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594. The First World War- The Invasion of Belgium

The Rest Is History

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  • Germany’s Strategic Vulnerability
    • Germany faced severe strategic constraints: far fewer men and a smaller combined GDP than the Entente.
    • That demographic and economic imbalance explains the urgency and risky nature of German plans. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook So he is running the most modern, the most formidable military machine in the world. However, there are good grounds for fearing a conflagration, fearing that they might not win. Because if you’re fighting Russia, Russia’s population and therefore manpower is a third bigger than Germany’s and Austria-Hungary’s combined. And if the Russians are joined by France, Britain, and by Belgium, the so-called Entente will have almost 280 million people, when the central powers only 120 million. Tom Holland Dominic, also, of course, Russia and France are on either flank of Germany. So that’s the other huge anxiety, isn’t it? Dominic Sandbrook That they might be crushed between these two sides. The sense of being encircled, I think, is massively important to understanding the German mentality above all. Economically, so you take those two powers on the flanks, France and Russia, their combined GDP is much bigger than Germany’s and Austria’s. And they have far more soldiers. Six million soldiers, the Entente have. The central power is less than three and a half million. So if you’re von Moltke sitting in your spa thinking about theosophy and the occult, and you also make a little bit of time to think about this war, you know that in a long war, it’ll be really Hard for you to win. (Time 0:14:01)
  • Strategic Gamble Of Rapid Victory
    • Germany believed it could avoid a long war by swiftly defeating France first and then turning east to Russia.
    • This Schlieffen-derived gamble forced a brutal timetable and shaped the invasion through Belgium. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook Anyone who’s done this for GCSE or A-level in England will know about this. Now, this doesn’t mean that Germany was planning a war, as sometimes people think. Basically, all nations had contingency plans. The French had a plan called Plon du Set, which we’ll come to next time. But this Schlieffen plan, elaborated by Moltke’s predecessor, Graf Alfred von Schlieffen, they’ve revised it and revised it. And military historians basically spend their entire careers arguing about this plan, but to boil it down and make it very simple. Tom Holland It’s all about the Battle of Cannae, isn’t it? It is a model, a little bit on the Battle of Cannae. Because he was obsessed by it, encircling and wiping out superior enemies. Dominic Sandbrook So the premise of it is, look, we can’t win a long war. If we have a long war, there will probably be an economic collapse and a revolution, but they’re not wrong. So the priority is to knock one enemy out before turning on the other one. Now, we wouldn’t be able to knock the Russians out quickly because their army is inferior, but they have so many men. So we basically have to take on the French first. Now, we cannot do what we did in 1870-71. We can’t just go across the Franco-German border because the French have built these swanky new fortresses, Verdun, Nancy, Belfort, places like this, that stand in their way and they Will slow us down. So we have to find another way into France and that is through Belgium. Tom Holland And the brilliant thing about Belgium is it has a very dense railway network, so we’ll be able to move our troops really quickly. And Dominic, just to ask, the French, it never crosses their mind the Germans might do this, and so they don’t build forts along the frontier with Belgium. Dominic Sandbrook I think they, it’s, I mean, they’re not idiots, right? It’s not like they think it’s impossible the Germans could go through Belgium, but their priority is the forts along their own border, I guess. And building forts along the Belgian border would seem a bit weird because it would look as if you’re protecting yourselves against an invasion by the Belgians, which seems very implausible. Tom Holland Might be a threat to French self-esteem, I suppose. Dominic Sandbrook Yeah, exactly. It would be like suddenly England decided to build loads of forts on the border with Wales. Well, it’s good enough for offer. Right. Yes, that’s true. Anyway, once you’ve gone through Belgium, basically the plan is that the left wing of your army, so that’s the southernmost wing, will pin the French against their own border, against These fortresses. And meanwhile, the northernmost, the right wing bit of the german army will go all the way around paris and encircle the french capital that way we’ll crush their army against the frontier We’ll encircle their capital france will be knocked