Dynamic of destruction : culture and mass killing in the First World War
Alan Kramer (Author)
"On 25 August 1914 in the Belgian university town of Louvain, the nature of modern European war took a terrible new turn. German occupying troops torched the medieval town, slaughtered hundreds of civilians, and deliberately destroyed their entire cultural heritage, including the world-famous university library. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust of Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain came to be seen as heralding a different style of war - a more total war, in which enemy civilians and their entire culture were now 'legitimate' targets." "Yet the destruction at Louvain was simply one symbolic moment in a wider wave of cultural destruction and mass killing that swept the world at this time - from the Balkans in 1912, via the western front, Turkey, Italy, and eastern Europe, to the seven-year catastrophe of war and revolution in Russia. Using a wide range of examples and eye-witness accounts from across Europe, award-winning historian Alan Kramer paints a picture of an entire continent plunging into a chilling new world of mass mobilization, total warfare, and the celebration of nationalist or ethnic violence - often directed expressly at the enemy's civilian population."--Jacket
Print Book, English, 2007
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007