Report of the British Committee on the Alleged German Outrages
Introductory Observations
. . . The depositions printed in the Appendix themselves show that the stories were tested in detail, and in none of these have we been able to detect the trace of any desire to “make a case” against the German army. Care was taken to impress upon the witness that the giving of evidence was a grave and serious matter, and every deposition submitted to us was signed by the witness in the presence of the examiner.
A noteworthy feature of many of the depositions is that though taken at different places and on different dates, and by different lawyers from different witnesses, they often corroborate each other in a striking manner.
The evidence is all couched in the very words which the witnesses used, and where they spoke, as the Belgian witnesses did, in Flemish or French, pains were taken to have competent translators, and to make certain that the translation was exact.
Seldom did these Belgian witnesses show a desire to describe what they had seen or suffered. The lawyers who took the depositions were surprised to find how little vindictiveness, or indeed passion, they showed, and how generally free from emotional excitement their narratives were. Many hesitated to speak lest what they said, if it should ever be published, might involve their friends or relatives at home in danger, and it was found necessary to give an absolute promise that names should not be disclosed.
For this reason names have been omitted.
A large number of depositions, and extracts from depositions, will be found in Appendix A., and to these your attention is directed.
In all cases these are given as nearly as possible (for abbreviation was sometimes inevitable) in the exact words of the witness, and wherever a statement has been made by a witness tending to exculpate the German troops, it has been given in full. Excisions have been made only where it has been felt necessary to conceal the identity of the deponent, or to omit what are merely hearsay statements, or are palpably irrelevant. In every case the name and description of the witnesses are given in the original depositions and in copies which have been furnished to us by H.M. Government. The originals remain in the custody of the Home Department, where they will be available, in case of need, for reference after the conclusion of the War.
The Committee have also had before them a number of diaries taken from the German dead.
It appears to be the custom in the German army for soldiers to be encouraged to keep diaries and record in them the chief events of each day. A good many of these diaries were collected on the field when British troops were advancing over ground which had been held by the enemy, were sent to Head Quarters in France, and despatched thence to the War Office in England. They passed into the possession of the Prisoners of War Information Bureau, and were handed by it to our secretaries. They have been translated with great care. We have inspected them and are absolutely satisfied of their authenticity. They have thrown important light upon the methods followed in the conduct of the war. In one respect indeed, they are the most weighty part of the evidence, because they proceed from a hostile source and are not open to any such criticism on the ground of bias as might be applied to Belgian testimony. From time to time references to these diaries will be found in the text of the Report. In Appendix B. they are set out at greater length both in the German original and in an English translation, together with a few photographs of the more important entries.
In Appendix C. are set out a number of German proclamations. Most of these are included in the Belgian Report No. VI. which has been furnished to us. Actual specimens of original proclamations, issued by or at the bidding of the German military authorities, and posted in the Belgian and French towns mentioned, have been produced to us, and copies thereof are to be found in this Appendix.
Appendix D. contains the rules of the Hague Convention dealing with the conduct of War On Land as adopted in 1907, Germany being one of the signatory powers.
In Appendix E. will be found a selection of statements collected in France by Professor Morgan.
These five appendices are contained in a separate volume.
In dealing with the evidence we have recognised the importance of testing it severely, and so far as the conditions permit we have followed the principles which are recognised in the Courts of England, the British Overseas Dominions, and the United States. We have also as already noted set aside the testimony of any witnesses who did not favourably impress the lawyers who took their depositions, and have rejected hearsay evidence except in cases where hearsay furnished an undesigned confirmation of facts with regard to which we already possessed direct testimony from some other source, or explained in a natural way facts imperfectly narrated or otherwise perplexing.
It is natural to ask whether much of the evidence given, especially by the Belgian witnesses, may not be due to excitement and overstrained emotions, and whether, apart from deliberate. falsehood persons who mean to speak the truth may not in a more or less hysterical condition have been imagining themselves to have seen the things which they say that they saw. Both the lawyers who took the depositions, and we when we came to examine them, full recognised this possibility. The lawyers, as already observed, took pains to test each witness and either rejected, or appended a note of distrust to, the testimony of those who failed to impress them favourably. We have carried the sifting still further by also omitting from the depositions those in which we found something that seemed too exceptional to be accepted on the faith of one witness only, or too little supported by other evidence pointing to like facts. Many depositions have thus been omitted on which , although they are probably true, we think it safer not to place reliance.