out and then we’ll use the railways to move all the troops east as quickly as possible to the borderlands of East Prussia and Galicia, Where hopefully our Austro-Hungarian allies will have kept the Russians at bay. We’ll see how the Austro-Hungarians get on later in this series. Now, we have to do all this in six weeks. We have six weeks to do all this before the Russians start to break through in the east. And if we fall behind, we’ll be into that war of attrition that we don’t want and we could well lose. Tom Holland And also, presumably, if the Russians break through in the east, they can capture Berlin. Dominic Sandbrook They can go all the way into Germany. They can drive into Germany. They can drive into the centre of Austria-Hungary. So the risk is that the Germans might capture Paris and the Russians might capture Berlin. I suppose so. That would be a twist, wouldn’t it? This is a massively risky idea. So even if the Germans concentrate their forces in the West, they will still have fewer divisions than the French, the British, and the Belgians put together. But that’s where the canny thing comes in, right? Tom Holland That you use the size of your enemy’s forces against them. Exactly. They’re lumbering and unwieldy, but you’re moving swiftly. Dominic Sandbrook Now, there’s a brilliant book on Germany and Austria, and the central powers in the First War, called Ring of Steel, by a British historian Alexander Watson. As he points out, this is a quote, a breathtakingly audacious and foolhardy aspiration because the French are not nothing. The French have one of Europe’s most modern and biggest armed forces. How are you going to knock them out so quickly? And the very fact that von Moltke is considering such a scheme is a sign actually of Germany’s underlying strategic weakness. And that’s actually one reason why I think, I don’t think the Germans are motivated by lust for conquest and aggression in this war, because they’re up against it from the very, very Beginning. They have to consider such a mad gamble. But speed underlies everything. If you can’t do it in six weeks, you’re in real trouble. So if we go back to the summer of 1914, by the last two days of July, von Moltke is studying all his reports with a massive sense of kind of panic. (Time 0:15:50)
  • National Unity Rooted In Perceived Necessity
    • German political unity in 1914 crossed party lines because many genuinely believed the war was forced upon them.
    • That perception enabled broad domestic support, including from previously anti-war Social Democrats. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook Yeah, I think it’s important for listeners to get that into their heads. The Germans genuinely think that the war has been forced upon them. There’s no question in their minds that God is on their side. And that explains why, for example, the biggest party, not just in Germany, actually, but in Europe, which is the Social Democratic Party, a left-wing anti-militarist party, votes Unanimously to fund the war, to give them war credits. And they agree they will not criticize the German government for the whole of the war. The trade unions promise they won’t strike for the whole of the war. And this is because they really think Germany’s been very hard done by, and this is a noble cause. But it also reflects, I think, a sense of seriousness. (Time 0:22:11)
  • Don’t Gamble With Neutrality Violations
    • When aggressive military plans risk violating international law, expect diplomatic blowback and propaganda losses.
    • Avoid calculating that legal breaches will be ignored; legal guarantees can trigger intervention. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook Because Belgium, to remind people from last time, Belgium’s a buffer state created largely by the British, actually, after the revolution of 1830 against the Netherlands. All the great powers had signed treaties to guarantee its independence and its neutrality, first in 1839 and then in 1870. And the Franco-Prussian War, Belgium had been neutral and independent. And if the Germans go into Belgium, and if the Belgians appeal for help, then Britain is legally bound to offer help. Then what form that help will take is ambiguous and undefined. So the British, just to quickly glance across the channel, they’ve been debating this for the last few days. They’re still very We talked last time about how in the cabinet meetings, some of the British ministers have said, look, if the Germans just go through a little bit of Belgium using the Railway and they don’t cause any damage and stuff, it’s not grounds for us to fight. Churchill, incredibly bellicose in this period, actually said at one point to his cabinet colleagues, I don’t see why we should come in if they go only a little way into Belgium. In other words, you know, maybe we can still stay out. The rad thing about all this is there’s such a diplomatic fog. Nobody knows