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The Rape of Belgium: The Untold Story of World War I. By Larry Zuckerman. New York: New York University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-8147-9704-0. Maps. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xi, 337. 832.95.
La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale. By Sophie de Schaepdrijver. New York: Peter Lang, 2004. ISBN 90-5201-215-6. Notes. Bibliography. Pp. 334. $33.95.
In August 1914, in the very first days of the German attack on France via Belgium, atrocities were committed against Belgian civilians by German troops. During the first months of the fighting, matters went from bad to worse, with, among others, the burning of the medieval library of Louvain University, the murder of hundreds of civilians and the major destruction of property in the Walloon (French-speaking) towns of Dinant and Tamines. For Belgium a period of occupation began, in which the small country was thoroughly looted, deprived of its industrial capacity and even part of its labour force. In many ways the four years of German occupation of Belgium can be seen as a foreshadowing of things to come in the Second World War.
Zuckerman wants to point out in his study that Belgium was not just a victim of atrocities but, worse still, of "routine terror and the mind-set that condoned it" (p. 1). He explicitly states that "occupied Belgium was a forerunner of Nazi Europe" (p. 2). He...