Abstract
This chapter identifies the motives of German occupying forces in destroying the culturally rich university town of Leuven/Louvain during the first weeks of the war. It discusses reactions to the sacking from “Beyond Flanders Fields” on the part not only of the Entente but also of German academics, politicians and the general public. In this sense it lays some of the foundations for Sebastian Bischoff’s account in Chap. 4 of German stereotypes of the Belgians.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
For Hull, “total war” means the complete mobilization of civilians, civil society, and especially of the economy for the war effort—something Hull argues Germany never achieved during the First World War.
- 2.
The Germans also disabled the city’s water pump and torched the town water company headquarters. The city’s water pressure was thus reduced and the efforts to extinguish the fires thwarted.
- 3.
The city of Louvain, much of which had been destroyed in August 1914, was later rebuilt. The university library was rebuilt with American aid in the interwar years and Germany carried out its promise under the Treaty of Versailles to make restitution for the collection of books burnt in 1914. Yet in 1940, German artillery destroyed the library a second time.
- 4.
Milne notes that the Bryce Report was largely discredited by historians and scholars in the 1920s and 1930s (see Ponsonby’s Falsehood in War-Time (1928) and Willis’ England’s Holy War (1928)). Even though Bryce was largely respected by his peers in both Europe and America for his work as US Ambassador and the presence of extreme views on German acts of brutality were never doubted, the report’s tendency to dwell upon lurid eyewitness accounts caused it to fall into some discredit. The scrutiny of the Bryce Report, along with biased reporting in both the German White Book: and the Belgian Grey Book, led many government officials and media outlets to hold official reports in contempt (see Duffy 2009).
- 5.
Germany went to war in 1914 with a conception of the war of annihilation that was based on the military doctrine developed by Alfred von Schlieffen, chief of the Prussian general staff from 1891 to 1905. His ideas would dominate German military theory and practice in the era of the First and Second World Wars. The Schlieffen Plan of 1906–1914 was based on the extreme reading of the great early nineteenth-century theorist on war, Carl von Clausewitz. It was von Clausewitz who argued the actions of the German troops upon a civilian population was sanctioned due to the fact that the populations of an enemy country should not be exempted from war, but should be made to feel its effects and be forced to put pressure on their government to surrender.
- 6.
Online British Library Newspaper Archives (accessed 5 March 2017).
- 7.
By the end of the war, 239 institutions were working together to collect materials to restore Louvain’s historic library. The university’s library would hold one of the richest collections of books and manuscripts between two wars, but in 1940 over 900,000 volumes would be lost as a result of German bombing.
- 8.
See René Chambry (1915), Die Wahrheit über Löwen. Lausanne: Payot.
- 9.
See Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg and Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg (1996).
References
Bernstein, Eduard (ed.) (1915), Das Deutsche Weißbuch über den Ausbruch des deutsch-russisch-französischen Krieges 1914. Berlin: Vowärts.
Chambry, René (1915), Die Wahrheit über Löwen. Lausanne: Payot.
Derez, Mark (2014), The Burning of the Library of Leuven and the International Response, http://www.historikerdialog.eu/sites/historikerdialog.eu/files/content/files/Lecture%20Derez%20Leuven %207%20May%202013.pdf (accessed August 10, 2016).
De Schaepdrijver, Sophie (2013), De Groote Oorlog : Het Koninkrijk België Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Antwerpen: Houtekiet.
De Schaepdrijver, Sophie (2014), The “German Atrocities” of 1914, http://www.bl.uk/world-war-one/articles/civilian-atrocities-german-1914 (accessed 5.5.2016).
Duffy Michael (2009), Bryce Report into German Atrocities in Belgium, 12 May 1915, http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/brycereport.htm (accessed 5.5.2017).
Fox, Major Frank (1915), The Agony of Belgium: The Invasion of Belgium in WW; August–December 1914. London: Hutchinson & Co.
Gilbert, Martin (1994), The First World War: A Complete History. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Horne, John and Alan Kramer (2001), German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hull, Isabel (2005), Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Keegan, John (1999), The First World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Kramer, Alan (2007), Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War.New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.
MacMillan, Margaret (2013), The War that Ended the Peace, The Road to 1914. New York: Random House.
Meyer, G.J. (2007), A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914–1918. New York:Bantam Dell.
Mokveld, Lambertus (1916), De overweldiging van België : ervaringen, als Nederlandsch journalist opgedaan, tijdens een viermaandelijksch verblijf bij de Duitsche troepen in België, Rotterdam.
Nick Milne (no date), The Rape of Belgium Revisited, http://ww1centenary.oucs.ox.ac.uk/memoryofwar/the-rape-of-belgium-revisited/.html (accessed April 30, 2017).
Souttar, Henry Sessions (1915), A Surgeon in Belgium, London: Edward Arnold.
Tollebeek, Jo and Eline van Assche. (2014), Ravaged: Art and Culture in Times of Conflict. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Tuchman, Barbara W (1962), The Guns of August, New York: Ballantine Books.
Von Ungern-Sternberg, Jürgen and, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg (1996), Der Aufruf “An die Kulturwelt!”: das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg : mit einer Dokumentation. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Waterfield, Bruno (2014), The City that turned Germans into “Huns”, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/belgium/11053962/The-city-that-turned-Germans-into-Huns-marks-100-years-since-it-was-set-ablaze.html (accessed September 13, 2016).
Zuckerman, Larry (2004), The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I. New York: NYU Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Williams, J.P. (2018). The Flames of Louvain: Total War and the Destruction of European High Culture in Belgium by German Occupying Forces in August 1914. In: Rash, F., Declercq, C. (eds) The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73108-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73108-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73107-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-73108-7
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)