exactly what anybody else is thinking. And the Germans don’t know what the British are thinking, and so they end up making a terrible mistake, arguably I would say the biggest diplomatic mistake of modern history. Tom Holland But of course, the French do know that if the British are to enter the war, it’s really vital that the Germans are seen to be the bad guys, the guys who infringe Belgian neutrality. And so they kind of issue military diktats, don’t they, that on no account are French troops to enter Belgium, that no French planes are to go enter Belgian airspace or anything like That. It’s really vital to France’s interests that Germany do this. Exactly. Dominic Sandbrook And the French refrain from attacking Germany, from attacking the Germans. They want the Germans to be seen as the aggressors. And so on the evening of Sunday, the 2nd of August, the Germans make this cataclysmic mistake. At seven o’clock, their ambassador gave the Belgians an ultimatum. He said, we want our armies to have safe passage on your railway system. We want to take over your border fortresses at Liège and Namur. We’re very sorry about this. We will get out as quickly as possible. We’ll compensate you for any damage. We’ll also pay for our own board and lodging. So don’t worry about that. Did no one ever think they could just buy tickets? Tom Holland Can you buy a ticket for like a million men? Dominic Sandbrook I don’t know. Is that possible? Tom Holland Get discount. Dominic Sandbrook They’ve been a very amusing conversation at the counter. I want to bring a few horses as well. But then the Germans say in this alternative, we’ll compensate you. However, if you do stand in our way, we will crush you. And you’ve got 12 hours to make up your minds. Now, the mad thing is they could just have gone through the south of Belgium. I mean, it would have been tricky and maybe militarily it would have been very difficult. But their foreign office, the German foreign office, had said, we think that persuading the Belgians, basically bullying the Belgians into agreeing is the only way to be sure the British Won’t intervene. However, this gamble completely backfires because even as nightfall comes, Belgium’s King Albert has already made up his mind. And at seven o’clock the next morning, Belgium rejects the ultimatum. The irony is that to the hawks in London who wanted to join the war, Herbert Henry Asquith and Edward Grey, who we talked about in the last series, this is the perfect issue. It’s the perfect casus belli to rally Liberal Party opinion. So when Edward Grey spoke to the Commons, he made this huge deal about plucky little Belgium. They just want to be left alone and get on with exploiting the people of the Congo. That’s poor Belgium. His pitch is literally liberal interventionism. Literally liberal interventionism. So even before the Germans have fired their first shot, they’ve handed the British and their opponents a most amazing propaganda weapon, breaking international law, all of this kind Of thing. And the next morning, the British duly issued their ultimatum. It’s not true that the Germans weren’t aware of this. They were very aware of it. So Bettman Holweg, when he spoke to the Reichstag, he said, listen, I completely understand why the Belgians and Luxembourg as well. Nobody ever mentions Luxembourg in this story. Poor Luxembourg. We completely understand why they’re aggrieved that we’re invading them. But we will make good the wrong we’re doing as soon as we’ve attained our military objectives. When you’re as imperiled as we are, fighting for everything we hold dear, you can only think of how you’ll cut your way out. He’s actually furious, though, in private that the British are using this as a pretext. (Time 0:25:00)
  • King Albert’s Public Appeal
    • King Albert rode into Brussels with his family and appealed to parliament amid cheering crowds and tears.
    • The scene became a powerful symbol of Belgian resistance and international sympathy. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook At eight o’clock that morning, so we are on the 3rd of August, Monday, the 3rd of August, 1914, the first German units crossed the Belgian border. And at midday, King Albert formally appealed to Britain as the guarantor of Belgian independence. And then he got on his horse. He’s wearing full uniform. He leads this procession, including his wife and his 12-year son, who’s dressed in a sailor suit, through the centre of Brussels. There are huge crowds of people cheering, some weeping, waving Belgian flags, the kind of trickler of Belgium. And he leads his family into the Belgian parliament. And it truly is an amazing scene. The deputies are all on their feet. They’re chanting and shouting, Vive le roi, vive la Belgique. (Time 0:30:18)
  • Von Kluck’s 20-Miles-A-Day Push
    • Alexander von Kluck led the drive through Belgium with a target of 20 miles a day and massive momentum.