Notwithstanding these precautions, we began the inquiry with doubts whether a positive result would be attained. But the further we went and the more evidence we examined so much the more was our scepticism reduced. There might be some exaggeration in one witness, possible delusion in another. inaccuracies in a third. When, however, we found that things which had at first seemed improbable were testified to by many witnesses coming from different places, having had no communication with one another, and knowing nothing of one another’s statements the points in which they all agreed became more and more evidently true. And when this concurrence of testimony, this convergence up on what were substantially the same broad facts, showed itself in hundreds of depositions, the truth of those broad facts stood out beyond question. The force of the evidence is cumulative. Its worth can be estimated only by perusing the testimony as a whole. If any further confirmation had been needed, we found it in the diaries in which German officers and private soldiers have recorded incidents just such as those to which the Belgian witnesses depose.
The experienced lawyers who took the depositions tell us that they passed from the same stage of doubt into the same stage of conviction. They also began their work in a sceptical spirit, expecting to find much of the evidence coloured by passion, or prompted by an excited fancy. But they were impressed by the general moderation and matter of fact level-headedness of the witnesses.
We interrogated them, particularly regarding some of the most startling and shocking incidents which appear in the evidence laid before us, and where they expressed a doubt we have excluded the evidence, admitting it as regards the cases in which they stated that the witnesses seemed to them to be speaking the truth, and that they themselves believed the incidents referred to have happened. It is for this reason that we have inserted among the depositions printed in the Appendix several cases which we might otherwise have deemed scarcely credible.
The Committee has conducted its investigations and come to its conclusions independently of the reports issued by the French and Belgian Commissions, but it has no reason to doubt that those conclusions are in substantial accord with the conclusions that have been reached by these two Commissions.
Report of the British Committee on the Alleged German Outrages
Excerpt:
CHARLEROIS DISTRICT. In Tamines, a large village on the Meuse between Namur and Charleroi, the advance guard of the German army appeared in the first fortnight in August, and in this as well as in other villages in the district, it is proved that a large number of civilians, among them aged people, women and children, were deliberately killed by the soldiers. One witness describes how she saw a Belgian boy of fifteen shot on the village green at Tamines, and a day or two later on the same green a little girl and her two brothers (name given) who were looking at the German soldiers, were killed before her eyes for no apparent reason.
The principal massacre at Tamines took place about August the 23rd. A witness describes how he saw the public square littered with corpses and after a search found those of his wife and child, a little girl of seven.
Another witness, who lived near Tamines, went there on August 27th, and says: “It is absolutely destroyed and a mass of ruins.”
At Morlanwelz, about this time, the British army, together with some French cavalry were compelled to retire before the German troops. The latter took the burgomaster and his man servant prisoner and shot them both in front of the H\’99tel de Ville at Peronne (Belgium), where the bodies were left in the street for 48 hours. They burnt the Hotel de Ville and 62 houses. The usual accusation of firing by civilians was made. It is strenuously denied by the witness, who declares that three or four days before the arrival of the Germans, circulars had been distributed to every house and placards had been posted in the town ordering the deposit of all firearms at the Hotel de Ville and that this order had been complied with.
At Monceau-sur-Sambre, on the 21st August, a young man of eighteen was shot in his garden. His father and brother were seized in their house and shot in the courtyard of a neighbouring country house. The son was shot first. The father was compelled to stand close to the feet of his son’s corpse and to fix his eyes upon him while he himself was shot. The corpse of the young man shot in the garden was carried into the house and put on a bed. The next morning the Germans asked where the corpse was. When they found it was in the house they fetched straw, packed it round the bed on which the corpse was lying, and set fire to it and burnt the house down. A great many houses were burnt in Monceau.
