When the German armies marched through Belgium during the First World War, they indulged
themselves in atrocities against the Belgian population.
Soon stories of mass murder, r*pe, pillage, mutilation, rape and aron appeared in the
Allied newspapers.
To what extent these stories were true?
And to what extent these were exaggerated?
In this video I'm gonna tell you everything you need to know about the infamous R*pe of
Belgium: the German war crimes in 1914 against the Belgian population.
Good to have you back on the channel.
If you're new: I'm Stefan, history teacher.
I like to cover history on location.
And I'm now in the Belgian city of Leuven (Louvain).
A city that suffered a terrible ordeal.
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This topic is of great interest to me because back in the day, when I studied history, I
did my BA thesis about this topic.
The German plan to invade France was named the Schlieffen Plan.
The idea was to make a circular movement across Belgium to encircle the French troops.
On 2 August the German ambassador handed the Belgian government an ultimatum where they
demanded free passage through Belgium.
Early that morning German troops had already invaded Luxembourg.
Belgium refused and on 4 August German troops crossed the German-Belgian border.
The Schlieffen Plan was put into action and it was all about speed.
There had to be no delay.
Atrocities began as soon as the German invasion of Belgium started.
In Andennes over 200 Belgians were shot.
In Tamines over 300.
Near the Belgian city of Dinant German troops were repairing a bridge were fired at.
On 23 August 1914 in Dinant over 600 civilians were shot and killed.
We are talking about men, women and children.
In Tamines, apart from executions, Belgian civilians were used as human shields against
the Belgian and French troops.
Often it happened Belgian civilians were taken hostage and when Belgian soldiers refused
to surrender these hostages were shot.
Most infamous was the Sack of Louvain which occurred in August 1914.
The Germans captured this city on 19 August.
Some days later panic was caused behind the German lines.
And a German commander ordered punitive measures.
Louvain was ransacked for five days.
Over 200 civilians were shot, some clergy among them and many buildings were set on
fire.
Most infamous was what happened to the building you see behind me, because this here is the
University Library.
The Germans were thinking there were resistance fighters in the basement, there weren't, nevertheless
they set fire to the building.
And as a result of this over 300.000 ancient documents went up in flames.
Many other towns were set ablaze as well.
Women were r*ped but the accounts on that are less clear.
This is due to the fact many surviving women out of shame didn’t share their experiences
to the outside world.
Also, counting bodies of the dead gives us a clear picture of how many civilians were
killed.
So does counting the number of buildings destroyed.
Counting rape victims is much harder.
Survivors barely spoke about it.
But why?
Why were the Germans using to much violence when they advanced through Belgium?
To understand that we need to look at the previous war: the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1).
Then the German troops were harassed by Francs-tireurs (free shooters) which were French irregulars
that harassed the German troops.
And the memory of these Francs-tireurs lingered in the minds of the German soldiers.
As a result of this it was blown out of proportions.
Also don't forget that many German troops were inexperienced recruits, phrone to these
beliefs and these actions.
I read that officers of the List Regiment (the regiment Adolf Hitler served in) were
handing out ropes to hang possible resistance fighters.
This became a self-fulfilling prophecy because then you assume these resistance fighters
are out there to look for you and you're gonna look for them.
Most of the attacks that were attributed to the alleged partisans were either Belgian
or French snipers or friendly fire.
If civilians had taken matters into their own hand, these were only isolated incidents.
Not a widespread fifth column, the Germans claimed it was the case.
On the German side however we cannot say their atrocities were carried out incidentally.
First of all, executing hundreds of civilians – what happened on several occasions – definitely
needs some organisation and structure and cannot be labelled as incidental.
Also, it has been proven that high military command tolerated and even encouraged these
war crimes.
It more or less ended because of the international pressure.
Other direct causes that historians Horne and Kramer point out were drunkenness and
the frustration for enemy resistance.
Soon after the first Belgian civilians were mass executed international newspapers reported
about these events.
But it went further.
The acounts of German atrocities were blown up out of proportions.
Stories of German soldiers impaling babies on their bayonets and mass rape emerged.
These stories were used to fuel the Allied cause for war.
In Britain and later the US these stories were used for recruitment of troops as you
can see on these posters.
Historian G.J.
Meyer had this to say: “The Germans were reported to be cutting
off the hands of French boys so they could never become soldiers, to be raping children
and bayoneting infants.
[…] Lying was epidemic—newspapers ran old photographs of Russian pogroms against
Jews as evidence of Germany’s “rape of Belgium”—and officials with access to
the facts were not immune.”
So, 6000 Belgian and North French civilians died during the German invasion of 1914.
Buildings were destroyed and many Belgians fled.
And these crimes are horrible, but these crimes shouldn't be blown out of proportion as it
was the case with the Allied propaganda.
It would be incorrect to state the German soldiers indulged themselves in large scale
r*pes and mutilation.
Like the Allied press portrayed.
On the flipside, many people think that because of the Allied propaganda all these stories
are false which also wasn't the case.