Last Train Leaving Belgium, Part 2: Jeff Lipkes

This is part one of an interview Anne Marie did in 2020. Sadly, shortly after the interview, Jeff Lipkes passed away. This episode is dedicated to him.

Jeff Lipkes was born and raised in Los Angeles and educated at U.C. Berkeley and Princeton, completing his Ph.D. in History in 1995. His dissertation was awarded the Joseph Dorfman Prize by the History of Economics Society.

Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 was published by University of Leuven Press in October, 2007, and is being distributed in North America by Cornell University Press. Lipkes is also the author of Politics, Religion and Classical Political Economy in Britain: John Stuart Mill and his Followers(Macmillan/​St. Martins, 1999), and half a dozen articles on the history of economic thought and British intellectual history. 

Transcript

Anne Marie Cannon: 1:18

Anne, hello. My name is Anne Marie cannon, and I'm the host of armchair historians. What's your favorite history? Each episode begins with this one question. My guests come from all walks of life, and are people who get really excited about a particular time, place or person from our distant or not so distant past, the jumping off point is where they become curious, then enter the rabbit hole into discovery. Some through scholarly research, others through pop culture documentaries and other podcasts. We look at history through the filter of other people's eyes. Armchair historians is a Belgian rabbit production. Stay up to date with us through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to like and subscribe. It really does help to spread the word. Wherever you listen to your podcast, that is where you'll find us if you like what you're hearing, be sure to leave us a five star review on your podcast platform of choice. You can also find us@armchairhistorians.com armchair historians is an independent podcast. If you'd like to support the show, become a patron through Patreon, or buy us a cup of coffee through kofi. Links to both in the Episode Notes.

Unknown: 2:40

You Hi,

Anne Marie Cannon: 2:49

I'm Anne Marie cannon, and you're listening to the last train leaving Belgium podcast, the last train leaving Belgium is a Belgian rabbit production. Thank you for joining us for episode three, part one of the podcast,

Jeff Lipkes: 3:18

especially if you look at the older military historians, older books, that in fact, the Germans behaved very brutally and callously towards the Belgian civilian population, and they killed about 6000 in the first month of the war, really, over a period of about three weeks. They're very bloody minded. And

Anne Marie Cannon: 3:51

in this episode, we speak to Jeff lipkes, author of rehearsals the German army in Belgium, August 1914, which recounts the brutal world war one invasion of Belgium by the Germans. It's a disturbing part of history which has been swept under the rug by governments and scholars alike. The book also recounts the reason I cannot tell my mother's story without first going back to what happened to her family in World War One you this is a supplemental limited series podcast that is meant to accompany the soon to be released documentary. Stay up to date with the latest news on the documentary, as well as the podcast on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Also be sure to subscribe to us through your favorite podcast platform. If you listen to us through Apple podcasts, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave a review. All those actions bump us up in the algorithms of the website, which in turn makes it easier for people to find us. So we're here today with Jeff lipkes. Jeff received his PhD from Princeton. He has authored several books, including the one we'll be talking about today, rehearsals the German army in Belgium, August 1914 which describes what happened to Belgian civilians when the German army invaded in August 1914 he has also written politics religion and classical political economy in Britain, John Stuart Mill and his followers, which, According to the economic record, is innovative, provoking and revealing. His study redraws the map of Mill's intellectual history, and according to the economic journal, it is a first rate addition to the mill literature. Mr. Lipkes is also working on a book about Sir Edward Gray, the British foreign secretary from 1904 Four to 1916 titled The lamps go out Sir Edward gray and the origins of the First World War. He is also, among other things, written articles on the history of economics, the history of economic thought and British intellectual history. Welcome to the show. Oh, thanks for inviting me. Did I leave anything out or get anything wrong in that intro? I just, I just felt a twinge of guilt about the shred with great book, because I put that aside for a while. I'm working on something else on, actually, on contemporary anti semitism, but I will do plan to go back to so interesting. What's Do you have a title for the new book that you're working on? Well, I'm not sure title yet, interesting and timely. So we're going to really talk about the first book. I mentioned rehearsals the German army in Belgium, August 1914 if you could just, you know, give us some background about the book.

