1914: The Belgian Massacres

Paul Ham

Abr 2014 · Ibinebenta ng Random House Australia

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In the early stages of World War 1 some 800,000 German troops defied Belgian neutrality and marched across the border.

In August 1914 the bulk of the German army - some 800,000 troops - defied Belgian neutrality and smashed across the border. Their orders were to invade France, destroying any Belgian resistance in their path. The German commanders were to achieve this within 6 weeks. What followed was the rape and massacre of hundreds of Belgian civilians. Scores of villages were burned. The beautiful library at Louvain was left in ashes. Such crimes were not arbitrary acts of drunken violence. They were planned and approved under the German military code. In this extract from his book 1914: The Year the World Ended, historian Paul Ham shows how the invasion of of Belgium set a brutal precedent for the Nazi occupation of Europe, 25 years later

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Paul Ham is the author of Hiroshima Nagasaki (2011), Vietnam: The Australian War (2007) and Kokoda (2004). Vietnam won the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Australian History and was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Prize for Non-Fiction (2008). Kokoda was shortlisted for the Walkley Award for Non-Fiction and the New South Wales Premier’s Prize for Non-Fiction.

Sandakan: The Untold Story of the Sandakan Death Marches, was published in 2012 and was been shortlisted for the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for History.
His most recent book is 1914: The Year The World Ended.

A former Sunday Times correspondent, with a Master’s degree in Economic History from the London School of Economics, Paul now devotes most of his time to writing history. He lives in Paris and Sydney with his family.