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Sack of Louvain

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Sack of Leuven
Part of the Rape of Belgium
The city's ruins in 1915
LocationLeuven
Date25 August 1914 (1914-08-25)–January 1915 (1915-01)
TargetBelgian civilians
Attack type
War crime, mass murder, forced labour
Deaths248 death toll
Victims1,500 subjected to forced labour and deported to Germany
Perpetrators Imperial German Army

The Burning of Leuven was the German assault on the Belgian town of Leuven, 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 camp until January 1915. The Library of the Catholic University of Leuven was completely destroyed after it was set on fire by the occupying German soldiers and 1,120 of the 8,928 homes in Leuven were similarly destroyed.

Prelude

The Imperial German Army, which was filled with recent volunteers with minimal military training, had already committed multiple war crimes after invading Belgium on 4 August 1914, including mass killings of hundreds of civilian 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] Civic leaders in Leuven had confiscated privately held weapons in early August, believing that individual resistance was futile and would prompt German reprisals.[3]

Events

About 15,000 German troops occupied the town, and from 19 to 22 August, the German 1st Army made its headquarters in Leuven.[4] The Germans took hostages from the municipal administration, magistrates, and the University of Louvain, and forced inhabitants to keep their front doors open, and windows lit throughout the night.[5]

On 25 August, although they had encountered no resistance from the population, German troops began a massacre.[6] 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.[7][8][9] Civilians were shot or bayoneted, homes were set on fire, and some bodies showed signs of torture.[10] Many of those killed were randomly dumped in ditches and construction trenches.[11]

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.[12] Within ten hours, the library and its collection was virtually destroyed.[13] The fire continued to burn for several days.[14] 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 loot, the fires, the pillage, the evacuation and the destruction of the city" as well as the deliberate incineration of the library's incunabula.[15] The burning of the University of Leuven's library caused the destruction of more than 230,000 books, including 750 medieval manuscripts.[16] Personal libraries and the papers of notaries, solicitors, judges, professors, and physicians were also destroyed.[17]

The killings and other acts of brutality took place throughout the next night and day.[18] The day after that, the German army bombarded the town with five shells.[19] The town was thoroughly pillaged, with many German officers and men engaging in mass plunder of money, wine, silver, and other objects of value and killing those who resisted or did not understand.[20]

In the town, some 1,100 buildings were destroyed,[21] variously estimated to constitute one-sixth[22] or more than one-fifth of the town's structures.[23] The town hall was saved because it was the site of the German headquarters.[24] Some 248 civilians were killed, and most of the city's 42,000 residents were exiled by force into the countryside,[25] with some being taken from their homes at gunpoint.[26] Approximately 1,500 citizens of the town, including women, children, and four of the hostages, were deported to Germany in railway cattle-wagons.[27]

Legacy

Louvain, by Belgian artist Gisbert Combaz (1916)

The German atrocities and the cultural destruction caused worldwide outrage.[28][29] It greatly harmed Germany's standing in the neutral countries.[30] In Britain, Prime Minister H. H. Asquith wrote that "the burning of Louvain is the worst thing [the Germans] have yet done. It reminds one of the Thirty Years' War ... and the achievements of Tilly and Wallenstein."[31] The Irish Parliamentary Party, led by John Redmond, condemned the German atrocities.[32] Intellectuals and journalists in Italy condemned the German act, and it contributed to Italy distancing itself from Germany and Austria and drifting toward the Allies.[33] The Daily Mail called it the "Holocaust of Louvain."[34][35]

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 Alfred de Zayas, are much more reliable than the later German White Book. The depositions alleged that the German soldiers believed themselves to be under attack by Belgian civilians and that the destruction of the city and it's cultural heritage took place in the heat of an urban battle against civilian-clothed members of the Belgian Garde Civique. For example, it was alleged that the insurgents were not known to any Belgians from Louvain, but had clearly been sent from outside the city with orders to stage an anti-German uprising. Furthermore, Dr. Georg Berghausen, the chief medical officer, testified that the German soldiers wounded at Louvain had mostly been fired upon with hunting guns, rather than being the victims of friendly fire.[36]

