Rape of Belgium
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The Rape of Belgium (August 1914) was series of atrocities committed by the German army in the opening months of World War I. At the outbreak of war, Belgium declared neutrality. However the German war plan, known as the Schlieffen Plan, called for Germany to violate this neutrality in order to gain the benefit of a faster approach into northern France. The invasion of Belgium violated the Treaty of London, 1839 that German foreign minister Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg dismissed as a "mere scrap of paper". The invaders terrorized the Belgians, shooting thousands of civilians and looting and burning scores of towns, including Leuven, which housed the country's preeminent university.
This caused outrage abroad and was cited by Great Britain as a reason for entering the war on France's side. The event also sparked what was many years of wartime propaganda -- in sensationalist war posters in Britain, the Germans were drawn as Huns or gorillas, completely dehumanized and immoral.
There were many outlandish charges of atrocities committed by the German army. One particularly nefarious charge seen early in the war in the British press involved the myth that the German "Hun" would cut off the hands of Belgian children (and in some instances impale Belgian babies on pikes). Perhaps the most famous charge against the Germans involved the city of Antwerp. Reported at the taking of Antwerp as the German army forcing the city's monks to ring the bells, the reports quickly morphed into the myth that the Germans murdered the monks for refusal to ring the bells of Antwerp and used the corpses as human "clappers".
[edit] External links
- H-Net Review of Horne & Kramer, The German Atrocities of 1914 : A History of Denial.
- Prof. John Horne, German War Crimes.
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