Christmas Peace (First World War)
The Christmas Peace ( English truce Christmas , Christmas Truce ') was not authorized by the instruction level ceasefire during the First World War on December 24, 1914 and in the following days. It took place on some sections of the Western Front , where there were spontaneous fraternizations , especially between Germans and British in Flanders . There were also no exchanges of fire on parts of the Eastern Front during this period. The Christmas peace of 1914 today mainly describes the events on the front between Mesen and Nieuwkapelle , where the Germans and the British faced each other in a warlike manner .
background
The events of 1914 are part of British collective memory and are often portrayed romantically. The real events can hardly be reconstructed today. Reports of events were incoherent or contradicting one another; some traditions were embellished over time and the official records contained hardly any useful information.
Triggering elements of the armistice
Many soldiers from all warring parties had gone to war enthusiastically and confident of victory in 1914 and had hoped to be home "by Christmas". However, this optimism soon evaporated. The bitter reality of the battles in the late summer and autumn of 1914 had in just a few months caused clear disillusionment on both sides of the front.
The trenches of the Western Front in late 1914
The war, which the German side according to Schlieffen as fast Umfassungsmanöver against the troops of the Entente had been planned had after, the First Battle of the Marne get a different face: The counterparty There was increased due to the new conditions of the struggle and the concomitant high personnel losses and lack of ammunition to forced to adopt a defensive attitude. After attempts by both sides to attack the enemy on an open flank in the north or on the shores of the North Sea ( race to the sea ) had failed, the war of movement at the end of 1914 had turned into a trench warfare , i.e. a positional war in which the fronts came off passed a system with trenches and trenches .
Quick victories by surprising maneuvers such as overflights were no longer possible. The soldiers now faced each other in systems of trenches between Switzerland and the English Channel . These were initially incoherent and partly improvised, but were gradually completed and expanded with enormous effort. At the end of 1914, most protective positions still offered little protection against snipers or hand grenades .
People were not quite prepared for this type of warfare, which, however, had already marked the Boer War and, to a far greater extent, the Russo-Japanese War ten years earlier. The soldiers had to find their way in new, unfamiliar situations, which were also exacerbated by the extremely bad weather in autumn 1914: Many trenches on the northern western front had turned into icy mud holes. After only five months, the western front was largely frozen; there was no end to the war in sight.
Remnants of human civilization
At the end of 1914, soldiers could still see remnants of human civilization and culture in their trenches at the front. Unlike in the later years of the war, churches and villages had not yet been completely shot to pieces, fields could still be recognized as such. The material battle with the typical barrel fire of the artillery did not develop fully until 1915/1916.
On both sides there was still an overarching Christian awareness of Christmas as a celebration of charity . It was also expressed in the Christmas carols, which sounded similar in several languages ( Silent Night, Holy Night : Silent night, holy night and Douce nuit, sainte nuit ). The message of the new Pope Benedict XV was also known among the soldiers . who, in his inaugural address in August 1914, had asked for an armistice for Christmas. However, this request was rejected by the warring parties, as was a similar request from the Archbishop of Paris , Léon-Adolphe Amette .
Tradition between the trenches
Today it is no longer possible to trace exactly how the armistice came about on December 24, 1914. The starting point was probably the area around Ypres . The troops of the British Expeditionary Force lay here on their 27-kilometer-long section of the front, which they had to hold after the First Battle of Flanders , often only 50 to 100 meters away from the German lines. This proximity made it easy to establish voice contact with the enemy. There is evidence that German and British units briefly laid down their weapons in quieter fighting situations before Christmas in order to rescue the fallen or the wounded or simply because they were too exhausted. This is documented even for situations after heavy fighting.
Such behavior had a certain tradition between opposing warring factions: in the Seven Years' War in North America the opponents sat around the campfire and played cards, in the Crimean War they shared food and tobacco, in the American Civil War they fished on the same river and gathered berries together. From the time of the Second Boer War , a football game between Boers and English has even come down to us. It is known from World War II that units of the Afrika Korps and the British heard the song Lili Marleen together .
