German atrocities 1914 a history of denial Horne & Kramer

[yperman]

I have just finished this book and I wondered what other forum members made of it?

[Martin Bennitt]

I read it some time ago. I got it out of the library so cannot comment on it in detail, but Ithought it well researched, well written and convincing.

 

Cheers Martin B

[Hedley Malloch]

I read it and other books on the German occupation of northern France and Belgium when I was researching my book ‘The Killing of the Iron Twelve’. The book is very well researched, detailed and produces a vivid, rich description of what the Germans did. What it does not explain satisfactorily is why the Germans behaved in the cruel, malicious way in which they did.

H&K explain German behaviour in terms fear of the franc-tireur, the civilian militias and armed groups not under central control who wrought such damage on the Prussian army in the war of 1870-1. This was a factor, but it is not a complete explanation. The fact is that the German army behaved like this throughout the occupied territories of Europe. It was not something they did simply in Belgium and France. There was no history of the franc-tireur in Eastern Europe, but their behaviour there was no different to that in Belgium and France. Further, the Germans exhibited the same pattern of malicious and unthinking behaviour in the wars against the Herero peoples in modern day Namibia in 1903-5 where there were most certainly no franc-tireur.

In other words what H&K describe was part of a more generalised and unthinking response by the German army to the problems of occupation. More recent work (see Hull, ‘Absolute Destruction’ and ‘A Scrap of Paper’ ) see it as a product of the culture of the German army, something not thought about, an automatic response born out of its control systems, organisation structure, symbols, rituals and myths. I like to think that in my book I took this analysis further and produced a more complete analysis and explanation.

H&K devote some time as to whether or not the Germans intended to break the Geneva and The Hague conventions and they conclude that they probably did. From a cultural point of view, the question is not intention, but whether or not international conventions ever emerged as an issue in their thinking. Both Hull and I conclude that it did not.

[sheldrake]

1 hour ago, Hedley Malloch said:

H&K explain German behaviour in terms fear of the franc-tireur, the civilian militias and armed groups not under central control who wrought such damage on the Prussian army in the war of 1870-1. This was a factor, but it is not a complete explanation.

There are parallels with the co-alition forces in the Great War Against Terror in Iraq. The moment people are defined as unlawful combatants it creates a space for  a range of depraved behaviour. A hysterical fear of an unseen enemy can create an environment where war crimes can be committed.  Is the German response to the fear of the franc tireur much different in nature to the spy fever and panic inspired by the fifth columnists that infected the British and French in both world wars?  There are plenty of accounts of spies being dispatched via summary justice  by British and French authorities. There is no full set of statistics available about the men and women who died in this way.  Clearly nothing to do with the culture of the German Army. 

[Marilyne]

I read it quite some time ago, have it here (French version) and find it noot only brilliantly researched but also one of the very rare oeuvres on this topic that managed to keep a perfect axiological neutrality. Their study of the facts faced with the interpretations of both sides make for fascinating reading. 

A very good book, that I'd encourage all serious students of the war but read!! 

 

M.

 

 

[yperman]

4 hours ago, Hedley Malloch said:

I read it and other books on the German occupation of northern France and Belgium when I was researching my book ‘The Killing of the Iron Twelve’. The book is very well researched, detailed and produces a vivid, rich description of what the Germans did. What it does not explain satisfactorily is why the Germans behaved in the cruel, malicious way in which they did.

H&K explain German behaviour in terms fear of the franc-tireur, the civilian militias and armed groups not under central control who wrought such damage on the Prussian army in the war of 1870-1. This was a factor, but it is not a complete explanation. The fact is that the German army behaved like this throughout the occupied territories of Europe. It was not something they did simply in Belgium and France. There was no history of the franc-tireur in Eastern Europe, but their behaviour there was no different to that in Belgium and France. Further, the Germans exhibited the same pattern of malicious and unthinking behaviour in the wars against the Herero peoples in modern day Namibia in 1903-5 where there were most certainly no franc-tireur.

In other words what H&K describe was part of a more generalised and unthinking response by the German army to the problems of occupation. More recent work (see Hull, ‘Absolute Destruction’ and ‘A Scrap of Paper’ ) see it as a product of the culture of the German army, something not thought about, an automatic response born out of its control systems, organisation structure, symbols, rituals and myths. 

