- Schrecklichkeit
"Schrecklichkeit" (German "terror" or "frightfulness") was a military responseFact|date=September 2008 of the German Army to civilian resistance in World War One during the invasion of
Belgium ,France [http://www.haverford.edu/engl/english354/GreatWar/Belgium/schreck.html Haverford University “Schrecklichkeit"] ] ["German policy was based on Schrecklichkeit ('dreadfulness' or 'frightfulness'). During their advance through Belgium in 1914 the German Army massacred hundreds of civilians and burned down towns and villages in reprisal for acts of resistance, real or imagined, and to deter the population." "War, Culture, and the Media".Ian Stewart. Page 57. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1996.] andPoland ["History of the World War". Francis Andrew March, Richard J Beamis page 63 Plain Label Books, 1918.] as well as inRussia .According to the traditions of warfare in Europe, a nation's resistance was expected to end when its armies had been beaten in the field. In Belgium however, civilian snipers continued to harass German troopsFact|date=September 2008, and the Germans adopted harsh measures ("schrecklichkeit"), to try and crush this resistance quickly. Hostages were shot, priests thought guilty of encouraging the resistance were killed and crimes committed by German soldiers, such as rape, were not seriously punished. In the Belgian city of Louvain, heavy artillery, including the Big Bertha cannon, was used against the town centre. One German officer later wrote about the town, "We shall wipe it out...Not one stone will stand upon another. We will teach them to respect Germany. For generations people will come here and see what we have done".
The harsh measures, hastily decided upon in the urgency of the German attempt to outflank Allied forces, proved to be a propaganda disaster for the Germans, as their publication caused a wave of indignation which aided the Allied cause.
Analysis
The main German argument for many years was that the actions in Belgium were result of civilian resistance. According to German argument Belgians were themselves to blame civilian resistance which was to be "illegal warfare." Echoes of this can be found as late as the 1990s in such works as Thomas Nipperdey’s "Deutsche Geschichte" or in 1996 edition of
Brockhaus . John Horne and Alan Kramer in the book "German Atrocities 1914 : A History of Denial" refute this thesis. Based on several sources, they contend that the German Army faced no irregular forces in Belgium and France during the first two and a half months of WWI ["The Etiology of War Crimes and the Complexities of Remembrance" Review by Alon Rachamimov of John N. Horne and Alan Kramer. German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001 ISBN 978-0-300-08975-2.] .References
ee also
*
Rape of Belgium
*Destruction of Kalisz
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