{"product_id":"dynamic-of-destruction","title":"DYNAMIC OF DESTRUCTION","description":"On 26 August 1914 the world-famous university library in the Belgian town of Louvain was looted and destroyed by German troops. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust at Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain came to be seen as the beginning of a different style of war, without the rules that had governed military conflict up to that point - a more total war, in which enemy civilians and their entire\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e culture were now 'legitimate' targets. \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e \u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e Yet the destruction at Louvain was simply one symbolic moment in a wider wave of cultural destruction and mass killing that swept Europe in the era of the First World War. Using a wide range of examples and eye-witness accounts from across Europe at this time, award-winning historian Alan Kramer paints a picture of an entire continent plunging into a chilling new world of mass mobilization, total warfare, and the celebration of nationalist or ethnic violence - often directed expressly at the\u003cbr data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003e enemy's civilian population.","brand":"Readers Paradise Book Shop Wexford","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41553362747563,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0538\/7105\/0923\/products\/17_ac802692-606e-48e9-b610-35e89c1aaa3a.jpg?v=1645720560","url":"https:\/\/readersparadise.ie\/products\/dynamic-of-destruction","provider":"ReadersParadise","version":"1.0","type":"link"}