Thank you all I will get a copy of "killing of the Iron Twelve". Like you I was impressed with the detail but came away feeling the fear of imaginary franc tireur wasn't enough - though the demonisation of guerrilla fighters Viet cong  ISIS etc in time with raw conscripts  and weak leaders can lead to a "My Lai" these killings started in days of the invasion.

[AOK4]

Hello,

 

I should have the book as well, but I can't seem to find it for the moment (after having moved recently).

From memory, I had some remarks about the book. For instance, they don't acknowledge the fact that in almost all instances the German units involved were in their first engagement with their enemy in populated area. This is a very important fact to try to understand why things happened. The last large scale crimes were around Ypres late October 1914, but the units involved there were almost completely made of men who had not been in combat before.

I am also of the opinion that they did too little research in German sources (a common fault for "Allied" researchers). One really has to also read the contemporary German writings to get an understanding of their thinking. Unlike what most say, these crimes were not premeditated (how can one explain the few dozen German deaths in Leuven f.i. during the chaotic nightly shooting and burning).

Another interesting element which has never been researched, would be to compare French and British behaviour to German (since some  posters talk about the Herero, it would be interesting to see how "holy" the French, British and Belgians were in their colonies). Even looking more recently to American behaviour during the Vietnam War shows huge similarities between what happened in 1914 and what happend there with civilians.

One more element that tends to be neglected is the presence of "normal" criminals present in a large army based on compulsary service. I guess some of these men saw their chance to start looting and cause other mischief in those confused times.

 

In court, all accused have also the right to call witnesses à décharge, something which the German army is not allowed to have?

 

(and now I'll duck into my concrete bunker so that I can withstand any retaliatory shellfire)

 

Jan

[Open Bolt]

4 hours ago, AOK4 said:

I'll duck into my concrete bunker so that I can withstand any retaliatory shellfire

You of all people know that is not always a guarantee of safety!

Very interesting discussion; plenty of parallels regarding colonies and Vietnam; also the introduction of chlorine gas in 1915, bombardment of coastal towns, aerial bombing, sinking of merchant ships etc?

[ilkley remembers]

Alan Kramer's 2007 follow up, The Dynamics of Destruction: Culture and Mass killing in the First World War, in which he expands the argument to cover other participating combatant nations is on my to read pile.

[AOK4]

2 hours ago, Open Bolt said:

You of all people know that is not always a guarantee of safety!

Very interesting discussion; plenty of parallels regarding colonies and Vietnam; also the introduction of chlorine gas in 1915, bombardment of coastal towns, aerial bombing, sinking of merchant ships etc?

 

Gas was being tested by the French as well f.i. in 1914 and 1915, although less successful. The Germans were the first to successfully deploy it after which the allies did were quite eager to catch up and do the same. Aerial bombing happened on both sides, and I am quite sure more civilian inhabitants of France, Belgium and Germany died of allied bombs than the other way around (one should read some of these bombing reports and the comments when obviously civilian targets were hit). There were also quite a few civilian casualties in Belgium because of British shore bombardments of f.i. Oostende and Zeebrugge, although I don't know whether the Royal Navy ever bombarded any German North Sea town. British submarines were active in the Baltic and North Sea, probably also attacking merchant ships going to and from Germany.

 

Jan

[James A Pratt III]

I  have read the book and found it well researched and well written. A  must read on the subject.

[Hedley Malloch]

On 06/04/2020 at 16:16, sheldrake said:

There are parallels with the co-alition forces in the Great War Against Terror in Iraq. The moment people are defined as unlawful combatants it creates a space for  a range of depraved behaviour. A hysterical fear of an unseen enemy can create an environment where war crimes can be committed.  Is the German response to the fear of the franc tireur much different in nature to the spy fever and panic inspired by the fifth columnists that infected the British and French in both world wars?  There are plenty of accounts of spies being dispatched via summary justice  by British and French authorities. There is no full set of statistics available about the men and women who died in this way.  Clearly nothing to do with the culture of the German Army. 

 

The point is that what happened in the occupied territories was not simply a response to the franc-tireur myth. The pattern of cruelty shown by the occupying German army was evident throughout the occupied lands, including Eastern Europe even where there was no franc-tireur myth. The Herero wars show that this pattern of response was well in place before 1914. They could even be like it with fellow Germans. The army was not under any meaningful civilian or political control. How it behaved was a product of how the German army trained its members, its control systems, its organisation structure, rulebooks, symbols, rituals and myths – in other words its culture. And the problem was much wider than shooting suspected spies – the Germans were like it with everyone all the time: deportations, confiscations, forced labour, rape, the systematic destruction of French and Belgian industry, suppression of French and Belgian culture, treatment of PoWs. It embraced everyone, everything, everywhere.