    • The German advance resembled “a machine… with the delicate organisation of a watch and the brute power of a steamroller.” Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook Walker is unleashing 750,000 men in three armies. They’re being carried west to the border in more than 500 trains a day. Of course, railway is very important to the First World War. An absolutely mind-boggling sight for anybody who was witnessing it. These columns of grey infantry, many of them, Tom, in those spiked helmets that you like so much. The column is 50 miles long, followed by horses and trucks and artillery. So these three armies, they are commanded by three generals, Karl von Bülow, Max von Haussen, and the most compelling of them, I think, is a guy called Alexander von Kluck. And he had fought in the Franco-Prussian War. So no chicken he. Very good. I like what you did there. He looks exactly as he should. The casting agency has supplied these men and done superbly. He’s got a sort of polished, shining, bald head, a fearsome look, and an enormous, bristling moustache. And his task, he is the guy who’s going to smash through Belgium, who’s going to sweep around Paris, who’s going to finish off the French and then turn east. And remember, he and the other generals have six weeks to do all this. So their target, he has set, von Kluck has set his men a target of 20 miles a day. And he says, we cannot fall behind. One day where we fall short, we have to make it good later on because the clock is ticking. And that urgency is absolutely essential to understanding what happens next. (Time 0:32:54)
  • Liège: Unexpectedly Strong Resistance
    • Liège’s garrison of 40,000 surprised the Germans and repelled initial assaults, mowing down attacking waves.
    • The forts delayed the German timetable and became a major news story across Europe. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook On the 5th of August, the Germans begin the assault on Liège. So this is day two. And already they’re slightly falling behind their timetable. Tom Holland And Dominic, that’s the thing, isn’t it, about the First World War, that people always seize on the importance of timetables. So there’s a thing about the railway timetables couldn’t be changed or anything. But I’m guessing that this reflects the industrial quality of the combat, that industrial society depends on precisely gauged time schedules. And it must provide the German high command with a degree of pressure that no army previously had ever had. People hadn’t operated to these kind of timetables. Absolutely not. Dominic Sandbrook I think they go into this war under greater time pressure than any other competent, arguably, in history. Yeah. They can’t be like a sort of 18th century army who sort of have a little campaign in the summer and then go to their winter quarters, do a bit of hunting on the side or something. Maybe the war will take 20 years. They’re not Charles XII. They can hear a ticking clock in the back of their heads the whole time. Now, Liege has a garrison of 40,000 men. It’s far more formidable than the Germans had expected. The first wave of men the Germans sent in from Westphalia and Hanover meet withering Belgian fire and are just cut down. So these scenes are described in Max Hastings’s brilliant book. I know you’re a massive Max Hastings fan, Tom. Catastrophe. And he describes how line after line of German infantry advance on this fortress. And a quote, this is a Belgian officer, we simply mowed them down. They came on almost shoulder to shoulder until as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped one on top of the other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded men. And you’ll hear sentences like that again and again in this series about people who basically, their officers just say, this is going to be a bit like the Napoleonic Wars. Come on, lads, go for it. And they all go for it. And about 10 seconds later, they’re all dead in an enormous heap. And the Germans, I think, learn that lesson pretty quickly. Quicker than the French and the British, perhaps. Certainly quicker than the French. I mean, the French, as we’ll see in the next episode. Tom Holland What’s not like the Napoleonic Wars, though, is what happens the next day, right? Because it’s the first Zeppelin raid in the history of warfare. Dominic Sandbrook Yes, the first ever air attack on a European city, I read. I mean, they’re literally just throwing bombs out of the Zeppelin. And they killed nine civilians in Liège. I wouldn’t want to go up in a Zeppelin with a bomb. No, I wouldn’t go in a Zeppelin at all, I think. On the 7th of August, they finally captured Liege and the Citadel. And the final assault on Liege was led by a man who we’ll be meeting again, called Eric Ludendorff, who will be very familiar to people who heard our episode about the Beer Hall Putsch. So a man who I think goes on to greatly let himself down with his political choices. But the surrounding forts fought on for about another 10, 11 days, and they tied up the German Second Army. You know, at this point, kind of steam is coming out of the German generals ears because they are falling well behind their schedule. They can’t move all their troops as quickly as they wanted. And Liège, although it’s largely forgotten now, in the summer of 1914 was a massive story. (Time 0:34:25)
  • Villages Where Reprisals Began
    • Early incidents in villages like Berneau and Melen saw Germans execute civilians after suspected attacks.
