100
years ago on this date, December 25, 1914, there was a series of widespread but
unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front around Christmas 1914. This was
known as the Christmas Truce. To commemorate the 100th anniversary
of this historical event, I will post the information about it from Wikipedia
and other links.
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The Illustrated London News's illustration of
the Christmas Truce: "British and German Soldiers
Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing
Trenches" The subcaption reads "Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising
on the field of battle at the season of peace and goodwill: Officers and men
from the German and British trenches meet and greet one another—A German
officer photographing a group of foes and friends." [Originally published
in The Illustrated London News,
January 9, 1915.]
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The
Christmas truce (German: Weihnachtsfrieden; French: Trêve de
Noël) was
a series of widespread but unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front around
Christmas 1914. In the week leading up to the holiday, German and British
soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In areas,
men from both sides ventured into no man's land on Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial
ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carol-singing.
Men played games of football with one another, giving one of the most enduring
images of the truce. However, the peaceful behaviour was not ubiquitous;
fighting continued in some sectors, while in others the sides settled on little
more than arrangements to recover bodies. The following year, a few units
arranged ceasefires, but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914;
this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from the high commands of both
sides prohibiting fraternisation. Soldiers were no longer amenable to truce by
1916. The war had become increasingly bitter after devastating human losses
suffered during the battles of the Somme and Verdun, and the incorporation of poison
gas.
The
truces were not unique to the Christmas period, and reflected a growing mood of
"live and let live", where infantry in close proximity would stop
overtly aggressive behaviour, and often engage in small-scale fraternisation,
engaging in conversation or bartering for cigarettes. In some sectors, there
would be occasional ceasefires to allow soldiers to go between the lines and
recover wounded or dead comrades, while in others, there would be a tacit
agreement not to shoot while men rested, exercised, or worked in full view of
the enemy. The Christmas truces were particularly significant due to the number
of men involved and the level of their participation – even in very peaceful
sectors, dozens of men openly congregating in daylight was remarkable – and are
often seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most
violent events of human history.
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A cross, left in Comines-Warneton
(Saint-Yvon, Warneton) in Belgium in 1999, to celebrate the site of the Christmas Truce
during the First World War in 1914. The text reads: 1914 -
The Khaki Chum's Christmas Truce - 1999 - 85 Years - Lest We Forget.
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Background
The
first five months of World War I had seen an initial German attack through Belgium
into France, which had been repulsed outside Paris by French and British troops
at the Battle of the Marne in early September 1914. The Germans fell back to
the Aisne valley, where they prepared defensive positions. In the subsequent Battle
of the Aisne, the Allied forces were unable to push through the German line,
and the fighting quickly degenerated into a stalemate; neither side was willing
to give ground, and both started to develop fortified systems of trenches. To
the north, on the right of the German army, there had been no defined front
line, and both sides quickly began to try to use this gap to outflank one
another; in the ensuing "Race to the Sea", the two sides repeatedly
clashed, each trying to push forward and threaten the end of the other's line.
After several months of fighting, during which the British forces were
withdrawn from the Aisne and sent north into Flanders, the northern flank had
developed into a similar stalemate. By November, there was a continuous front
line running from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, occupied on both sides
by armies in prepared defensive positions.
Fraternisation
Main article: Live and let live (World War I)
Fraternisation
– peaceful and sometimes friendly interactions between opposing forces – was a
regular feature in quiet front-line sectors of the Western Front. In some
areas, it manifested simply as a passive inactivity, where both sides would
refrain from overtly aggressive or threatening behaviour, while in other cases
it extended to regular conversation or even visits from one trench to another.
Truces
between British and German units can be dated to early November 1914, around
the time opposing armies had begun static trench warfare. At this time, both
sides' rations were brought up to the front line after dusk, and soldiers on
both sides noted a period of peace while they collected their food. By 1
December, a British soldier could record a friendly visit from a German
sergeant one morning "to see how we were getting on". Relations
between French and German units were generally more tense, but the same
phenomenon began to emerge. In early December, a German surgeon recorded a
regular half-hourly truce each evening to recover dead soldiers for burial,
during which French and German soldiers exchanged newspapers. This behaviour
was often challenged by both junior and senior officers; the young Charles de
Gaulle wrote on 7 December of the "lamentable" desire of French
infantrymen to leave the enemy in peace, while the commander of 10th Army, Victor
d'Urbal, wrote of the "unfortunate consequences" when men
"become familiar with their neighbours opposite". Other truces could
be enforced on both sides by weather conditions, especially when trench lines
flooded in low-lying areas, though these often lasted after the weather had
cleared.
