The Rape of Belgium And The Battle of Tannenberg I THE GREAT WAR - Week 5

August 28th 1914. Throughout August, 1914, as the war progressed in Belgium, France,

and Serbia, the Austrian and German high command either sanctioned or ignored the widespread

execution and rape of civilians and the sacking and burning of occupied towns. A shocked and

revolted world looked on.

My name is Indy Neidell. Welcome to the Great War.

Here’s where we stood on the battlefields of Europe at the beginning of the week:

In the west, there were three German armies- 750,000 men. The left flank was in Lorraine,

and the rest were marching through Belgium at 30 km per day, an amazing speed, and pretty

much slaughtering the French armies they encountered, and the British Expeditionary Force under

John French was approaching from the west. Okay? In the East, the Germans were on the

retreat out of East Prussia and the Russians were advancing.

Now, in the west, after all the victories of the past few weeks, things were looking

good for the Germans but their reputation was doing anything but that, and the atrocities

the German troops committed against civilians in the west grew and grew.

In Dinant, German soldiers repairing a bridge were fired on by a few Belgian civilians,

and as a reprisal over 600 Belgian men, women, and children were shot. On August 20th, it

happened in Andenne. There was even a printed announcement from German General von Bulow,

posted in Liege that read the following “The population on Andenne, after manifesting peaceful

intentions towards our troops, attacked them in the most treacherous manner. With my authorization

the general who commanded these troops has reduced the town to ashes and shot 110 persons.”

In Tamines, 384 men were rounded up near the church and shot.

In Rossignol 122 people were executed for supposedly supporting the French army, who

had just themselves been crushed there in battle.

There were dozens more such incidents, known collectively as “the Rape of Belgium”,

but in Leuven, though, it was completely out of control. The Germans had occupied Leuven

on August 19th, right? On the 25th, the Belgian army, coming from Antwerp, harassed the Germans,

but once this was over, the German command decided the people of Leuven were to blame,

so for the next five days the German troops executed hundreds of citizens of both sexes,

including many clergy, and burned the city and many of its famous medieval buildings.

In the international press there were horrible eyewitness accounts and even a headline in

the New York Tribune “Germans sack Louvain, women and clergy shot.”10,000 civilians

were driven from the city. In total over 6,000 civilians are known to have been killed in

cold blood in Belgium and France by Germans in the first weeks of the war.

Now, I have to point out that some people today believe that the charges of war crimes

against Germany in occupied Belgium and France are greatly exaggerated or even fabricated,

but this is completely at odds with contemporary evidence. And it’s important to note that

these crimes were not only tolerated by military command, but in many cases even sanctioned

by them.

Even some of the German newspapers, instead of denying or downplaying what happened, tried