The Sack of Louvain was the German assault on the Belgian town of Leuven (French: Louvain), part of the events collectively known as the Rape of Belgium, taking place during the First World War. Over the course of several days of pillaging and brutality, 248 people were killed and 1,500 were deported to Germany where they were held at the Munster internment camp until January 1915. The Library of the Catholic University of Leuven was destroyed after it was set on fire by the occupying German soldiers and 1,120 of the 8,928 homes in Leuven were destroyed.
The Imperial German Army, which was dominated by recent volunteers and conscripts who had received minimal military training before being sent into combat, had already committed multiple war crimes since invading Belgium on 4 August 1914, including mass killings of hundreds of civilians as hostages or under suspicion of guerrilla warfare, in Liege, Aarschot, and Andenne.[1] On Tuesday, 18 August, the Belgian Army withdrew from the university town of Leuven; in the morning of the next day, Wednesday, 19 August, German forces—including infantry, artillery, uhlans, and cavalry—entered the town, encountering no resistance from the population.[2]
Events
The library of the Catholic University of Leuven in a turn-of-century postcardThe ruins of the University of Leuven's library after it was burned by the German army in 1914
About 15,000 German troops occupied the town, and from 19 to 22 August, the German 1st Army made its headquarters in Leuven.[3] The Germans took hostages from the municipal administration, magistrates, and the Catholic University of Leuven, and forced inhabitants to keep their front doors open, and windows lit throughout the night.[4]
On 25 August, although they had encountered no resistance from the population, German troops began a massacre.[5] The massacre likely began when a group of German soldiers, panicked by a false report of a major Allied offensive in the area, fired on some fellow German troops.[6][7][8] As the German 1st Army panicked further, their discipline evaporated, civilians were shot or bayoneted, homes were set on fire, and some bodies later showed signs of torture.[9] Many of those killed were dumped in ditches and construction trenches.[10]
At around 11:30 pm, German soldiers broke unto the university's library (located in the 14th-century cloth hall), which held significant special collections, including medieval manuscripts and books, and set it on fire.[11] Within ten hours, the library and its collection was virtually destroyed.[12] The fire continued to burn for several days.[13] The rector of the American College of Louvain was rescued by Brand Whitlock, the U.S. ambassador, who recorded the rector's account of "the murder, the lust, the looting, the fires, the pillage, the evacuation and the destruction of the city" as well as the arson attack that destroyed the library's incunabula.[14] The burning of the University of Leuven's library caused the destruction of more than 230,000 books, including 750 medieval manuscripts.[15] Personal libraries and the papers of notaries, solicitors, judges, professors, and physicians were also destroyed.[16]
The killings and other acts of brutality took place throughout the next night and day.[17] The day after that, the German army bombarded the town with five shells.[18] The town was thoroughly pillaged, with many German officers and men engaging in looting of money, wine, silver, and other objects of value, while killing those who resisted or did not understand.[19]
In the town, some 1,100 buildings were destroyed,[20] variously estimated to constitute one-sixth[21] or more than one-fifth of the town's structures.[22]Leuven Town Hall was saved because it was already the site of the German headquarters.[23] Some 248 civilians were killed, and most of the city's 42,000 residents were exiled by force into the countryside,[24] with some being taken from their homes at gunpoint.[25] Approximately 1,500 citizens of the town, including women, children, and four of the hostages, were deported to Germany in railway cattle-wagons.[26]
Legacy
Louvain, by Belgian artist Gisbert Combaz (1916)Peace Memorial, Leuven
According to historian Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, the War Crimes Bureau of the Prussian Ministry of War collected 73-eyewitness depositions about the Sack of Louvain, which were mainly from German officers and enlisted men. The original protocols, according to de Zayas, are more complete and more reliable than the excerpts appearing in The German White Book. The depositions alleged that the German soldiers believed themselves to be under attack by armed Belgian civilians and that the destruction of the city and its cultural heritage took place in the heat of what was thought to be an urban battle against civilian-clothed members of the Belgian Garde Civique. For example, it was alleged that the captured and slain insurgents were not recognized as local residents by any Belgians in Louvain, so they were thought to have been sent from outside the city with orders to stage an anti-German uprising. Furthermore, Georg Berghausen, the 1st Army's chief medical officer, testified that the German soldiers wounded at Louvain had mostly been injured by bullets from hunting guns, rather than being the victims of friendly fire.[35] If Berghausen's testimony was not perjury, in an effort to shield the officers and enlisted men of his Division from facing court martial proceedings under German military law, it is intriguing, as the city government of Louvain had ordered the confiscation of all privately owned firearms in early August, believing that civilian resistance was futile and would provoke violent reprisals.[36]
The university was reopened in 1919, and the reconstructed library was inaugurated in 1927. The rector of the university, Paulin Ladeuze, said that "At Louvain, Germany disqualified itself as a nation of thinkers."[37]
