June 28, 1919. The armistice signed between Germany and the Allied powers at the Palace of Versailles in France placed excessively harsh conditions on the unstable postwar Germany, even receiving some international criticism. Notably, payment of reparations placed Germany in an excruciating position.
However, the more hardline factions within the Allied nations considered the restrictions lenient.
In January 1923, France’s president, Alexandre Millerand, accused a workforce-strapped Germany of failing to meet the terms of the treaty because it did not supply enough coal and so, along with Belgium, invaded and occupied the Ruhr region. Instead of dispiriting the Germans, this event fueled a surge of nationalistic honor inside Germany.
Six years later, amid a period of unprecedented economic instability at the start of the global depression, the German people voiced fierce opposition and resistance to the content of the Treaty of Versailles. Moving to utilize all the boiling anger, Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—the Nazi Party—slowly grew in power, creating slogans about restoring pride in the fatherland to agitate the people into abandoning the treaty and restoring their economy. The majority of the German people welcomed their rise. The social forces capable of halting their impact had mostly been eliminated from within Germany since the end of the Great War.
As soon as one war ends, the next one begins.
September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany invaded Poland, with the Soviet Union invading sixteen days later on the seventeenth.
The two countries divided Poland and occupied their respective territories.
Lila’s homeland had yet again lost its peace and freedom.
And then, May 10, 1940.
Just like in the Great War, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium.
On the afternoon of the sixteenth, the German Army left the town of Leuven intact and shelled just the university library, which had been restored following its destruction in the previous war. On the morning of the seventeenth, German bombers dropped explosives on the southern side of the library. It burned for two straight days, tumbling to ruin just as it had during the 1914 invasion.
The root of this second tragedy was the outcome of one misunderstanding.
After the Great War, Germany paid reparations to completely restore the library it had burned in the last invasion—both the building and the collection. However, part of its construction included plans for a monument in front of the new building—one seemingly designed to trample on Germany and Belgium’s efforts and struggles to restore their relationship. On it, the American architect and designer of the new library, a Francophile named Whitney Warren, proposed the following inscription:
Furore Teutonico Diruta, Dono Americano Restituta (Destroyed by German fury, rebuilt by American donations)
The dean of Leuven University deemed this inscription inappropriate for congenial postwar relations between Belgium and Germany and refused to allow it. However, Warren opposed the dean and repeatedly protested, and this commotion reached German ears. Warren’s proposal was ultimately rejected, and though Warren capitulated, the monument was approved for use in a war memorial in Dinant recognizing the large number of Belgians who had lost their lives in the 1914 German invasion.
Three years earlier, at the war memorial’s inauguration ceremony, the German government learned of the inscription and sent a message to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denouncing it as slander against the German Army and demanding it be removed. The German Army later reduced the monument to rubble when they invaded Belgium again in 1940.
However, some of the German soldiers marching on Leuven mistakenly believed that the inscription was engraved on the library as originally planned and not at Dinant, so they destroyed the library.
And like an act of hatred calling for another, or a monster whispering lies into a soldier’s ears with a wicked smile, the tragedy of more than twenty years ago repeated itself. The library restored through hard and earnest work was once again burned to ashes by the German Army.
The German soldiers were watching the Leuven library burn before their very eyes, feeling as if a burden was being lifted from their souls, when a sudden scream rang out from overhead that made them freeze.
A giant black shape appeared in one corner of the gray sky. A monster with wings like a dragon or bat emitted an angry shriek that sounded like metal rubbing against metal. The monster flew in circles over the soldiers’ heads, looking upset enough to attack at any moment. They covered their ears as they crouched low, shivering, and for a long time the creature seemed uninterested in flying away.
Between the sharp, ear-shattering screams, some soldiers clearly heard a person speaking.
“Those who know no justice or have no knowledge shall be forever cursed.”
The shape finally disappeared off into the distance.
Yet the soldiers lay trembling on the ground.
The entire experience was altogether too bizarre, so the German Army service record for that day contains not a single mention of this strange event.