A German soldier crosses No Man's Land, hoping he won't be shot dead, and approaches British troops with a small lighted Christmas tree. For at least one day, it was all quiet on most of the Western Front.
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“One Human Episode Amid All the Atrocities”
A German and British soldier meet in No Man’s Land along the Western Front on December 24, 1914. Credit: All That’s Interesting.
Anytime, anywhere, when the cycle of violence is momentarily interrupted or broken and a tenuous step taken towards achieving peace — elusive and unachievable as it might be at times — that, in itself, is worthy of remembrance.
For one day — and unsanctioned by the military high command on all sides — the guns of war fell silent for war-weary soldiers along much, if not all, of the Western Front during World War I.
It was undeniable proof that even in the most difficult of circumstances, human beings often don’t lose their sense of decency, goodwill, and compassion.
Even if you are a cynic by nature, I hope you are moved by the events around Christmas in 1914.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle referred to it as "an amazing spectacle” and saluted it as “one human episode amid all the atrocities which have stained the memory of the war” in a memorable description of the truce, "World War 1: The Christmas truce of December 1914," The Gazette (UK). A Scottish writer, Doyle became famous for creating one of the most enduring characters in English fiction, detective Sherlock Holmes. I first posted a version of this diary in 2011.
A Spontaneous Outburst of Humanity
During the Great War, it was one of those rare events that reaffirmed one’s faith in humanity. After all, once a war — any war — is over, everlasting peace should remain first and foremost the ultimate goal of any lethal conflict.
Wars suppress the natural, civil urge of men to behave in a manner that can even be remotely construed as civilized behavior. Combat does terrible things to soldiers, wreaking havoc on their minds and bodies, and transforming the best of them into killing machines.
During a war, the transformation of civilians into soldiers may surprise lots of people. It’s what you must do to confront reality and survive the grim prospect of probable death staring you right in the face. The low-key and gentle person, who may have been a country farmer in a previous life, turns into a savage, thirsty for blood. The unassuming and quiet factory worker, primarily concerned with making machine parts, emerges as an efficient killer. The seemingly peace-loving gardener who lovingly took care of nature's wonders is worried about one and only one thing: kill or be killed.
Prolonged conflicts severely restrict and narrow one's options in the field of battle. Through all the brutality, soldiers are preoccupied with the ultimate goal: survival. And at the war's end, a longing to be reunited with their loved ones and to carry on with their mundane, unexciting, and ordinary lives.
Even amid unprecedented carnage in World War I, soldiers on both sides found within themselves a modicum of human decency and desire for peace.
In this most brutal of wars, which raged on for four long years, there was a cessation of hostilities on the Western Front beginning on the night of December 24, 1914 — even if for a brief moment in time.
As shown at the very top of this diary, a depiction of the 1914 Christmas truce was first published on the front page of the Illustrated London News on 9 January 1915 by artist and war correspondent Frederic Villiers. Credit: MeisterDrucke.
"Theirs Not to Reason Why, Theirs But to Do and Die"
The harsh reality of total war is simply this: older men send younger men into battle to die while invoking honor, duty, and country. The generals and senior military brass adorn their chests with medals and decorations; the grunts make the ultimate sacrifice.
How should soldiers behave when placed as cannon fodder in an impossible situation? As I wrote in this 2007 diary — "Shared National Sacrifice" and 'The War' Tonight on PBS.
“A Battle in Flanders.” World War I sketches like these depict the officer class as elitist, pompous, and far removed from reality. In the early 20th century, class differences were much more pronounced in the British Army. After four years of static trench warfare, the old, hierarchical social order slowly crumbled, the distance between classes narrowed considerably, and new realities made British society gradually more egalitarian. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Grand strategies, geopolitical objectives, and tactical battle plans are for politicians and generals. In a democratic society, soldiers don't make the decision to engage in war; political leaders, some with perverted personal agendas, do.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
The "Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom" Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote about the futility of war and directed his criticism at the British military high command.
His classic poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, is about a disastrous suicidal charge made by British soldiers in the Crimean War.
The Crimean War took place between 1853-1856, with Tsarist Russia fighting an Allied force consisting of soldiers from the British, French, and Ottoman Empires. The Allies were also joined by a force from the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war resulted as imperial powers jockeyed for territorial influence following the decline of the Ottomans.
An Awful, Brutal War
World War I was largely not a war of movement; instead, huge armies faced each other in trenches for months at a time with little to no tactical gain.
Often, these prolonged confrontations — with neither side making any strategic progress — would take place under harsh conditions.
British soldiers in a trench during the Battle of the Somme. Credit: All Poetry.
Following the outbreak of war in June 1914, the British and German armies dug in across France and Belgium and faced each other in a long series of trenches that extended for hundreds of kilometres across the countryside. In a totally new type of defensive warfare, the soldiers lived in hellish conditions in these trenches, exposed to the weather, constant shelling, and small arms fire.