The armistice
Gifts and packages on both sides
On December 23, 1914, there was a great desire to be able to open the Christmas presents that had arrived from home in peace and without fear of death. Every British soldier received a parcel from the King, in which he found, among other things, a Princess Mary Box , a metal box with the engraved profile of Princess Mary , George V's only daughter . The box contained chocolate, scones (British pastries), cigarettes and tobacco and a princess greeting card. A facsimile of the king depicted George V as the troop father who wished his troops: “ May God protect you and bring you home safe ” (German: “ May God protect you and bring you home safely”). 355,000 of these Princess Mary Boxes were shipped in 1914.
At Christmas 1914, many German soldiers received gifts from their home communities donated by public funds, as well as parcels from their families with warm clothing, food, alcohol, cigarettes and letters. In 1914, in contrast to the later war years, there was no particular shortage of food and beverages in Germany. In addition, the Supreme Army Command had sent tens of thousands of miniature Christmas trees to the German fronts to be illuminated for Christmas.
No comparable effort was made in France or Belgium. The Christmas festival traditionally did not have the same meaning there as in Germany. In addition, in contrast to Germany or Great Britain, both countries were directly affected by the war and its destruction. The French and Belgians fought on their own territory, and their bitterness against Germany, the enemy of the war, was even greater than that of the British.
Morally strengthened by the donations from their homeland, many soldiers received for the first time, after weeks and months of privation, an inkling of a life in peace. Otherwise, her life situation, often exposed to cold and dirt, was still bleak. The front had only recently frozen, and care and welfare facilities to maintain a minimum level of comfort for the soldiers had to be gradually built in the rear. On the other hand, the combat area had not yet become the perfected, deeply structured dividing line of later years. An ammunition crisis paralyzed both sides, apart from the fact that in World War I there was hardly any uninterrupted warfare in winter. This made soldiers on both sides even let their relatively close opponents participate in the Christmas tradition of giving and sharing. A correspondent for an English newspaper wrote that some Germans had succeeded in getting a chocolate cake across no man's land that the British were only too happy to accept. It also seems to have been a German soldier who called out to a British soldier in English that the Germans wanted to sing some Christmas carols at a certain time (some sources say 7:30 am) and that " Tommy " shouldn't shoot because of that . As a sign he wanted to put candles on the edge of the ditch. The British accepted the request. When the German concert was over, the opponents applauded and the Germans asked to sing along. One of the British shouted that he would rather die than sing German, whereupon the Germans laughed and shouted back that they would kill him if he did. The British began to sing in English and many Germans gradually put their fir trees on the edges of the ditch.
December 24th - Enemies in no man's land
The morning of December 24th brought a clear day. The constant rain had stopped, in some places in the sector there was still shooting, but in most of them there was silence, which was only broken by calls from the soldiers facing each other. The first men called the enemy that they wanted to rescue their fallen. There was no shooting when they went unarmed into no man's land. After the dead were buried, the soldiers began to speak to one another, especially in English, as many Germans had learned the language or even worked in Great Britain due to the proximity to England propagated by the emperor.
Contrary to the widespread opinion that only ordinary soldiers had laid down their weapons in protest because they felt they were being used as " cannon fodder ", many officers also took part in the events and in some cases even conducted negotiations. One of these officers was Lieutenant Kurt Zehmisch from the Saxon Infantry Regiment 134, who was a French and English speaking teacher from Weischlitz in the Vogtland. Zehmisch noted in his diary that he had ordered his people not to shoot at the enemy during the Christmas holidays. They would put candles and fir trees on the trenches. He went on to write that the British gave their approval by whistling and clapping and that he - like most of his comrades - had stayed up all night. The following day, Zehmisch stated that some Brits had come out of their trench with a football . They would have kicked back and forth. The commanding English officer and Zehmisch himself were of the unanimous opinion that all of this was unimaginable and incredibly wonderful.
Many commanders, such as the chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Sir John French , issued strict disciplinary orders against their own troops. Others, on the other hand, were more relaxed about the Christmas episode and were convinced that after Christmas the war would continue as usual. The hierarchies of both warring parties reacted to the events in a similarly ambivalent manner.
