In Andenne, Belgium, the massacre of the population began soon after the German occupation on August 20 and continued intermittently during the night. The Germans resorted to machine guns and opened fire. Most of the German soldiers were intoxicated with alcohol. They killed a large number of defenseless civilians and the town collapsed. About 211 people lost their lives in this massacre.
On the Western Front of World War I, German troops crossed the border of Belgium on August 2, 1914. As soon as the Germans invaded the Belgian territory, German soldiers committed atrocities against civilians, including women and children. From the moment the Germans crossed the Belgian border, murder, rape, arson, and looting broke out. For about the first two weeks of the war, the towns and villages near Liege were the main casualties. The Germans indiscriminately captured and slaughtered a selection of civilians in the villages with little regard for their guilt or innocence. A humane German soldier who witnessed the massacre said, "I am a father myself and I cannot bear this. It's not war, it's butchery," he exclaimed in disgust as the Germans invaded Belgium and northern France in 1914, massacring some 6,000 civilians.
Fearing the Belgian guerrilla fighters or the French resistance, Frans-Thilaire, the Germans massacred about 156 people in Aarskote and 211 in Andanne in August 1914. In eastern and central Belgium, including Seuil and Taminne, they burned houses and executed about 383 civilians. They also massacred about 674 people in Dinant. In Belgium, a large number of men were captured and forcibly taken by police to places chosen for executions, where they were shot in cold blood without trial or attempted investigation. Victims of the massacre included men, women, and children. The province of Brabant also ordered the elimination of innocent nuns under the pretext that they were spies or men disguised as nuns. In the surrounding area of Aarskot, women were repeatedly the victims of rape between August 19 and September 9, 1941, while the town was recaptured. Rape was almost as latent as murder, live arson, and looting. When army soldiers were ordered or allowed to kill non-combatants on a large scale, a worse ferocity filled the air, and both lust and bloodlust led to massacres on a larger scale.
