Galt's Gulch

The Christmas Truce

Posted by richrobinson 10 years, 4 months ago to The Gulch: General
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I have always found the story of the WWI Christmas truce to be fascinating. There is more information out there but this is a brief description.
SOURCE URL: http://www.history.com/videos/the-christmas-truce#friend-or-enemy

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  • Posted by $ johnrobert2 10 years, 4 months ago
    It saddens me to read how vilified our soldiers are by everyone around the world when our soldiers are often the most compassionate and caring of any in the world, especially to children. IMO, no other nation has (unofficially) given so much to those with whom they are at war. The track record of other nations is not quite so spotless.
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  • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 4 months ago
    The Christmas truce was a series of widespread, unofficial ceasefires that took place along the Western Front around Christmas 1914, during World War I. ... The following year, a few units again arranged ceasefires with their opponents over Christmas, 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 such fraternization. In 1916, after the unprecedentedly bloody battles of the Somme and Verdun, and the beginning of widespread poison gas use, soldiers on both sides increasingly viewed the other side as less than human, and no more Christmas truces were sought." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_t....

    The first year of the war - barely five months, actually - the reality had not set in. Note also, that the British and Germans shared more than either did with the French. That may have to do with culture or history. The French still wanted revenge for 1871, while the British and Germans had nothing to separate them and Hanover to unite them. The British royal family did not change its name to "Windsor" until 1917.

    The History Channel link went to a different story. Personally, I find The History Channel to be manufactured for mass audiences. They use film from one event while narrating another. The voice-overs are actors, not real participants. And then there is the ideology. The only way to write history without a frame of reference ("being informed by theory") is to produce an almanac of facts. Even that requires a conceptual framework for the selections of data. I had a co-worker whose wife used to give him a bit of grief over his tube time with the History Channel, which she called "All Hitler All the Time."
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    • Posted by richrobinson 10 years, 4 months ago
      Good info Mike. The History Channel took a left turn a number of years ago. I have wondered how much of the story changed over the years. I think about this every Christmas for some reason. I guess I just like knowing that even in war humane acts are possible. Merry Christmas.
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      • Posted by $ MikeMarotta 10 years, 4 months ago
        War is inhumane by its nature. Some times and places have been less inhumane than others. The Greeks began the practice of ransoming captured soldiers. However, when the Athenians launched a surprise attack on Syracuse in 415, the fleet was wrecked in a storm. The captured boys were worked to death in the marble quarries for several years before Syracuse allowed them to be bought back.

        Ransom was also in the code of chivalry in the Middle Ages, but it applied to the knights, not to commoners, of course.

        After the Battle of Agincourt, the English violated all customs by executing the French knights whom they had captured. In fact, the men were seated on the ground, in their armor, helmets off, bound. It was liked to slaughtering turtles.

        In the Renaissance, mercenary armies were likewise polite to each other, surrendering easily and buying back their liberty. That eventually infuriated some of their patrons.

        At the start of the American Revolution, the British showed no mercy to Americans they captured and those who surrendered were usually killed on the spot.

        The Geneva Conventions of 1864 underscore the generalization that as a result of capitalism, warfare and its attendant cruelties were greatly diminished compared to earlier times. The Christmas Truce of 1914 would seem to have been the last of that sensibility.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 10 years, 4 months ago
    yea! A chance to anecdote. This time, not my own.

    I don't buy the happy face they put on the Americans meeting the effing Soviets.

    My father's reminiscence of Soviet encounters included two points: the fascination they had with electric lighting, once he showed it to them, and their inability to comprehend what a shower was for. After he mimed how to use the shower... they used it to wash their clothes... while wearing them.

    His other reminiscence of the Soviets was the 3 days he spent helping to load ammunition for the coming war with the sons of bitches because they wouldn't turn over 3 American POWs. The cowards finally backed down, like all bullies when confronted by men of character.

    Oh yeah, and the 3 weeks we had to pull up and wait to let the Soviet (strike)bastards(/strike) troops take Berlin. He also mentioned something about a female Soviet colonel who was allowed to shoot Germans at will. Allegedly German soldiers had raped her and her sisters. I guess there weren't any cattle available.

    But, the reaction of our troops to the German civilians I can fully believe. It saddened and jaded my father how... "friendly" the female population turned out to be.

    When he arrived in Europe just before the occupation, the USO served our soldiers coffee and doughnuts. My dad saw an old German guy, going around picking up the discarded bits of doughnut and putting them in a paper bag.
    He went up to the old guy, took the bag, dumped the doughnuts out on the ground, while the old man looked impotently on.
    He then went to the fresh tray of doughnuts and filled the bag, and handed it back to the old man.
    One of the USO battleaxes squawked that the doughnuts were for the GIs. My dad said that if they were for the GIs, that included him and he'd do what he damn well pleased with his doughnuts. (words to that effect).

    Later, when given guard duty over a mountainous coal dump (I've always suspected as punishment for his rebellious ways...) he saw a German woman come out with her two children to steal coal from that mountain and put it in a burlap sack.
    Being the good American he was... he held the bag open for them.

    (Yeah, I've told these stories before, and I'll tell them again... and again... because they make me proud I could call him "Dad".)
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