Talk:Rape of Belgium

(some) historical revision?

there is a new book by a US-based German (art) historian Ulrich Keller, which has made some waves in Germany. (I don't think it has been translated to English yet.) https://www.amazon.de/dp/B0765D3WFT He basically looked at thousands of records/testimony from the German Military Archive (MA) and French/Belgian newspaper articles. Bottom line: unrest and defensive fire by the Belgian civil population was nearly ubiquitos, at least in the Wallonian (francophil) part of the country. The German reaction, in his opinion, was harsh, but justified. According to the military records the German army suffered some 2500 casualties by the Francs-tireurs. Reactions by the historian community have been mixed, but not entirely hostile. There has even been a symposium organized by the University Potsdam; the summary is available in English: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/index.asp?id=7409&view=pdf&pn=tagungsberichte&type=tagungsberichte It will probably need some time to "sink in" but in the end, I believe, we will see some revision of the "conventional wisdom". And indeed: it never quite made sense why an - otherwise highly organized and disciplined - German army should tie itself down in civil warfare in Belgium while under the time pressure of the Schlieffen plan to confront the French army ... Felixkrull (talk) 16:22, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

So 'rape of Belgium' is merely a propaganda title given to something that was essentially something different?105.4.0.75 (talk) 09:58, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

No, the comment above is about the early stage of the invasion of Belgium when a number of Belgian civilians fired on the invading Germans and the response from the Germans was very heavy-handed. The argument goes that the invading Germans were entitled to treat the civilians defending their country as military targets and also conduct reprisals, and so the disproportionate killing of civilians during the invasion was justified. (That does require accepting a military invasion is legitimate.) The Rape of Belgium, however, was the whole process of widespread stripping the country of assets and manpower. SandJ-on-WP (talk) 21:18, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

I'd also characterise the reaction of the historian to Keller there to be more negative than positive. There's some shotgun injuries but that doesn't really prove organised resistance, let alone justify collective punishment and Horne for example pointed to massacres where there's no possible justification. Fangz (talk) 15:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Similar action by the Allies towards Greece

It should be noted that British and French forces illegally occupied the Greek port of Salonika on October 5, 1915, later ousting the rightful Greek government and replacing it with a puppet government under Mr. Venizelos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_I_of_Greece#World_War_I_and_the_National_Schism — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:ED:F713:5900:600F:D013:B381:793E (talk) 16:40, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Without a reliable source making a connection between these events, the analogy above constitutes original research.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:51, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

See also section

The See also section currently contains: Belgian Congo, Freikorps in the Baltic, Herero and Namaqua Genocide, Leipzig War Crimes Trials and Belgisch Dagblad. Only the Leipzig trials appear to have any relevance whatsoever to this topic. Can we remove the irrelevant, and add meaningful links? Prime Lemur (talk) 04:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Now it contains only "Herero and Namaqua Genocide" (approx. 100 000 killed persons), but no more the atrocities of the Belgians in Congo (approx. 8-10 Million killed persons !). So may I ask, why is the Herero genocide linked to this story and the Congo atrocities not ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State

Lord Northcliffe would be proud of of this article, but for Wikipedia it's a shame ! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:ED:F712:D700:8C8B:934C:385A:E1D9 (talk) 15:31, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

There seems to be indeed some unwarranted bias in the article. Link one atrocity myth to another. That way assertions without factual base sound more credible. 105.4.0.75 (talk) 10:00, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

The Rape of Belgium is not an atrocity myth. Nice try though. SandJ-on-WP (talk) 21:19, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Pathetic, obvious NPOV violation

This article is not about the "Rape of Belgium" - i.e. the Allied propaganda campaign. It is about the alleged atrocities that took place in Belgium during WWI. You cannot just conflate the two into one and the same; if you do, you are pretty much just a mouthpiece for whatever propaganda, on par with an article about the colonization of world being titled "The Great Game", and that sort of thing. It wasn't so great of a game for anyone who was the victim. The objective of Wikipedia is not to turn a state propaganda office and its jingoisms into a arbiter of truth. As for the content, one cannot even go one sentence into the article without running into flagrant pov-throwing. Consider: The Rape of Belgium was the brutal mistreatment of Belgian civilians by German troops - is there a source for this? Because this is again the language of the British war office, and I guess according to them and their publications, the Kaiser ate the world, hid in your house and bayonetted babies. A better opening lede might be "the term used in a propaganda campaign..." or something like that. If it were to instead take form as an article just about the atrocities during occupation, alleged or factually supported, then the article lede should take on a different form and so should the title of the article. Either way, change is necessary - in its current form, this article is a disaster. I'm also noting the abuse of German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg's quote in this same context, trimmed from "only for a word, neutrality, a word, that in the event of war already often was not thought of, only for a tiny piece of paper, would Great Britain move into war against a likeminded nation which wanted nothing more than to be friends" to The German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg dismissed the treaty of 1839 as a "scrap of paper". Asa3432 (talk) 09:22, 8 September 2021 (UTC)