Why were the Germans so cruel to the Belgians during WWI? What did neutral...

/thread

Embrace it

Finally, a non-autistic answer.

So the G*rmans made an impossible demand,lied to its people about the circumstances and then the savages chimped out on innocent Belgians
God they deserve to be glasses

It wasn't just Belgians. They raped French women and crucified Canadian soldiers.

>a
>mere
>scrap
>of
>paper

>By the evening of 5 August, the coup de main was ready but it was obvious that no surprise could be obtained, given the resistance of the Belgian army "and civilians" in densely populated country, where movement had been slowed by hedges and fences. An envoy was sent to the fortress commander in Liège who replied with "Frayez-vous le passage" (You must fight your way through)

never forget the wafflemen who died to save European civilization

...

It's just German nature. From a Polish soldier's memoirs on the same subject from the Vienna campaign:

>The Germans, on the other hand, took no captives, but killed them crudelissime [with exceeding cruelty]. Even after death, they dragged their corpses about; flayed them, twisted the flayed strips into straps they might use; the third day after the battle, it was already hard to see a Turk on the battlefield with his body entire; and if any of our men was not cautious in leading a captive, and he rode among Germans, they would seize the prisoner out of his grasp and kill him.

>My nephew Stanisław Pasek was leading a Turk, some kind of important fellow, for he was handsomely attired and riding a beautiful horse; my nephew, having disarmed the captive, was leading him along on his horse, holding only the reins, when along comes a German, rides alongside the Turk, and stabs him with a dagger. The Turk only groaned; my nephew looked back, and the Turk, mouth agape, is slipping off his horse. Having stabbed him, the German rode off at once to the side. My nephew begins to scold him: "You pig, you knave! Killed my prisoner you have, and is that permitted?" The German but laughs and says: "Ja, Pan, are you Poles feeding the devil?" My nephew rails at him that you're a scoundrel, not a cavalier - to kill a captive already in our hands. But the German only rides on, laughing.

>What else was there to do? The Germans feel great rancor as the Turks robbed them of so much of their country, their provinces and fortresses; secondly, they are a natura crudeles [innately cruel] and know not how to observe knightly restraint in victoria

The myth of German atrocities in Belgium is itself a myth. Convoluted, I know. The reports and propaganda that the Brits put out were so ridiculously exaggerated ("The Germans are eating Belgian infants!"), people after the war got to thinking that the Germans didn't do ANYTHING objectionable. In truth, they were harsh on the civilian population, and there were cases of needless cruelty.
Not that the Brits had a leg to stand on. I suppose murdering unarmed civilians is much less tasteless when it happens to distant brown people.

>Implying Russian soldiers didn't do the exact same bullshit upon entering east Prussia in WW1

Lol, is this supposed to be inspiring? Dumbass should have just let the Germans pass through. Instead, he chose to pointlessly sacrifice the lives of his citizens because "muh honor."

>Germans are so stupid they need Belgian officers to explain to them how advancing through an enemy country works
>achtung achtung why are you shooting at us this isn't fair
>we dindu nicht

The honest Anglo was too good natured and well meaning to believe that fellow Europeans could be be so deceitful and cruel. This naive belief in the fundamental humanity of the Teuton persisted through Munich 1938.

What does Russia have to do with anything?

>enemy

I thought they were supposed to be neutral?

>I suppose murdering unarmed civilians is much less tasteless when it happens to distant brown people.
You say that sarcastically but uniroincally equality is a myth. Why would people view it the same way? It's objectively not the same. beyond superficial comparisons such as "they both killed people" I doubt any British conquest of what you call "brown people" is really analogous to the situation between Germany and Belgium at this time.

>Implying the Russians had the ability to do anything before they were kicked out
The only bigger joke than Russia was Austria Hungarys army

What would Belgium have lost by just letting the Germans pass through? Nothing. They brought it all on themselves. The Germans knew that they were in a fight for national survival, so they couldn't afford to waste any time.

When you invade a neutral country in violation of their stated neutrality, they are not obliged to not shoot you.

The Germans weren't invading, just passing through.

slowing down the Germans arguably helped save Belgium. If the Germans knocked out the French and then the British or however that would've happened they weren't simply going to leave Belgium. This is obvious with their wartime propaganda in the country and it is apparent that they had plans to annex Flanders and turn Wallonia into a protectorate

Why would anyone sane let hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers into his country, just like that? Are you out of you mind?

>Germans enter through Belgium
>Belgian Army blocks off German armies from Germany
>Entire army is encircled

That's just a bunch of lines on a map. That's not worth sacrificing real, human lives. Sure, some parts of Belgium may been annexed, but so what? The Kaiser would have fully embraced them as his newest beloved citizens.

What you have to remember when reading early modern Polish impressions about the character of foreign soldiers (invariably negative, even when talking about allies), you have to remember that unlike most countries the Commonwealth didn't practice conscription or commoner levies, their military was 100% volunteer and mostly composed of petty noblemen at least theoretically carrying some level of a "chivalrous" self-regard, however brutal in practice.

So often what you may read as a commentary on national differences is really disdainforplebs.jpg.

>Although Belgium rejected the ultimatum, the German government falsely reported to the domestic press that Belgium had capitulated to their demands for paasage.