More recently, 21st-century historian Thomas Weber has examined the root causes of the German war crimes committed during the Rape of Belgium, the vast majority of which took place between 18 and 28 August 1914 and which were curtailed by the disciplinary policies the Imperial German Army high command immediately adopted in response to the global outcry. Acting with the benefit of both hindsight and detachment from the emotions, atrocity propaganda, and political ideologies of the period, Weber alleges that German war crimes in Belgium were not motivated by anti-Catholicism, as even overwhelmingly Catholic units of the Imperial German Army willingly took part. They were also not, as many Sonderweg thesis historians still allege, the natural outgrowth of both German culture and Prussian Army-style militarism, from which a straight line can allegedly be drawn to the Holocaust and the many other Nazi war crimes of World War II.[38]
Even though the German people are traditionally stereotyped as orderly, well-disciplined, and invariably super-efficient,[39] according to Weber, the real, "situational factors at play", during the August 1914 Rape of Belgium were, "the nervousness and anxiety of hastily mobilized, largely untrained civilians, panic, [and] the slippery slope from requisitioning to looting and pillaging."[40]
According to Weber, vast numbers of minimally trained, poorly disciplined, and extremely paranoid teenaged German soldiers in August 1914 Belgium saw, "franc-tireurs everywhere, with lethal consequences. In many cases of friendly fire directed by German troops on other German troops or on occasions when German troops could not work out the direction of enemy fire, the existence of illegal enemy combatants was immediately assumed with devastating and disastrous results. To make matters worse, the Belgian Garde Civique - the home guard - that had been deployed during the first few days of the war (and thus immediately prior to the eleven-day period in which most atrocities took place) did indeed not wear regular uniforms."[41]
The destruction of the university library, whether it was an act of poorly trained conscripts whose discipline had imploded, a deliberate act of cultural vandalism, or because, similarly to the bombing of Monte Cassino in 1944, the library buildings were believed to be in secret use for military purposes, still violated Imperial Germany's obligation, as a signatory to the Hague Convention of 1907, that "in sieges and bombardment all necessary steps must be taken to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes". For this reason, the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, included a clause to strengthen protections for cultural property under international law.[42]
A monument was erected in Louvain's municipal square, overlooking a mausoleum with the remains of 138 victims of the sack.[43] The monument features panels by Marcel Wolfers depicting the atrocities that soldiers from the German 1st Army perpetrated against the civilian population of Louvain following the collapse of their military discipline.[44] The mausoleum was unveiled in 1925 by former Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch, before an audience that included Queen Elisabeth and Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier.[45]
Leuven, also called Louvain, is the capital and largest city of the province of Flemish Brabant in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is located about 25 kilometres east of Brussels. The municipality itself comprises the sub-municipalities of Heverlee, Kessel-Lo, Leuven proper, Wilsele, Wijgmaal and part of Haasrode and Korbeek-Lo. It is the eighth largest city in Belgium, with more than 100,244 inhabitants.
Dinant is a city and municipality of Wallonia located in the province of Namur, Belgium. On the shores of river Meuse, in the Ardennes, it lies 90 kilometres (56 mi) south-east of Brussels, 30 kilometres (19 mi) south-east of Charleroi and 30 kilometres (19 mi) south of the city of Namur. Dinant is situated 20 kilometres (12 mi) north of the border with France.
Arthur Augustus William Harry Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede, was a British politician, writer, and social activist. He was the son of Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, and Mary Elizabeth Bulteel, daughter of John Crocker Bulteel. He was also the great-grandson of The 3rd Earl of Bessborough, The 3rd Earl of Bathurst and The 2nd Earl Grey. The 1st Baron Sysonby was his elder brother.
The Rape of Belgium was a series of systematic war crimes, especially mass murder and deportation, by German troops against Belgian civilians during the invasion and occupation of Belgium during World War I.
Désiré Félicien François Joseph Mercier was a Belgian cardinal of the Catholic Church and a noted scholar. A Thomist scholar, he had several of his works translated into other European languages. He was known for his book, Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1897). His scholarship gained him recognition from the Pope and he was appointed as Archbishop of Mechelen (Malines), serving from 1906 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1907.
The Committee on Alleged German Outrages, often called the Bryce Report after its chair, Viscount James Bryce (1838–1922), is best known for producing the "Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages," published on 12 May 1915. The report is seen as a major propaganda form that Britain used in order to influence international public opinion regarding the behaviour of Germany, which had invaded Belgium the year before. It was the first significant publication from the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House.
This is the order of battle for the Belgian Army at the start of the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914.
Schrecklichkeit is a word used by English speakers to describe a military policy of the Imperial German Army towards civilians in World War I. It was the basis of German actions during their march through Belgium in 1914. Similar policies were followed later in France, the Russian-held area of Poland, and in Russia.