    • Within days the Germans had executed at least 850 Belgian civilians, setting a brutal early tone. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook These reports start in Liège. So on the night of the 4th of August, so right at the very beginning of the war, the Germans had moved into the nearby village of Berneau. And they hear reports of unexplained gunfire in the night. And there are rumours that reach the Germans that 12 of their men have been shot. So the next day they round up suspected culprits in the village. They get about 10 of them, and they shoot them, including an entire family of five that they found hiding in a cellar. Why are you hiding in a cellar? Very suspicious. We’ll just have to get rid of you. The next day, the Germans in a nearby hamlet, Saint-Adelain, a Belgian shell landed in the hamlet, and it wounded some of the Germans who were billeted there. This time, the Germans said, well, probably the guy who gave a position away was the local teacher and they got him and his family rounded them up and they shot them so this all sets the Tone for what is to come so in the next few days in the village of sumen more than a hundred people belgian civilians are shot or bayoneted in a place called melen. 72 people herded into a meadow, including eight women and four girls who are not yet in their teens. And they’re all shot. The local mayor, the mayor of Melen, arrived to bury the dead and the Germans shot him too. And then they burned the whole village to the ground. And there are examples in any number of Belgian hamlets and villages. (Time 0:38:23)
  • Reprisals Fueled By Fear And Memory
    • German troops carried out systematic reprisals against Belgian civilians driven by fear of partisan attacks and historical memories of 1870–71.
    • Those reprisals became official policy despite violating the Hague conventions and worsened Germany’s international image. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook And this is the sort of the taint that has marked the German record in the First World War ever since. And the one thing that a lot of people know is they disgraced themselves in Belgium. Tom Holland And how do we know this? Who is reporting this? Are there Belgians? Are there Germans? Are they admitting it? What’s going on? Dominic Sandbrook So there are reports from the Belgians. There are lots of reports in Allied newspapers, but there are also German letters, German diary entries and so on, because the Germans don’t deny that this is happening. All wars have civilian casualties. I mean, it’s completely fanciful to imagine that you’ll ever fight a war in which civilians won’t be shot. But this seems to go well beyond that. And the Germans’ own explanation is, we are being ambushed all the time by Belgian civilian partisans. So there’s an example, I think Max Hastings quotes it. A soldier writing home, he says, I’m shocked by, I quote, the havoc wreaked by the bestial mob in Liège. He’s not talking about the German occupiers. He’s talking about the locals. And he says, we were greeted at first with cheers, people waving kind of white tablecloths and stuff as flags of surrender. However, that was just a malicious trick. Scarcely had we passed the houses when rifle barrels were poked out of the windows and we were shot in the back. There were also shots aimed at our legs from cellar coal holes. Now, the thing is, these probably weren’t partisans. These were probably regular Belgian troops who had taken cover and were ambushing the Germans. But the Germans assume that this is a partisan warfare, that these are civilians who are betraying them in a cowardly way, attacking them when their backs are turned. And why are they assuming that? Well, this is the really fascinating thing. I think the short answer is the Germans have travelled with an enormous amount of historical baggage. And there’s a brilliant study of this by two Irish historians called John Horne and Alan Kramer. And they emphasise the Germans had an institutional memory of what had happened in 1870-71 when they had invaded France, occupied France, and they had come under severe attack from French partisans called francs d’hureurs, kind of free shooters. Even before the Germans went into Belgium, they are dreading that there will be a repeat of this. And so the stories they got from Liège about being ambushed exacerbate their darkest fears, and they are then ramped up by German newspapers. In a similar way to the way that Allied newspapers ramp stuff up during the war. So German newspapers have loads of stories about how they’ve been tricked by frontiereurs, how they’re being attacked, how they’re being tortured, how German soldiers have been Beheaded by Belgian civilians. So these are the mirror image the stories that Allied newspapers tell about the Germans. Tom Holland In Britain, for instance, there’s an assumption that if you’re a soldier and you go to, say, a colonial war, there’s always a risk that you might be shot. So there’s the famous Kipling poem, isn’t there, about £2,000 of education drops to a £10 jeseo. This idea that somebody might have a crack at you from behind a rock or something at any point this presumably is not something that has become part of german culture in the same way that That perhaps the german military are not as inured to the possibility of getting a bullet in the back from some guy with a cheap rifle and to the degree that the british or the french who Are colonial powers are i don’t know because