The Christmas Truce

[jmc247]

As Christmas approached the festive mood and the desire for a lull in the fighting increased as parcels packed with goodies from home started to arrive. On top of this came gifts care of the state. Tommy received plum puddings and ‘Princess Mary boxes’; a metal case engraved with an outline of George V’s daughter and filled with chocolates and butterscotch, cigarettes and tobacco, a picture card of Princess Mary and a facsimile of George V’s greeting to the troops. ‘May God protect you and bring you safe home,’ it said.

Not to be outdone, Fritz received a present from the Kaiser, the Kaiserliche, a large meerschaum pipe for the troops and a box of cigars for NCOs and officers. Towns, villages and cities, and numerous support associations on both sides also flooded the front with gifts of food, warm clothes and letters of thanks.

With their morale boosted by messages of thanks and their bellies fuller than normal, and with still so much Christmas booty to hand, the season of goodwill entered the trenches. A British Daily Telegraph correspondent wrote that on one part of the line the Germans had managed to slip a chocolate cake into British trenches.

Even more amazingly, it was accompanied with a message asking for a ceasefire later that evening so they could celebrate the festive season and their Captain’s birthday. They proposed a concert at 7.30pm when candles, the British were told, would be placed on the parapets of their trenches.

The British accepted the invitation and offered some tobacco as a return present. That evening, at the stated time, German heads suddenly popped up and started to sing. Each number ended with a round of applause from both sides. The Germans then asked the British to join in. At this point, one very mean-spirited Tommy shouted: ‘We’d rather die than sing German.’ To which a German joked aloud: ‘It would kill us if you did’.

http://www.floppingaces.net/2010/12/24/we-dont-want-to-fight-today/

I saw a TV show tonight about the Christmas Truce. It did a good job talking about it and what happened, but it didn't do the best job in discussing what it meant. Was it just some time off from the battle? Did it show something about the human condition?

There actually were truces in World War 2 as well though they were far less publicized by the press. I thought this article below was quite good at getting in the mindset of the British and German soldiers who were part of a truce that happened in 1941.

In the summer of 1941, two groups of German and British soldiers met deep in the Libyan desert. Instead of shooting at each other, the enemies chatted and exchanged cigarettes before going their separate ways. What made the encounter all the more remarkable was that Erwin Rommel, the German commander in North Africa, was among them.

Speaking in the fluent English he learned as a sub-tropical agriculture student, Mr Schneider told The Independent that the chance rendezvous between Rommel, aka Desert Fox, and a British reconnaissance unit was one of two incidents that summed up both the humanity and the ruthlessness of the battle for North Africa. Mr Schneider, now 86, said: "The common soldiers did not act out of hate. When we met the English soldiers in the desert that time, we were far, far from anywhere. There was no reason to shoot. We swapped cigarettes and I talked with the English officers. But there were also times when we were shocked by the enemy.

"Rommel enjoyed touring the front lines. We would go deep into the desert to explore. One time we came across 14 German soldiers who seemed asleep. When we got closer we saw each had his throat cut. Nearby we found a kukri – the knife of the British Gurkha soldiers. I still have that knife." The extent to which the ferocity of a war fought by young men has been replaced by comradeship among former enemies was underlined this weekend when Mr Schneider met five former Desert Rats, including an ambulance driver who accidentally drove into a German tank position while it was being inspected by Rommel and was promptly sent back to his lines by the field marshal with Mr Schneider at his side.

"We are now friends, very good friends," he said. "I was once a German soldier and they were English soldiers but now we find it difficult to understand why we had to fight against each other. Rommel was always first a soldier. We did not forget that we were fighting fellow human beings." Mr Schneider said: "I was one of Rommel's drivers. I was chosen because I knew English and could operate their equipment. I also had a good memory for landscapes, which was important in the desert.

Mr Schneider said: "When the propaganda photographs were taken of our unit, they would drape Swastika flags over the vehicles. When the cameramen went away, Rommel would order the Swastikas to be taken away. He didn't like Nazi insignia and took it off. He said, 'I am a German soldier'."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/rudolf-schneider-i-was-rommels-driver-1706924.html

 

[Gary Mitchell]

That was very interesting. Thanks for the links.

 

[Nardpuncher]

Thanks for that.

 

[Canadave]

There was also a letter from a Canadian soldier that was recently discovered, which revealed that the truces continued to happen after 1914, despite not appearing in the official record.

The letter is all the more poignant because the young Ontario soldier who wrote it -- 23-year-old Pte. Ronald MacKinnon -- was killed in the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917, a bloody but successful Canadian charge up a strategic height of land in the French countryside.

A few months earlier, MacKinnon had written to his sister in Toronto about a remarkable event on Dec. 25, 1916, when German and Canadian soldiers reached across the battle lines to share Christmas greetings and trade presents.

"Here we are again as the song says," MacKinnon wrote. "I had quite a good Xmas considering I was in the front line. Xmas eve was pretty stiff, sentry-go up to the hips in mud of course. ... We had a truce on Xmas Day and our German friends were quite friendly. They came over to see us and we traded bully beef for cigars."

The passage ends with MacKinnon noting that, "Xmas was 'tray bon,' which means very good."