Jeff Lipkes: 7:14

Well, okay, it's towards late in my teaching career. I'm retired now. I was teaching a lot of classes in 20th century Europe, 20th century world and then the world wars. These are popular classes. Unlike classes in the history of economic thought, you get a bigger draw. And so I got it, and I got into the two World Wars. And what you run across in the standard text and in the one thing why the courses are attractive to students is you wind up showing a lot of documentary footage, especially World War Two, because there's so much good documentaries.

Anne Marie Cannon: 7:42

I don't know about you, but if I was given the choice of listening to lectures about the theory of economics or watching documentaries about World War One, I'd definitely pick the documentaries of World War One. And

Jeff Lipkes: 7:54

there's that. There's a standard one now, and it reflects the popular opinion at the time, the authors were not, you know, didn't know very much about, really, what went on in Belgium. And that was the consensus was that these so called atrocities were just manufactured by British propaganda. They were trapped up in London. Or some historian said that, well, you know, some they did respond harshly to Frank tour. Frank tourists were the supposed guerrilla sharpshooters who, in fact, didn't exist. There was no civilian resistance to the Germans. But either the the these atrocities stories were just fabricated entirely, or they were or they were exaggerated, and that the Germans really behaved quite well, and that Allied propaganda Mills just churned this stuff out in order to mobilize public opinion behind the war. So I was curious about this, and I just began looking into it more. And I really one point, decided to write a short book, because I discovered, especially if you look at the older military historians, older books, that in fact, the Germans behave very brutally and callously towards the Belgian civilian population, and they killed about 6000 in the first month of the war, really, over a period of about three weeks. They're very bloody minded. And

Anne Marie Cannon: 9:13

so basically, the jumping off point for Jeff lipkes book and his research is this discrepancy between the accounts of what actually happened in Belgium at the opening of the invasion, often referred to as the rape of Belgium. There's this idea that the atrocities committed at the hands of the Germans against the Belgian people was not really as bad as indicated by survivors first hand accounts that were reported to the British government in 1915 and accounts taken after the war, there was, and still is a standing belief the stories of civilian massacres were nothing More than propaganda designed to sell the war to foreign governments, including the United States, and to complicate things, there were reports of specifically horrific acts that did not actually happen, sensationalized accounts told by Non witnesses, which in the end, helped to de legitimize first hand witness accounts.

Jeff Lipkes: 10:24

It's the historian, subsequently, in the 20s and 30s, kind of seized on these, on these stories, and said, Look, you know, these were all made up in order to discredit the real killings that that the Germans committed, the real war crimes. Now, in the I've looked carefully through newspapers for the first months of the war, these stories do not appear in any newspapers, any reporters, but, but they're stories of fingers being enhanced, being chopped off, breast being chopped off, eyes being gouged out there. They're these gory tall tales that really did not happen the Germans. So

Anne Marie Cannon: 11:00

why do you think they because I've read about this, and this is one of the problems with, apparently, the credibility of the real stories that happen. Why do you think that exists? Well, I

Jeff Lipkes: 11:14

you know it was really this. The Belgian civilians were pretty accurate. Because. I looked very carefully at the these appendices, this one appendix in particular. But there was the soldiers, for whatever reason they just, you know, they were repeating gossip that they heard. It never took place in their own company or their own regiment. It was always somewhere else. But, and then, you know, these were, you know, you could see why these would have sort of sensationalistic appeal, because there was even a story about British soldier being crucified nailed to a barn door. So they're just more lurid than than simply men being taken out of their homes, marched to a town square or to a field and gunned down. I mean that because that's what they did repeatedly. Yeah, so but, but I do, but, you know, I do want to repeat that the British press, I looked at seven or eight of the leading dailies, and they were very they talked about some of the real killings that went on, in some detail, especially Leuven, which was the Oxford of Belgium, that kind of lot of coverage. There are very, very few stories, you know, one or two were carefully qualified by the reporters about these really outrageous and gory atrocities. So, so I don't know just must have taken root after the publication of these appendices in April. But in any case, so

