The Rape of Belgium

In August 1914, the German army invaded neutral Belgium, the world's sixth-ranked industrial power and Europe's second-oldest democracy, violating an 1839 treaty that the German chancellor dismissed as a "scrap of paper". The invaders terrorized and shot thousands of civilians, looted and burned scores of towns, and reduced the once major industrial power to a nonentity. Belgium was a forerunner to Nazi Europe but the Allies were afraid to confront Germany. The author suggests that had they done so, Europe's reaction to the rise of Nazi Germany might have taken a different course.