Rape of Belgium

Encyclopedia : R : RA : RAP : Rape of Belgium

The Rape of Belgium (August 1914) was a disputed event during World War I in which Germany invaded the neutral nation of Belgium as a component of its Schlieffen Plan. This 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 Louvain, 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 amoral.

External links

[ISFWWS] Review of Horne & Kramer, The German Atrocities of 1914 : A History of Denial.

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.