Individual events and memories
In the village of Fromelles in France - west of Lille and about 30 kilometers south of Ypres - soldiers of the Gordon Highlanders entered the 80-meter-wide no-man's-land to rescue their fallen.
A common service was celebrated, Psalm 23 (“The Lord is my Shepherd ...”) was spoken, first in English by the regimental priest and then in German by an English student. The Germans were on one side, the British on the other, everyone had taken off their headgear, recalls second lieutenant Arthur Pelham Burn in his diary:
“The Germans formed up on one side, the English on the other, the officers standing in front, every head bared. Yes, I think it was a sight one will never see again. "
“The Germans stood together on one side, the English on the other. The officers stood in the front row, everyone had their headgear off. Yes, I think this was a sight that you will never see again. "
In the same place, the British captain (captain) R. J. Armes noted in a letter that he had heard isolated shots and a cannon in the distance, but that there was otherwise silence. He allowed some of his soldiers to meet with the Germans. They then exchanged tobacco in no man's land and talked as much as possible.
Elsewhere, Saxon soldiers handed over two barrels of beer from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers to their British opponents . Captain C. I. Stockwell noted in the battalion diary that suddenly half a dozen Saxons were standing on the edge of the trenches without weapons. He ran to his soldiers, who were waiting for his orders with rifles at the ready, while the Saxons shouted: “ Don't shoot. We don't want to fight today. We will send you some beer. ”(German:“ Don't shoot. We don't want to fight today. We'll send you some beer. ”) Then a barrel was rolled by three Germans into the middle of no man's land. A German officer had appeared and was walking towards the barrel. Stockwell did the same, practically greeting each other. The German officer didn't speak a word of English and said in German that the British should take the beer, there was still plenty left. In exchange, Captain Stockwell had several Christmas puddings sent to the Germans. A German soldier had brought glasses and two bottles of beer to the officers. They clinked glasses and then went back to their lines. There was singing on both sides all evening.
In a letter published in The Times , German Lieutenant Niemann stated that a football match had been played in his sector at Frelinghien-Houplines that ended 3-2 for the Germans - a symbol of the Christmas peace that helped create legends. However, the truth of the matter can no longer be checked today. What is certain, however, is that there was an unorganized kick between the opponents, but that it was not played for a goal, let alone with a referee . By Christmas 2014, the Flanders Peace Field project wanted to turn the old Mesen sports field into a memorial and organize an event with representatives of the nations involved at the time.
According to several reports, there was also at least one joint pork barbecue, mutual haircutting and shaving, several soccer games and there were many exchanges of luxury goods such as tobacco, cigarettes and chocolate in no man's land.
On a French section of the front, a German brought a drunken Frenchman back to his position and laid him down in front of the barbed wire barn.
Most of the reports come from the British side, the best known from Captain Sir Edward Hulse (fallen in 1915) of the Scots Guards , who, on returning from headquarters, discovered that there had been fraternization.
“Scots and Huns were fraternizing in the most genuine possible manner. Every sort of souvenir was exchanged, addresses given and received, photos of families shown, etc. One of our fellows offered a German a cigarette; the German said, 'Virginian'? Our fellow said, 'Aye, straight-cut', the German said 'No thanks, I only smoke Turkish!' [...] It gave us all a good laugh. "
“The most extensive fraternization took place between the Scots and the Huns [a swear word for Germans]. All kinds of souvenirs were exchanged, addresses were passed over and over, family photos were shown, etc. One of us offered a German a cigarette. The German asked: 'Virginia'? Ours said: 'Sure, straight-cut cut'. The German replied: 'No, thanks, I only smoke Turkish…' […] We all laughed a lot at that. "
The end of the armistice
It is now believed that at least 100,000 soldiers from the parties fighting on the Western Front took part in the ceasefire, mainly British and Germans. The armistice and fraternities were mostly observed on December 23 and 24, 1914. Occasionally, longer pauses in the fire were observed, some even until January 1915. As dictated by the military tradition of the 19th century, in less important sectors of the front there were also unofficial and short agreements for the care of the wounded and the recovery of the dead, but these never appeared in the reports of the army commandments.
