History of the Christmas Truce of 1914: Peace in the WWI Trenches
HISTORY OF THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE OF 1914
A little over a century ago across the 400-mile battle line of Europe, World War I had claimed almost a million lives over the previous 5 months of battle. The Great War, “the war to end all wars” was about to experience something almost unheard of in two thousand years of warfare: a temporary though unofficial truce. As Christmas Eve fell in the trenches of Flanders Field, German soldiers had erected Christmas Trees with lighted candles. At about 8:30 pm as the firing of guns began to subside the Germans began to sing “Stille Nacht.” The song was originally German, but the British soldiers knew the English words to “Silent Night.” Diaries written by soldiers during this time tell of local armistices established between both sides, occurring across dozens of other locations along the battle line as well. German and British soldiers left their trenches and crossed “No Man’s Land” to meet and exchanged gifts they’d received from home: chocolate, tobacco, alcohol, articles of clothing, buttons, badges and hats. The British soldiers bartered tins of plum pudding and tobacco sent to them by King George. The Germans had pipes with a picture of the Crown Prince.
Football
Christmas Day brought impromptu football (soccer) matches between the soldiers. This time also afforded the opportunity to bury the dead, and exchange prisoners. The first documented truce was recorded in the War Diary of the 2nd Essex Regiment on December 11, the last one ended at New Year, but it was all unofficial. And it was not universally observed across the entire Western Front line. Perhaps as many as 100,000 soldiers were involved in this truce. Robert Graves, the British writer — known for I, Claudius — later recounted the football match, parts of which were fictional, with a score of 3–2 for the Germans. No reports were reported of the truce for a week, until the story was broken by the New York Times, in the still-neutral U.S.
How unusual was this?
A century and a half earlier, in America during the Revolutionary War German mercenary soldiers from Hesse, hired to fight for the British, were making merry during Christmas. The American soldiers under General George Washington took advantage of this to surprise attack them on December 26, 1776, at the Battle of Trenton.
Redux?
While this temporary Christmas Truce of WWI was attempted a year later at Neuve Chapelle among other places, the armistice was not repeated. Instead, threats of court-martial and shooting of deserters were ordered by superior officers. Indeed, Ian Calhoun, the Scottish Commanding Officer of the British forces was subsequently court-marshalled for “consorting with the enemy” and sentenced to death. Only King George V spared him from that fate. Ironically, George V — known in modern times from the Academy Award-winning movie The King’s Speech (reviewed here) as the father of “Bertie” — was the first cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and was the first monarch of the House of Windsor, having changed his name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a politically incorrect German name during World War I.
In 2005, a slightly fictionalized version of the story was made into the movie called “Joyeux Noel.”
Recently the Sainsbury supermarket chain in the UK, in partnership with The Royal British Legion produced the following ad. Worth watching here.
Do you recognize the music played during the end of this ad?
Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
www.billpetro.com
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