A vivid picture of the events at Montigny-sur-Sambre has been given by a witness of high standing who had exceptional opportunities of observation. In the early morning of Saturday, August 2nd, Uhlans reached Montigny. The French army was about 4 kilometres away, but on a hill near the village were a detachment of French about 150 to 200 strong lying in ambush. At about 1.30 the main body of the German army began to arrive. Marching with them were two groups of so-called hostages, about 400 in all. Of these, 300 were surrounded with a rope held by the front, rear, and outside men. The French troops in ambush opened fire, and immediately the Germans commenced to destroy the town. Incendiaries with a distinctive badge on their arm went down the main street throwing handfuls of inflammatory and explosive pastilles into the houses. These pastilles were carried by them in bags, and in this way about 130 houses were destroyed in the main street. By 10.30 p.m. some 200 more hostages had been collected. These were drawn from Montigny itself and on that night about 50 men, women, and children were placed on the bridge over the Sambre and kept there all night. The bridge was similarly guarded for a day or two, apparently either from a fear that it was mined or in the belief that these men, women, and children would afford some protection to the Germans in the event of the French attempting to storm the bridge. At one period of the German occupation of Montigny, eight nuns of the Order of Ste. Marie were captives on the bridge. House burning was accompanied by murder, and on the Monday morning 27 civilians from one parish alone were seen lying dead in the hospital.
Other outrages committed at Jumet, Bouffioulx, Charleroi, Marchiennes-au-Pont, Couillet, and Maubeuge are described in the depositions given in the Appendix.
DINANT.
A clear statement of the outrages at Dinant, which many travellers will recall as a singularly picturesque town on the Meuse, is given by one witness, who says that the Germans began burning houses in the Rue St. Jacques on the 21st August, and that every house in the street was burnt. On the following day an engagement took place between the French and the Germans, and the witness spent the whole day in the cellar of a bank with his wife and children. On the morning of the 23rd, about 5 o’clock, firing ceased, and almost immediately afterwards a party of Germans came to the house. They rang the bell and began to batter at the door and windows. The witness’s wife went to the door and two or three Germans came in. The family were ordered out into the street. There they found another family, and the two families were driven with their hands above their heads along the Rue Grande. All the houses in the street were burning. The party was eventually put into a forge where there were a number of other prisoners, about a hundred in all, and were kept there from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m. They were then taken to the prison. There they were assembled in a courtyard and searched. No arms were found. They were then passed through into the prison itself and put into cells. The witness and his wife were separated from each other. During the next hour the witness heard rifle shots continually, and noticed in the corner of a court yard leading off the row of cells the body of a young man with a mantle thrown over it. He recognised the mantle as having belonged to his wife. The witness’s daughter was allowed to go out to see what had happened to her mother, and the witness himself was allowed to go across the courtyard half an hour afterwards for the same purpose. He found his wife lying on the floor in a room. She had bullet wounds in four places, but was alive and told her husband to return to the children, and he did so. About 5 o’clock in the evening he saw the German ringing out all the young and middle-aged men from the cells, and ranging their prisoners, to the number of 40, in three rows in the middle of the courtyard. About 20 Germans were drawn up opposite, but before anything was done there was a tremendous fusillade from some point near the prison and the civilians were hurried back to their cells. Half an hour later the same 40 men were brought back into the courtyard. Almost immediately there was a second fusillade like the first and they were driven back to the cells again. About 7 o’clock the witness and other prisoners were brought out of their cell and marched out of the prison. They went between two line of troops to Roche Bayard about a kilometre away. An hour later the women and children were separated and the prisoners were brought back to Dinant, passing the prison on their way. Just outside the prison the witness saw three lines of bodies, which he recognised as being those of neighbours. They were nearly all dead, but he noticed movement in some of them. There were about 120 bodies. The prisoners were then taken up to the top of the hill outside Dinant and compelled to stay there till 8 o’clock in the morning. On the following day they were put into cattle trucks and taken thence to Coblenz. For three months they remained prisoners in Germany.
Unarmed civilians were killed in masses at other places near the prison. About 90 bodies were seen lying on the top of one another in a grass square opposite the convent. They included many relatives of a witness whose deposition will be found in the Appendix. This witness asked a German officer why her husband had been shot, and he told her that it was because two of her sons had been in the civil guard and had shot at the Germans. As a matter of fact one of her sons was at that time in Liege and the other in Brussels. It is stated that beside the 90 corpses referred to above, 60 corpses of civilians were recovered from a hole in the brewery yard and that 48 bodies of women and children were found in a garden. The town was systematically set on fire by hand grenades.
