The Christmas Truce of 1914

The Forgotten Christmas Truce of 1914 and the Unlearned Lessons That Could Have Prevented the Century of War 1914 - 2014

By Gary Kohls
Lew Rockwell.com
December 21, 2014

It was exactly 100 years ago this month when the Christmas Truce
of 1914 occurred, when Christian soldiers on both sides of the
infamous "No Man’s Land of the Western Front" recognized their
common humanity, dropped their guns and fraternized with the
so-called "Enemies" that they had been ordered to kill without
mercy the day before.

The truth of that remarkable event has since been effectively
covered up by state and military authorities (and the embedded
journalists at the time) because they were angered (and
embarrassed) by the breakdown of military discipline.

In the annals of war, such “mutinies” are now unheard of.

The generals and (as well as the saber-rattling, chest-thumping
politicians and war profiteers back home) rapidly developed
strategies to prevent such behavior from happening again.

Christmas Eve of 1914 was only 5 months into World War I, and
the cold, weary, homesick soldiers found themselves not heroes,
as expected, but rather miserable, frightened and disillusioned
wretches living in rat and louse infested trenches.

Most of them had dreamed heroic dreams when they had signed up
to kill and die for King and Country a few months earlier, and hey
had been fully expecting to be home for the holidays.

Lower echelon officers on both sides of No Man’s Land, who were
suffering right along with the troops, allowed a lull in the war, just
for Christmas Eve.

Then they allowed the troops to sing Christmas hymns, and many
of the not-yet hardened soldiers started to recognize the humanity
of the demonized “other” that had been fingered as sub-humans
deserving of death.

And so the merciful spirit of the season came upon them; and they
disobeyed orders that forbade fraternizing with the enemy by laying
down their weapons and mingling with them in the area between the trenches.

Unknown to the higher echelon commanding officers, who were
enjoying good food and drink in their warm bunkers out of the
range of the artillery barrages and machine gun bursts, the grunts
on either side of the battle line suddenly sensed the stupidity of
killing someone that was just like them and who had never done
them any harm.

Many of the men that experienced the moment knew that
something deeply profound had happened: a spiritual experience
of mutual respect and love that epitomized their mutual Christian
upbringing and they refused to fight and kill when the war was
ordered to re-start.

Some soldiers were punished for their disobedience and many of
them had to be replaced with fresh troops that had been in the
reserve trenches the day before (corporal Adolf Hitler was among
the ones who did not experience the front line fraternization.)

The Christmas Truce of 1914 had come close to ending the futile
and ultimately suicidal war that destroyed 4 empires and an entire
generation of young men that had been bamboozled into joining up.

The truce had occurred at various places up and down the triple
parallel lines of trenches that stretched through France for 600
miles from Belgium to Switzerland.

The vast majority of the soldier that experienced the unauthorized
truce did not survive the war.

Many of them had just experienced a bloody battle that had killed
tens of thousands of troops on either side, with essentially no
territory being gained by either side, and they now knew that they
were in for a long war of attrition.

They would not be home for Christmas.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/12/gary-g-kohls/the-christmas-
truce-of-1914