511 replies to this topic

[bob lembke]

Hi, Harry and the rest of you guys;

I just got some great news, am in a great mood, and also suddenly worry that I may be distressing some of you guys. I know that I am contrarian, an old fart, pompous and self-centered, often grumpy, and that I sometimes enjoy slipping a dagger between some-one's ribs. But, hey, no-one is perfect!

So my very best wishes to everyone, no matter what sort of superstitious rituals you are pursuing at this holiday season! (I am quite the heathen; my vastly superior wife could best be described as a Wiccan/Anglican and a lapsed Catholic.) You guys, and my discourse with you, means a lot to me.

Ho, Ho!

Bob

[salesie]

I know little about the Boer war. However, I think that, since the Brits could not catch the Africaaner male gurrillas (sp?) flitting across the veldt, they rounded up the Africaaner wives and children from their farms and put them in camps. I understand that something like 7000 wives and 28,000 children died. I am sure that these people were healthy and as hard as nails when rounded up. They must have been kept in absolute death-camp conditions to die like that. Given any reasonable amount of food, and given half a chance to keep clean, very few would have died. I believe that the Africaaners have documented every one of these deaths by name. I could add that the number of dead, if my numbers are correct, is about six times as many as the civilians who died in "the Rape of Belgium", some percentage (probably quite high) who were either innocent, or denied a fair and adequate trial, and some percentage (probably smaller) who were caught red-handed committing a generally accepted capital crime.

Are my figures correct? Corrections gratefully rerceived.

Bob Lembke

Your figures are only slighty high, Bob, and these casualties, the vast majority being children, accounted for around 25% of the total internees - the vast majority dying from diseases such as measles, typhoid, dysentry etc.. This was indeed a black time in the history of our country and, even though it was criminal neglect and incompetence that caused the suffering not deliberate genocide, no condemnation is too severe.

However, even amid such disgraceful behaviour we can see decent people coming to the fore. The camps were closed to new inmates, and conditions greatly improved for those who could not return home and had nowhere else to stay, the death rate dropping to 2% which was less than British cities of the time. This improvement was brought about  by the efforts of a Miss Emily Hobhouse, who visited these camps and came to England to blow the whistle, being aided in her mission by the good sense of Lloyd George and a free press. The resultant huge public outcry forced Parliament to act and the government of the day to rapidly redress the situation. Our system in this country may not be perfect, but this episode at least shows it does ultimately have a collective conscience that does not deny the truth, no matter how damning.


Cheers - salesie.

[bob lembke]

Hi, salesie!

Your further details are heartening, and nothing less than I would expect from the English (and the rest of the tribes running about those isles - super-wife's maiden name is Megan Foley,  but despite that she is almost half English - but certainly from the foggy isles.) As I have said, I am very English in culture and geneology, raised on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Mum slaving away for three days at Christmas to make a old-fashioned fruit pudding, brought into the darkened dining room abaze with rum, etc., etc.

A friend just e-mailed me scans of eight documents. I have just now looked at them, and the last one that I examined is absolutely earth-shaking, as far as my little world of interest is concerned, easily the most remarkable research find of my 6-7 years of intense study of WW I. At least one of the others is merely suspendous, and, globally speaking, more important than the other. My former mere state of glee was simply based on receiving these documents, without actually seeing what they are, but this is amazing.  I am bursting to share what they are, and I simply can't. My friend has access to archives we ordinary mortals can only dream about.

Bob

[Jim_Grundy]

Bob


In one of my previous posts I stated that no nation can claim to be immune from having committed crimes.  However, the fact remains that what was done by one nation at one time does not excuse or justify crimes by other nations at other times.  

The old British concentration camp line has been used by apologists for the later, rather 'worse' camps established in Germany and elsewhere later in the 20th Century but I've never heard it used before to justify mass executions of Belgian and French civilians in 1914.  What an interesting line of defence!  Perhaps I could try and use it myself, "Well, your honour, I felt entirely justified in killing every person who looked at me bozz-eyed because Henry V ordered the killing of his prisoners at Agincourt, so there is precedent, you see!  What else could I have done?!"

