Silent Night
The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce
by Stanley Weintraub World War I was fought largely in trenchs, such that opposing troops were close to each other and died slowly. Further, many German troops had been in Britain before the war and so British and German troops spoke English together and sometimes even knew each other. Fraternization in these situations was very possible. Despite the lack of goodwill between higher ups in the opposing armies, troops could and did fraternize of their own volition. Small impromptu truces sprung up. Many truces were already going on before Christmas of 1914, but across the front, truces sprung up for Christmas. The fighting resumed for different reasons in different places. Some regiments changed places shortly after Christmas such that the regiments facing each other were not the ones who knew each other. Sometimes higher officers visited the troops or threatened repercussions. And sometimes the truce had been fragile to begin with. Whatever the reasons, no such truce was held the following Christmas.
The truces of December 1914 were all seperate truces, although some were influenced by nearby fraternization. Similarly, the tale of their truces is not cohesive, although the stories influence each other. With one chapter devoted to what ifs, Weintraub speculates on what could have happened had peace been made and the fighting stopped. His what ifs follow a course as though no war had been fought, but I contend that if war had been stopped because the armies would not fight, the change in thought due to the armies' refusal to fight would have changed history in and of itself.
Happy reading.
