The Christmas Truce of WWI—A Moment of Great Disobedience

On Christmas Eve of 1914—a hundred years ago this month and in the midst of brutal trench warfare—a moment of peace broke out on the Western Front. It was a great moment of disobedience.

Cold, weary and homesick 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 their “enemy”. They had all hoped desperately that this miserable trench war would end soon but now knew they would not be home for Christmas like they had naively believed (and had been led to believe by the press). It was a moment of sudden clarity and tender mercy by those who also knew that they would likely never go home.

It was five months after the Great War had broken out; a war fated to last another four brutal years, in which fifteen million civilian and military men and women would be killed. Considered one of the deadliest conflicts in history, WWI had significant global effects, effects that still ripple through it to this day. Consequences include the Bolshevik Revolution, the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, development of the atom bomb, the Cold War and the collapse of European colonialism.  

As many as 100,000 of the million troops (10%), stationed along the 500 mile Western Front in World War I, mutually and spontaneously stopped fighting for at least 24 to 36 hours (from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day). Isolated instances of local truces occurred as early as December 11, and continued sporadically until New Year’s Day and into early January 1915.

As Christmas neared, the soldiers on both sides of the trenches “sensed the stupidity of killing someone that was just like them and who had never done them any harm,” writes Gary G. Kohls of Global Research. “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.” They disobeyed their orders that forbade them to lay down their weapons and fraternize with the enemy: an enemy—the soldier in the trench across from them—who in some ways more shared their lot than their own officers and politicians.

On Christmas Eve 1914, German troops ceased fire in the region of Ypres, Belgium and Saint-Yvon. They decorated the area around their trenches, just 30 to 300 yards from the British, French, or Belgian trenches. The Germans decorated Christmas trees and sang Christmas carols. The British responded with carols of their own. The two sides then shouted Christmas greetings to each other. Eventually, soldiers ventured out of their trenches into No Man's Land; they shook hands with their “enemy”, shared smokes, food and wine and sang with each other. Souvenirs such as buttons and hats were exchanged. The artillery in the region fell silent. Joint services were held. In many places along the front, the truce lasted through Christmas night, continuing until New Year’s Day.

Troops from all sides took advantage to bury their dead, lying all over the battlefields; there were even reports of joint burial services and of soccer games played between the Germans and British.

Despite general’s strict orders against any kind of fraternization with the enemy, at least 115 fighting units among British, German, French and Belgian soldiers participated in the spontaneous truce.

Future nature writer Henry Williamson, then a nineteen-year-old private in the London Rifle Brigade, wrote to his mother on Boxing Day:

"Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a 'dug-out' (wet) with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Haha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh dear, no! From a German soldier. Yes a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday the British & Germans met & shook hands in the Ground between the trenches, & exchanged souvenirs, & shook hands. Yes, all day Xmas day, & as I write. Marvelous, isn't it?"

German artillery officer Mr Rickner described celebrating with French soldiers.

“I remember very well Christmas, I remember the Christmas Day when the German and the French soldiers left their trenches, went to the barbed wire between them with champagne and cigarettes in their hands and had feelings of fraternization and shouted they wanted to finish the war …”

The Christmas Truce of 1914 came close to ending the futile and brutal trench war; but it didn’t…

Eco-psychologists and cultural historians argue that human archetypes rooted in mutual respect, empathy, and cooperation are crucial to our species survival and evolution.

Around 5,500 years ago, small Neolithic villages burgeoned into larger urban “civilizations,” and a new organizational idea emerged, says Bruce Wilson of Popular Resistance:

“What cultural historian Lewis Mumford calls a megamachine, comprised totally of human parts forced to work together to perform tasks on a colossal scale never before imagined. Civilization saw the creation of bureaucracies directed by a power complex of an authority figure (a king) with scribes and messengers, which organized labor machines (masses of workers) to construct pyramids, irrigation systems, and huge grain storage systems among other structures, all enforced by a military. Its features were centralization of power, separation of people into classes, lifetime division of forced labor and slavery, arbitrary inequality of wealth and privilege, and military power and war… We have been stuck for three hundred generations in a model requiring massive obedience to large vertical power complexes.”

Etienne de la Boetie (1553), founder of modern philosophy in France, tells us that massive civil obedience is required to enable vertical authority structures to prevail, whether in the form of monarchial succession, dictatorship, or democratic selections. Autonomous freedom once enjoyed by peoples in pre-civilization tribal groups have given way to the controlling ideologies of authority structures. These de la Boetie described as oppressive “domination hierarchies” where private property and male subjugation of women prevail, by force if necessary.

The emergence of vertical authority structures, the rule of kings and nobles, ripped people from historical patterns of living in small tribal groups (Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner, 1995). Along with forced stratification, the separation of people from their intimate connections with the earth produced deep insecurity, fear, and trauma to the psyche. Ecopyschologists suggest that such fragmentation led to an ecological unconscious.

The 1914 Christmas Truce was a heroic act of disobedience by men, who—recognizing a common belief and trust—refused their orders to fight each other on Christmas Eve and laid down their arms to “fraternize” with their enemy.