Bob, I suggest that you improve your knowledge of what took place in the Boer War.  Firstly, the British didn't invent concentration camps, the Spanish did in Cuba before the Boer War started.  Indeed, the term 'concentration camp' was an anglicised version of the Spanish terms and who applied it first but British MPs investigating the neglect of Boer inmates in those camps in the first place (actually the MP for the area where I live!).  No, the fact that the conditions were exposed by the British themselves doesn't excuse what took place but it marks something of a contrast to the entrenched state of denial that I am sensing here about the actions by some sections of the German armed forces in 1914.

Also, and this is something that you might not be aware of, the large majority of British soldiers who died in the Boer War, died of precisely the same diseases as did those poor unfortunates in the camps (and they were equally 'healthy when they went to South Africa).  If the British didn't treat their own men well, they were never going to do any better for 'prisoners'.  Where have I heard that before, oh yes, from Germans and their treatment of Allied POWs during the Great War.  Further, the policy of rounding up civilians and putting them into camps was stopped because, rather than removing support from the Boer Commandoes, it actually freed them from having to look after their families - the threat of African reprisals was a constant fear to the Boer population (and why do so few people mention that probably as many Africans died in those camps as Boers?). Yet, and here's the irony, some of the Boer leadership actually wanted - and I can provide sources to support this - their families put into camps for their own protection!  I might be wrong but I'm not sure if any Belgian civilian offered themselves to be shot by an invading army in 1914 but I could be wrong.

Bob, it is a simple fact that none of us, of whichever nationality, can claim to have no historical skeletons in the cupboard.  The British are most certainly not without causes for shame, and it is true that many Britons are not very good at acknowledging that, but that doesn't mean that a blind refusal to accept that what was done in the name of the country to which you have some attachment in the past changes anything.  Belgian and French civilians were murdered with no justification of any kind in 1914 by the invading German forces.  It happened and the fact that something similar may have been perpetrated by others at different times doesn't take away the fact that it was a crime.  

If anyone wants to demonise another people today by listing past crimes, then highlighting potential hypocrisy by the 'demoniser' is a valid line to take.  But that isn't where we're at or is it what you feel to be on the receiving end of?  I wonder.


Jim

[Beau Geste]

Blimey, Harry, you want to delve deep into the human phsyche when all the psychologists and psychiatrists in the world can't give us a definitive answer about ourselves? Oh well, here's my twopenneth.

I just felt the thread wasn't going anywhere interesting and needed an injection of something different. If it doesn't work, we can alway take a step backwards.

If everyone were the same and capable of evil I would say "evolutionary thinking" would never have happened, we'd all still be thinking like cavemen.

I agree and  not everyone acted in the same bestial way in Belgium in 1914 or in Europe during WW2 but atrocities occurred and concentration camps appeared. It would appear to need only the appropriate political, economic and social conditions for the evil minority to rise to the surface. What I was asking, not very clearly and I apologise for that, is whether or not a similar thing could happen here ?  

We see major elements of Islam preaching holy war, just as christians did a few centuries ago. Islam is around 800 years younger than christianity, is it going through the same evolutionary psychological process our own forefathers went through?

I found this particularly interesting. I have to admit I had never thought of it this way.

Soldiers reflect their society, they never existed in a vacuum - some will stray to excess and some will never stray, and the majority will fall somewhere between the two, but the percentages of these three groups will undoubtedly vary considerably depending on the kind of society they come from.

Absolutely!  But as you've said yourself, societies can change.  A liberal democracy today can become a dictatorship tomorrow. There are no guarantees that things will always evolve in such a way as to affect a gradual improvement. Societies can move backwards. A loosening of the moral values that restrain the evil minority might well slacken, allowing the sort of change I'm talking about  here.

Kind regards Salesie and thank you for a really interesting post.

Harry
Cheers - salesie.

[Beau Geste]

my very best wishes to everyone,

Thank you Bob and to you and yours.