Occasional attacks ordered by the various high commands required the men to climb up out of the trenches and advance over the ground between, usually strewn with barbed wire entanglements, where hundreds would be slaughtered in "no-man’s land" by the waiting machine guns of the enemy. In day-to-day trench life it was courting death to raise one’s head above the trench parapet — waiting expert snipers dotted about the countryside in concealed positions could snuff out a mans life with a head shot from 300 metres away.
It was in these diabolical circumstances that Christmas Day 1914 approached and both armies were reconciled into having to experience thoroughly miserable conditions for their Yuletide. But it was not to be.
Read more about trench warfare in this article — "British Trench Warfare 1917-1918."
The Christmas Truce of 1914 During World War I
In this illustration by Angus McBride, British and German troops took a break from killing each other during the Christmas Truce of December 1914. The reality of war in the trenches was much less romantic. Credit: The Times (UK).
Even as their lives are on the line, some battle-weary soldiers don't lose the capacity to act as, well, human beings. Amidst the utter senselessness of World War I, there was a shining moment that brought a momentary end to the killing and savage display of man's inhumanity towards man.
The first truce happened on the night of December 24, 1914.
Although there was no official truce, about 100,000 British and German troops were involved in unofficial cessations of fighting along the length of the Western Front.
The first truce started on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1914, when German Troops began decorating the area around their trenches in the region of Ypres, Flanders in modern-day Belgium. The Germans began by placing 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 the '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 that night. The truce also allowed a breathing spell where recently-fallen soldiers could be brought back behind their lines by burial parties. Joint services were held... In many sectors, the truce lasted through Christmas night, but it continued until New Year's Day in others...
On Christmas Day, after a night of carol singing, a private with the Welsh Fusiliers recalled that feelings of goodwill had so swelled up that at dawn Bavarian and British soldiers clambered spontaneously out of their trenches. A football was produced from somewhere — though none could recall from where. "It wasn't a game as such, more a kick-around and a free-for-all. There could have been 50 on each side for all I know. I played because I really liked football. I don't know how long it lasted, probably half an hour."
A wonderful moment of hope and peace in that awful conflict that was then the costliest in human history.
Peace on Earth, Goodwill to all Men.
The above video is from BBC's "Days that Shook the World" series about the Christmas Truce of 1914. Read more about the truce in this article — Ari Shapiro, “A Century Ago, When The Guns Fell Silent On Christmas,” NPR, December 25, 2014. Another good account is "Modern myths and legends mask the truth about Christmas 1914," The Times (UK).
Credit: St. Nicholas Center.
In a C-Span program about wartime Christmases broadcast in 2014, Professor Stanley Weintraub said that before Christmas Day, a British newspaper had encouraged average citizens to send plum puddings to their loved ones at the Western Front to lift their morale. The British soldiers received so many packages that they didn't know what to do with them. They had more than enough goodies to swap with German soldiers. The Germans had lots of cigars and sausages to offer.
It all started when they erected table-top Christmas trees with lit candles in front of their trenches. The British were only a couple of hundred yards away and shot at the German positions. Calmly, the trees were replaced one by one. Eventually, the British figured out that this was a genuine gesture of peace.
About those football games? Professor Weintraub's research in England showed that the Germans won most of the low-scoring games.
In that C-Span appearance, Professor Weintraub also referenced his excellent book, Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914. New York: Free Press, 2001.
In Some Instances, the Truce Lasted Until New Year’s Day
Many German soldiers had lived in Great Britain before World War I and were quite fluent in English. Although this made communication easier, not all soldiers were enamored of this peaceful gesture. Among the dissidents was an Austrian-born infantryman in the Bavarian Army by the name of Adolf Hitler.
Military commanders on all sides took measures to ensure that such a truce would not occur again until the war’s end, almost four years later, on November 11, 1918. Artillery bombardment on Christmas Eve in future years quashed attempts to prevent such deliberate fraternization.
A French Soldier in World War I.
While there were relatively few British troops who spoke German, many Germans had worked in Britain before the war, and this experience facilitated communication between the two groups. Saxon troops, in particular, were credited with initiating a dialogue with the British.
Soldiers on both sides regarded the Saxons as amiable and trustworthy, and the Christmas Truce had the most success in areas where British troops faced Saxon regiments. The truce was not widely adopted in French-controlled areas of the front; German soldiers had spent 1914 overrunning a huge swath of French territory, and animus toward the occupiers was too strong. There was also no equivalent truce on the Eastern Front, as Russia was still operating under the Julian calendar, and so the Russian Orthodox Christmas would not be observed until early January.
There were some casualties as a result of the nonuniversal implementation of the truce, and, even among the units which observed the cease-fire, not all men approved of the decision. Adolf Hitler, who, as a dispatch runner for regimental headquarters, rarely went as far as the forward trenches, sharply criticized the behaviour of men in his regiment who had opted to join the British in No Man’s Land. “Such a thing should not happen in wartime,” he is reported to have said. “Have you no German sense of honour?”
