The Rape Of Little Belgium During World War I

A series of war crimes were perpetrated against the people of Belgium in the early months of WWI, which were referred to at the time as “the rape of little Belgium.” In August 1914 several large flanks of German soldiers marched into Belgium, seizing command of major urban centers like Liège, Leuven, and Andenne. They subsequently wreaked havoc. In the weeks immediately proceeding the seizure of Belgium by the Germans, international newspapers published. There was an international outcry raised against the Germans, who did not relinquish control of Belgium well into 1918. Ultimately, it took the attack on the American vessel Lusitania, and the sinking of several merchant ships in 1917 for President Woodrow Wilson to declare war on Germany,
However, in 1917, when it was clear the US had to go to war, something major had to be done to build public support for precisely the opposite cause Wilson had spent his first term rallying around. He created the Committee on Public Information, designed for the sole purpose of raising support for American entry into the war. The CPI created a films division, a news division, and eventually a “division of pictorial publicity.” CPI staff circulated in mass. WWI was the first major international conflict which saw this widespread a use of graphic media to incur change, otherwise known as propaganda. Though much of the early propaganda created by popular illustrators like Charles Dana Gibson and James Montgomery Flagg was positive and patriotic, The posters were shocking, sometimes to the point of cruelty, but they were highly
The image depicts two shadowed figures: a larger man in what appears to be a military uniform, with a gun and a spiked helmet, leading off a young girl, whose pose suggests she is resisting his grip. The two figures’ shadows obscure flames in the background, which represent the burning cities of Belgium. Metaphorically speaking, the viewer is inclined to read the man and girl as analogies of Germany and Belgium: Germany, a hulking brute, and Belgium, an innocent girl. Looking closely at the soldier’s face reveals it is not a typical human profile. It is something skeletal, or more likely, a primate’s. Jeff Lipkes notes that Referring to Germans as huns, and depicting them as Young does here as primates has the effect of animalizing the Germans, dehumanizing them. The intent would be that it is much easier to condone ruthless attacks on a race of subhumans, or degenerate animals than it would be on a race of beings you considered human. Belgium, meanwhile, is depicted as a young girl being abducted, as several scholars have noted, “presumably, to be raped.” The invocation of rape transforms Germany’s prolonged series of crimes, and complicated involvement in the war into a single act: a violation. A violation that is so heinous that the viewer of Young’s image would feel compelled to, at the