Harry

[Phil_B]

Interesting Phil. Can u expand on that?

Harry

Unfortunately no. I read it way back and always assumed that's what they did. Anyone confirm?

I read this piece yesterday and finished up not knowing what to think:-

23/8/18, 3 div MG Bn report:-
"About 7am a party of the enemy emerged from a dugout on the Sunken Road about 20 yds away and rushed our position. I shot one officer through the head with my revolver, then we were taken prisoners with about 12 Gordon Highlanders, two of whom were wounded. We were taken along the Railway and put in a small sandpit with 3 of the enemy to guard us. We tried to take our wounded with us, but a German officer refused to let us get them all. This officer started beating one of the Gordons with a stick and told him to hurry up. He said he was going to shoot the two machine gunners because they had inflicted heavy casualties on German troops. At that moment, a German colonel appeared who was very nice to us.... Just then our barrage opened at 11am. We were hurried to Achiet le Grand and the Germans took refuge in a dugout and left us at the top of the stairs. We saw our fellows advancing and waved for them to come on and they took prisoners all the Germans in the dugout, about 3 officers and 50 men. We told the KRRs about the officer who had beaten the Gordon with the stick. The KRRs then bayonetted the officer."

Perhaps summary justice was the norm in those times?

[salesie]

Harry, just came across this little snippet about the morality of war, and thought it may be relevant to the thread's new direction, sorry it's yet another quote:

"WHEN survival of the state, a way of life, is at stake, as it was between 1914 and 1918, anything which guarantees one's own survival at the expense of the enemy has some justification manufactured for it. If we are honest with ourselves we must recognize that mankind usually acts first on the basis of expediency and only afterwards finds moral justifications to explain the action. The morality of total war is brutally different from the morality of comfortable peacetime. Killing is regarded as the ultimate crime within a state at peace, but when war intervenes, killing receives the state's sanction, indeed its blessing, as does much else which is normally considered reprehensible. The problem is not a new one. Young Cyrus objected to his father's advice that a general needs to be an arch-plotter, cheat, robber and thief as the price of outwitting his opponent, the very antithesis of all he had been taught. His father, Xenophon, solemnly answered: Those lessons were for friends and fellow citizens, and for them they stand good; but for enemies - do you not remember that you were taught to do much harm?"

It seems to me, this pretty much sums up the moral dilemma that war brings with it - it is a universal dilemma, the same now as in Xenophon's day, and it certainly reared its ugly head in 1914. It is probably one of the very few universal truths about mankind - if so, we are doomed for eternity to keep having to confront this dilemma. But is this quandary not essential to us as a "thinking" species even though it may ultimately destroy us - is this moral dilemma not a logical and inevitable consequence of free will?

I will use my favourite poem to demonstrate my point: written in April 1917 two weeks before its author, R.E. Vernede, was killed in action:

A Listening Post

The sun’s a red ball in the oak
And all the grass is grey with dew,
Awhile ago a blackbird spoke –
He didn’t know the world’s askew.

And yonder rifleman and I
Wait here behind the misty trees
To shoot the first man that goes by,
Our rifles ready on our knees.

How could he know that if we fail
The world may lie in chains for years
And England be a bygone tale
And right be wrong, and laughter tears?

Strange that this bird sits there and sings
While we must only sit and plan –
Who are so much the higher things –
The murder of our fellow man.

But maybe God will cause to be –
Who brought forth sweetness from the strong –
Out of our discords harmony
Sweeter than that bird’s song.

Robert Ernest Vernede 1917

In his poem, is he simply questioning the perceived superiority of man over beast? Or, is he saying that mankind, because of our greater awareness of our world, has a price to pay for that greater understanding - saying that we don’t get Owt for Nowt?



Cheers - salesie.

