Christmas truce
The Christmas truce was a series of unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914. The truce occurred only five months into the war. In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man’s land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs.
About Christmas truce in brief
The Christmas truce was a series of widespread unofficial ceasefires along the Western Front of the First World War around Christmas 1914. The truce occurred only five months into the war. Hostilities had lulled as leadership on both sides reconsidered their strategies following the stalemate of the Race to the Sea and the First Battle of Ypres. In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German, and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man’s land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs. There were joint burial ceremonies and prisoner swaps, while several meetings ended in carol-singing. Men played games of football with one another, creating one of the most memorable images of the truce. The following year, a few units arranged ceasefires but the truces were not nearly as widespread as in 1914; this was, in part, due to strongly worded orders from the high commands of both sides, prohibiting truces. Soldiers were no longer amenable to truce by 1916. The war had become increasingly bitter after heavy human losses suffered during the battles of 1915. The Christmas truces are 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 one of most violent events of human history. In some sectors, there were occasional ceasefires to allow soldiers to go between the lines and recover wounded or dead comrades; in others, there was a tacit agreement not to shoot while men rested, exercised or worked in view of the enemy.
On the Eastern Front, Fritz Kreisler reported incidents of spontaneous truces and fraternisation between the Austro-Hungarians and Russians in the first few weeks of the War. Truces between British and German units can be dated to early November 1914, around the time that the war of manoeuvre ended. In early December, a German surgeon recorded a regular half-hourly truce each evening to recover dead soldiers for burial, during which French soldiers exchanged newspapers. This behaviour was often challenged by officers; French soldiers often challenged this behaviour by German officers. By 1 December, British soldiers could record a visit from a friendly German sergeant to see how they were getting on while they collected their food. Relations between French and German soldiers were generally more tense but the same phenomenon began to emerge to emerge in early December. Other French soldiers wrote on December 7 of the desire of French infantrymen to leave the enemy in peace, while the commander of 10th Army, Victor d’Urbal, wrote of the ‘unfortunate consequences’ when men leave their opposite neighbours in peace. Other soldiers wrote about the ‘become familiar with their neighbours’ when they leave the opposite end of the trenches. By November, both sides had built a continuous line of trenches running from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier.
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This page is based on the article Christmas truce published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 30, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