The general armistice ended on some English sections only on December 26th ( Boxing Day ), on certain Scottish sections on New Year's Day , as this was celebrated by the Scottish soldiers as a special festival. The battalion report by Captain J. C. Dunn and Captain C. I. Stockwell of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers , who received the barrels of beer, can be considered authentic and exemplary: at 8:30 a.m., three shots were fired into the air and the British hoisted a flag the inscription "Merry Christmas". A German captain appeared on the other side of the front, holding up a cloth with "Thank you" written on it. Both saluted and went back into their trenches. A German soldier shot twice in the air, after which it was war again.
Consequences
The armistice had no disciplinary consequences on either side of the front. He was never mentioned in the German press, although the events are documented by records from the Supreme Army Command (OHL). British and French reporting was more revealing, but the extent was reduced to a small fraternization on an insignificant section of the front.
At Christmas 1915 there were again attempts by the troops to repeat the events of the previous year. This time, however, it was no longer tolerated by the commanders under threat of court martial . From 1916 onwards, there were no longer any unofficial, small armistices between the opponents. The no man's land had become a constant battle zone.
Survivors
No survivors are known to have been involved in the events since 2005. The last - albeit passive - eyewitness was Alfred Anderson , who died on November 21, 2005 at the age of 109. He served as a soldier in the Scottish Black Watch Regiment and in a private conversation he remembered that - in reserve - he had suddenly heard the eerie silence. The interlocutor interviewed by the BBC reported about it in 1996:
“It was very cold and very still. He said he could hear these voices shouting, carried over on the night air. What he could hear was total stillness, which he found very eerie. "
“It was very cold and very quiet. He said he could hear these voices carried through the night air. What he could hear was total silence, which he found very eerie. "
Survivor Murdoch M. Wood delivered a moving verdict before the British Parliament in 1930 when he said that the soldiers would probably never have taken up arms again had it been up to them.
Monuments
On November 11, 2008, the first memorial to the Christmas peace was inaugurated in Frelinghien, France . After a church service and the unveiling of the monument, a football match between soldiers of the 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh and members of the German Panzergrenadier Battalion 371 Marienberger Jäger and the Panzergrenadierbrigade Free State of Saxony took place. Their predecessors, the 2nd Battalion The Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Saxon Infantry Regiment 134 as well as a machine gun company of the Saxon Jäger Battalion No. 6, had signed a truce in Frelinghien on Christmas Eve 1914.
Before the soccer game, a beer keg was rolled by the Germans to the Welsh, in memory of what happened in December 1914 when the Germans occupied the local brewery. The football signed by all players during the commemoration is now owned by the Working Group for Saxon Military History.
In December 2015, the French President François Hollande consecrated another monument, the Monument des fraternizations, in Neuville-St. Vaast a. The German war cemetery Neuville-St. Vaast .
Christmas peace on the Italian front
In 1915 there was a Christmas peace for a few days on the contested front line of the Col di Lana and Monte Sief .
Luis Trenker writes about the plateau of Lavarone - Folgaria in the autobiographical novel Sperrfort Rocca Alta that on December 24th 1916 there was deep silence. People shouted “Good Christmas!” Or “Buon Natale!” And sang Christmas carols across the front.
Artistic reception
Movies
- Richard Attenborough : Oh! What a Lovely War (1969)
- Christian Carion: Merry Christmas / Joyeux Noël (2005)
music
- Paul McCartney : Pipes of Peace (1983) and the accompanying video process the story.
- The Farm : All Together Now (1991)
- Johannes X. Schachtner : “Wacht heiser Feinde” for chamber ensemble (2009); the title is an anagram to "Christmas Peace"
- Gerhard Schöne : Field Post, Flanders 1914 (2011)
- The song It Could Happen Again (1996) by Collin Raye makes direct reference to what happened.
- The song Let the Truce be Known by the Israeli metal band Orphaned Land was also influenced by the Christmas peace.
- The song "When the guns were silent" (2015) by the medieval rock band Saltatio Mortis tells the story of this event.
Comic
- The comic No Man's Land by Ralf Marczinczik describes the soccer game that is said to have been played between German and British soldiers (result 3: 2) during the Christmas peace . The story won the 2013 fan award for football comic of the year at the German Academy for Football Culture .