[Desdichado]

One area that has been overlooked on this thread is the theft of mail: specifically parcels sent to men at the front. The report of the Dardanelles Commission mentions this in its discussion of postal arrangements. One Colonel Mayo Robertson of the Mediterranean Expeditionary force was so incensed that letters and packages addressed to him had gone missing that he asked for a formal investigation which was instigated by Lieutenant-Colonel Williamson. As well as the theft of entire packages, many reached the troops with items missing. It was upsetting to the soldiers to know that loved ones at home had sent gifts to them only to end up in someone else's pockets.

The Post Office and the Army Service Corps Parcel Transit Service were the two agencies responsible for delivering mail and parcels to the troops. The latter was blamed for ther looting of parcels. Colonel Williamson eventually concluded that those who organised the postal services were not to blame for the mismanagement of delivering the mail! Poor packaging accounted for some losses but if a package was not sent in a sealed Post Office bag, its contents were likely to be stolen. Most of the thefts were traced to the military forwarding office but there is no report of anyone being court-martialled for this.

For me, the theft of mail from a front line soldier is a dirty trick and every bit as bad as stealing from the dead.

[Beau Geste]

When survival of the state, a way of life, is at stake, as it was between 1914 and 1918, anything which guarantees one's own survival at the expense of the enemy has some justification manufactured for it. If we are honest with ourselves we must recognize that mankind usually acts first on the basis of expediency and only afterwards finds moral justifications to explain the action. The morality of total war is brutally different from the morality of comfortable peacetime. Killing is regarded as the ultimate crime within a state at peace, but when war intervenes, killing receives the state's sanction, indeed its blessing, as does much else which is normally considered reprehensible.

Hello Salesie,

Not for the first time you have found a poem  that addresses,  in a highly relevant way, the issues being discussed.  Some of the poems, especially those less well known, that were  written during The Great War are truly magnificent and this, I feel,  is one of them. I particularly like the way it avoids graphic detail of the horrors of that conflict and yet with consummate ease illustrates that it was in every way a struggle for the survival of everything that was considered  important.

One of the things that struck me as I read it (for the first time in some years incidentally) was the emphasis it places on the end justifying the means used in war. As you say it's as if there is a different morality that "kicks in" once war starts and one's country, way of life and belief systems are threatened with extinction.  

It is interesting that that was precisely the point that David Menichetti made in the conclusion to his " German Policy in Occupied Belgium 1914 - 18" that I referred to in #383: "The Germans were involved in a major war that required all the strength, manpower and resouces at their disposal. To ignore Belgium was to hurt Germany's chances of winning the war".

Does this "different morality" though condone any and all acts during war. Obviously not. Yes, the barriers are lowered  but there are  still constraints on the soldiers of both sides. Many of these constraints are self imposed but nevertheless they exist. It's that I think that makes the human species, as a whole, what it is. Even during the worst excesses of both world wars there were those who refused to be dragged down, even though they knew it might very well cost them their lives. Others displayed a trait that is supremely human: fear, and did nothing.

In an earlier thread I made the point that the people of Bergen Belsen in Germany claimed that they did not know what was going on a few kilometres down the road. They were condemned by many because the poor souls who were being transported were made to walk down the main street of the village to reach the camp. Of course the inhabitants of Bergen  knew what was going on but they were too afraid to do anything about it. I find that supremely understandable.

A number of pals have mentioned and reinforced the point that we are not all the same.  The devil exists in all of us but only a relative few allows him to govern the way we feel and act. Most of the time, most people act as civilised human beings. Yes, in war they kill the enemy but that is an act governed by a "new" morality as your posting points out. Even then, even during combat,  compassion is never too far beneath the surface.

Kind regards,

Harry

[Beau Geste]

I agree Des. When one thinks how important those parcels were one can only feel disgust for those who chose to divert them for their own use.

As you probably know though it isn't uncommon.  My father was in Stalag V111 B in Lamsdorf, Upper Silesia for four years in WW2 and "parcels going astray" was a relatively common occurrence.

Harry

[Beau Geste]

Hello everyone

I've decided to opt out for a while. I feel the need to replenish my aging batteries and do a bit of painting and decorating around the house.

