An Historical Record BY ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE LATE FELLOW OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY MCMXVII COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA...

The subject of this book is the treatment of the civil population in the countries overrun by the German Armies during the first three months of the European War. The form of it is a connected narrative, based on the published documents [1] and reproducing them by direct quotation or (for the sake of brevity) by reference. With the documents now published on both sides it is at last possible to present a clear narrative of what actually happened. The co-ordination of this mass of evidence, which

Arabic numerals after the R refer to the depositions contained in the particular section of the Reply that is being cited at the moment: e.g. , R15 denotes the fifteenth deposition in the section on Louvain in the Reply when cited in the section on Louvain in the present work; but it denotes the fifteenth deposition in the section on Aerschot when cited in the corresponding section here. The Reply is also referred to by pages, and in these cases the Arabic numeral denotes the page and is precede

When Germany declared war upon Russia, Belgium, and France in the first days of August, 1914, German armies immediately invaded Russian, Belgian, and French territory, and as soon as the frontiers were crossed, these armies began to wage war, not merely against the troops and fortifications of the invaded states, but against the lives and property of the civil population. Outrages of this kind were committed during the whole advance and retreat of the Germans through Belgium and France, and only

The Germans invaded Belgium on Aug. 4th, 1914. Their immediate objective was the fortress of Liége and the passage of the Meuse, but first they had to cross a zone of Belgian territory from twenty to twenty-five miles wide. They came over the frontier along four principal roads, which led through this territory to the fortress and the river, and this is what they did in the towns and villages they passed. The first road led from Aix-la-Chapelle, in Germany, to the bridge over the Meuse at Visé,

At St. André [11] 4 civilians were killed and 14 houses burnt. Julémont , [12] the next village, was completely plundered and burnt. Only 2 houses remained standing, and 12 people were killed. Advancing along this road, the Germans arrived at Blégny [13] on Aug. 5th. Several inhabitants of Blégny were murdered that afternoon, among them M. Smets, a professor of gunsmithry (the villagers worked for the small-arms manufacturers of Liége). M. Smets was killed in his house, where his wife was in chi

There is another road from Aix-la-Chapelle to Liége, which passes through Battice and is commanded by Fort Fléron (Fort Fléron offered the most determined resistance of all the forts of Liége, and cost the Germans the greatest loss). The Germans marched through Battice on August 4th, and came under fire of the fort that afternoon. In the evening they arrested three men in the streets of Battice, and shot them without charge or investigation. The check to their arms was avenged on the civil popul

The Germans converged on the forts by more southerly roads as well. At Dolhain , [32] on the road from Eupen to Verviers, 28 houses were burnt on Aug. 8th and several civilians killed. At Metten , [33] near Verviers, a German soldier confesses that he and his comrades “were ordered to search a house from which shots had been fired, but found nothing in the house but two women and a child.... I did not see the women fire. The women were told that nothing would be done to them, because they were c

Francorchamps , [34] the first Belgian village on the Malmédy road, was sacked on Aug. 8th, four days after the first German troops had passed through it unopposed, and again on Aug. 14th by later detachments. At Hockay , [35] near Francorchamps, the curé was shot. In Hockay and Francorchamps 13 people were killed altogether, and 25 houses burnt. “M. Darchambeau, who was wounded (in the cellar of a burning house), asked a young officer for mercy. This young officer of barely 22, in front of the

The same outrages were committed between the Vesdre and the Ourthe. At Louveigné , [47] on Aug. 7th, the Germans, retreating from their attack on the southern forts, looted the drink-shops, fired in the streets, and accused the civilians of having shot. A dozen men (two of them over 70 years old) were imprisoned as hostages in a forge, and were shot down, when released, like game in the open. That evening Louveigné was systematically set on fire with the same incendiary apparatus that was used a

Meanwhile, the Germans had crossed the Meuse at Visé, and were descending on Liége from the north. At Hallembaye , in the commune of Haccourt , [50] 18 people were killed. There were women, children and old men among them, and also the curé, [51] who was bayonetted on his church threshold as he was removing the sacrament. In the commune of Haccourt 80 houses were destroyed, and 112 hostages were carried away into Germany. Hermalle-sous-Argenteau [52] was plundered on Aug. 15th, and 9 houses dest

Twenty-nine of these civilians were killed and 55 [59] of the houses destroyed in the city of Liége itself—on August 20th, a fortnight after it had fallen into the German Army’s possession. The Germans entered Liége on August 7th. Their entry was not opposed by Belgian troops, and arms in private hands had already been called in by the Belgian police. [60] The Germans found themselves in peaceful occupation of a great industrial city, caught in the full tide of its normal life. There was nothing

The first German force to push forward from Liége was the column commissioned to mask the Belgian fortress of Antwerp on the extreme right flank of the German advance. From the bridges of the Meuse this column marched north-west across the Province of Limburg . Belgian patrols met the advance-guard already at Lanaeken on August 6th, driving civilians in front of it as a screen. [74] The invaders were obsessed with the terror of franc-tireurs. At Hasselt , [75] on August 17th, they made the Burgo

The Germans marched into Aerschot [86] on the morning of Aug. 19th, driving before them two girls and four women with babies in their arms as a screen. [87] One of the women was wounded by the fire of the Belgian troops, who had posted machine guns to dispute the Germans’ entry, but now withheld their fire and retired from the town. The Germans encountered no further resistance, but they began to kill civilians and break into houses immediately they came in. They bayonetted two women on their do

The smaller places round Aerschot suffered in their degree. At Nieuw-Rhode 200 houses (out of 321) were plundered, one civilian killed, and 27 deported to Germany. At Gelrode , [107] on August 19th, the Germans seized 21 civilians as hostages, imprisoned them in the church, and then shot one in every three against a wall—the rest were marched to Louvain and imprisoned in the church there. None of them were discovered with arms, for the Burgomaster of Gelrode had collected all arms in private han

Yet the devastation done by the Germans in their advance was light compared with the outrages they committed when the Belgian sortie of August 25th drove them back from Malines towards the Aerschot-Louvain line. In Malines itself [115] they destroyed 1,500 houses from first to last, and revenged themselves atrociously on the civil population. A Belgian soldier saw them bayonet an old woman in the back, and cut off a young woman’s breasts (d 1). Another saw them bayonet a woman and her son (d 2).

The Germans entered Louvain on August 19th. The Belgian troops did not attempt to hold the town, and the civil authorities had prepared for the Germans’ arrival. They had called in all arms in private possession and deposited them in the Hôtel-de-Ville. This had been done a fortnight before the German occupation, [145] and was repeated, for security, on the morning of the 19th itself. [146] The municipal commissary of police remarked the exaggerated conscientiousness with which the order was obe