Series
- In Warehouse 13 , the eleventh episode of the second season is about a cannon case from the Christmas peace
- In the Christmas special of the 10th season of Doctor Who , " Fallen Out of Time " (2017), the Christmas peace and a football game between the warring parties can be seen.
literature
- Malcolm Brown, Shirley Seaton: Christmas Truce. The Western Front December 1914 . Pan Books, 1999, ISBN 978-0-330-39065-1 .
- Christian Bunnenberg: December 1914: Silent night in the trenches. The memory of the Christmas peace in Flanders . In: Tobias Arand (Hrsg.): The “Urkatastrophe” as a memory - historical culture of the First World War . University of Münster Central coordination of teacher training ZfL, Münster 2006, ISBN 978-3-934064-67-6 , p. 15-60 .
- Christian Bunnenberg: Christmas Truce. The amateur photos of the Christmas peace 1914 and their career . In: Gerhard Paul (ed.): The century of pictures . Volume I: 1900 and 1949. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2009, p. 156-163 .
- Christian Bunnenberg: Review of: Jürgs, Michael: The small peace in the great war. Western Front 1914: When Germans, French and British celebrated Christmas together, Munich 2003 . In: Geschichtslehrerverband Deutschlands (Ed.): History, politics and their didactics . Aschendorf, Münster 2004, p. 255-257 .
- Michael Jürgs : The little peace in the Great War: Western Front 1914. When Germans, French and British celebrated Christmas together . Goldmann Taschenbuch 15303, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-442-15303-4 .
- Stanley Weintraub: Silent Night. The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce . Plume Books, 2002, ISBN 0-452-28367-1 (English, reprint).
- Herfried Münkler : The Great War. The world from 1914 to 1918 . 6th edition. Rowohlt, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-87134-720-7 .
- Aloys Buschmann: Christmas peace . Volksstück from d. World wars 1914/15 in 3 acts. Vollmer, 1920.
- David Boyle: Peace on Earth . Endeavor Press, 2014.
Web links
- The Christmas Truce - Operation Plum Pudding . Alan Cleaver and Lesley Park website dedicated to collecting reports from British soldiers on the Christmas truce. The website also contains a report on the unveiling of the Christmas Peace Memorial in Frelinghien (2008).
- Peter-Philipp Schmitt: Christmas in the trenches - a little peace. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 17th December 2014.
- When the soldiers made peace - The Christmas miracle of 1914: an "episode of humanity". In: Stuttgarter Zeitung . September 5, 2007, accessed October 11, 2008 .
- Rüdiger Haude: Silent night. In: Internet pages of the grassroots revolution . Retrieved October 11, 2008 .
- Stanley Weintraub: The Christmas truce: When the guns fell silent. In: The Independent . December 24, 2005, accessed on October 11, 2008 (This article details some historical details and people who were involved in the events.).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Quoted from Malcolm Brown, Shirley Seaton: Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914
- ↑ See the article A Brief Moment of Peace in War ( Memento from August 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) from August 10, 2013 on tagesschau.de (accessed on August 10, 2013)
- ↑ Frelinghien Plaque ( Memento from December 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) , report on the unveiling of the Christmas Peace Memorial in Frelinghien on The Christmas Truce - Operation Plum Pudding , accessed on December 24, 2009, and Christmas Day truce football match on YouTube ( both English).
- ↑ Monument commemorates fraternization during the First World War . ( Memento of December 23, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Zeit Online , December 17, 2015; Retrieved December 18, 2015.
- ^ Anton Graf Bossi-Fedrigotti : Kaiserjäger, Glory and End. According to the war diary of Colonel v. Cordier . Stocker, Graz / Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-7020-0263-4 , p. 211 ff.
- ↑ Luis Trenker: Rocca Alta fortress. My time 1914–1918 . Berg, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-7634-0205-5 , pp. 207ff.
- ^ Orphaned Land premieres video "Let The Truce Be Known" via The Guardian . Century Media , Aug. 8, 2014
- ↑ German Football Culture Prize 2013: “No man's land” is football comic of the year. Kicker-Sportmagazin , October 12, 2013, accessed on November 8, 2016 .