I've enjoyed talking to you all on this thread. Keep it going and, please, fight clean !!!!

Kind regards,

Harry

[bob lembke]

Hi, Pals;

I am not trying to revive the bomb-tossing of the "Belgian Question". However, poking in another corner of the GWF, I came across a rather interesting thread, on "Belgian Refugees", in the "POW" sub-forum. It is a discussion that first was on Belgian refugees in the UK, and then the discussion spread to the topic of Belgian refugees in the Nederlands. Several Pals resident in Holland contributed. Let me paste in part of a post by one of them.

Some figures :

NL : 200000 (December 1914) , 105000 (mai 1915): the figure of Belgian refugees in the Nl was only very high in the very beginning of ww1; for several reasons a very big part of the Belgian refugees returned very rapidly to their home-country.
UK : 125000 (November 1918)
FR : more than 325000

A very good book (in dutch) in respect of (Belgian) refugees in The Netherlands is "Oorlogsgasten ", written by Evelyn De Roodt. (reading and/or understanding the dutch language is necessary)

Gilbert Deraedt

Other posts in the thread indicated that possibly as many as a million Belgian refugees fled into Holland in the opening days of the war, but that they started to return to (occupied) Belgium within weeks. If this is true, there must have been 1,000,000 Belgian refugees in Belgium in September 1914, 200,000 were left in December 1914, and only 105,000 in May 1915. Did the Dutch allow Belgian refugees to transit to Allied countries? (They certainly did not let the 1st Brigade of the Naval Division leave, but interned military may have been a different case.) Even if the Dutch allowed Belgian refugees transit to the Allied countries, the above numbers indicate that the majority returned to German-occupied Belgium, rather soon after their initial flight.

What does this all mean? Frankly, I don't know. It has now occurred to me that a good class of source on the Belgian Question would be both the contemporary and the recent literature bearing on this question from the Dutch, who were neutral during WW I and were in close proximity and in some contact with German-occupied Belgium. Certainly such material would be less tainted than war-time propaganda put out by the Allied armies and governments, such as the van der Essen work previously cited. I for one do not plan to devote a good portion of my remaining productive life on this question.

I have looked for my book in Dutch from my Belgian e-aquantence, but I have not found it. I find Dutch surprisingly easy to read, given no background at all in the language, and to my inexpert eye linkages to English seem apparent, making reading it easier, at least to me.

Bob Lembke

[Desdichado]

Bob, you really can't let something go can you?

According to Herbert Samuel, President of the Local Government Board, 1,000,000 refugees fled Belgium in 1914. To take the pressure off the Dutch, Britain accepted between 4 to 5 thousand Belgians per week. Britain housed about 250,000 refugees in 1915, the number dropping to 160,000 by 1916, with many of them, well the males at least, enlisting in the allied forces.

If they did return to Belgium from Holland in 1914, I doubt that there were too many citizens of Louvain amongst them. In your eyes, is there anything remotely critical of Germany that was written during the period of the Great War that wasn't propaganda?

[bob lembke]

It the risk of eternal damnation, I am foolishly posting to this great thread, which has clearly run its course. One of the topics (not the central one) kicked about here was the topic of Belgium in 1914. I wanted to mention to the interested Pals that I have started working on a fresh source. Last year I noticed, on e-Bay, an autograph diary for sale, a diary of a reserve NCO of the 20. Reserve Infanterie Regiment, covering his time in Belgium. (This is the original hand-written diary, written in a mix of two old handwriting systems, penned in ink into a high-quality ruled notebook with hard covers.) As this regiment was one of the regiments of one of the two original divisions of my grand-father's army corps, I was very interested in it, and unfortunately ended up in a bidding war with a Belgian who also wanted it badly, and I ended up paying about 150 Euros for it. When I got it I put it aside.

