The 1914 Christmas Truces and the Development of Twentieth Century Warfare

Christmas in the Trenches: The 1914 Christmas Truces and the Development of Twentieth Century Warfare History Major Seminar Thesis Jeanie Gordon Professor Laura Beers 27 April 2011 Abstract: History has been fraught with reports of soldiers fraternising with enemy troops during wartime. Soldiers shouted to each other and exchanged vodka during the Crimean War (1853-1856) 1 and allowed the enemy to forage for food unimpeded during the American Civil War 2. This paper will work to determine why the tradition of temporary cease-fires, particularly during the holiday season, ended after the Christmas of 1914. In the nearly one hundred years since this critical date, the truce has captured the imagination of millions of people for its symbolism as the turning point of the war and the positive images it proposes of humanity. Previously, soldiers, officers, journalists, and citizens believed that the war would be over by Christmas. Instead, the continued conflict after the holiday season signalled the end of the warfare of gentlemen and the beginning of modern warfare. The principal aim of this paper is to determine why Christmas 1914 became a symbolic turning point in military history. It will examine diary entries of soldiers, newspaper articles of the time, soldiers’ letters to home, as well as secondary source material to achieve this goal. 1 ‘Incidents of the Crimean War.’ New York Times . April 1883. Accessed 30 November 2010. 2 Ralph Lowell Eckert. John Brown Gordon: Soldier, Southerner, American. (Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge: 1989). Pg. 111. 2 Introduction: Warfare before the twentieth century is characterised by the existence of informal truces between warring troops. War was fought in the open air, facing down the enemy, with swords and relatively weak guns that forced soldiers to fight within fairly close proximity to one another. Reports from the Crimean War describe British, French, and Russian soldiers gathered around campfires and exchanging vodka, and during the American Civil War, the two sides occasionally met to trade tobacco, coffee, and newspapers. Meanwhile Sundays during the Boer Wars were set aside to be a day of peace, and troops would play football and cricket.3 According to historians Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, authors of Christmas Truce , a collection of primary source documents from the Christmas Truce, ‘it is rare for a conflict at close quarters to continue very long without some generous gesture between enemies or an upsurge of the “live and let live” spirit.’ 4 As World War I progressed, however, these feelings of closeness and connections between men degraded as trench warfare developed as the main mechanism of the day. The trenches were barely large enough to hold a man standing upright and were often bogged down by rain and the resultant mud. Any body part seen above the edge of the trench was immediately used as target practice for the opposing soldiers, so men spent much of their time crouched down low over their guns, preparing for the sudden onslaught of fire that characterised much of the fighting. 5 The trench lifestyle was exacerbated by the development of new technologies, including the use of gases and tanks. These new fighting machines made war that much more dangerous 3 Linden Bradfield Webster. ‘Linden Bradfield Webster’s Reminisces of the Siege of Mafeking.’ Journal of Military History . Vol. 1 No. 7. 1970. 4 Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton. Christmas Truce. (New York, Leo Cooper: 1984). Introduction, xi. 5 Bruce Bairnsfather. Bullets and Billets . (New York, The Knickerbocker Press: 1917). 76. 3 and immediate. Just fifty years before, getting shot was not a death sentence, and soldiers were actually more likely to die from the resultant wound getting infected than from the shot itself. During World War I, the development of improved rifles and the growth of the machine gun, powerful tanks, and poison gases meant the threat of death became increasingly personal and immediate. The attitudes in the trenches started trending towards the kill-or-be-killed mantra that heretofore had only been considered in hand-to-hand combat. As men became more and more engaged with trench life, weaponry became more advanced, and as the war dragged on, most feelings of sympathy or commonality between soldiers disappeared. Men were now literally fighting for their lives, and could see no benefit in being kind to the men working so vehemently to kill them. Before the war completely evolved into the beginning of what is now known as modern (or total) warfare, however, there was one last day of hope and promise. Each of the soldiers examined, and a number of historians referenced, asserted that Christmas 1914 had the potential to end the war. 6 Men had already engaged in a popular mass uprising to celebrate the holiday the best way they could while on the front. It would, some suggest, have taken a small spark to cause the further uprising that would end the war. Bruce Bairnsfather, a Lieutenant with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, in his book on the First World War, recalls imagining that on such a day as Christmas, when the weather finally took a turn for the better, the war could be over. According to Bairnsfather, ‘it was just the sort of day for Peace to be declared.’7 Other accounts of the truce indicate the feeling expressed by Bairnsfather was reflected up and down the Western Front. However, this war-ending catalyst never came, and the war quickly reverted to the deadly nature that came to be synonymous with the Great War. 6 Stanley Weintraub. ‘The Christmas Truce.’ In Cowley, Robert. The Great War . (New York: Random House, 2003). 64. 7 Bairnsfather, 74. 4 The Christmas truces of 1914 are a unique piece of history. Few events or time periods have been identified as turning points for the progression of society, the economy, or war. The truces could have led to a large-scale uprising to end the war, or they could have ended with the return to war. If the war ended in 1914, World War II would not have developed out of the Versailles Treaty and the resultant economic and social discontent in Germany, and millions of lives may have been saved. Additionally, rapid advances in war technology during World War I and World War I would not have been made, and modern technology may snot have yet reached its current levels. The lost generation of soldiers who did not come home would still be alive, and European societies would not have had to deal with reconstruction and the economic challenges it contained. On a more speculative level, if World War I never gave rise to World War II, globalisation may have progressed at a slower rate, and the atomic bomb may not have caused panic through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The Russian Revolution may have been stalled, and the Cold War may not have taken over the second half of the twentieth century. However, for reasons to be discussed in this paper, the war resumed, and the future of modern warfare was resumed and the twentieth century continued on its destructive path. Interestingly, for an event that could have had massive implications for the progression of warfare and modern society, there is little scholarship directly examining the implications of the Christmas truces on the Western Front of 1914. For most people, the truces are simply a lovely story of peace and goodwill between men during a dark and dangerous time. In truth, however, they are much more than nice stories to describe in children’s books, or to create movies and songs about.8 The truces represent a turning point in history, when the world had the option to 8 The two best known children’s books for the subject are Truce by Jim Murphy, published in 2009, and Christmas in the Trenches written by John McCutcheon and illustrated by Henri Sorenson in 2006. Joyeux Noel , released in 2005 and starring Diane Kruger is a well known movie on the subject, and the well-known Belleau Wood by Garth Brooks is the best known song. 5 continue the way it had been progressing under Napoleon and Bismarck in the nineteenth century, in gentlemen’s warfare and colonialism, or change directions and pave the way for world leaders such as Stalin, Kennedy, Mao Zedong, and Nixon. The significance of studying the reasons and mechanisms behind the Christmas truces cannot be understated when working to realise how wars would develop in the future. Understanding both the mechanics of the developing conflict and the mindsets of the soldiers on the front lines during the holidays and truces, can help future historians develop research on the expansion of warfare, and how the individual soldiers played a role in that progression. It could possibly help historians gain a different perspective on the mindset of modern day soldiers as they head to war. The research can also, of course, provide more background to people working to keep the memory of the truce alive for future generations, in the hope that, even if war will likely never return to the time of chivalry, the concept of goodwill towards all men will be maintained in warfare and the general public. 6 Historiography: World War I is one of the most studied events in history. Consequently, the first Christmas during the war is one of the most frequently examined holidays; it is an anomaly in an otherwise brutal war. Yet it was not an irregularity for wartime at all. Instead, there have been recorded incidents of spontaneous, temporary ceasefires throughout military history. Before World War I, soldiers were occasionally found sitting across the campfire from each other and sharing rations.

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