Dynamic of Destruction
Author | : Alan Kramer |
Publisher | : OUP Oxford |
Total Pages | : 643 |
Release | : 2008-11-06 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780191580116 |
ISBN-13 | : 0191580112 |
Rating | : 4/5 (16 Downloads) |
Download or read book Dynamic of Destruction written by Alan Kramer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-11-06 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 26 August 1914 the world-famous university library in the Belgian town of Louvain was looted and destroyed by German troops. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust at Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain came to be seen as the beginning of a different style of war, without the rules that had governed military conflict up to that point - 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 Europe in the era of the First World War. Using a wide range of examples and eye-witness accounts from across Europe at this time, 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.