In the days following Christmas, violence returned to the Western Front, although the truce persisted until after New Year’s Day in some areas. While the truce could not have succeeded without the endorsement of junior officers on both sides, British and German generals quickly took steps to prevent any further episodes of fraternization between their men. Still, there were no courts-martial or punishments linked to the events of the Christmas Truce; senior commanders likely recognized the disastrous effect that such a move would have on morale in the trenches. Attempts to revive the truce on Christmas Day 1915 were quashed, and there were no subsequent widespread cease-fires on the Western Front until the armistice of November 1918.
Why did the high commands behave in that fashion? They feared that the outbreak of peace would get contagious and that the war might end. If the war ended, the side that was at a strategic disadvantage would not only be perceived as losing the war but, importantly, the government in power would almost certainly fall. It wasn't in the interest of the military leaders to let this happen, even as the commanding officers of the troops facing each other had no such desire to reignite hostilities. It wasn't meant to be. Frontline troops were sent to the rear, and fresh reserve troops, with no memory or knowledge of the truce, replaced them.
The war had a momentum of its own — as explained by soldier-poet Edmund Blunden. He would survive the war and, in later years, became a Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. Like his fellow poet, Siegfried Sassoon, he wrote extensively about his wartime experiences. A prolific poet and noted academic, Blunden was nominated multiple times for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
British Poet Edmund Blunden, quoted in David Burg's Almanac of World War I, p. xii. Credit: My Poetic Side.
By the end of the day both sides had seen, in a sad scrawl of broken earth and murdered men, the answer to the question. No road. No thoroughfare. Neither race had won, nor could win, the War.
The War had won, and would go on winning.
Friends with fellow soldier-poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves (Blunden’s Oxford classmate) wrote one of the more memorable accounts of World War I, Goodbye to All That. The book deals with how the war swept away the old order in Europe and ushered in significant changes that touched every aspect of life. Decades later, Graves would also become famous for writing I, Claudius. See this recent diary of mine to learn more about British poets in World War I — Wartime Propaganda and Soldier-Poets.
Even though the truce lasted in a few instances till New Year's Day, the fighting returned soon after. Soldiers had no option but to resume the larger war. Expected by many to end by Christmas 1914, World War I would be fought for almost four more bloody years.
For a brief period in late December 1914, the guns of war fell silent, the senseless slaughter stopped, and sanity prevailed — even as it could not eventually overcome the all-too-frequent human urge to act irrationally, cause havoc, and self-destruct.
It was a remarkable moment in the history of modern warfare.
“Christmas in the Trenches” is an anti-war song by award-winning American singer-songwriter John McCutcheon. It is written from the perspective of Francis Tolliver, a fictional British soldier from Liverpool.
The song’s lyrics emphasize what Tolliver finds in common with the Germans on Christmas Eve across No Man’s Land in World War I. Based on the Christmas Truce of 1914, Tolliver wonders whether the war is simply manufactured animosity conjured up by politicians to serve their selfish purposes or, not quite transparent to him, perhaps has a real purpose. In the fighting, it is soldiers on the ground who pay the ultimate price, and not the political leaders sitting safely back in the comfort of their homes in the UK.
In the above video, McCutcheon tells a story from the late 1980s when he played in an annual festival of folk music in Tønder, Denmark, which is not too far from the German border. He performed in several locations in Tønder, and about five minutes after every show started, four older men in their 80s would come regularly to see him sing. They’d enter through the back entrance of the tent, move to the front near the stage, and listen to his songs. At the end of each show, they’d look at McCutcheon, nod to acknowledge him, turn around, and leave quietly. Curious as to who they were, after his last show, McCutcheon jumped off the stage after the concert and ran towards the last of the men as he was about to exit the back door. The man spoke English and told McCutcheon who they were and why they came to see him perform.
All of them were best friends and former German soldiers, who had volunteered in 1914 when war broke out — and lied about their ages, for they were only 14 years old at the time — to fight for the Kaiser. They led full lives, and once their wives passed away, they all moved into adjacent rooms in a large veterans facility in Berlin.
When they heard the song over the radio recounting the most important story of their lives, they told everyone about it. The four men gathered all the staff, orderlies, and interns, making them listen to this song about an earlier chapter of their lives and experiences in the trenches. If someone much younger than them — McCutcheon was in his mid-30s at the time — was singing their praises, it would come across as believable. As old widowers, they appreciated him for it proved to the world that they mattered and the underlying story validated their lives.
McCutcheon believed that for one night in late December 1914, the four German boys, scared as they were on the battlefield where they could die at any moment, were the sanest men in the world. Such was the appeal of this remarkable gesture to embrace peace by soldiers on opposing sides.
It was a shame it only lasted briefly in 1914, never to be repeated on the same scale until the war ended four years later on November 11, 1918.
You can listen to another version of “Christmas in the Trenches,” as performed by Edward Morgan in this video. The song video has many photographs that you’ll find relevant and interesting.