Another witness saw a little girl of seven, one of whose legs was broken and the other injured by a bayonet.
We have no reason to believe that the civilian population of Dinant gave any provocation, or that any other defence can be put forward to justify the treatment inflicted upon its citizens.
As regards this town and the advance of the German army from Dinant to Rethel on the Aisne, a graphic account is given in the diary of a Saxon officer. [A copy of this diary was given by the French military authorities to the British Headquarters Staff in France, and the latter have communicated it to the Committee. It will be found in Appendix B. after the German diaries shown to us by the British War Office.] This diary confirms what is clear from the evidence as a whole both as regards these and other districts, that civilians were constantly taken as prisoners, often dragged from their homes and shot under the direction of the authorities without any charge being made against them. An event of the kind is thus referred to in a diary entry: “Apparently 200 men were shot. There must have been some innocent men amongst them. In future we shall have to hold an inquiry as to their guilt instead of shooting them.” The shooting of inhabitants, women and children as well a men, went on after the Germans had passed Dinant on their way into France. The houses and villages were pillaged and property wantonly destroyed.
(c) Abuse of the Red Cross and of the White Flag
The Red Cross
Cases of the Red Cross being abused are much more definite.
There are several accounts of fire being opened, sometimes at very short range, by machine guns which had been disguised in a German Red Cross ambulance or car; this was aggravated in one case near Tirlemont by the German soldiers wearing Belgian uniform.
Witness speaks also of a stretcher party with the Red Cross being used to cover an attack, and of a German Red Cross man working a machine gun.
There is also a well-attested case of a Red Cross motor car being used to carry ammunition under command of officers.
Unless all these statements are wilfully false, which the Committee sees no reason to believe, these acts must have been deliberate, and it does not seem possible that a Red Cross car could be equipped with a machine gun by soldiers acting without orders. There is also one case of firing from a cottage where the Red Cross flag was flying, and this could not be accidental.
On the whole, there is distinct evidence of the Red Cross having been deliberately misused for offensive purposes, and seemingly under orders, on some, though not many, occasions.
Abuse of the White Flag
Cases of this kind are numerous. It is possible that a small group of men may show a White Flag without authority from any proper officer, in which case their action is, of course, not binding on the rest of the platoon or other unit. But this will not apply to the case of a whole unit advancing as if to surrender, or letting the other side advance to receive the pretended surrender, and then opening fire. Under this head we find many depositions by British soldiers and several by officers. In some cases the firing was from a machine gun brought up under cover of the White Flag.
The depositions taken by Professor Morgan in France strongly corroborate the evidence collected in this country.
The case numbered h 70 may be noted as very clearly stated. The Germans, who had “put up a white flag on a lance and ceased fire,” and thereby induced a company to advance in order to take them prisoners, “dropped the white flag and opened fire a t a distance of 100 yards.” This was near Nesle, on September the 6th, 1914. It seems clearly proved that in some divisions at least of the German army this practice is very common. The incidents as reported cannot be explained by unauthorised surrenders of small groups.
There is, in our opinion, sufficient evidence that these offences have been frequent, deliberate, and in many cases committed by whole units under orders. All the acts mentioned in this part of the Report are in contravention of the Hague Convention, signed by the Great Powers, including France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, in 1907, as may be seen by a reference to Appendix D., in which the provisions of that Convention relating to the conduct of war on land are set forth.
Conclusions
From the foregoing pages it will be seen that the Committee have come to a definite conclusion upon each of the heads under which the evidence has been classified.
It is proved:
(i) That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organised massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.
(ii) That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.
(iii) That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provisions had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that t he burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleged, being indeed part of a system of general terrorisation.
(iv) That the rules and usages of war were frequently broken, particularly by the using of civilians, including women and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag.
Sensible as they are of the gravity of these conclusions, the Committee conceive that they would be doing less than their duty if they failed to record them as fully established by the evidence. Murder, lust, and pillage prevailed over many parts of Belgium on a scale unparalleled in any war between civilised nations during the last three centuries.
