{"product_id":"9780191580116","title":"Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War","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 culture were now 'legitimate' targets.  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 enemy's civilian population.","brand":"OUP Oxford","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47119988031728,"sku":"9780191580116","price":26.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780191580116_p0.jpg?v=1763661335","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780191580116","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}