Anne Marie Cannon: 12:46

and that the atrocities and the thing that is referred to by some as the rape of Belgium never really happened. And so okay, let me ask you one question about that. Do you think that it was because they were just trying to play it down on purpose, or because there was that evidence that no, these stories really didn't happen. So none of the stories happened. Part of

Jeff Lipkes: 13:09

a general revulsion to the war was that also was that the British commanders were buffoons and American commanders too. The line was they were lions led by donkeys, you know, something like that. Along with that was a misinterpretation of the Versailles Treaty. It was because the Versailles Treaty was taken to be this harsh, draconian, totally unfair peace arrangement. And it's just not true. Really, there's all this. This was just one part of the general reaction to the war. And what's interesting is that in the it was not it was actually both on the left and the right, but primarily on the left that these store, these skepticism was repeated in, in in in America and in and in Britain. But in Germany, it was the right wing that obviously wanted to discredit the stories about the behavior of the Germans in Belgium, and was left wing that was really interested in exposing but it really happened. So it's kind of an interesting switch there. So

Anne Marie Cannon: 14:16

in a weird twist of history, different countries, different factions in different countries, at different times, had something to gain from the sanitizing of the atrocities committed at the opening of World War One against the Belgian people. Well. So the way that I come into this story and into your book is I grew up. My mother was Belgian. She was born in Belgium. She was seven years old in World War Two when the Germans invade a harrowing story. That is what the documentary is about. It's about her experience through the filter of her daughter, me, but also she, sadly, she died two years ago. We I do have some personal interviews with her in Belgium. So I grew up with these stories. And one of the stories that I was told was about World War One, and it was about my mother's great aunt, and her name was Adele Ubon, Charlie a and my mother was close to Adele. And I think about it, because I thought, well, she was a great aunt. How close could you have been? I have a great nephew. You know, it means more to me now I you know, it hits home a lot more so my mother would tell this story about Adele's family was massacred in an aqueduct beneath the bridge in Neff, which is right across the moose river from Danah. And you even wrote in your book that the Neff massacres were especially horrific. So I knew this story. It was kind of a legend in the family. We knew that. We knew the story about my mother, because she she talked a little bit about that too. But later on. Flash forward, my mother's in her late 70s, and I am in grad school, and I My background is I'm a storyteller. So I was getting my master's degree in creative and Professional Writing, and I was studying multimedia writing, because I was really interested in the different ways that you could tell. You know. Stories that I could tell stories. So I started this journey of this documentary and the podcast episode one is actually the beginning of that journey. That was a project I did for school, probably about two years ago. I was contacted by a cousin. The cousin guy Charlie A is actually the grandson of Adele Obion, Charlie, a guy's father George, was one of the three children of Adele Ubon who survived the massacre beneath the aqueduct and Neff Belgium in 1914 and he actually sent me a link to your book, and that's how this all started. And what became of that is that, you know, you have a very detailed for first account that talks about what happened to Adele's family. The details just make it so much more real to us. And as I started researching this, one of the things I found out is exactly what you talk about, and the fact that, basically, this idea of the rape of Belgian was a farce, it was propaganda, and it didn't really happen. And yet, you know, in my family, this has always been a kind of a part of our family narrative, so that's how I found you, and that's why this is so important to me. And one of the other things that I found really frustrating was that whole idea that the history books and whatever I was reading was telling me, oh, it really wasn't that bad, and it was that bad, and it is carried in the psyche of my mother. And flash forward, the Germans invade Belgium, and, uh, World War Two. Where's my mother staying? She's staying right there in front of that aqueduct where those people were killed. She's seven years old, and this legend is, you know, ingrained in her head, and she was already afraid of the Germans. And oh, my god, the Germans are coming again, and her father is off in France fighting the war. So in her escape to France is a harrowing story. So I was really frustrated. And I don't know if hurt is the right word, but I'll just use that word I was, I was kind of hurt and offended at this idea that these horrible things didn't happen. Yeah,