Our function is ended when we have stated what the evidence establishes, but we may be permitted to express our belief that these disclosures will not have been made in vain if they touch and rouse the conscience of mankind, and we venture to hope that as soon as the present war is over, the nations of the world in council will consider what means can be provided and sanctions devised to prevent the recurrence of such horrors as our generation is now witnessing.
The Committee on Alleged German Outrages, often called the Bryce Committee after its chair, Viscount James Bryce (1838-1922), is best known for producing the “Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages” published on May 12, 1915. The report is seen as a major propaganda form that Britain and America used in order to educate the world on the behavior of Germany who had invaded Belgium the year before.
The Report was translated by the end of 1915 into every major European language and had a profound impact on public opinion in Allied and neutral countries, particularly in the USA. Though the findings of the Report have been substantiated by several scholars in the 21st century, the eyewitness testimony published in its 320-page Appendix A included some sensationalist accounts of mutilations and rapes for which there is no other evidence. These invented atrocities stigmatized the Report and made it a target for revisionist historians and writers on propaganda down to the present day.
By the middle of September, 1914, the Belgian Government had issued three reports on German war crimes committed during the invasion of the country, and there were calls in the British Parliament and the Press for a British commission to conduct its own inquiry. Prime Minister Herbert Asquith responded on September 15 by authorizing the Home Secretary and the Attorney General to investigate allegations of violations of the laws of war by the German Army. In the end, some 1,200 witnesses were interviewed by teams of barristers appointed by George A. Aitken, Assistant Home Secretary, who directed the investigation, and by clerks in the Attorney General’s Office. Most of the witnesses were Belgian refugees; nearly two million Belgians had fled the country, and over 120,000 found refuge in the UK.
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce
On December 4, James Bryce was asked to chair the “German Outrages Inquiry Committee”, which would review the material that had been collected and issue a report. The mission of this committee was to review the “charges that German soldiers, either directed or condoned by their officers, had been guilty of widespread atrocities in Belgium.” Bryce asked if he would have a chance to interview witnesses, but was told that would not be necessary. The Britannic Majesty’s Government appointed some of their most notable citizens to be a part of the committee: James Bryce who was a former British ambassador to the United States, H.A.L Fisher a well known Liberal historian, Sir Frederick Pollock who was a famous judge and legal historian, and Harold Cox, the Edinburgh Review editor, and two lawyers, Sir Edward Clark and Sir Alfred Hopkinson.
Viscount Bryce was an inspired choice to chair the committee. He was a Gladstonian Liberal who had opposed the Boer War and had sought accommodation with Germany until the invasion of Belgium. He also had a substantial reputation as a scholar, having studied at Heidelberg, had made his scholarly reputation with a book on the Holy Roman Empire, and had been awarded honorary doctorates by the universities of Jena and Leipzig in addition to the Pour le Mérite. Still more important for the government, Bryce was a respected figure in both Britain and the United States, where he had been the British ambassador from 1907–1913, and was a friend of President Wilson. He had written an important work on the political system in the U.S., The American Commonwealth, had traveled widely in the country, and had many admirers among American politicians and intellectuals. His imprimatur guaranteed that the report would be widely read. In public statements and private correspondence, Bryce claimed that he hoped to exonerate the German Army from accusations of barbarism. Bryce was also known for his sympathy towards the German people and their culture. By selecting Bryce to be head of the committee, it was believed that the research and findings completed would be reviewed with extreme care and that it would hold the guilty responsible for their actions.
The membership of the Committee incorporated many important individuals of British and international status, including Sir Frederick Pollock, Sir Edward Clarke, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Sir Kenelm E. Digby, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, and Mr. Harold Cox.
The Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages, more commonly known as the Bryce Report, was a 61-page document issued on May 12, 1915.
The Report
The British Home Office collected a vast amount of evidence from civilians whose villages were attacked by German troops, British officers, German soldier diaries, and other firsthand accounts. The evidence against the German soldiers verified their inhumane acts of violence.
