German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial

by John Horne, Alan Kramer

Is it true that the German army, invading Belgium and France in August 1914, perpetrated brutal atrocities? Or are accounts of the deaths of thousands of unarmed civilians mere fabrications constructed by fanatically anti-German Allied propagandists? Based on research in the archives of Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, this pathbreaking book uncovers the truth of the events of autumn 1914 and explains how the politics of propaganda and memory have shaped radically different versions of that truth. John Horne and Alan Kramer mine military reports, official and private records, witness evidence, and war diaries to document the crimes that scholars have long a campaign of brutality that led to the deaths of some 6500 Belgian and French civilians. Contemporary German accounts insisted that the civilians were guerrillas, executed for illegal resistance. In reality this claim originated in a vast collective delusion on the part of German soldiers. The authors establish how this myth originated and operated, and how opposed Allied and German views of events were used in the propaganda war. They trace the memory and forgetting of the atrocities on both sides up to and beyond World War II. Meticulously researched and convincingly argued, this book reopens a painful chapter in European history while contributing to broader debates about myth, propaganda, memory, war crimes, and the nature of the First World War.

Genres: History, World War I, Germany, Nonfiction

416 pages, Hardcover

First published October 11, 2001

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think of any other book, outside of propaganda ones produced around WWI that deals with this subject. It is a splendid book because there were very real atrocities in at the start of WWI when the Germans invaded Belgium on their way to France (never mind later inhumanities like the forced labour extracted from occupied Belgium and France), the destruction of Louvain and the widespread shooting of hostages (over 6500 but no one really is sure of the final number) and burning of villages in response for the actions of third forces. From these actions were born the later fictitious propaganda stories of Germans cutting off children's hands and corpse factories etc. So horrified were people after the war that their governments lied that gradually the memory of what was done was lost. But there were atrocities and this book is an important monument to the memory of those innocent victims of German hysteria with being attacked by guerrillas who they refused to recognise as proper combatants (that Germany made a cult of heroes out of their own guerrillas who had risen up to drive out the invading French troops of Napoleon is an irony that the German High command would not have recogised). The fact that their was no guerrilla resistance was immaterial, the soldiers thought there was and that Belgium people were attacking German soldiers from behind and desecrating (which usually meant in the fervid imaginings castrated) their dead or wounded comrades. Those castrated corpses were as mythically as the children without hands. The only children who ever hand their hands cut off by an invading army were the children (and adults) of the Belgian kings grotesque personal fiefdom in the Congo by Belgian soldiers and administrators. But that transference of cruel and barbarous practice from the colonies (even if only imaginary such as the severed hands) made WWI a different sort of war (and is examined in some detail in Horner and Kramer 'Dynamic of Destruction').

This is a long and detailed and very comprehensive account but it is well and sympathetically written and should be read by anyone interested in WWI.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ultimately a very solid, well-researched book. The work is truly ground-breaking, in that it pushes the debate past arguing whether German atrocities during the invasion of Belgium actually happened. Establishing clearly that they did, the discussion shifts now to explanations of why.

That said, the book is a dry read. The sheer volume of evidence the authors provide is convincing, but can make the book a drudge to read.

[Richard Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disgusting Allied propaganda.
Debunked in this book
https://archive.org/details/TheMythOf...

[Fred · Rating 2 out of 5]

a sad sorry book