I know that the "rape of Belgium" was a big part of UK-French-US propaganda during the first World War. I remember hearing some historians later saying that this was overblown. But is there consensus among historians on this point? How does the 1914-18 occupation compare to earlier/later military occupations? Was it a dress rehearsal for the 1940-44 occupation of France and the low countries - did the Germans draw any (good or bad) lessons?
The number of civilian casualties in Belgium has recently been adjusted upwards (a lot of new research was done for the centennial).
It was brutal. The German forces became so frustrated with the resistance of the Belgian forces that even early on they started to take it out on civilians. The best known of those incidents are what the Germans did to the university city of Leuven (after a Belgian counterattack from Antwerp) and Dinant. In Dinant they accused the population of taking up arms and killed 674 men, women and children. In Leuven they killed 248 people and destroyed 2.000 buildings including the university library (which was one of the oldest on the continent).
There were many other incidents like Tamines, Aarschot and Andenne
That said the propaganda took it to a new level like Germans eating babies and that kind of stuff so in that regard it is overblown.