I now plan to first finish a book about my grand-father and father, before I complete a couple of others that I had in the oven, so today I picked up the diary and put 2-3 hours into it, and mostly translated about a page and a half. The diary is 74 1/2 pages long, written in a fairly large format ruled notebook, 20 lines per page, and it seems to average 7.8 words per line, according to a sample set of lines I counted.  There also is a little foreword written onto a front cover. So we are talking about 11, 650 words.It briefly starts with the start of the war, as experienced by the author (an Unteroffizier der Reserve, or reserve sergeant), and then covers the period from mid-August, when his regiment entered Belgium, to the time at the end of October when his army corps was entrained to rush across Germany to help meet the Russian armies that were beginning to enter East Prussia. I believe that the train he was on passed thru Berlin, and there is strong evidence that he was a resident of Berlin, so probably the author, at a stop in Berlin, was able to give the diary to someone to take to his family, hence it ending abruptly as the train crossed Germany.  

I have only translated a page and a half, and not 100%, chosen to cover his first day in Belgium, and I think that this diary will provide grist for everyone's mill. Just in this brief passage, they detrained, marched across the border, and marched along the Dutch border. He stated that the "Dutch inhabitants" (as they were inside Belgium, he must have meant Flemish inhabitants of Belgium) greeted them warmly. They march on, and then they began to take fire from houses, several times, as they marched by. They rush one of these houses, and they capture people, in cluding a 12 year old boy and a priest.

I now must state that I have a tax emergency, and must bury myself in paperwork for about 1-2 weeks. (Do you guys in the UK have taxes?) When I emerge I will work on this diary more, and probably start a thread and report what the diary says. The guy has clear handwriting, but it is a bit difficult; it is a mix of the later Suetterlin and the older Kurrent handwriting systems, and in fact reflects some of the quirky things my grand-father put into his hand-writing.

So, perhaps in a month, if this diary proves to be as interesting as this fragment suggests, I may start a thread on what I find. Will this be Revealed Truth? Of course not. It is even a possibility that it is a fabrication of some sort. But probably not, it most likely is an actual autograph diary written as the events it depicts unfolded. I will also attempt to research the guy, Unteroffizier der Reserve Albert Mietke, although success here is unlikely. It is only one tiny peek into what occurred in Belgium, but it should have some assumption of creditability, certainly more so than some book ground out by government war-time propaganda mills as part of a massive and very successful propaganda effort. I will certainly report honestly on what it says, which may not be entirely to my liking.

Bob Lembke

[PBI]

Bob,if you really want to Experience the Horrors of Taxation come and live in Rip Off Britain !!!!....

[Beau Geste]

Bob,if you really want to Experience the Horrors of Taxation come and live in Rip Off Britain !!!!....

Hello Bob,

I'm supposed to be decorating but I've opened The Forum each day to see what's appeared.

I don't know if I've got rusty during the lay off but I don't immediately see what the point is you are trying to make here. Germany invaded Belgium, that is historical fact. In the process innocent Belgian lives were lost, that too is a historical fact.  So why should the fact that some innocent Belgians opened fire on German troops be so unusual as to warrent five substantial paragraphs that I have to say, Bob, contributes little or nothing to the thread.

Warmest regards,

Harry

[PBI]

Agreed Harry.
                    Belgium was a NEUTRAL Country,and had been invaded and i would have thought that some of the Civilian Population would have felt enraged enough to have taken Action against the Invader.Whats more is that i am Fed up with the Flimsy Attempts of The German Military to cover up or Justify the Savage Actions of Their Soldiery against the Civilian Populations of Countries that They Had Invaded.The German Army Massacred over 600 Unarmed Civilians in the Town of Dinant in 1914,and went on to Punish Louvain also...WHY ?


http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/dinant.htm


I am rapidly Tiring of Hearing the German  Excuses to justify such Barbarism....NO EXCUSES..what ever Happened to German Kultur ?

[healdav]

[quote name='Jim_Grundy' date='Jan 4 2008, 09:11 AM' post='831061']
Bob

"Firstly, the British didn't invent concentration camps, the Spanish did in Cuba before the Boer War started.  Indeed, the term 'concentration camp' was an anglicised version of the Spanish terms and who applied it first but British MPs investigating the neglect of Boer inmates in those camps in the first place (actually the MP for the area where I live!).  No, the fact that the conditions were exposed by the British themselves doesn't excuse what took place but it marks something of a contrast to the entrenched state of denial that I am sensing here about the actions by some sections of the German armed forces in 1914."