Jeff Lipkes: 18:36

I sympathize completely, because I don't have relatives in Belgium, but I am not Belgian myself, but I, I felt the same thing, this sense of kind of outrage, the injustice it was done to the Belgians. You know, one time with the with the invasion, but then in in Marie, and discouraging the testimony, because there just, there's so much testimony. And

Anne Marie Cannon: 19:02

I just have to say it was such a gift to find you and to find this book. Like I said, my mother was very fond of her great aunt. There was the family legend, and the story that had been passed down, the account that you give in the book of Adele and her family actually clarifies a lot of things that were, we were kind of miss telling each other, because I feel like I can count more on Adele's account than our family legend. And it's interesting that whole idea of how, you know, we pass things down from generation to generation, but that was such a gift for for me and also for my mother, to be able to read that account. I do have to say that I've been reading the book again getting ready for this interview. It's very heavy. It's very heavy. And it's like, I have to, you know, step I had to step back from it. But it's, it's painful. It's a painful history.

Jeff Lipkes: 20:00

It is, yeah, but it was criticized for, you know, excessive obsession with with the grim details. But it's I just wanted, just didn't want to hear that the myth about the invention about the British propaganda machine and the invention of so called Belgian atrocities. But, but, of course, the but you know you never your objective in writing a book has never realized, you know, you that's still, people still persist. And although historians are better now, but journalists still will disparage what happened.

Anne Marie Cannon: 20:36

So why did you write the book? Ultimately, why did you want to put that out there? Well,

Jeff Lipkes: 20:44

again, it was just a sense of of injustice, of of correcting this misinterpretation, especially in the this film The most best source of information, because it was shown in in classrooms across the country, year after year, was this film called The Great War and modern memory, something like that of Jay winter was the author, and it was just disseminating this erroneous picture. And I just felt kind of aggrieved about that, and I just wanted to set the record straight. I couldn't believe, you know, going back and first reading. You know, first I read these military story barbara tuchman is a certainly popular author known to a lot of people the guns of August. And she actually gets it, some of it right, as far as the scope of the killings and and then some of the military historians do. But then, you know, then there's just tons of sources in French. But collect because all official documents were in French, even for events that took place in in the northern Belgium, in the Flemish speaking areas provinces. But, but there's, and I did want to, you know, give credit to I've used different sources to put together this story, but a very important one was this multi volume work by two priests, or there were clergymen of some kind under Schmidt and Neyland who, I think partly because they were priests, were able to get people to open up afterwards and tell and tell in detail their their stories, they were trusted figures and and so. So a lot of the details do come from them. They, you know, in the early, early 20s, they were interviewing the survivors, so, but there was, there's just lots and lots of material out there, and it was just an urge, desire. And again, I thought it was going to be very short, but the first book was over 800 pages. I thought it's going to be a very short look at what the Germans actually did, but I just got carried away, and I went to Belgium, Belgium, I think, three times, and looked at the British archives as well, because all the priests in every diocese were required to submit reports about what happened their diocese. So in all of the Archdiocese, their records of these priests, their handwriting, you know what? What went on? And so,

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:07

who did they read? Who did they submit the reports to

Jeff Lipkes: 23:11

the bishops? Okay, the bishop is in methylene or Moline. Is this called in French, and Liege and the three bishops. And so they're in those archives. So they had to write these reports and and then, plus, just lots of people just published short memoirs. And there were new, you know, newspapers and journal articles of eyewitness accounts of what happened. So there's just a lot of material out. There's just no excuse for repeating these lies about what went on.

Anne Marie Cannon: 23:46

So are you Belgian? Are you French? Do you speak French?