The university was reopened in 1919, and the reconstructed library was inaugurated in 1927. The rector of the university, Msg. Paulin Ladeuze, said that "At Louvain, German disqualified itself as a nation of thinkers."[37]

More recently, however, 21st century historian Thomas Weber has carefully examined the German war crimes committed during the Rape of Belgium, the vast majority of which took place between 18 and 28 August 1914 and were curtailed by the Imperial German Army afterwards, with the benefit of both hindsight and detachment from the emotions of the period. Rather than being motivated by anti-Catholicism or even as the natural outgrowth of Prussian Army militarism, from which a straight line can allegedly be drawn to the Nazi war crimes of World War II,[38] Weber alleges that German soldiers in August 1914 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 particularly 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."[39]

Even though the German people are traditionally stereotyped as obsessed with order, discipline, efficiency, and meticulously careful planning,[40] according to Weber, the real, "situational factors at play", in August 1914 were, "the nervousness and anxiety of hastily mobilized, largely untrained civilians, panic, [and] the slippery slope from requisitioning to looting and pillaging."[41]

Even so, the destruction of the university library 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"; the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the First World War, included a clause to strengthen protections for cultural property under international law.[42]

Furthermore, 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 graphically 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 formally unveiled in 1925 by former Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch, before an audience that included Queen Elisabeth and Cardinal Désiré-Joseph Mercier.[45]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 6
  2. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 6–7
  3. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 6
  4. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 7
  5. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 7
  6. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 7–8
  7. ^ Ovenden 2020, p. 110
  8. ^ Charney 2010, p. 122
  9. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 251
  10. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 7–8
  11. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 8
  12. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 6, 8
  13. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 8
  14. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 8
  15. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 8–9
  16. ^ Williams 2018, p. 38
  17. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 11
  18. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 9–10
  19. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 11–12
  20. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 11–13
  21. ^ Williams 2018, p. 41
  22. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 38
  23. ^ Charney 2010, p. 122
  24. ^ Veranneman 2018, p. N.P.
  25. ^ Williams 2018, p. 38
  26. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 11
  27. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 10–11
  28. ^ Charney 2010, p. 122
  29. ^ Williams 2018, p. 41
  30. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 14
  31. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 14
  32. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 14
  33. ^ Kramer 2007, pp. 14–15
  34. ^ Williams 2018, p. 41
  35. ^ Kramer 2007, p. 133
  36. ^ Alfred Maurice de Zayas (1989), The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939–1945, University of Nebraska Press. Pages 5-6.
  37. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 387
  38. ^ Thomas Weber (2010), Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Oxford University Press. Pages 35-41.
  39. ^ Thomas Weber (2010), Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Oxford University Press. Page 36.
  40. ^ Zudeick, Peter (19 November 2012). "Order makes Germans' world go round". dw.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
  41. ^ Thomas Weber (2010), Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War, Oxford University Press. Page 37.
  42. ^ Ovenden 2020, p. 110
  43. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 387
  44. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 387
  45. ^ Horne & Kramer 2001, p. 387

References

  • Kramer, Alan (2007). Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-280342-9.
  • Williams, John 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 Christophe Declercq & Felicity Rash (ed.). The Great War in Belgium and the Netherlands: Beyond Flanders Fields. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Horne, John; Kramer, Alan (2001). German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. Yale University Press.
  • Ovenden, Richard (2020). Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-06-7424120-6.
  • Charney, Noah (2010). Stealing the Mystic Lamb: The True Story of the World's Most Coveted Masterpiece. PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648800-0.
  • Veranneman, Jean-Michel (2018). Belgium in the Great War. Pen & Sword. ISBN 978-1-52671662-0.
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