The Report was divided into two parts:
Part I, “The Conduct of the German Troops in Belgium” consists of descriptions and summaries of war crimes in six regions: “Liège and District,” “Valleys of Meuse and Sambre,” “The Aerschot (Aarschot), Malines (Mechelen), Vilvorde (Vilvoorde), and Louvain (Leuven) Quadrangle,” “Louvain (Leuven) and District,” “Termonde” (Dendermonde), and “Alost” (Aalst).
Belgium was guaranteed by a Treaty in 1839, that no nation was to have the right to claim the passage for its army through a neutral state. The treaty was in the case that Germany and France might enter a war between each other.
Belgian Minister in 1911 requested from Germany that she would respect the Treaty of 1839. Germany’s response to the request was, “Belgian neutrality is provided for by international conventions and Germany is determined to respect those conventions.”
The German Minister, Herr von Below on August 2, 1914 presented Belgium with a note where they demanded with an instant declaration of war that they were allowed passage through Belgium.
The King of Belgium with concern for his civilians was reluctant to Germany’s request. But on the evening of August 3, German troops crossed through Belgium land. The Belgian civilians were startled by the attacks, and German troops did not expect a difficult passage
Part II is divided into two sections summarizing “Treatment of Civilian Population” and “Offences Against Combatants.”
After having “narrated the offenses committed in Belgium, which it has been proper to consider as a whole, we now turn to another branch of the subject, the breaches of the usages of war which appear in the conduct of the German army general.”
A one-page Conclusion follows.
The Report came to four conclusions about the behavior of the German Army:
“That there were in many parts of Belgium deliberate and systematically organized massacres of the civil population, accompanied by many isolated murders and other outrages.”
“That in the conduct of the war generally innocent civilians, both men and women, were murdered in large numbers, women violated, and children murdered.”
“That looting, house burning, and the wanton destruction of property were ordered and countenanced by the officers of the German Army, that elaborate provisions had been made for systematic incendiarism at the very outbreak of the war, and that the burnings and destruction were frequent where no military necessity could be alleges, being indeed part of a system of general terrorism.”
“That the rules and usages in of war were frequently broken, particularly be the using of civilians, including woman and children, as a shield for advancing forces exposed to the fire, to a less degree by killing the wounded and prisoners, and in the frequent abuse of the Red Cross and the White Flag.
The Committee determined that “these excesses were committed–in some cases ordered, in others allowed–on a system and in pursuance of a set purpose. That purpose was to strike terror into the civil population and dishearten the Belgian troops, so as to crush down resistance and extinguish the very spirit of self-defence. The pretext that civilians had fired upon the invading troops was used to justify not merely the shooting of individual francs-tireurs, but the murder of large numbers of innocent civilians, an act absolutely forbidden by the rules of civilised warfare.”
The Committee sought to exonerate certain individuals. German peasants “are as kindly and good-natured as any people in Europe. But for Prussian officers, “war seems to have become a sort of sacred mission… The Spirit of War is deified. Obedience to the State and its War Lord leaves no room for any other duty or feeling. Cruelty becomes legitimate when it promises victory.”
The committee made an important note that this report was investigating the actions of the Germany army and that the German people should not be blame for the crimes of their national army. This careful investigation of all 1,200 depositions created the belief that the term ‘atrocity’ should be directly connected with the German army, due to the army’s extreme practice of militarism.[8] This is confirmed by the German diaries, which showed the German account of the war crimes in Belgian was directly ordered by commanding army officers. In its final conclusion, the committee claimed that the militarism of the German army was the cause of the outrages in Belgium.
Distribution
The Report was widely accepted throughout the world, translated into more than 30 languages and widely circulated by British propaganda services, especially in the USA, where it was reprinted and circulated in most of the US national newspapers, including the New York Times.
Impact of Report
On 27 May 1915 it was reported that every New York newspaper had reprinted the Bryce Report. Charles Masterman, head of the British War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House, had 41,000 copies shipped to the US. The same month the German government attempted to combat the report with the publication of its own reports on atrocities committed against German soldiers by Belgian civilians. It offered depositions and eyewitness accounts but had little impact.
The Committee on Public Information urged US newspapers not to publish stories that might undermine the Bryce Report. A column titled “The Daily German Lie” linked support for the Report’s authenicity to a War Department request for a ban on printing unsubstantiated atrocity stories.