The
close proximity of trench lines made it easy for soldiers to shout greetings to
each other, and this may have been the most common method of arranging informal
truces during 1914. Men would frequently exchange news or greetings, helped by
a common language; many German soldiers had lived in England, particularly
London, and were familiar with the language and the culture. Several British
soldiers recorded instances of Germans asking about news from the football
leagues, while other conversations could be as banal as discussions of the
weather or as plaintive as messages for a sweetheart. One unusual phenomenon
that grew in intensity was music; in peaceful sectors, it was not uncommon for
units to sing in the evenings, sometimes deliberately with an eye towards
entertaining or gently taunting their opposite numbers. This shaded gently into
more festive activity; in early December, E.H.W. Hulse of the Scots Guards
wrote that he was planning to organise a concert party for Christmas Day, which
would "give the enemy every concievable form of song in harmony" in
response to frequent choruses of Deutschland Uber Alles.
The
approach to Christmas
In the
lead up to Christmas 1914, there were several peace initiatives. The Open
Christmas Letter was a public message for peace addressed "To the
Women of Germany and Austria", signed by a group of 101 British women suffragettes
at the end of 1914 as the first Christmas of World War I approached. Pope
Benedict XV, on 7 December 1914, had begged for an official truce between the
warring governments. He asked "that the guns may fall silent at least upon
the night the angels sang." This attempt was officially rebuffed.
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British and German troops meeting in
No-Mans's Land during the unofficial truce. (British troops from the
Northumberland Hussars, 7th Division, Bridoux-Rouge Banc Sector).
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Christmas
1914
Roughly
100,000 British and German troops were involved in the unofficial cessations of
hostility along the Western Front. The first truce started on Christmas Eve
1914, when German troops decorated the area around their trenches in the region
of Ypres, Belgium and particularly in Saint-Yvon (called Saint-Yves, in Plugstreet/Ploegsteert
– Comines-Warneton), where Capt. Bruce Bairnsfather described the truce.
The
Germans placed candles on their trenches and on Christmas trees, then continued
the celebration by singing Christmas carols. The British responded by singing carols
of their own. The two sides continued by shouting Christmas greetings to each
other. Soon thereafter, there were excursions across No Man's Land, where small
gifts were exchanged, such as food, tobacco and alcohol, and souvenirs such as
buttons and hats. The artillery in the region fell silent. The truce also
allowed a breathing spell where recently killed soldiers could be brought back
behind their lines by burial parties. Joint services were held. The
fraternisation carried risks; some soldiers were shot by opposing forces. In
many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, continuing until New
Year's Day in others.
On
the day itself, Brigadier-General Walter Congreve, then commanding 18 Infantry
Brigade, stationed near Neuve Chapelle, wrote a letter recalling the Germans
initiated by calling a truce for the day. One of his brigade's men bravely
lifted his head above the parapet and others from both sides walked onto no
man's land. Officers and men shook hands and exchanged cigarettes and cigars,
one of his Captains "smoked a cigar with the best shot in the German
army", the latter no more than 18 years old. Congreve admitted he was
reluctant to personally witness the scene of the truce for fear he would be a
prime target for German snipers.
Bruce
Bairnsfather, who served throughout the war, wrote: "I wouldn't have
missed that unique and weird Christmas Day for anything. ... I spotted a German
officer, some sort of lieutenant I should think, and being a bit of a
collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons.
... I brought out my wire clippers and, with a few deft snips, removed a couple
of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in
exchange. ... The last I saw was one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an
amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a
docile Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground whilst the automatic
clippers crept up the back of his neck."
