Today is the anniversary of the Christmas Truce of 1914, a spontaneous soldiers’
truce that broke out on Christmas Eve all along the Western Front in France,
lasting in places until the day after Christmas.
French, British and German soldiers, intrigued by the sound of Christmas carols
from the enemy trenches, first tentatively refrained from firing on one another.
A German boot tossed into the British trenches turned out to be filled with
candy and sausage. Soldiers, with increasing confidence, began to venture out
into no-man’s land and into each other’s trenches to exchange small presents
like coffee and cigarettes, spirits, and newspapers from home. They celebrated
Christmas by playing football on no-man’s-land. Soldiers from opposing armies
shared rations, sang carols together and posed for group photographs.
The Allies and Central Powers had previously called temporary truces as Christmas
approached, in order to bury their dead — but only with approval from their
respective High Commands. This Christmas truce, in contrast, was completely
unauthorized by commanders on either side, a violation of discipline in just
about every imaginable respect (fraternization with the enemy — a court-martialable
offense — just for starters). And needless to say, the German and Allied leaderships
were utterly terrified by the implications — even more terrified than after
the Armistice in 1918 when a British unit in France, impatient for demobilization,
organized a soviet. They racked their brains to come up with a way to threaten
or trick the men in the trenches into ending the unauthorized truce and getting
back to killing one another.
The soldiers weren’t having any of it, though. Directly ordered to resume fire
on December 26, they perfunctorily fired their rifles into the air rather than
at the enemy. Finally the High Commands ended the truce by bringing in fresh
troops from the rear who had not experienced the truce. In Christmas 1915 and
subsequent years, truces were prevented by ordering continuous artillery barrages
from the rear, and making conspicuous examples of officers who even hinted at
allowing another Christmas truce. A British captain who authorized a local truce
for burying the dead, followed by half an hour of fraternization, was court-martialed.