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Author Traces 'Invented' WWI Atrocities
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Published: March 14, 2008
WESLEY CHAPEL - Their possessions slung over their shoulders, children by their side, a small group of Belgians is depicted leaving their country for fear of being slaughtered by German soldiers.
Jeff Lipkes took one look at the painting that hangs in a Brussels museum and knew it would work well on the cover of his latest book, "Rehearsals," a detailed look at the German invasion of Belgium in August 1914.
The book describes the killing of almost 6,000 people and the burning of nearly 25,000 homes and buildings during about a three-week period. Although those acts often have been dismissed as propaganda, Lipkes asserts in his 704-page book that the carnage was real and "part of a deliberate campaign of terrorism ordered by military authorities."
"People thought the atrocities were invented by the British to get America involved in the war, and to get people to enlist in the British army. You can still read this," said Lipkes, a Meadow Pointe resident, who earned a doctorate in history from Princeton University in 1995.
"In popular treatments on the war, or even on The History Channel, they still dismiss these 'German atrocities.'
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"Rehearsals" was published by the Leuven University Press in Belgium and was released in Europe in October; the book was released in the United States in January by Cornell University Press, which handles North American distribution for Leuven University.
"In its field, it probably will be controversial, and I think that's why he wrote it," said Jonathan Hall, publicity manager at Cornell University Press. "In many ways it is living history and the reputation of a country is at stake. In that field, it will be a revelation. He's done a lot of research and it's very well-documented.
"There probably will be some backlash in Germany. ... Because of the Holocaust and World War II, they're still apologizing for that. There's still the dark cloud."
Hall said the book mainly will be available through the university's Web site, www.cornellpress.cornell.edu, or amazon.com.
'People There Still Remember'
A Los Angeles native who also studied at the University of California at Berkeley, Lipkes, 58, is also the author of "Politics, Religion and Classical Political Economy in Britain: John Stuart Mill and his Followers," published by Macmillan in 1999.
He has taught English and creative writing at Northwestern University and Penn State University, and taught history at the University of South Florida, Florida Southern College and Eckerd College, but now writes full time.
In researching the book, Lipkes made two trips to Belgium, where he interviewed scores of survivors' relatives and pored through volumes of archives in Brussels, Liege, Mechelen and Namur. Most of the records are written in French and German. Lipkes reads both languages.
"I didn't get to talk to anybody who actually saw atrocities, but I got to speak with their nieces, nephews and grandchildren," he said. Victims "were herded into the village square and shot. Or, they were taken to a meadow, sometimes 10 or 20 at a time. There was one mass execution where they killed close to 300 at once.
"They talked about the fires and looting. People were put into cattle cars and sent to concentration camps. It was mostly men, but sometimes women and children, too. They'd just round up people at random.
"People there still remember. It was repressed, forgotten and dismissed in the rest of the world."
Lipkes also visited the massacre sites. He said he titled the book "Rehearsals" because the actions of German soldiers in World War I foreshadowed the horrors unleashed by Nazis in World War II.
"It just struck me that there were these parallels," he said. "The cattle cars were striking, and these forced marches. They had this attitude and sense of superiority - this arrogance that they had a right to do whatever they needed to do to win this war."
Nearly 2 Million Fled
About 2 million Belgians fled as the Germans advanced, an exodus immortalized by "Civilians In Flight From the Invasion In 1914," the Richard Jack painting.
Lipkes said he regrets not going to Germany, but that his research includes analyzing German reports and depositions of German soldiers.
"The British and French also interviewed a lot of prisoners," he said.
Lipkes moved to Florida about 10 years ago with wife, Rita Ciresi, a novelist and English professor at USF, and daughter, Celeste, a freshman at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Ciresi described her books, including "Blue Italian," "Pink Slip" and "Remind Me Again Why I Married You," as romantic comedies. They are obviously much different than her husband's work.
"It's a huge undertaking," she said of the effort involved in writing "Rehearsals." "Everything has to be checked a million times. As a novelist, you can just make it all up. I think it's is a really admirable piece of writing and brings attention to something that hasn't been explored before.
"If you look at these books that deal with atrocities, you see how history is nothing but that. It just plays itself out in different ways in different times and different places."
Lipkes already is working on his next project.
Not surprisingly, it will involve exhaustive research and possibly more travel.
"I have these angles on the whole sweep of European history, starting with prehistoric times," he said. "I'd like to finish it in a couple years."
Reporter Geoff Fox can be reached at (813) 948-4217 or gfox@tampatrib.com.
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