Future
nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London
Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother on Boxing Day: "Dear Mother, I am
writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke
fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in
the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the
Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the
pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured
trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his
own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the
Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes,
all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvellous, isn't it?"
Captain
Sir Edward Hulse reported how the first interpreter he met from the German
lines was from Suffolk where he had left his girlfriend and a 3.5 hp
motorcycle. Hulse went on to describe a sing-song which "ended up with 'Auld
lang syne' which we all, English, Scots, Irish, Prussians, Wurttenbergers, etc,
joined in. It was absolutely astounding, and if I had seen it on a
cinematograph film I should have sworn that it was faked!"
Nor
were the observations confined to the British. Leutnant Johannes Niemann:
"grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the
incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate
with the enemy."
General
Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, issued orders
forbidding friendly communication with the opposing German troops. Adolf
Hitler, then a young corporal of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry, was
also an opponent of the truce.
In
the Comines sector of the front there was an early fraternisation between
German and French soldiers in December 1914, during a short truce, and there
are at least two other testimonials of similar behaviours in sectors where
German and French companies opposed each other. In sections of the front where
German and Belgian troops faced each other in December 1914, there was at least
one such instance when a truce was achieved at the request of Belgian soldiers
who wished to send letters back to their families, over the German-occupied parts
of their own country. Richard Schirrmann, who was in a German regiment holding
a position on the Bernhardstein, one of the mountains of the Vosges, wrote an
account of events in December 1915: "When the Christmas bells sounded in
the villages of the Vosges behind the lines ..... something fantastically
unmilitary occurred. German and French troops spontaneously made peace and
ceased hostilities; they visited each other through disused trench tunnels, and
exchanged wine, cognac and cigarettes for Westphalian black bread, biscuits and
ham. This suited them so well that they remained good friends even after
Christmas was over." He was separated from the French troops by a narrow
No Man's Land and described the landscape as: "Strewn with shattered
trees, the ground ploughed up by shellfire, a wilderness of earth, tree-roots and
tattered uniforms." Military discipline was soon restored, but Schirrmann
pondered over the incident, and whether "thoughtful young people of all
countries could be provided with suitable meeting places where they could get
to know each other." He went on to found the German Youth Hostel
Association in 1919.
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The Christmas Truce 1914 : German
soldiers of the 134th Saxon Regiment photographed with men of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment in No
Man's Land on the Western Front.
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Football
matches
Mike
Dash said in 2011 that "there is plenty of evidence that football was
played that Christmas Day—mostly by men of the same nationality, but in at
least three or four places between troops from the opposing armies". A
letter written by a doctor attached to the Rifle Brigade, published in The
Times on 1 January 1915, reported "a football match… played between
them and us in front of the trench."
Games
played between opposing teams include the 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment pitched
against "Scottish troops". Some accounts of the game bring in
elements of fiction by Robert Graves, a British poet and writer who
reconstructed the encounter in a story published in 1962. In Graves's version,
the score was 3–2 to the Germans.
Another
match was played in the sector of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,
"recorded that a game was played in his sector 'between the lines and the
trenches,' and according to a letter home published by the Glasgow News on 2
January, the Scots" won by 4–1.
Royal
Field Artillery Lieutenant Albert Wynn wrote of a match against a German team
(described as "Prussians and Hanovers") played near Ypres near the
border of Belgium and France. The Lancashire Fusiliers, based near Le Touquet
on the northern French coast, played a match against German soldiers using a bully
beef ration tin as the "ball". To celebrate these accounts, the
Premier League is expected to complete a football pitch in Ypres in 2014.
Not
all historians agree that any organised football matches took place. Malcolm
Brown and Shirley Seaton in their book Christmas Truce say that the only
references to football matches are either hearsay or refer to 'kick-about'
matches with 'made-up footballs' (such as the bully beef tin mentioned above).
Brown and Seaton also mention attempts to play organised matches which failed
to take place. They conclude that serious football matches could not have taken
place because of the state of ground in no-man's land.