Jeff Lipkes: 23:52

Yeah. Do we read? And my spoken French is now pretty terrible, but it was okay enough to talk to people. Then it was I wished it was better, but I did interview people actually, and did not. There were still a few survivors, but I mostly, I didn't speak with any of them, but I did speak with nieces, nephews, children and grandchildren. So I did get some first hand stories, some stories directly that were not, had not been published or were not in archives,

Anne Marie Cannon: 24:24

right? Wow. So I want to read this excerpt. It talks about, you know, the idea, and one of the things I really appreciate about your book is that you're sharing these stories. There are people who experience them, and everybody's perception is different, but it is still a really important part of the fabric of the truth in the bigger picture. And so one of the things you say is, there is no one story to tell. There are rather multiple points of view on a given historical event, and one has to make heroic efforts to avoid privileging those of the dominant race, class or gender, or in wars the triumphant nation or colonizing power. I thought that was really powerful. And kind of, you know, consolidates everything you just said about why you wrote the book. For me, that's the truth. There's scholarly truth, and then there is a bigger, greater truth, which takes into consideration the facts, but also the emotional experience of people. I feel like this is what you do with this book. And I, you know, really appreciate it. This

Jeff Lipkes: 25:41

is, you know, there's a maxim history written by the winners, but in this case, it actually, it actually wasn't because it was the German version that really got disseminated and propagated, because the Germans were very after the war. They were very interested in clearing their name, and so they spent a lot of money and had a lot of people working on these magazines and journals that were were dedicated to putting out their story, and they succeeded the version. You know, their their version got accepted and taken into adopted by historians.

Anne Marie Cannon: 26:17

And then you also say, in the book, you say, however, I believe the underlying reason for the continued unwillingness of journalists and popularizers to acknowledge what happened in Belgium in August 1914 has to do with the seductive appeal of revisionism views inspired by the bitter reaction to the Great War during the 1920s and early 30s, though long rejected by most scholars, have retained their grip on public opinion briefly. Revisionists believe that all the nations that went to war in 1914 were equally to blame. They slithered into war. I thought that was really interesting. And what could you tell me a little bit more about this idea of revisionism?

Jeff Lipkes: 27:00

Well, sure, it's attractive to to think of yourself as skeptical, cynical as you know, our parents and grandparents were swept away by propaganda, but we, we know better, you know, where it's a very self flattering idea, and that was part of the attraction. And then a part of the attraction was a, you know, a legitimate reaction to the kind of demonization of of the enemy that went on in all the countries, you know, especially in America.

Anne Marie Cannon: 27:30

So I want you to tell us about the title, and specifically the word rehearsals. Why that choice of words?

