The Sliding Doors Moment of World War I

It won’t surprise many regular readers of my blog that the historical event that fascinates me has something to do with Christmas! However, the real fascination lies in its immediate effects and its long term repercussions.

The Christmas Truce took place in various places along the trenches of World War I between December 24 and 26 of 1914, the first Christmas of the war. It was a real event, but one which has had a layer of mythology placed over the top. It was likely that makeshift football games were played at certain points but they were probably nothing more than the type of playground games that had few rules and no real competitive elements. One thing is certain though. The soldiers did meet, they did sing carols, they did share food, drink and conversation and they did all this in honour of the birth of Jesus. Letters home from both sides attest to this. I have written a full post about this in the past so if you want the full story then take a read here. What I will finish with today are a few reflections on what the Christmas Truce meant and could have caused.

The first thing to say is that, apart from a few individuals with a natural bloodlust, very few troops go into battle wanting to kill. However, soldiers are taught to see the enemy as faceless entities who are simply a homogeneous mass of evil. The Christmas Truce blew this apart as the troops on both sides realised that they were fighting men exactly like themselves. Some of the Germans actually lived over in the UK before the war and knew the places familiar to the British troops. Once the human face of the enemy was revealed it caused a real conundrum. How could you fight people who you had made a personal connection with? The answer was that you couldn’t. In certain areas of the trenches the opposing sides warned each other of incoming fire or deliberately fired their guns over the tops of the trenches not in them.

The politicians and generals were extremely perturbed by the Christmas Truce and did their best to cover it up. They wanted the war to continue for their own purposes and they were quite happy to sacrifice not only ordinary working people but even many of their own contemporaries at public schools, sent to the front lines as junior officers. Their answer to the problem was to move entire battalions who had been infected by the goodwill of the Christmas Truce out of the trenches to be replaced by other troops with no personal connections to the other side. This, and their insistence on the ‘lie’ of the Truce, ended up ensuring that the war continued for nearly four more years at the loss of 8.4 million more lives.

The truth is that the humanity on show that Christmas was inconvenient for the war machines of both sides. When we remember those who died in 12 days time we must not forget that they were people like us who had family, friends, dreams and ambitions. They were brave but only because they were given no other choice by people who didn’t have to be brave.

Below is the link to my earlier post with a reflection on the event I put together at my local football club. It’s a great read.