 

The positions of the Germans and the Allied powers in France and Belgium are not comparable. The Germans were an occupying power; the Allies were not. As such, the Germans had obligations under The Hague and Geneva Conventions with respect to the French and Belgian civilians who were under their control.

 

I am not aware that the British army shot civilians suspected of spying in France or Belgium. Can you supply further details, please?

[Hedley Malloch]

On 07/04/2020 at 05:10, AOK4 said:

Hello,

 

I should have the book as well, but I can't seem to find it for the moment (after having moved recently).

From memory, I had some remarks about the book. For instance, they don't acknowledge the fact that in almost all instances the German units involved were in their first engagement with their enemy in populated area. This is a very important fact to try to understand why things happened. The last large scale crimes were around Ypres late October 1914, but the units involved there were almost completely made of men who had not been in combat before.

I am also of the opinion that they did too little research in German sources (a common fault for "Allied" researchers). One really has to also read the contemporary German writings to get an understanding of their thinking. Unlike what most say, these crimes were not premeditated (how can one explain the few dozen German deaths in Leuven f.i. during the chaotic nightly shooting and burning).

Another interesting element which has never been researched, would be to compare French and British behaviour to German (since some  posters talk about the Herero, it would be interesting to see how "holy" the French, British and Belgians were in their colonies). Even looking more recently to American behaviour during the Vietnam War shows huge similarities between what happened in 1914 and what happend there with civilians.

One more element that tends to be neglected is the presence of "normal" criminals present in a large army based on compulsary service. I guess some of these men saw their chance to start looting and cause other mischief in those confused times.

 

In court, all accused have also the right to call witnesses à décharge, something which the German army is not allowed to have?

 

(and now I'll duck into my concrete bunker so that I can withstand any retaliatory shellfire)

 

Jan

 

The argument that these atrocities were the unpremeditated, carried out by naïve troops in and around Ypres and restricted in time to late-1914 is simply at substantial variance with the known facts. The atrocities committed not restricted to shooting civilians out of hand, but included burnings and later embraced deportations, forced labour, rape, requisitions. This continued throughout the occupied territories in Europe throughout the war. Indeed, a central point of Hull’s book, ‘Absolute Destruction’ is that some aspects actually got worse as the war progressed, reaching its apogee in the final weeks of the war. Much of this was signed off by senior German commanders, professional soldiers, hardly inexperienced novices. Not all of them were like this: Crown Prince Rupprecht was a notable exception, but too many were. 

 

There is evidence for this everywhere: in the diaries of locals, in local archives one can see it in the poster collections, dossiers prepared by the French government, notably ‘Rapports et Procés-Verbaux d’Enquête de la Commission Instituée En Vue de Constater les Actes Commis par L’Ennemi en Violations du Droit des Gens’, nearly 1000 pages of statements and photographs of German atrocities. Then there are the statements held in the local archives at Annecy made by some of the 600,000 French and Belgian deportees when they entered France. Perhaps some of this was exaggerated or even fabricated, but there is just too much of it to be ignored.

 

Your point about whether or not the British and French were any kinder colonial masters than their German counterparts showed themselves to be in Namibia in 1903 is a good one, but it not relevant here. The discussion here is how the Germans behaved in occupied Europe, so let’s keep to the point. A similar comment could be made about who first used poison gas, submarine warfare. Interesting, but hardly relevant to the discussion of how Germany managed its occupation of France and Belgium.

 

Your argument that the German officers concerned were denied a chance to clear their names does not stand up to examination. They could have done so in the Leipzig trials held after the war. These were largely controlled by the German government at the time, but it simply refused to co-operate. Charges against leading German military and naval figures were dropped leaving only a few junior officers to face the music. Others were tipped off giving them time to abscond to countries where there were no extradition agreements. To be fair, there was not much appetite on the part of Lloyd George or Clemenceau to press matters; both were well aware of the fragile state of the Weimar Republic and the threat posed to it by right-wing army officers. But any German officer who thought he had been smeared with unfair charges certainly had the chance to clear his name. That they did not take it is down to them and the German government, admittedly with considerable Allied help.

