Slight aside (since LibreOffice != Word, and XML diffs are still horribly messy):

If you save your LibreOffice documents in flat XML format, (e.g. fods, fodt instead of ods, odt), placing them under version control becomes slightly less annoying — the diffs become at least _potentially_ human readable.

See also:

http://blog.riemann.cc/2013/04/23/versioning-of-openoffice-l...

https://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/msg48067.h...