the germans of course, have been fighting colonial war in South-East Africa and what becomes Namibia. Dominic Sandbrook So they’re not complete strangers to colonial warfare. I wonder if they have a different standard for European wars. Do you not think that they think that in a European war you’re walking down a basically suburban street or the street of a village that’s very like a German village, really, and then you’re Shot in the back? Tom Holland It’s seen as completely legitimate and unexpected that people who are so like you would behave in this way. Kaiser’s outrage compares the Belgians to the Cossacks, doesn’t he, and say that this is terrible behaviour. Dominic Sandbrook This is not a pretext for beastliness that the Germans were kind of itching to unleash. The Germans genuinely believe that they have been kind of betrayed in some way, that the Belgians have broken the rules of warfare. The Kaiser, yeah, absolutely. The population of Belgium, he writes, on the 9th of August, have behaved in a diabolical, bestial manner, not one iota better than the Cossacks. He comes out with all the newspaper kind of tabloid cliches. They’ve been torturing our men. They’ve beaten them to death. And he says, I mean, the Kaiser, who’s got a terrible track record of diplomacy with the other monarchs of Europe, he says, tell the king of the Belgians that since his people have placed Themselves outside European customs, they’ll be treated accordingly. I guess that line is a giveaway, right? Tom Holland We might expect this in Africa. But in Europe, oh, that is shocking. Except that, notoriously, in Africa, this is how the Belgians have behaved. The irony. Maybe the Belgians have got form, Tom. Dominic Sandbrook Maybe the Belgians are the real villains of the story. Tom Holland I mean, I’m just wondering, is that also maybe a part of it? Dominic Sandbrook No, surely not. No? That the Belgians are going to start cutting off people’s hands and forcing them to collect rubber. Tom Holland I mean, there is obviously a kind of shadow that hangs over all of this, that atrocities that the Belgians had inflicted in the Congo are now being inflicted on the Belgians in their native Land. I just wonder the degree to which people are oblivious to that irony or aware of it. Well, do you know what? Dominic Sandbrook The fascinating thing is when the British papers exaggerate the German atrocities. So even today, some historians basically parrot British propaganda and repeat these stories about the Germans impaling babies on bayonets and cutting women’s hands off and stuff. Stories that I think are almost certainly luridly exaggerated because, I mean, they are doing mass shootings and things, but they’re not doing all this. These stories, as Alexander Watson points out in his book Ring of Steel, these stories are directly inspired by newspaper reports about what was going on in the Congo. I mean, unbelievable. They’re basically taking the stories about what King Leopold’s men had been doing in the Congo and just changing the names and making the Germans the bad guys and the Belgians the victims. It’s really remarkable. To go back to the German soldiers, I think there’s an image in the popular imagination that most of them are hard-faced, kind of hatchet-faced stormtroopers in waiting. But actually, as Horn and Kramer point out in their study, a huge proportion of the German soldiers are teenagers. They’ve been mobilized in haste. They’ve been very quickly and poorly trained. Most of them have never been abroad. They are excited, frightened, confused, and they’re also often drinking heavily because as they go through a town, they’ll obviously, you know, soldiers always do this. They’ll loot the local shops. They’ll get stuck into the kind of Belgian beer or whatever. So they’re a little bit tanked up. And then when somebody shoots at them, they lose their temper very, very quickly. But it’s also driven from the top. So by the 12th of August, von Moltke is issuing a solemn warning. Any Belgian civilian suspected of what he calls atrocities will be immediately shot under martial law. And the Germans effectively by this point are running a formal policy of mass reprisals, even though this is forbidden by the Hague Convention. (Time 0:39:48)
  • 1870 Memory Shaped 1914 Responses
    • German soldiers feared Belgian francs-tireurs because 1870–71 partisan attacks left a lasting institutional memory.
    • That fear led to exaggerated newspaper reports and harsher responses in 1914. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook And they emphasise the Germans had an institutional memory of what had happened in 1870-71 when they had invaded France, occupied France, and they had come under severe attack from French partisans called francs d’hureurs, kind of free shooters. Even before the Germans went into Belgium, they are dreading that there will be a repeat of this. And so the stories they got from Liège about being ambushed exacerbate their darkest fears, and they are then ramped up by German newspapers. In a similar way to the way that Allied newspapers ramp stuff up during the war. So German newspapers have loads of stories about how they’ve been tricked by frontiereurs, how they’re being attacked, how they’re being tortured, how German soldiers have been Beheaded by Belgian civilians. (Time 0:41:31)
  • Propaganda Mixed With Real Atrocities
    • Allied atrocity stories sometimes borrowed imagery from reports about Congo abuses and amplified them.