 

Jan – a question for me when I wrote my book was to explain why the Germans committed these atrocities. Failure to do so leads to their demonization. And they were not demons, although some of them occasionally behaved in a demonic way. The explanation I came up with was the culture of the German army – this is what it told its members to do. The franc-tireur myth was a small and localised part of this, but is not a complete explanation. The frightening part of culture as an explanation is it means that any one of us would have behaved in exactly the same way, if we had been brought up with its values, assumptions and implicit beliefs. We like to think that we would not, that our innate sense of decency, moral superiority, training, stiff-upper lips, ‘Britishness’ if you like, would act as a check on outrageous, inhuman behaviour. The evidence suggest that it would not. ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls … ‘

[sheldrake]

4 hours ago, Hedley Malloch said:

The point is that what happened in the occupied territories was not simply a response to the franc-tireur myth. The pattern of cruelty shown by the occupying German army was evident throughout the occupied lands, including Eastern Europe even where there was no franc-tireur myth. The Herero wars show that this pattern of response was well in place before 1914. They could even be like it with fellow Germans. The army was not under any meaningful civilian or political control. How it behaved was a product of how the German army trained its members, its control systems, its organisation structure, rulebooks, symbols, rituals and myths – in other words its culture. And the problem was much wider than shooting suspected spies – the Germans were like it with everyone all the time: deportations, confiscations, forced labour, rape, the systematic destruction of French and Belgian industry, suppression of French and Belgian culture, treatment of PoWs. It embraced everyone, everything, everywhere.

 

The positions of the Germans and the Allied powers in France and Belgium are not comparable. The Germans were an occupying power; the Allies were not. As such, the Germans had obligations under The Hague and Geneva Conventions with respect to the French and Belgian civilians who were under their control.

 

I am not aware that the British army shot civilians suspected of spying in France or Belgium. Can you supply further details, please?

 

You may be right to argue that the Kulture of the German army predisposed to act in cruel ways.  However, there is a danger of applying double standards    

 

Edward Spiers in Liaison 1914 reported incidents of spies executed under summary justice.

P54 describes how sentries, fearful of cars full of German spies would shoot at cars first and ask questions later. 

P471-2 14 September 1914 describes the apprehension and conviction on very slight evidence of two civilians in Reims. Facing photograph captioned "Spies awaiting execution"   

This section is wporth quoting at length

Quote

I had a conversation with one of the officers connected with the court martial that condertmed these people, and shudderingly remarked that the evidence was slight, the accusation often improbable, and how could guilt be established in such cases without the possibility of error? His answer made a profound impression on me. ” You English don't know what war is. The existence of France is at stake. A single spy may cause such harm as to imperil the fate of the nation. Justice has little to do with it. Our duty is to see that no spy escapes whatever the cost may be. If a proportion of those who arc executed to-day are guilty, even one or two, we have every reason to be satisfied that our duty to the country has been done.” These executions and drastic methods were not ours, but on the other hand it would hardly behove us to criticise them, for often when doubtful cases arose in our own area, difficult to deal with by our more deliberate procedure, the suspected persons were handed over to the French, not merely because it was best to let them deal with people who might turn out to be their own nationals, but also on accoimt of the expeditiousness and rapidity with which we knewthey would handle such matters.

 

 

 Spiers provides evidence of franc-tireur too.

 

Quote

As we fell back, we were to abandon many men lost or for-gotten in their immense depths 5 stragglers, patrols that had missed their way, posts that had not been relieved, or detachments that had been cut off. The story of what befell some of these men is a dramatic one. .....They were outlaws in that if caught they would be treated as spies, for the Germans had announced that they would shoot any allied soldiers caught behind their lines. Amongst the men cut off in this way during the retreat was a French officer with a great name and a greater heart. Captain de Colbert, He collected some three hundred soldiers of all arms, but mostly belonging to the 305th Infantry Regiment, and conducted with his little band a fierce and effective guerilla warfare against the German lines of communication. Never sleeping twice in the same place, moving from one fastness to another, he harried the enemy in this quarter or in that, and then vanished into the impenetrable thickets of the gloomy woods. His men came to know every path and glade in the forest, and learned to find their way about its rugged slopes as surely as the herds of wild pig lurking in its depths. Two whole divisions of Landwehr were sent against them to no purpose. The Germans tramped the woods in their heavy boots, fired at shadows, shouted ** Wehr da ? *’ as startled doe sprang from the undergrowth, but of de Colbert they could find no trace, and in the end they gave up the hunt. The French knew nothing of the existence of Colbert and his men until the beginning of November, 1914. On the 13th of that month the G.Q.G. sent a note to the Armies reporting the presence of French troops behind the German lines in the neighbourhood of Signy-le-Pedt, and asking that means of getting into touch with them should be studied.

