Author Description

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.