In fact, the term 'concentration camp' goes way, way back. I have come across mentions in documents dealing with Charlemagne that talk about his putting people into 'concentration' areas. He was a great ethnic cleanser apart from anything else, and moved an awful lot of people from one region to another, for various reasons. Whilst they were waiting for resettling they were in these concentration areas (there is one still commemorated in the village name not far from where I live).

The term 'concentration camp' is used right up to WW2 to mean quite simply a place where there were concentrations of people. In WW1 it was often used for POW camps, internment camps, and so on, and that by all nations.

In South Africa, I did come across one quote (I can't put my hands on it for the moment) that said that one of the problems was that many Boers simply were not used to living with a lot of people. They lived by family out in the bush and had little concept of hygiene in any form. If they wanted a toilet they simply went behind a bush; there being plenty in the, well, bush. This was OK when the next person was miles away, but in a camp it rapidly gave problems.

[Beau Geste]

Bob

entrenched state of denial

Hello Healdav,

Thank you for your contribution.

I would like to pick up on your point that you have "sensed an entrenched state of denial" in some of the postings on this thread. You are absolutely correct. PBI, Salesie, Desdichado and I have tried to influence the perceptions of one particular Forum pal who appears to reside permanently in the mental state you describe. So far, we've failed miserably so I thought I would give it "another go" by extending the analysis slightly.


It seems to me that despite this gentleman's reluctance to accept the facts,  German atrocities committed in Belgium and France during The Great War  did occur and relatively frequently. This should not surprise anyone . The invasion of Belgium, a small, neutral and peace loving country was in itself an act of great brutality and as such,  merely continued a process that began mid way through the 19th century when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck decided that “force not argument” was “the most useful catalyst of change.”  (Robin Neillands: The Old Contemptibles”

It  began in 1864 with Prussia’s  violent settlement of the Schleswig-Holstein controversy, continued with the annexation  of Austria and the forceful occupation of Austria’s east German allies: Saxony, Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, before the new “united Germany” turned its attention on France in the shape of the Franco- Prussian War of  1870 –71.

An interesting and highly relevant trait that emerged during this period of German aggression was racism. As Neillands points out, “the Prussians were very intent on excluding non-Germans from their new creation.”

This racist imperative, based on the questionable notion that the German race was superior to all others, was also a dominant force in the thirties when groups like the jews, gypsies and even those who were physically or mentally handicapped were treated as inferior or even subhuman and disposed of in their millions.

The scenes that confronted allied units who freed the inmates of concentration camps like Buchenwald and Belsen were not the figments of someone’s vivid imagination, they were the actions of a nation state whose history is besmirched by periods of extreme violence directed against its neighbours.

Despite all the evidence, however, some have  claimed that this didn’t happen, that the allies simply imagined it and used “the lies” as a propaganda tool. The Supreme Allied Commander in WW2 anticipated that this would indeed be the case and insisted that the horror that was the German death camps be recorded because “ somewhere down the track of history, some b-----d will get up and say that this never happened”.

Well, it did happen. It’s historical fact just like the German excesses in places like Dinant and Louvain duringThe Great War. If Germans were capable of "the holocaust" during WW2, its soldiers were certainly capable of killing non-combatants in Belgium or injured allied soldiers on the battlefields of France and Belgium and relieving them of their personal possessions.

This thread began as a study of the practice of stealing the personal possessions of those who had died in battle. In more than four hundred and fifty postings it has meandered  somewhat but its continued existence suggests it is still interesting those of us who find a study of human behaviour sometimes depressing but always fascinating.  

It is my belief that to shut one's eyes to historical fact renders one's judgements highly questionable or even dismissive.


Kind regards,

Harry

[healdav]

Hello Healdav,

Thank you for your contribution.