Chris
Baker, former chairman of The Western Front Association and author of The
Truce: The Day the War Stopped is also sceptical, but says that although
there is little hard evidence, the most likely place that a match may have
taken place between the Germans and the British was near the village of
Messines: "There are two references to a game being played on the British
side, but nothing from the Germans. If somebody one day found a letter from a
German soldier who was in that area, then we would have something
credible."
Eastern
Front
A
particular manifestation of the Christmas truce in December 1914 occurred on
the Eastern front, where the first move originated from the Austrian
commanders, at some uncertain level of the military hierarchy. The Russians
responded positively and soldiers eventually met in no man’s land.
Public
awareness
The
events of the truce were not reported for a week, in an unofficial press
embargo which was eventually broken by the New York Times on 31
December. The British papers quickly followed, printing numerous first-hand
accounts from soldiers in the field, taken from letters home to their families,
and editorials on "one of the greatest surprises of a surprising
war". By 8 January pictures had made their way to the press, and both the Mirror
and Sketch printed front-page photographs of British and German troops
mingling and singing between the lines. The tone of the reporting was strongly
positive, with the Times endorsing the "lack of malice" felt
by both sides and the Mirror regretting that the "absurdity and the
tragedy" would begin again.
Coverage
in Germany was more muted, with some newspapers strongly criticising those who
had taken part, and no pictures published. In France, meanwhile, the greater
level of press censorship ensured that the only word that spread of the truce
came from soldiers at the front or first-hand accounts told by wounded men in
hospitals. The press was eventually forced to respond to the growing rumours by
reprinting a government notice that fraternising with the enemy constituted
treason, and in early January an official statement on the truce was published,
claiming it had happened on restricted sectors of the British front, and
amounted to little more than an exchange of songs which quickly degenerated
into shooting.
Later
truces
After
Christmas 1914, sporadic attempts were made at seasonal truces; a German unit
attempted to leave their trenches under a flag of truce on Easter Sunday 1915,
but were warned off by the British opposite them, and later in the year, in
November, a Saxon unit briefly fraternised with a Liverpool battalion. In
December 1915, there were explicit orders by the Allied commanders to forestall
any repeat of the previous Christmas truce. Individual units were encouraged to
mount raids and harass the enemy line, whilst communicating with the enemy was
discouraged by artillery barrages along the front line throughout the day. The
prohibition was not completely effective, however, and a small number of brief
truces occurred.
An
eyewitness account of one truce, by Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, recorded that after
a night of exchanging carols, dawn on Christmas Day saw a "rush of men
from both sides ... [and] a feverish exchange of souvenirs" before the men
were quickly called back by their officers, with offers to hold a ceasefire for
the day and to play a football match. It came to nothing, as the brigade
commander threatened repercussions for the lack of discipline, and insisted on
a resumption of firing in the afternoon. Another member of Griffith's
battalion, Bertie Felstead, later recalled that one man had produced a
football, resulting in "a free-for-all; there could have been 50 on each
side", before they were ordered back.
In
an adjacent sector, a short truce to bury the dead between the lines led to
official repercussions; a company commander, Sir Iain Colquhoun of the Scots
Guards, was court-martialled for defying standing orders to the contrary. While
he was found guilty and reprimanded, the punishment was annulled by General Haig
and Colquhoun remained in his position; the official leniency may perhaps have
been because he was related to H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister.
In
the Decembers of 1916 and 1917, German overtures to the British for truces were
recorded without any success. In some French sectors, singing and an exchange
of thrown gifts was occasionally recorded, though these may simply have
reflected a seasonal extension of the live-and-let-live approach common in the
trenches.
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Re-enactors Peter Knight and Stefan
Langheinrich, descendants of Great War veterans, shake hands at the 2008
unveiling of a memorial to the 1914 Christmas Truce.
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Legacy
and historical significance
Although
the popular tendency has been to see the December 1914 Christmas Truces as
unique and therefore of romantic rather than political significance, they have
also been interpreted as part of the widespread non-cooperation with the war
spirit and conduct by serving soldiers. In his book on trench warfare, historian
Tony Ashworth describes what he calls the 'live and let live system.'