 

Dunn The War The Infantry Knew: P 65 21 September 1914 "Spies everywhere, we've sent sixteen to the French; they will be shot."   

 

20 May 1940 ...Saw two men running down the road.  Refugees said they were parachutists. Captain Martin and myself called for them to halt, but they didn't. Not immediately. Dropped them. Both dead when we reached them.  Diary Sergeant L D Pexton unpublished diary IWM.  (World War 2 the autobiography. John E Lewis)

 

The Sound Archives of the Imperial War Museum includes an interview with a soldier of the Northamptonshire Regiment who said that in 1940 he shot a Belgian farmer who was obviously ploughing his field in such a way to indicate battalion headquarters to German aircraft.

The Welsh Guards threw a man dressed as a priest into the harbour at Boulogne in 1940 because they were suspicious of the names and addresses in his bible.   

 

The British and French did not practice deportations or forced labour in Europe. However, the 100,000 Chinese labourers who thought they were travelling to Europe to work as civilian labourers were placed under martial law. 

 

References to the German treatment of the Herero needs to be placed against the British treatment of the Boers - whose families were deported and housed in concentration camps as well as their black African and Asian subjects.  The Amritsar massacre took place after the end of the First World War. The heavy handed response to the Dublin rising is one factor in the loss of Ireland from the United Kingdom. The Black and Tans were a British paramilitary freikorps. 

 

I am not making a judgement about any single episode, merely pointing out that there is a case to answer.

Edited 10 April , 2020 by sheldrake

[Marilyne]

While I have not read "The dynamics of destruction" yet… must be on the list… I can nevertheless recommend Larry Zuckerman's "The rape of Belgium" as another take on the matter.

 

M.

[ilkley remembers]

3 hours ago, Marilyne said:

While I have not read "The dynamics of destruction" yet… must be on the list… I can nevertheless recommend Larry Zuckerman's "The rape of Belgium" as another take on the matter.

 

M.

As a result of reading this interesting thread Alan Kramers book has been moved up from mid way in the  to read pile to the top of the leaning tower, passing Orwells 'Coming up for Air and a Maigret on the way. Wizzed through the introduction first chapter this morning and although he starts with burning of Louvain his focus is now broadened to cover cultural destruction across the whole of continental Europe in WW1. His time frame now begins in 1911 and extends through the 30s and 40s up to and including reference to WW2 which I think is a reasonable position given that he sees these events as driven largely by racism. The historian David Reynolds wrote that the The First World War had a 'Long Shadow' and it seems likely that Kramer will agree.

[Hedley Malloch]

On 10/04/2020 at 15:19, sheldrake said:

 

You may be right to argue that the Kulture of the German army predisposed to act in cruel ways.  However, there is a danger of applying double standards    

 

Edward Spiers in Liaison 1914 reported incidents of spies executed under summary justice.

P54 describes how sentries, fearful of cars full of German spies would shoot at cars first and ask questions later. 

P471-2 14 September 1914 describes the apprehension and conviction on very slight evidence of two civilians in Reims. Facing photograph captioned "Spies awaiting execution"   

This section is wporth quoting at length

 

 Spiers provides evidence of franc-tireur too.

 

 

Dunn The War The Infantry Knew: P 65 21 September 1914 "Spies everywhere, we've sent sixteen to the French; they will be shot."   

 

20 May 1940 ...Saw two men running down the road.  Refugees said they were parachutists. Captain Martin and myself called for them to halt, but they didn't. Not immediately. Dropped them. Both dead when we reached them.  Diary Sergeant L D Pexton unpublished diary IWM.  (World War 2 the autobiography. John E Lewis)

 

The Sound Archives of the Imperial War Museum includes an interview with a soldier of the Northamptonshire Regiment who said that in 1940 he shot a Belgian farmer who was obviously ploughing his field in such a way to indicate battalion headquarters to German aircraft.

The Welsh Guards threw a man dressed as a priest into the harbour at Boulogne in 1940 because they were suspicious of the names and addresses in his bible.   

 

The British and French did not practice deportations or forced labour in Europe. However, the 100,000 Chinese labourers who thought they were travelling to Europe to work as civilian labourers were placed under martial law. 