I would like to pick up on your point that you have "sensed an entrenched state of denial" in some of the postings on this thread. You are absolutely correct. PBI, Salesie, Desdichado and I have tried to influence the perceptions of one particular Forum pal who appears to reside permanently in the mental state you describe. So far, we've failed miserably so I thought I would give it "another go" by extending the analysis slightly.


It seems to me that despite this gentleman's reluctance to accept the facts,  German atrocities committed in Belgium and France during The Great War  did occur and relatively frequently. This should not surprise anyone . The invasion of Belgium, a small, neutral and peace loving country was in itself an act of great brutality and as such,  merely continued a process that began mid way through the 19th century when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck decided that “force not argument” was “the most useful catalyst of change.”  (Robin Neillands: The Old Contemptibles”

Of course, I have the advantage that I can drive to three sites of big WW1 massacres in about an hour or less from where I live.  I can get to a nearby and forgotten WW2 concentration camp in half that time, and a major camp in a couple of hours, and one in Germany in, again, about an hour. Concentration camps (known as KZ, incidentally) are a part of the collective memory here. Don't tell people they didn't exist; they will just roll up their sleeves and show the tattoo marks. For cognoscenti, the sculptor (died a couple of years ago, and a neighbour of mine), Lucien Wercollier, spent over 2 years in a camp - Hinzert. All his post war sculptures can be summed up as "tortured man", even his sculpture of the Scouting Three feathers that he did for the 80th anniversary.

There is no central database of these massacre casualties as far as I know, but they are on town memorials (Longuyon, for example, Arlon, Rossignol, Ethe, Virton). They are also in the French database of war dead, but as you can only interrogate that by name it is a bit difficult. However, I did once print down one death certificate that I came across, so people can look it up and confirm the extent of the conspiracy by governments:

Felter Albert Camille
born 2/5/1894 Longuyon, shot by the Germans (as a hostage) 26/8/1914.

[healdav]

Just a thought re the actions of men in the front line and pilfering from the enemy.

As far as I am aware there was no concept in conscription of weeding out the overly tough, macho or anything else, including those with long crime records.

So, if you put in the front line, and give a rifle and a few grenades to someone who's 'profession' is beating people up for their wallets, its a bit unreasonable to expect him to become a knight in shining armour just because he is in the army.

More than one man was killed by someone in his own trench when he caught him pilfering his belongings.

As Andy Mcnab said of his training, "they spent Tuesday to Thursday teaching us aggression; we spent Saturday and Sunday practising and they spent Monday punishing us for training".

[Beau Geste]

Of course, I have the advantage that I can drive to three sites of big WW1 massacres in about an hour or less from where I live.  I can get to a nearby and forgotten WW2 concentration camp in half that time, and a major camp in a couple of hours, and one in Germany in, again, about an hour.

Thank you healdav. Obviously you have an advantage that few of us possess. Where are you based incidentally?

I hope you are reading this Bob !

Best wishes,

Harry

[Beau Geste]

[quote name='healdav' date='Jan 22 2008, 05:11 PM' post='843922']
if you put in the front line, and give a rifle and a few grenades to someone who's 'profession' is beating people up for their wallets, its a bit unreasonable to expect him to become a knight in shining armour just because he is in the army.

(quote]

This was a point I made early on in the thread : that an infantry battalion (or any other large military organisation) was a microcosm of the society from which it's drawn. I agree entirely with the point you're making here. It would be not only "unreasonable" to expect a person to act totally out of character simply because he dons an army uniform and takes "the King's shilling", it would be a miracle.

Many thanks for your valuable contribution,

Harry

[PBI]

The War Memorial in Poperinghe,Belgium comes to My Mind in so much as Included on the WW1 Roll of Honour,are the Names of Many Civilians from the Town who were either Murdered or Deported to as Hostages,Slave Labour in Germany from whence They never returned,and again More Civilian Names on the WW2 Roll of Honour.I am sure their must be many such War Memorials containing similar Civilian Lists.