Sounds like bs.

>All of this was of course rooted in the German doctrine of vernichtungskrieg which they had already practiced in China and SW Africa.

This is bs

The Rape of Belgium most definitely happened, but not on the scale most people think. It took about two seconds afterwards for the Anglos to start pumping out propoganda to take advantage of it and turn popular opinion against Germany.

Because if they had let them through and France ultimately won, they would have been punished. The last thing they needed were the Frogs destroying more Flemish culture.

>they weren't simply going to leave Belgium.

How do you know?

>it is apparent that they had plans to annex Flanders and turn Wallonia into a protectorate

Any plans to turn Belgium into some sort of vassal (economic union, German military bases in Belgium and annexations of some strimps of Wallonia and Flanders mainly) date from September 1914 and later; there is no evidence that the Germans planned to do any of this in case the Belgians let them pass through.

revenge for the congo desu

Please explain further.

>How do you know?
Germans. Duh.

This passage from Tuchman's The Guns of August really highlights German stupidity and autism.

>General von Hausen, commanding the Third Army, found, like von Kluck, that the “perfidious” conduct of the Belgians in “multiplying obstacles” in his path called for reprisals “of the utmost rigor without an instant’s hesitation.” These were to include “the arrest as hostages of notables such as estate-owners, mayors, and priests, the burning of houses and farms and the execution of persons caught in acts of hostility.” Hausen’s army were Saxons whose name in Belgium became synonymous with “savage.” Hausen himself could not get over the “hostility of the Belgian people.” To discover “how we are hated” was a constant amazement to him. He complained bitterly of the attitude of the D’Eggremont family in whose luxurious château of forty rooms, with greenhouses, gardens, and stable for fifty horses, he was billeted for one night. The elderly Count went around “with his fists clenched in his pockets”; the two sons absented themselves from the dinner table; the father came late to dinner and refused to talk or even respond to questions, and continued in this unpleasant attitude in spite of Hausen’s gracious forbearance in ordering his military police not to confiscate the Chinese and Japanese weapons collected by Count D’Eggrernont during his diplomatic service in the Orient. It was a most distressing experience.

How the fuck did these empty-headed militarists believe that Belgians should just lie down and let the Germans do whatever they want?

They had bad experience with French resistance from the Franco-German war and went on preemptive "antiterrotist" action.

It's funny that the Germans went apeshit on the French despite the fact that decades earlier, their ancestors fermented anti-Napoleonic resistance and called for the entire peoples of Prussia to be at war against the hated French invaders.

If I'm occupying someone else's country, and a count puts me up in his fucking château, I would stay in servant's quarters with my staff and take my meals (the rations of my own enlisted men, if I can) in private. Then again, I'm not a German.

You are the leader of a sovereign nation. Your huge neighbor that several superpowers have promised to protect you from wants to march a million men through your territory and commandeer all of your railroads and roads. It is the year 1918 and the 19th century mindset of how nations interact with each other is still heavily in place

What would you actually do? If Belgium just let Germany through, they basically would be an imaginary country in the eyes of the world at that point, because you dont just let other people march millions of men through your land. Would the US let Mexico just march thousands of men through to get to Canada?

>all european powers used brutal occupation policies towards natives in their african&asian colonies
>throw a bitchfit when krauts use those exact same methods against other europeans

Classical example of wh*te hypocrisy.

>>all european powers used brutal occupation policies towards nativ
What about non European powers like the balkans, Poland, the baltics or Finland? Or even Austen-Hungary, Switzerland and Luxembourg for that matter.

The World Wars are why colonialism left a bad aftertaste in people's mouths. When the Germans used those tactics in Europe, you could hardly justify the superiority of the white race.

Even then, the British, French, and Dutch STILL did heinous shit to their colonies AFTER 1945.

>why dont all people on Earth just let every autistic Kraut do whatever he wants

it was literal propaganda

I'm sure you meant 1914.

see

Psychological effect from the French guerilla during the 1870 war
The German armed had been very scared by this unexpected new theat, and therefore decided to repress civilians harshly in the next war in order to avoid that

>The experiences of French guerrilla attacks and of the asymmetric warfare during the Franco-Prussian War had a profound effect on the German General Staff. During World War I, they carried out an unusually harsh and severe occupation of areas which they conquered. Hostages were regularly executed in response to reports of sniping in French and Belgian communities. The occupying German forces were reportedly very fearful of spontaneous civil resistance, which led to these arrests and executions, some of which were preemptive or at least before actual violent resistance.[4]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francs-tireurs#World_War_I

Tl;dr: It's all the fault of the Eternal Frog-Eater

>deliberately burn down a library containing hundreds of thousands of manuscripts of European history and artwork
Bravo Germany.

You've left out the most amusing part of this story which is the fact von Hausen's troops had just massacred hundreds of Belgian civilians at Dinant ten miles away, and that Count D’Eggrernont son-in-law was at Dinant during those events (which von Hausen was aware of by his memoirs).

Much like the holocaust :^)

There's actually no proof that they delibaretly burned down the library; they set fire on a bunch of houses from where civilians had shot at them; from there the fire spread to other buildings; they actually made an effort to save the city hall and some paintings from a church.

German autism is the most powerful force in the world.