The findings of the committee became a major piece of British propaganda used to convince Americans to join the war. The committee’s report proved the atrocities in Belgian were committed under German militarism, which left neutral countries to draw their own conclusions of how to view the German army. But, based on their own conclusions, most neutral countries, especially the United States, came to connect the German army with the term ‘atrocity’ during World War I. “By identifying German army conduct with militarism, the Bryce Report made opposition to the German army the same as opposition to war itself.” Because the Bryce Report was considered a credible source, it was cited throughout national newspapers. The New York Times reported that the committee was “set to answer the question, ‘Were there German atrocities in Belgian?’ and they have answered it. They have made further disputes impossible.” The American public believed that the committee had made credible arguments against the German army.
Criticism
German authorities in response to the Bryce Report published the White Book five days later. The book contained records where Belgians were guilty of atrocities committed on German soldiers.
“It has been established beyond doubt that Belgian civilians plundered, killed and even shockingly mutilated German wounded soldiers in which atrocities even women and children took part. Thus the eyes were gouged out of the German wounded soldiers, their ears, noses and finger-joints were cut off, or they were emasculated or disemboweled. In other cases German soldiers were poisoned or strung up on trees; hot liquid was poured over them, or they were otherwise burned so that they died under terrible tortures.
Immediately after World War I, the original documents of the Belgian witness depositions could not be found in the British Home Office, where they were supposed to be kept for protection. This prevented others from questioning and investigating the depositions to prove if the Bryce Report was true. The Committee on Alleged German Outrages was not a direct part in collecting the depositions of the witnesses. The majority of the depositions that were obtained for the Bryce Report were taken by English barristers (lawyers), who were not under oath. It was subsequently revealed that the committee did not personally interview a single witness, relying instead on hearsay evidence and depositions given without oaths.
Objections were made to the timing of its release, to the fact that the testimony of witnesses was not given under oath and the individuals were not identified by name, and to the improbability of some of the testimony. It was repeatedly claimed that the charges had been refuted by subsequent investigations. The fact that the original depositions were lost was said to show bad faith. The motives of Bryce and the other members were also questioned. Trevor Wilson claims in particular that members believed that if they rejected the more sensationalist accusations against the German Army, involving rape and mutilation, audiences would question the more prosaic was crimes that the Army did indeed commit.
Among the books of the interwar period attacking the Bryce Report are Harold Laswell, Propaganda Techniques in the World War (1927), Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in Wartime (1928), H. Grattan, Why We Fought (1928), Harry Elmer Barnes, In Quest of Truth and Justice (1928), George Viereck, Spreading Germs of Hate (1930), James Squires, British Propaganda at Home and in the United States (1935), H. C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign Against American Neutrality, 1914-1917 (1938) and James Read, atrocity Propaganda, 1914-1919 (1941).
Criticisms have seldom been dispassionate. Convinced that reports of German war crimes were fabrications, revisionists have vilified Bryce and the Report for nine decades. The latter was “in itself one of the worst atrocities of the war.” Bryce was guilty of “an irresponsible misuse of judicial procedure that disseminated…huge untruths.” For Bryce, “no lie was too great and no distortion too bizarre.”
Responses to Criticism
As to the specific charges made by inter-war revisionists, there is no evidence that the Report was rushed into print five days after the sinking of the Lusitania in order to capitalize on the outrage caused by that event. When there can be no prosecution for perjury, the taking of testimony under oath is no guarantee of its reliability, as evidenced by the German White Book (which claimed the Belgian government had organized guerrilla attacks on the German Army in 1914), where most of the depositions are sworn. The Belgian government requested that witnesses not be identified by name for fear of reprisals against relatives and friends in occupied Belgium. Most witnesses can be identified from lists of names in the Committee’s papers in the National Archive.
When historian James Morgan Read wished to consult the original depositions in 1939, he was told, with much embarrassment, that they were lost. On August 13, 1942, however, the missing depositions were located. The depositions, however, were subsequently destroyed, most likely by a German rocket. There is no evidence that they were deliberately withheld from Read or intentionally destroyed.
