Belgium."
In his book ''Roosevelt and Hitler'', Robert E. Herzstein stated that "The Germans could not seem to find a way to counteract powerful British propaganda about the 'Rape of Belgium' and other alleged atrocities". About the legacy of the propaganda, Gullace commented that "one of the tragedies of the British effort to manufacture truth is the way authentic suffering was rendered suspect by fabricated tales".
Aftermath
Later analysis
In the 1920s, the war crimes of August 1914 were often dismissed as British propaganda. Later, numerous scholars have examined the original documents and concluded that large-scale atrocities did occur, while acknowledging that other stories were fabrications. There is a debate between those who believe the German army acted primarily out of paranoia, in retaliation for real or believed incidents involving resistance actions by Belgian civilians, and those (including Lipkes) who emphasize additional causes, suggesting an association with German actions in the Nazi era.
According to Larry Zuckerman, the German occupation far exceeded the constraints international law imposed on an occupying power. A heavy-handed German military administration sought to regulate every detail of daily life, both on a personal level with travel restraints and collective punishment
Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member of that group, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends and neighbors of the perpetrator. Because ind ...
, and on the economic level by harnessing the Belgian industry to German advantage and by levying repeated massive indemnities on the Belgian provinces. Before the war Belgium produced 4.4 percent of world commerce. More than 100,000 Belgian workers were forcibly deported to Germany to work in the war economy, and to Northern France to build roads and other military infrastructure for the German army.
Historical studies
Recent in-depth historical studies of German acts in Belgium include:
* ''The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I'' by Larry Zuckerman
* ''Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914'' by Jeff Lipkes
* ''German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial'' by John Horne and Alan Kramer.
* ''Schuldfragen. Belgischer Untergrundkrieg und deutsche Vergeltung im August 1914'' by Ulrich Keller
Horne and Kramer describe some of the motivations for German tactics, chiefly (but not only), the collective fear of a "People's War":
The same authors identify a number of contributory factors:
* inexperience leading to lack of discipline amongst German soldiers
* drunkenness
* 'friendly fire' incidents arising from panic
* frequent collisions with Belgian and French rearguards leading to confusion
* rage at the stubborn and at first successful defense of Liège during the Battle of Liège
A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and for ...
* rage at Belgian resistance at all, not seen as a people entitled to defend themselves
* prevailing near hatred towards the Roman Catholic clergy in Belgium and France
* ambiguous or inadequate German field service regulations regarding civilians
* failure of German logistics later leading to uncontrolled looting
Recent studies conducted by Ulrich Keller have put the reasoning of Horne and Kramer into question. Keller claims that the reason for the brutal German behavior in the first few months of the invasion was due to the existence of a substantial Belgian partisan movement. He claims the organized resistance was led by the Garde Civique. As evidence he provides German medical records which show a substantial number of German soldiers wounded by shotguns which were neither in use by the Germans nor by French nor Belgian rearguard units as well as records by the Belgian government.
Keller's claims have led to an argument among historians which led to a conference being held in 2017. The conference was jointly organized by Sönke Neitzel, Oliver Janz, and Peter Hoeres and focused on the German behaviour in Belgium during the opening stages of the First World War. During the conference the following historians were able to present their arguments:
* Ulrich Keller (Santa Barbara)
* John Horne (Dublin) and Alan Kramer (Dublin)
* Alexander Watson (London)
* Oswald Überegger (Bozen)
* Peter Lieb (Potsdam)
* Axel Tixhon (Namur)
* Larissa Wegner (Freiburg)
In sum, the conference demonstrated the need for additional research, particularly on the Belgian role in 1914 and the key question how widespread the irregular resistance had been. The evidence provided by Keller hints at a more than merely sporadic resistance by irregular Belgian fighters.
Legacy
At a commemoration ceremony on May 6, 2001, in the Belgian town of Dinant
Dinant () is a City status in Belgium, city and Municipalities in Belgium, municipality of Wallonia located in the Namur Province, province of Namur, Belgium. On the shores of river Meuse, in the Ardennes, it lies south-east of Brussels, south ...
, attended by Belgium's defense minister Andre Flahaut, World War II veterans, and the ambassadors of Germany, France and Britain, state secretary of the German Ministry of Defence, Walter Kolbow
Walter Kolbow (born 27 April 1944, in Spittal an der Drau) is a former German politician of the SPD.
He was Parliamentary State Secretary (1998-2005) in the Federal Ministry of Defense, as well as deputy chairman of SPD Parliamentary Group in ...
, officially apologized for a massacre of 674 civilians that took place on August 23, 1914, in the aftermath of the Battle of Dinant
The Battle of Dinant was an engagement fought by French and German forces in and around the Belgian town of Dinant in the First World War, during the German invasion of Belgium. The French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) a ...
:
Mr Kolbow placed a wreath and bowed before a monument to the victims bearing the inscription: ''To the 674 Dinantais martyrs, innocent victims of German barbarism''.
See also
* Destruction of Kalisz
The destruction and sacking of the city of Kalisz ( pl, zburzenie Kalisza) by German troops took place from 2 August until 22 August 1914 at the beginning of World War I. The event is also known as the Pogrom of Kalisz or Poland's Louvain (see '' ...
(1914)
* Herero and Namaqua genocide
The Herero and Namaqua genocide or the Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged by the German Empire against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama in German South West Africa (now Namibia). I ...
(1904–1907) – an earlier atrocity in German South West Africa
German South West Africa (german: Deutsch-Südwestafrika) was a colony of the German Empire from 1884 until 1915, though Germany did not officially recognise its loss of this territory until the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. With a total area of ...
(now Namibia
Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...
)
* Leipzig War Crimes Trials
* Manifesto of the Ninety-Three
The "Manifesto of the Ninety-Three" (originally "To the Civilized World" by "Professors of Germany") is a 4 October 1914 proclamation by 93 prominent Germans supporting Germany in the start of World War I. The Manifesto galvanized support for the w ...
a proclamation endorsed by 93 prominent German intellectuals in 1914 in support of German military actions.
References
Further reading
Books
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
* Ulrich Keller, Schuldfragen. Belgischer Untergrundkrieg und deutsche Vergeltung im August 1914. Mit einem Vorwort von Gerd Krumeich, Schöningh: Paderborn 2017,
*
*
*
* Gunter Spraul: Der Franktireurkrieg 1914. Untersuchungen zum Verfall einer Wissenschaft und zum Umgang mit nationalen Mythen. Frank & Timme 2016, .
*
*
Journals
*
*
* Gullace, Nicoletta F. "Allied Propaganda and World War I: Interwar Legacies, Media Studies, and the Politics of War Guilt" ''History Compass'' (Sept 2011) 9#9 pp 686–700
*
*
*
* sees the Bryce report as exaggerated propaganda
External links
* Wegner, Larissa
Occupation during the War (Belgium and France)
, in
1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War
* Kramer, Alan
Atrocities
in
1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War
* Debruyne, Emmanuel
Intimate Relations between Occupiers and Occupied (Belgium and France)
, in
1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rape of Belgium
1914 in Belgium
Belgium–Germany relations
German occupation of Belgium during World War I
Mass murder in 1914
Slavery in Europe
War crimes in Belgium
World War I crimes by Imperial Germany
World War I massacres
World War I propaganda