    • Sensational claims (e.g., impaled babies) mix real massacres with exaggerated propaganda. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook These stories, as Alexander Watson points out in his book Ring of Steel, these stories are directly inspired by newspaper reports about what was going on in the Congo. I mean, unbelievable. They’re basically taking the stories about what King Leopold’s men had been doing in the Congo and just changing the names and making the Germans the bad guys and the Belgians the victims. It’s really remarkable. (Time 0:45:13)
  • Remorse Amid Reprisals
    • German soldiers often felt remorse and framed reprisals as duty, not ideological sadism.
    • That psychological conflict differentiates 1914 conduct from later, explicitly ideological genocidal policies. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook The people say, it’s dreadful that we have to do this. I don’t enjoy doing it at all. You know, it’s not an exercise in sadism. It’s very different from the sentiments in the Third Reich, where you’re being told that what you’re doing is kind of important racial hygienic cleansing, and it’s a noble thing to Do and all of this. These people feel bad about what they’re doing. They all know they feel bad about it. The officers feel bad about it because the officers, as Watson says, they have an aristocratic honour culture. They see themselves as chivalric knights. He gives an example of another guy, Major General Koch. His division shot more than 200 Belgian civilians. And he wrote to his wife and he said, you know, we’re doing this and we have to do it, but I hope we can stop soon because, and I quote, we’re not Huns and we don’t want to sully the honour of Tom Holland The German name. So it’s not as bad, for instance, as the behaviour of the French in the Peninsular War against Guerrieros. Or Napoleon’s troops in Italy. Dominic Sandbrook Actually, Alexander Watson in his book makes precise this point. (Time 0:50:13)
  • Louvain Library Burns: Cultural Shock
    • German troops burned the medieval university library at Louvain and held back firefighters while priceless manuscripts went up.
    • The destruction shocked intellectuals and transformed perceptions of Germany across Britain and beyond. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook And this is a story about a library about the medieval University of Louvain or Leuven, which is the oldest university in the Low Countries. And basically what happened in this place, which is now, I mean, it’s called Louvain at the time, but now I think people call it Leuvenven there were reports of gunshots in this town and The german soldiers run completely amok they lose their discipline they’re beating up people in the streets bayonetting them and stuff they break into the university library and They set it on fire and firemen arrive to tackle the blaze and the germans hold them back they want to watch it burn and basically a quarter of a million books went up in smoke and hundreds Of priceless medieval manuscripts. And then the fire spread overnight into the old city of Levent and loads of it was destroyed, hundreds of people killed, all of this kind of thing. And this is the one incident that goes around the world and leads to people saying they’re the huns they’re barbarians they’re book burners all of this and as you say it’s a particular Tom Holland Disaster maybe particularly in britain where intellectuals and opinion formers almost have a cultural cringe towards germany germany’s cultural and intellectual achievements The sense that germany is the most highly educated nation in the world. I mean, it’s not an inaccurate impression. But it is a disaster, isn’t it? Because the spectacle of German troops destroying a library, it detonates that image. It does completely. (Time 0:52:46)
  • Rapid Collapse Of Cultural Admiration
    • British admiration for German culture collapsed rapidly once reports of atrocities and cultural destruction circulated.
    • Intellectuals who once lauded Germany turned to denunciation within months. Transcript: Dominic Sandbrook Max Hastings quotes this British naval cadet. He writes in his diary at the end of August. He says, if their army is capable of doing what it is doing, then the rest of the race must be the same. From now onwards, I shall regard every German, man, woman, and child from the Kaiser downwards as a willful savage. The use of that kind of language that the Germans are Philistines, they’re barbarians, they’re savages, that becomes very common. Tom Holland I mean, that’s the kind of language you might expect from a young man. But you do also start to get it among British writers and intellectual scientists who previously had been in awe of German cultural achievements. I mean, it’s incredible how fast that sense switches. Dominic Sandbrook Obviously, the Kiplings and the people like that and the Buchans and whatnot, people who are basically co-opted for the war effort and who previously, as you say, they’d been perfectly Happy to go and give a lecture at the University of Heidelberg. But by 1915, they’re saying, I’ll never have a German book in the house again. These people are absolute savages. (Time 0:54:20)