The destruction of Kalisz by German troops took place from 2 August until 22 August 1914 at the beginning of World War I. The event is also known as the Pogrom of Kalisz or Poland's Louvain.
The German invasion of Belgium was a military campaign which began on 4 August 1914. On 24 July, the Belgian government had announced that if war came it would uphold its neutrality. The Belgian government mobilised its armed forces on 31 July and a state of heightened alert was proclaimed in Germany. On 2 August, the German government sent an ultimatum to Belgium, demanding passage through the country and German forces invaded Luxembourg. Two days later, the Belgian government refused the German demands and the British government guaranteed military support to Belgium. The German government declared war on Belgium on 4 August; German troops crossed the border and began the Battle of Liège.
The history of Belgium in World War I traces Belgium's role between the German invasion in 1914, through the continued military resistance and occupation of the territory by German forces to the armistice in 1918, as well as the role it played in the international war effort through its African colony and small force on the Eastern Front.
The Siege of Namur was a battle between Belgian and German forces around the fortified city of Namur during the First World War. Namur was defended by a ring of modern fortresses, known as the Fortified Position of Namur and guarded by the 4th Division of the Belgian Army. The purpose of the fortified Belgian cities was to delay an invasion force until troops from the states guaranteeing Belgian independence came to their aid. The French Fifth Army planned to counter-attack while the Germans were besieging Namur.
The German occupation of Belgium of World War I was a military occupation of Belgium by the forces of the German Empire between 1914 and 1918. Beginning in August 1914 with the invasion of neutral Belgium, the country was almost completely overrun by German troops before the winter of the same year as the Allied forces withdrew westwards. The Belgian government went into exile, while King Albert I and the Belgian Army continued to fight on a section of the Western Front. Under the German military, Belgium was divided into three separate administrative zones. The majority of the country fell within the General Government, a formal occupation administration ruled by a German general, while the others, closer to the front line, came under more repressive direct military rule.
The Battle of Dinant was an engagement fought by French and German forces in and around the Belgian town of Dinant in the First World War, during the German invasion of Belgium. The French Fifth Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) advanced into Belgium and fought the Battle of Charleroi (21–23 August) and Battle of Mons (23 August), from the Meuse crossings in the east, to Mons in the west. On 15 August 1914, German troops captured the Citadel of Dinant which overlooked the town; the citadel was recaptured by a French counter-attack during the afternoon.
Jozef De Vroey (1912–1999) was a Catholic priest and child survivor of the 19 August 1914 Aarschot massacre that occurred in World War I during the rape of Belgium and whose book about this atrocity, Aarschot op Woensdag 19 Augustus 1914, has been cited by many historians, including Trinity College, Dublin, Professor Alan Kramer in his 2002 Yale University Press published book German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial that he co-wrote with John N. Horne. After World War II, De Vroey, also, published a book about the life, exploits and execution of Belgium spy Jozef Raskin.
The University Hall in Leuven, Belgium, is a medieval cloth hall with 17th and 18th-century extensions that is now the main administrative building of the KU Leuven. Heavily damaged during the Sack of Leuven in August 1914, the building was restored 1921–1926. It has been a listed building since 26 November 1942, and protected built heritage since 14 September 2009. The building fills most of a block, with entrances on three of the surrounding streets at Krakenstraat 2, Naamsestraat 22, and Oude Markt 13.
The Couillet Treaty details the heavy war reparations imposed by the Imperial German Army on the Belgian town of Charleroi and its surrounding communes, in retaliation for the action allegedly carried out by francs-tireurs against its soldiers as they entered Charleroi.
During World War I (1914–1918), belligerents from both the Allied Powers and Central Powers violated international criminal law, committing numerous war crimes. This includes the use of indiscriminate violence and massacres against civilians, torture, sexual violence, forced deportation and population transfer, death marches, the use of chemical weapons and the targeting of medical facilities.
The Sack of Dinant or Dinant massacre refers to the mass execution of civilians, looting and sacking of Dinant, Neffe and Bouvignes-sur-Meuse in Belgium, perpetrated by German troops during the Battle of Dinant against the French in World War I. Convinced that the civilian population was hiding francs-tireurs, the German General Staff issued orders to execute the population and set fire to their houses.
The German atrocities of 1914 were committed by the Imperial German Army at the beginning of World War I in Belgium, particularly in Wallonia, and in France in the departments of Meuse, Ardennes, and Meurthe-et-Moselle.
References
Charney, Noah (2010). Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece. PublicAffairs. ISBN978-1-58648800-0.
Horne, John; Kramer, Alan (2001). German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. Yale University Press.
Williams, John P. (2018). "Chapter 3: The Flames of Louvain: Total War and the Destruction of European High Culture in Belgium by German Occupying Forces in August 1914". In Christophe Declercq & Felicity Rash (ed.). The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands: Beyond Flanders Fields. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN9783319731070. OCLC1013179685.
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