 

References to the German treatment of the Herero needs to be placed against the British treatment of the Boers - whose families were deported and housed in concentration camps as well as their black African and Asian subjects.  The Amritsar massacre took place after the end of the First World War. The heavy handed response to the Dublin rising is one factor in the loss of Ireland from the United Kingdom. The Black and Tans were a British paramilitary freikorps. 

 

I am not making a judgement about any single episode, merely pointing out that there is a case to answer.

 

Of course the French shot French people on suspicion of spying. But you said that in WW1 the British army  had shot French people they suspected of spying. Is there any evidence of this?

The Spiers quote about Captain Colbert being a franc-tireur - he was not. He was a legitimate armed and uniformed combatant, a fully paid up member of the French army. As such he was not a franc-tireur. The term refers to civilians and members of militias and semi-official armed groups, of which there were many in France and Belgium - but none in Germany. Captain Colbert was protected by The Hague and the Geneva conventions - francs-tireurs were not.

I cannot accept your argument that the 100,00 Chinese labourers were in any way equivalent to 'deportees'. For sure, WW1 meant massive international movements of labour, but not everyone who was forced to move across international boundaries can be regarded as a deportee. Otherwise we would have to include all members of those armies who fought in countries other than their own, especially the conscripts. And the Germans who were being forced to fight in France and Belgium - were they 'deportees'? . A deportee is a civilian who is forcibly removed from their home by an enemy occupying power.

Were the British any better slave masters than the other colonial powers? Probably not. But here I want to focus on the single issue of how the Germans managed the occupation of France and Belguim. Widening the discussion leads to obfuscation of German war guilt, muddying of waters. If you wish to look at the 'wider context', then perhaps this could be better done by opening a separate thread.

[Hedley Malloch]

21 hours ago, ilkley remembers said:

As a result of reading this interesting thread Alan Kramers book has been moved up from mid way in the  to read pile to the top of the leaning tower, passing Orwells 'Coming up for Air and a Maigret on the way. Wizzed through the introduction first chapter this morning and although he starts with burning of Louvain his focus is now broadened to cover cultural destruction across the whole of continental Europe in WW1. His time frame now begins in 1911 and extends through the 30s and 40s up to and including reference to WW2 which I think is a reasonable position given that he sees these events as driven largely by racism. The historian David Reynolds wrote that the The First World War had a 'Long Shadow' and it seems likely that Kramer will agree.

 

Kramer uses the word 'culture' in a particular way. 'Culture' can mean a country's art, literature, buildings, theatre - its artistic heritage if you like. This is how Kramer uses the word.  When studying organisations, it has another meaning. Here it refers to the beliefs, values and assumptions held in common by organisation members. These are often tacit. They find expression in the organisation's control systems, organisations structures, power systems, rituals, symbols and myths. That is the sense in which I am using it.

[AOK4]

For my book about Gheluvelt during the First World War, I had found a few stories about locals being either severely abused or even shot by British troops.

 

Jan

[ilkley remembers]

3 hours ago, Hedley Malloch said:

Kramer uses the word 'culture' in a particular way.

 

Only really able to comment about Kramers introduction although I did re-read it as I was not entirely convinced that he had adequately explained the juxtaposition of cultural destruction (by his definition) and mass killing. I was tempted to read the conclusion before the main body of the book in the hope that a clear picture of his argument might reveal itself,  however, to date restraint has been exercised.

 

Clearly, ‘Dynamics of Destruction’, falls into the cultural history/ new historicism category with all the advantages and disadvantages that the genre (for want of a better phrase) brings to historical scholarship. In this case it seems that he wants to throw into the melting pot a bit of mass killing, architectural barbarism, literary and artistic interpretation along with a smidgen of Italian Modernism and hey presto we have Fascism. Perhaps this sounds a trifle cynical and probably and over simplification of Kramers position but my first impression is that this has been done better elsewhere. Still I might be pleasantly surprised.

[sheldrake]

9 hours ago, Hedley Malloch said:

 

1.  Of course the French shot French people on suspicion of spying.

2.  But you said that in WW1 the British army  had shot French people they suspected of spying. Is there any evidence of this?

 

3. I cannot accept your argument that the 100,00 Chinese labourers were in any way equivalent to 'deportees'.

 Re 1  The French army shooting French or German people as spies raises a comparison with the Germans shooting Belgians and French.