However, the claim by revisionists that some of the testimony is not credible is entirely legitimate. The Committee included in Appendix A depositions it should have been much more skeptical of, particularly from Belgian soldiers. Critics repeatedly cited as the most egregious accusations a claim by a Belgian soldier that he had witnessed a mass rape in central Liège and the claim of two civilians in Mechelen that they saw a German soldier spear a child with his bayonet as he marched past.
There is a clear correlation between the unreliability of the testimony in a given town or region and the percentage of soldiers offering testimony. In an analysis of the plausibility of testimony in Appendix A, based on other sources, Jeff Lipkes found that in the testimony about Liège and the villages to its east, the 35 depositions average 3.8 on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents “probably a legend or invention” and 5 represents “very likely.” Soldiers, however, rate only 2.16, while civilians average 4.14. The former accounted for just 17% of the depositions. Similarly, in the section on the valleys of the Meuse and Sambre, the 30 statements by witnesses average 3.77, with civilians rating 4.04, while soldiers only average 2.4. The soldiers again comprised a low percent of the total, 16.6%. It is in the region designated “The Aershot, Malines, Vilvorde, Louvain Quadrangle,” where the majority of the testimony comes from soldiers, that the most dubious depositions occur. Even within this region, testimony from townspeople tends to be reliable. In Aarschot, the 38 depositions average 4.0. Soldiers, 31.6% of the total, averaged only 2.4, whereas the 26 civilians rated 4.73, providing credible accounts that fully tallied with other evidence.
Although the claim was made repeatedly that subsequent investigations disproved the charges of the Bryce Report, this is not the case. There was no systematic attempt to analyze the findings of the Committee, and certainly no official re-investigation. Read, the most scholarly of the revisionists, compared eyewitness reports in three towns with the reports of the post-war Belgian Commission of Inquest. In Mechelen and Elewijt, there are certainly some dubious allegations among the Bryce Committee witnesses. However, the 14 reports from Aalst are almost entirely corroborated by testimony from the Belgian Commission. Most of the slashings, stabbings, and burnings described by witnesses were likely to have taken place.
In areas where there were mass executions, the Bryce Report actually underestimates the killing. In Aarschot, where 169 civilians were murdered, the report records only ten deaths. No totals are given for Dinant, where 685 civilians were killed; however, various figures, added together, come to 410. As for Tamines, where 383 were killed, the Report only states: “A witness describes how he saw the public square littered with corpses…” The Committee had few witnesses to draw upon for the French-speaking regions of Belgium. Most Walloons fled to France.
There is no evidence that Committee members felt that the graver charges would not be believed in if the more sensationalist accusations were dismissed, as Wilson claims. However, there is no question that the Committee members exercised poor judgement in their selection of testimony. They reprinted 55 depositions from the small town of Hofstadt, many dubious, where fewer than ten murders occurred. (The depositions average only 2.11 on Lipkes’s scale, with soldiers providing 85% of the testimony.) Meanwhile, the Committee failed to investigate carefully well-documented cases of mass executions, such as Andenne, Tamines, and Dinant.
Conclusion
Today, the Report is considered by some to be a “prime example of untruthful war propaganda.” The report released by the committee was considered credible because of its use of professional structure and legal terms, but the lack of documented resources greatly injured the reputation of the committee for modern scholars.
The findings of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages show that war propaganda can be effective, even if it lacks both true and reliable sources. “The character of evidence helps explain how inaccuracies and exaggerations so frequently crept into the text.” While these exaggerations are most commonly seen in the witness accounts, the German diaries in actuality did not contain accounts “of the sexual-sadistic” scandals with women and children of Belgium. In a post-war report, the Belgian Commission proved that the main victims of the German war crimes were male adults, not women and children. Overall, modern scholars suggest that the committee’s “Bryce Report slid from the factual into the symbolic.”
Despite its flaws, the four conclusions the Report comes to have been amply documented by recent historians: J. Horne and A. Kramer, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (2001), L. Zuckerman, The Rape of Belgium (2003), and J. Lipkes, Rehearsals: The German Army in Belgium, August 1914 (2007). Lipkes endorses the Report’s analysis as well, while Horne and Kramer emphasize German paranoia.
