They Stopped the Killing: The Christmas Truce of 1914

The Christmas Truce of 1914As World War I began in August of 1914, Germany started a push through Belgium into France toward Paris. The French and Belgians mobilized their armies to stop the Germans and were soon joined by the English. Each side expected to prevail quickly. However, by Christmas of 1914, it had become clear that the war would not end quickly as neither side was able to advance. The opposing forces faced each other in trench warfare with the line stretching from the North Sea across Europe down to Switzerland in the south. This western front extended 600 miles with the men on each side in their respective trenches doing their best to kill the enemy.

The conditions of the battlefield were also the enemy for the men on both sides. As the winter rains came, the trenches filled with water and mud. The men would go weeks without being able to shower or wash.  Their body odors combined with overflowing cesspits and the smells of rotting bodies that were either unburied or in shallow graves. Rats came and multiplied as they fed on the dead. The men were assaulted by other lice, nits, and disease.

The horror of war was ever present for those in the trenches.  One soldier described seeing men with their heads blown open but still living.  Others tried to run even after having lost their feet in battle.  Another went for medical attention while trying to keep his intestines from spilling out.  Some men no longer had mouths, jaws, or faces.  One used his teeth to clamp an artery in his arm to avoid bleeding to death.  (Denson, citing Eric Remarque)

In the midst of this hell came Christmas and an unplanned moment of light, peace, reconciliation, and sanity.  On large segments of the 600-mile line, guns became silent and killing stopped.  It has been called the Christmas Truce of 1914.  It wasn’t the leaders of the countries or the upper echelons of the military that stopped it. The men in the trenches brought the carnage to a halt.  More than just halting the bloodshed, the combatants reached out across no man’s land between the front lines to those on the other side, recognized their humanity, shared family pictures, played games, and exchanged, food, smokes, sweets, drinks, and mementos.

It’s difficult to characterize what happened because there wasn’t just one happening.  There were probably hundreds of happenings involving tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of men along the line of demarcation.

In most places the unplanned truce appears to have started with the Germans. The German government had sent hundreds of small Christmas trees to the front lines. The German soldiers decorated the trees with small candles and then put them on top of the trenches. The allied forces were bewildered at first by these strange lights. It didn’t happen uniformly but it appears that frequently the trees put the Germans in the Christmas spirit and on Christmas Eve they began singing carols.  Many accounts mention Silent Night as one of the songs firs sung.  After their surprise, the allied troops responded.  Sometimes they applauded or sang the same song in English or found a different with which to respond in kind.  Sometimes the men in opposing trenches would sing the same song together in their own respective languages.  The guns were no longer doing the talking.  A different kind of communication had started.

The men in the trenches began shouting out different kinds of greetings.  They tested the other side to see if it might be safe to show themselves.  In at least one place there was the shouted invitation from the German side, “You no shoot, we no shoot” (Weintraub, 25).  Cautiously, the men on both sides began to show themselves and to move out into no man’s land carrying the items which their families’ had sent to cheer them through the Christmas season.  As these former combatants met in no man’s land, they started to establish friendships by exchanging these small treasures and showing one another pictures of their loved ones.  That night, the men returned to their respective trenches many with a keen awareness of how much the enemy was like them and of the absurdity of war.

On Christmas Day, the men left their trenches again and met on the land between them.  Frequently one of the first things they attended to was the burial of their dead friends whom they had been unable to retrieve from no man’s land.  The two sides sometimes helped each other with the difficult responsibility of burying these men.  More than once, they found themselves joining those on the opposite side in a common worship service to remember and honor those who had fallen.

Once this was done, in many places along the front, a common passion erupted — soccer.  The playing conditions were far from perfect, but that didn’t stop the men.  Some games were joyful chaos made up of many dozens of men kicking whatever passed for a ball.  Others had official teams, referees, lines for the field and goals.  Sometimes someone would have a regulation ball.  Other times they made balls from sandbags packed with straw and in at least one place where no ball was available, a large can became the ball.

The powers that had precipitated the war broke the truce and cranked the violence back up, resulting in 40 million casualties.

Yet in the midst of darkness, there had been a great light.  There had been a moment when the dirty, smelly men at the bottom of the war machine had grasped the vision of the Christmas message and pointed the world toward that light.

Even though the truce ended, they are still our guides toward a peaceful world.

Bibliography

Weinbraub, Stanley.  Silent Night.  New York: The Free Press. 2001. A very detailed, well researched account but not quite as readable as one could wish.
Denson, John V.  The Christmas Truce of World War I.  An online article listed under the Ludwig von Mises Institute.  December 19, 2005

Joyeux Noel.  A well done movie in story form of the truce.  Received an Academy Award and was Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Film.