Complicated local truces and agreements not to fire at each other were
developed by men along the front throughout the war. These often began with
agreement not to attack each other at tea, meal or washing times, and in some
places became so developed that whole sections of the front would see few
casualties for extended periods of time. This system, Ashworth argues, 'gave
soldiers some control over the conditions of their existence.' The December
1914 Christmas Truces then can be seen as not unique, but as the most dramatic
example of non-cooperation with the war spirit that included refusal to fight,
unofficial truces, mutinies, strikes, and peace protests.
- In the 1933 play Petermann schließt Frieden oder Das Gleichnis vom deutschen Opfer (Petermann makes peace: or, the parable of German sacrifice), written by Nazi writer and World War I veteran Heinz Steguweit (German), a German soldier, accompanied by Christmas carols sung by his comrades, erects an illuminated Christmas tree between the trenches, but is shot dead by the enemy. Later, when the fellow soldiers find his body, they notice in horror that enemy snipers have shot down every single Christmas light from the tree.
- The 1969 film Oh! What a Lovely War includes a scene of a Christmas truce with British and German soldiers sharing jokes, alcohol and songs.
- The video for the song "Pipes of Peace" by Paul McCartney depicts a fictionalized version of the Christmas truce. The song was released in 1983.
- The final episode of the BBC television series Blackadder Goes Forth references the Christmas truce, with the main character Edmund Blackadder having played in a football match. He is also seen being annoyed that having scored it was disallowed for offside.
- The song "All Together Now" by Liverpool band The Farm took its inspiration from the Christmas Day Truce of 1914. The song is being re-recorded by The Peace Collective for release in December 2014 to mark the centenary of the event.
- John McCutcheon's song "Christmas in the Trenches," from his 1984 album Winter Solstice, presents a composite account of attested events of the truce from the perspective of a fictitious English soldier. (Mike Harding's song "Christmas 1914", from his 1989 album Plutonium Alley, and Garth Brooks's song "Belleau Wood", from his 1997 album Sevens, contain similar depictions of the truce.)
- The 1992 film A Midnight Clear depicts a Christmas truce loosely based on events from the 1914 truce, although the setting is moved to the end of WWII.
- In the intro of the 1995 episode "The River of Stars" of the series Space: Above and Beyond images of the Christmas Truce of 1914 were shown.
- The truce is dramatized in the 2005 French film Joyeux Noël (English: Merry Christmas), depicted through the eyes of French, British and German soldiers. The film, written and directed by Christian Carion, was screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
- Ahead of the centenary of the truce (December 2014), English composer Chris Eaton and singer Abby Scott produced the song, 1914 - The Carol of Christmas, to benefit British armed forces charities. At 5 December 2014 it had reached top of the iTunes Christmas chart.
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Re-enactors Peter Knight and Stefan
Langheinrich, descendants of Great War veterans, shake hands at the 2008
unveiling of a memorial to the 1914 Christmas Truce.
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Monuments
A
Christmas truce memorial was unveiled in Frelinghien, France, on 11 November
2008. Also on that day, at the spot where, on Christmas Day 1914, their
regimental ancestors came out from their trenches to play football, men from
the 1st Battalion, The Royal Welch Fusiliers played a football match with the
German Battalion 371. The Germans won 2–1.
On
12 December 2014, a memorial was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in
Staffordshire, England by Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and the England
national football team manager Roy Hodgson. The Football Remembers memorial was
designed by ten year old schoolboy Spencer Turner after a UK-wide competition.
Education
In
2014 the Northumbria and Newcastle Universities Martin Luther King Peace
Committee produced resources to enable schools and churches to mark the
December 1914 Christmas Truces. These included lesson plans, hand-outs,
worksheets, PowerPoint slide shows, and full plans for assemblies, and carol
services/Christmas productions. The authors explained that their purpose was
both to enable schoolteachers to help children learn about the remarkable
events of December 1914, but also to use the theme of Christmas to provide a
counterpoint to the UK government's glorification of the First World War as
heroic. As the Peace Committee argues, "These
spontaneous acts of festive goodwill directly contradicted orders from high
command, and offered an evocative and hopeful – albeit brief – recognition of
shared humanity" – and thereby, they argue, give a rereading of the
traditional Christmas message of "on earth peace, good will toward
men."
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