In Brief: 109 Years Ago Today, The 1914 Christmas Truce Brought World War I to a Humane Pause.
Humanity shone in the most unimaginable conditions.
Merry Christmas to all who celebrate the holiday.
And a Happy New Year to everyone in 2024, a year I hope will be filled with blessings.
— Ben
World War I was hailed as the “war to end all wars” because of its unparalleled destruction and carnage. We know too well that the saying has failed us since that conflict ended in November 1918.1
Nevertheless, an event on Christmas Eve and day, 1914, demonstrated a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst one of the most violent conflicts in human history. It is famously known as the 1914 Christmas Truce of World War I.
Word of the truce spread quickly. This headline from the London Daily Mail is dated December 31.
The 1914 Christmas Truce of World War I
On the evening of December 24, 1914, roughly 100,000 British and German troops soldiers in Belgium climbed out of their trenches and declared a short-lived truce before fighting resumed. The truce was reportedly instigated by the Germans, who decorated their trenches with Christmas trees and candles and began singing “Silent Night” and other carols.
According to British Columbia’s CBC News and historian Stanley Weintraub:
[It] started with German officer Walter Kirchhoff, a tenor with the Berlin Opera.
He came forward and sang Silent Night in German, and then in English. In the clear, cold night of Christmas Eve, his voice carried very far. The shooting had stopped and in that silence, he sang and the British knew the song and sang back. Gradually the troops crawled forward into No Man's Land.2
Weintraub continues:
[The singing] was impromptu, no one planned it. It has to begin with something, and it did begin with elements of shared culture. If it hadn't been for shared culture, certainly there would have been no Christmas truce. (emphasis added).
Indeed, shared music was intense in peaceful sectors. It was not uncommon for units to sing deliberately to entertain opposing troops.
The song had a deep impact on many of the soldiers. Weintraub adds:
Soldiers . . . wrote home the day after to their families, to their wives, and to their parents, saying, “You won't believe this. It was like a waking dream.” They recognized that on both ends of the rifle, they were the same.3
During the truce, there were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in caroling.
Both sets of soldiers played an impromptu game of soccer in the freezing weather.4
Following the memorable 1914 truce, commanding officers forbade such encounters. Nevertheless, as late as 1915, across the front lines, opposing forces agreed not to shoot while men rested, exercised, or worked where they could be seen by the enemy.
A British Newspaper Illustration of the Festive 1914 Truce
The Eastern Front
Word of the British-German truce spread to the Eastern front, where Austro-Hungarian commanders solicited such a cease-fire. Russian officers responded positively and soldiers eventually met in No Man's Land.5
British military historian and journalist Max Hasting writes:
On Christmas Day in Galicia, Austrian troops were ordered not to fire unless provoked, and the Russians displayed the same restraint. Some of the besiegers of Przemyśl deposited three Christmas trees in no man's land with a polite accompanying note addressed to the enemy: 'We wish you, the heroes of Przemyśl, a Merry Christmas and hope that we can come to a peaceful agreement as soon as possible.” In No Man's Land, soldiers met and exchanged Austrian tobacco and schnapps for Russian bread and meat. When the Tsar's soldiers held their own seasonal festivities a few days later, Habsburg troops reciprocated.6
Galicia and Przemyśl are both cities in southeastern Poland near western Ukraine.
Humanity on Christmas
The original Christmas truce was particularly significant due to the number of men involved and the level of their participation—even in quiet sectors, dozens of men openly congregating in daylight was remarkable—and are often seen as a symbolic moment of peace and humanity amidst the horrors of war.7
The First World War I was by no means the war to end all wars. Yet for only a short period, troops on both sides understood the carnage of the war, the humanity they shared with their enemies, and no doubt their desire to celebrate future Christmases at home. The War ended 11 months later with the Armistice of November 11, 1918.
Additional Reading:
Jim Murphy, Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting (2009). Murphy is a two-time Newbery Honor Book author.
Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (Plume).
For an extraordinarily detailed account (2,400+ words) of the truce, see Peter Verplancke and Robin Schafer and Philippe Oosterlinck, 1914: The Forgotten Christmas Truce (irontime.substack.com (2022)). Schafer writes the Substack THE IRON TIME (THE 'OTHER SIDE' OF MILITARY HISTORY Germany at War 1800-1945).
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Armistice Day: World War I Ends (History Channel).
Stanley Weintraub, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce (Plume).
Id.
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce.
See Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War (Illustrated 2014).
Id.
Id. at 5.
Such a tragically beautiful moment in the middle of wreckage. They had been promised that the war would last only a few months, meanwhile on that Christmas Eve they had four more years of fighting ahead of them. I wonder if it would have been different had they known that.
This was a remarkable moment in history. Over the ensuing decades, we've seen far more tactics like attacking during sacred religious days (Yom Kippur War, EG), and I don't know if we'll see this level of unexpected humanity on such a large scale ever again. Does "hands across America" count?