Source

 

[jmc247]

There was also a letter from a Canadian soldier that was recently discovered, which revealed that the truces continued to happen after 1914, despite not appearing in the official record.

Thanks for bringing that over.

It has taken a long time for Hollywood and mass perception to see WW1 German soldiers as more than 'killers' and 'the enemy'. There was numerous propaganda stories in the French/British press during the war of German soldiers parading around towns with babies on their bayonets. Mass opinions of the ordinary soldiers have changed, but it took a long time.

Its likely going to take alot longer before the same happens to WW2 German soldiers because of the Final Solution and ignorance among the masses of who carried it out and how German society and its major institutions operated before and during WW2. Its still 'ok' to show ordinary German soldiers be tortured and even scalped in a major Hollywood film and for it to be passed off as a good thing because they are 'Nazi's'. Never mind the fact the Wehrmacht was made up of mostly conscripts, the Nazi's mainly used the SS and Waffen SS to enact their "Final Solution" and unlike the armies of most other totalitarian regimes (like Saddam's) the officers and generals of the Wehrmacht weren't required to be members of 'the leader's' party.

The major lesson that people should learn from stories like the ones above is that armies no matter what their side are made up of ordinary people with their positive attributes and their flaws.

 

[Canadave]

^ That's one of the reasons why I love Das Boot, as the crew of U-96 are all just normal Germans. One's a devout Nazi, but most of them are just men serving their country.

 

[jmc247]

^ That's one of the reasons why I love Das Boot, as the crew of U-96 are all just normal Germans. One's a devout Nazi, but most of them are just men serving their country.

That was a really good war film. I found there were other really good films from the German perspective during the Cold War like Cross of Iron and The Desert Fox. However, these films were in no small part motivated by a desire to rehabilitate Germany in the eyes of the world during the Cold War as the West German Army was our frontline ally to keep Europe from falling to the USSR.

Once the Cold War ended and the USSR fell the motivation to create balanced films about WW2 and the people who fought it decreased greatly as Germany was no longer a frontline ally against our number one enemy in the world. Its sad how much of history is written and re-written because of political motivations. I guarantee if WW3 started soon after WW2 ended and Operation Unthinkable went into effect it would have meant a much much quicker rehabilitation of the German people and their army by the mass media and Hollywood.

Either a Soviet attack on the Anglo-American allies or Operation Unthinkable would been alot more likely to occur had Rommel managed to negotiate the surrender of all German Army divisions in the East which he was trying to do before his car was hit in an allied air attack 1944. He was planning it so that Germany was taken over by people he respected like the British and Americans not the Red Army. If the German surrender happened it would have given the U.S. and UK a straight shot to Berlin in the summer of 1944 as well as dozens of German divisions to potentally use in a second war against Stalin.

Operation Unthinkable was a British plan to attack the Soviet Union. The creation of the plan was ordered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1945 and developed by the British Armed Forces' Joint Planning Staff at the end of World War II in Europe

The plan was taken by the British Chiefs of Staff Committee as militarily unfeasible due to a greater than two-to-one superiority of Soviet land forces in Europe and the Middle East, where the conflict was projected to take place. The majority of any offensive operation would have been undertaken by American and British forces, as well as Polish forces and up to 100,000 surrendered German Wehrmacht soldiers.

Any quick success would be due to surprise alone. If a quick success could not be obtained before the onset of winter, the assessment was that the Allies would be committed to a total war which would be protracted. In the report of 22 May 1945, an offensive operation was deemed "hazardous".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable

Germans would have also likely developed a resistance mythology (like Italians and the French) had events happened differently as the counterfactual I listed above which would have also meant that subsequent generations of Germans wouldn't have developed a hatred of Germany's WW2 era soldiers.

 

[Klingon Empire]

These stories bring a warming to my heart. I love to hear that even sworn enemies, told to fight to the death, can come together and enjoy Christmas.

 

[Canadave]

^ I don't mean anything personal by this, but I have to laugh when I see that sentiment coming from someone whose username is Klingon Empire.

 

[Klingon Empire]

^ I don't mean anything personal by this, but I have to laugh when I see that sentiment coming from someone whose username is Klingon Empire.

I KNOW RIGHT LOL.

 

[jmc247]

^ I don't mean anything personal by this, but I have to laugh when I see that sentiment coming from someone whose username is Klingon Empire.

I KNOW RIGHT LOL.

I now have the image in my head of Klingon, Romulan, and Cardassian singing Silent Night.

 

[sojourner]

^In the original Klingon?

 

[JRS]

There is a very good movie about the Christmas truce called Joyeux Noel:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/

 

[sojourner]

I always liked how it was portrayed in Paul McCartney's "Pipes of Peace" video.
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ErrZ-ipoE[/yt]

 

[Captain Ice]

This has been covered in song as well. Look up the lyrics to Belleau Wood by Garth Brooks.

 

[marillion]

^In the original Klingon?

+1

 

[Zulu Romeo]

This has been covered in song as well. Look up the lyrics to Belleau Wood by Garth Brooks.

This song too:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7MwXniOD44[/yt]

 

[Gaith]

There is a very good movie about the Christmas truce called Joyeux Noel:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/

Aye; I liked it too. Three languages, sharing nearly equal screen time.