Rehearsals
The German Army in Belgium, August 1914
Studia Semitica Upsaliensia, No. 24

By Jeff Lipkes
December 2007
Leuven University Press                                                        
Distributed by
ISBN: 9789058675965                                             
815 pages, Illustrated, 6 1/4 x 9 1/2
$129.50 Paper Original

                 

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Rehearsals is the first book to provide a detailed narrative history of the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914 as it affected civilians. Based on extensive eyewitness testimony, the book chronicles events in and around the towns of Liège, Aarschot, Andenne, Tamines, Dinant, and Leuven, where the worst of the German depredations occurred.

Without any legitimate pretext, German soldiers killed nearly 6,000 non-combatants, including women and children, and burned some 25,000 homes and other buildings.  For more the seventy-five years, however, charges against the German Army about the killing, raping, looting, and arson have been dismissed in Germany, the U.K., and U.S. as mere atrocity propaganda.

Recently, the case has been made that the violence, which came to a boil between august 19th and 26th , was the result of an spontaneous outbreak of German paranoia about francs-tireurs (civilian sharpshooters). Rehearsals provides much evidence that the executions were in fact part of a deliberate campaign of terrorism ordered by military authorities.

Jeff Lipkes was educated at UC Berkeley and Princeton, where he received a PhD in History in 1995. He is the author of Politics, Religion and Classical Politicla Economy in Brittain: John Stuart Mill and his Followers

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