Jeff Lipkes: 27:37

Yeah, well, I got some flow for that, but I did that. I did try to explain in the in the afterward, a little bit more about that, because obviously you can't this is not comparable to the Holocaust. It is in some ways comparable to what happened in when the Germans invaded Poland. Now they were very careful when they went into Belgium the second time they were originally, they were careful about treating the civilians. They remember what had happened and how much money it had cost them to try to erase the image of the barbaric Han, you know. So they had very close instructor from Hitler on down to behave better towards the Belgians. But then there was actually this, this time of genuine resistance that formed after a couple of years. And I think 70,000 Belgian civilians were killed, as you know, in somewhat connected to the resistance. And not, you know, 29,000 Jews and others, others were killed in allied bombing too. But, but in Eastern Europe, they just behaved with the same brutality. And my point is, really, when in rehearsals was that it was not, you know, some people give too much credit to Hitler. He was only in power for six years before the in reshaping German mentality and German outlook on things. He was in power for six years when World War Two started, and you can certainly affect the mindset of children in school, but but grown ups, no, you know, they these, some of the ideas that were responsible for the barbaric behavior of the Germans in the war. Long predate the Nazi coming to power, but they were form of the nationalism took in Germany, the form of German militarism, which was very distinctive from the, you know, for instance, dueling, which was part of the military ethos, was important, very, very important in Germany in the late 19th century, early 20th century, it had really died out elsewhere in Europe. There was no people didn't guys didn't tool anymore. So as it's very different culture, and certainly different military culture, there was a, just a glorification of, for instance, another real quick comparison, honor was so important. You were always you carried out a duel or challenged somebody through duel to defend your honor, or the honor of the Kaiser's honor because you were wearing Kaiser's uniform. There are 45 words with the prefix of honor in German, and they're only, I think about five in English. So honor was very, very important. It was very important. They were very status, conscience, conscious, conscious. And you had to be a reserve if you wanted to be anybody, you had to be reserve officer. Every guy, a middle class man, was a reserve officer. And you were taught, there's another there's another German word, Schneider, kite, sharpness. You were taught that the duty of the officer was to be very easy, easily offended, ready to challenge somebody to a duel, to not put up with any nonsense, to be just, you know, intolerant. And that was, that's part of the culture. You know, there are many, many examples of this. So there are these differences. Another difference is the nationalism was just much more extreme and and it also was during the war, everybody became more nationalistic, and people were nationalistic before the war, but it wasn't quite was more kind of celebrating your own history and your own culture, but the Germans just carried a couple steps first. Are. And, you know, there are these wonderful statements about, you know, God, because Lutheran pastors in particular, authored these kind of hair raising sermons about God's Germans being God's chosen people, and God must be pleased to see himself mirrored in the German soul. You know, these, these historians, the writers in allied countries and in neutral countries, just had a field day going through these pamphlets published by Lutheran pastors, finding these gems and the other the other factor was anti Catholicism too. That was responsible for the treatment of the Pelican population, because they just thought they were bewitched by their priests. And 45 priests were were executed in those just a short time, you know, less than three weeks, because they were supposedly leading this guerilla campaign, you know, just ridiculous. So, so that was a factor as well. And so anyway, all these things predate, predate Hitler and contributed to the behavior of the Germans during Second World War. That was, that was the point, the point of the the idea of the title, of rehearsals.

Anne Marie Cannon: 32:32

So I guess what I got out of the title was this idea that the brutality that was carried out upon the Belgian somehow translated into the brutality of the Holocaust. Am I wrong about that? Well,

Jeff Lipkes: 32:49

that's the closer analogy. Is what I mentioned is the treatment of Polish civilians just doing exactly what they did in Belgium, except on a much bigger scale. In the same time period, they killed like, I think, 70 or 18,000 This is the army before the real persecution of Poles begins, just burning villages, shooting the all the men, usually all the men, sometimes women, but, but there is this interesting fact that that Hitler, that Hitler's anti semitism was never originally that important a part of his appeal. I mean, he he actually had to tone down the anti semitism when he won his big victories in the 30s. I used to ask students, you know, guess how many votes Hitler got in the election night the 1929 election. All right, he got. He got, I believe, 2.7% of the vote, he was not. He's not a popular figure until the Great Depression hit. So yes, of course, Truman's were anti semitic, but they weren't nearly as anti semitic as in the if you had been asked in the in the 1900s you would have said Russia and France, because fair, if you'd been asked in 1930 you would have said poll, the polls because of anti semitic legislation. But of course, there had to be a lot of anti semitism for everybody to cooperate. The people cooperated with the Holocaust to carry them. But I but there are other there are these other factors that I was talking about could figure in the treatment of Jews as well as the treatment of poles and other other Eastern Europeans. So, so that was what, that was, the point that I was trying to make, too. So there's, there is some relevance for the Holocaust. One famous couplet was, and the world may once again be healed by German ways. Have this very exalted pride in Germany and and the one, one Danish theologian who collected, one of many people who collected these, these quotes concluded at the end of his book that he was trying to summarize what the what they said all these German pastors, Germany is not the strongest nation in the world, but as a nation which, without comparison, stands highest in every respect determines the sole chosen people, the crown of creation. All moral virtues are in the German nothing but his natural, inborn qualities. All that is noble, good and beautiful, can therefore be described as German. It follows that the German people as such, cannot possibly do wrong. It will always be preserved from wrongdoing by its inherent nature, but I mean specific quotations. That was from the summary by the Danish theologian. Then there was just the belief also that the small Belgian civilians were told this repeated this many times. They were told small nations are going to disappear. I mean, Germany's destiny was European hegemony, and many of them, many you keep reading this, this freight, you know, soldiers, but more often, officers would tell somebody, cauldron, Belgium will disappear, you know,

