THE RAPE OF BELGIUM: The Unknown First World War
By Larry Zuckerman
NYU Press

In August 1914, the German Army invaded Belgium, violating a treaty that the German chancellor notoriously likened to a "scrap of paper." The invaders terrorized the populace, shooting thousands of civilians and looting and burning scores of towns. Allied propagandists called this the "rape of Belgium." Over the next 50 months, the Germans plundered the country, deported Belgians en masse as forced laborers, and jailed thousands on contrived charges, including the failure to inform on family or neighbors. Such methods were what a later generation would have recognized as totalitarian. Occupied Belgium was a forerunner of Nazi Europe. Had the victors punished Germany in 1919 as they had pledged to, would the Nazis have been able to repeat the crimes with such impunity and on such a vast scale? That is one critical question raised in THE RAPE OF BELGIUM: The Unknown First World War by Larry Zuckerman, who argues that the crimes against Belgium justified the democracies' war on Germany and a punitive peace. Not only were the crimes unspeakable, the Germans showed no remorse, laying the foundation for World War II.

Based on years of primary source research in the Hoover Archives and previously untapped Belgian government archives, this 110,000-word book reveals newsworthy evidence that previous historians ignored or never uncovered. That along with its controversial thesis should insure this book gets considerable attention, just as Niall Ferguson’s The Pity of War (1999) did by asserting that Europe would have been better off had Germany won the war, a contention Zuckerman vigorously refutes.

World War I has been a hot subject in the past few years. In addition to the Ferguson book, the History Book Club has recently offered The Road to Verdun and two books on the Lusitania--David Ramsay's Lusitania: Saga and Myth and Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Preston. Another highly praised 2002 title is Ben MacIntyre's The Englishman's Daughter. Paul Fussell's celebrated essay, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975), was reissued in 2000. The closest competitor is German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial, by John Horne and Alan Kramer (Yale, 2001, $40), but it does not discuss the occupation or its importance as an early totalitarian regime. Moreover, that book is a desiccated academic monograph that few general readers would have the patience to read. In contrast, THE RAPE OF BELGIUM weaves eyewitness accounts from Belgian, German, and neutral sources into a compelling and readable narrative with incisive character sketches and a sense of immediacy.

Zuckerman’s previous book, The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World (Faber & Faber, 1998; North Point Press, 1999), received excellent reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Published in Britain by Macmillan and Pan, the book won the André Simon Special Commendation Award, given annually to a book about food. The Potato has also been translated into Chinese, Korean, Turkish, and Japanese. Zuckerman has appeared on a dozen NPR broadcasts, including "Morning Edition" on programs with the BBC and radio outlets in Ireland and Japan, and on camera as a historical consultant in a PBS documentary about the potato blight, "Hot Potatoes," now being distributed nationally to public television stations.

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