Re2 . I said the world wars and provided references to British shooting Belgians and French in WW2. I also provided a reference to a  WW1 source saying that at least one unit handed spies or German stragglers to the French in the knowledge that they would be executed.  Is this better?   

Re 3 The Chinese volunteered for service as civilian labourers. The British and French prevailed on the Chinese government to join the war. The result was that these men were now conscripted under martial law. Did they have an option to leave? WQe executed some of the Chinese through courts martial.

 

In repeat. I am not arguing the merits of each case, merely that sweeping claims of a unique German guilt for actions in WW1 can be challenged.

 

Edited 12 April , 2020 by sheldrake

[ilkley remembers]

One of the interesting features about the Horne and Kramer book is that it was one of the first, if not the first, to actively analyse the veracity of the Belgian atrocity claims. Even during the war the German authorities had mounted a robust denial of the majority of the claims and post war there was no real diminution of denial. As far as I am aware, and I am happy to be shot down in flames, Anglo/American disinterest in pursuing war crimes left an void into which poured a revisionist narrative effectively exonerating the German army  for its actions in occupied territory between 1914 and 1918. 

 

It seems to have been the somewhat derided Barbara Tuchman in the Guns of August who brought the issue back into the spotlight, although, her analysis probably lacked rigour. It seems that it is only in the last 20 years or so that professional historians have been able to challenge a perceived orthodoxy that The German Army 's actions in Belgium and France were justifiable and in comparison to other nations not entirely unusual.

[AOK4]

8 hours ago, ilkley remembers said:

One of the interesting features about the Horne and Kramer book is that it was one of the first, if not the first, to actively analyse the veracity of the Belgian atrocity claims. Even during the war the German authorities had mounted a robust denial of the majority of the claims and post war there was no real diminution of denial. As far as I am aware, and I am happy to be shot down in flames, Anglo/American disinterest in pursuing war crimes left an void into which poured a revisionist narrative effectively exonerating the German army  for its actions in occupied territory between 1914 and 1918. 

 

It seems to have been the somewhat derided Barbara Tuchman in the Guns of August who brought the issue back into the spotlight, although, her analysis probably lacked rigour. It seems that it is only in the last 20 years or so that professional historians have been able to challenge a perceived orthodoxy that The German Army 's actions in Belgium and France were justifiable and in comparison to other nations not entirely unusual.

 

Just a few remarks:

1. Most of the research is done with a goal: to prove that Germany was predestined to become the all-evil national social state it was in 1933-1945.

 

2. Most of the research is done without any serious investigation into German military sources and without proper knowledge of the German army and how it was structured (therefor not understanding which units were involved where and their background about being for the first time in the front).

 

3. The same is valid for research about the occupation. There were huge differences in the application of the rules in different areas. These differences come from the fact that certain commanders were less strict and because other rules applied to the different areas (Operationsgebiet - Etappengebiet - Generalgouvernement).

 

4. The investigation reports are never neutral, neither the German report nor the French and Belgian ones. Both serve a very important main or side goal: propaganda, something which can't be denied and should be taken into account when studying them.

 

5. I think it is time to make comparative studies about the different aspects: war crimes against civilians and occupation policies (WWI, Rhine occupation, WWII, post-war Europe, Southeast Asia, Middle East, ...) and the different actors (both sides!). I think that a lot of similarities would be found over time and among all sides.

 

6. The 1914 atrocities were neither forgotten nor denied by any serious person who was interested in the First World War when Horne and Kramer wrote their book. Only Anglo Saxon historians without knowledge of local publications in Dutch and French can have gotten that idea. The stories about atrocities and occupation policies are and have been very well documented.

 

Jan

[AOK4]

May I also refer to the paper by Markus Pöhlmann: Habent sua fata libelli. Zur Auseinandersetzung um das Buch „German Atrocities 1914“, in: Portal Militärgeschichte, 16. November 2017.

 

Jan

[AOK4]

And also worthwile reading: Markus Pöhlmann, Über die Kriegsverbrechen von 1914, in: Globale Machtkonflikte und Kriege. Festschrift für Stig Förster zum 65. Geburtstag. Hg. von Flavio Eichmann, ders. und Dierk Walter in Verbindung mit Birgt Beck-Heppner, Paderborn 2016, S. 125-144.

 

(both articles can be read on academia)

 

Especially this article is very worth reading as it gives examples of all kinds of crimes on all fronts.

Edited 14 April , 2020 by AOK4