Anne Marie Cannon: 35:50

yeah, it's interesting, because it seems like during the occupation, the Belgians, In both wars, were in a state of limbo, and one of this compelling stories that I talk about in the last episode that I released, episode two of the podcast, was my cousin's mother was a courier. She worked for the census, and people were against her because she was a. Collab. They said she was collaborating with the Germans. And yet, that's not really how it went down. They would do things like go out to the farms, because what the census was for the Germans, and they would go out to the farms and take inventory of their stock, you know, the animals and the crops and that type of thing. And then they would tell the farmers, tell us how many you have. And then they would say, Okay, we're going to report this many, and it would be a fraction of what they have, and you need to hide your livestock, or whatever it was. And it just seemed like to, you know, to be in that place of, this is my country. This isn't my country. You know, how do I remain loyal to my country? It's another totally interesting rabbit hole to go down. But, and yet, they persevered. Persevered. Somehow they persevered. I want to read one more excerpt that talks about some of the things that we've been talking about that I highlighted, and get kind of your feedback about it. So this is also in the forward to the second edition, a couple of questions may occur to readers at this juncture. It has been asked for at least a generation, and not only by Germans, how long citizens of the Federal Republic must be made to feel guilty for the murders committed under the Nazi regime. Is it not unsporting to now add war crimes committed by soldiers of the kasser Reich to the burden of German guilt? Scrupulous historians can only answer that the feelings of the descendants of the individuals whose action they described cannot be any of their concern. But it is also safe to say that few historians, unlike ordering executions in 1914 believed in collective guilt, and fewer still, and trans generational guilt. Nonetheless, the actions of the German army in Belgium are part of the historical record, and anyone wishing to explain German history between 1871 and 1945 needs to account for them. I had somebody tell me about this documentary that I'm doing. Who would be interested in it, haven't the Germans paid enough? What do you say about this idea of, haven't they paid enough in the German guilt? Well, first

Jeff Lipkes: 38:41

thing I want to say is I was accused by some critics of like suggesting that this was, there was a German national character. It was, was brutal and non humane and but, but I'm certainly nothing that obviously Germans German, the Germans have transformed themselves since the war successive generations and and they were different. And before they were, you know, before the, you know, the unification of Germany, they were called, you know, the nation of of poets and scholars. You know, they were not, they were not pressure. Was always militaristic. But the rest is, terminates, not at all. So, so I was certainly not saying that this was in a these traits that came out in the express themselves during the invasion of Belgium. But again, I just, you know, it's, it's history, it happened. And particularly, what was particularly imperative for me was that it was, it was blotted out. It was just discredited. And I just wanted that that story to be told, and that people would not repeat this misinformation about what had happened. We're

Anne Marie Cannon: 40:02

going to stop here for today, but be sure to join us next week when we pick up where we left off. With Jeff lipkes, I need to warn you, though the subject matter is quite disturbing and not suitable for all audiences.

Jeff Lipkes: 40:24

Yeah, this, it was so vile. It was just, there was no the what was incredible was one of the women actually saw, when she saw the soldiers with their guns level, she just, you know, pleaded. I mean, she looked pleadingly at them and held up her baby, you know, her little infant. They still, they still. They still open fire. You know, that was the order that was given fire on them. It was just so heartless, and then

Anne Marie Cannon: 40:59

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