“The 1914 Christmas Truce of one hundred years ago was an extraordinary example of how wars can only continue if soldiers agree to fight,” says Bruce Wilson of Popular Resistance:

“It needs to be honored and celebrated, even if it was only a flash of a moment in time. It represents the potential of human disobedience to insane policies. As German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht proclaimed, General, your tank is a powerful vehicle. It smashes down forests, and crushes a Hundred men. But it has one defect: it needs a driver. If commoners refused en masse to drive the tank of war, the leaders would be left to fight their own battles. They would be brief.”

References:

Lewis Mumford, Lewis. 1967. Myth of the Machine: Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 186.

de la Boetie, Etienne. 1553. The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, trans. Harry Kurz (ca. 1553; Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1997), 46, 58–60; Riane Eisler, The Chalice and the Blade (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 45–58, 104–6.

Roszak, Theodore, Mary E. Gomes, and Allen D. Kanner, (eds.). 1995. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth Healing the Mind. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Ad Astra After Shock: Person of Interest and The Last Summoner

As expected, the Ad Astra Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention was superb. I also enjoyed its new venue—the venue used by Polaris previously: the Sheridan Parkway North on Hwy 7 in Richmond Hill (north of Toronto).

Thanks to Kris Webb and the rest of programming for a terrific job. I participated in several panels, an author’s signing session and I also gave two well-attended workshops. Let’s start with the end first: the last panel I participated in.

The panel was called “Stealth Science Fiction in Person of Interest”, and was the brainchild of Ira Nayman, an avid watcher of the show and a colleague of mine. Unbeknownst to me, the panel I’d been assigned to participate with Ira and another panelist was about a TV show (“Person of Interest”) I’d never seen! I beg pardon; I don’t own a TV or watch it much. In fact, I first learned about one of my soon to become favorite TV shows, Farscape, at a convention such as this one—but not before the show had been long cancelled!

I bumbled in the beginning as realization dawned on me that this was what the panel was about and quietly berated myself for not rereading the short description (which had been sufficiently vague—at least to me).

I finally let the panelists and audience know my limitation when Ira astutely noted that I was being extra reticent (not one of my usual traits in panels). We muddled along, despite my infirmity, and the panel went along admirably—mainly because Ira moderated with great astuteness and audience members participated enthusiastically.

One of the plot points of the show led Ira to share a personality-defining hypothetical dilemma that he’d encountered in another show. Here’s how he described it: if you knew you could save five people by instigating the death of another person, would you do it? Or would you, by your inaction, allow the five to die by not instigating that person’s death? The premise, of course, is that you could tell the future of two divergent actions.

I realized soon after that this is exactly the situation that my main character Vivianne Schoen, the Baroness Von Grunwald, faced in her journey to change the history she’d inadvertently authored (in The Last Summoner). As a medieval time traveler, she was presented with several courses of history and needed to choose her actions carefully in accordance with both short-term and long-term consequences. Faced with the possibility of saving utterly millions of people who were fated to perish in World War I by instigating the death of one man—Kaiser Wilhelm II—Vivianne sets out to do the deed.

Besides her ability to time travel, Vivianne is able to manipulate

Kaiser Wilhelm II

metal through mind-wave energy. Because of this power, she decides to participate in a momentous event in which her power will have a potentially deadly effect. The year is 1889, just a year after Kaiser Wilhelm II was crowned Emperor, and the place is Charlottenburg Race Course in Berlin in this excerpt from The Last Summoner:

VIVIANNE pulled up the collar and hood of her fur coat to ward off the November chill as she walked next to Jurgen von Eisenreich in Berlin’s Charlottenburg Race Course. The coat barely kept the winter wind from cutting through her cream- colored evening gown. Fastened at the back, it had no bustle and signaled the upcoming style. They were here to watch Europe’s latest touring attraction from America: Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Steering her by the elbow, von Eisenreich guided her up the rafter stairs toward the Royal Box, where the new Emperor was already seated with his retinue of several statesmen, including his aides-de-camp, and two imperial guards. Vivianne recognized the odious and obsequious Count Alfred von Waldersee, seated beside the Emperor. Twenty-seven years the Kaiser’s senior, the Count was a power-mongering anti-Semite, who would prove to mold the weak-minded Crown Prince into the bigoted warlord Kaiser Wilhelm II was becoming.

Vivianne stole a long glance to the Reich’s young ruler. It had been just a year since the Crown Prince had ascended to the imperial thrown and he had already stirred up trouble with his insulting behavior of his mother, the dowager Empress, and his uncompassionate handling of his father’s funeral; then his shabby treatment of England’s Queen and her son, the Prince of Wales.

Vivianne furtively studied the dashing thirty-year old ruler with deep interest. Dressed impeccably in uniform, he was rakishly handsome, she decided, with sharp intelligent eyes, a long aristocratic nose and well-waxed handle-bar mustache. She found herself staring at his withered left arm, which he rested on his lap. Though she could not make it out, it was a good six inches shorter than the other arm and partially lifeless. He’d been a breech birth and both he and his mother were lucky to be alive.

Vivianne reflected on that eventful day when she’d botched her attempt to save the last Emperor of Germany from an unnatural birth. While Oskar had been instantly killed, the doctor had survived the carriage accident with only a severe concussion; he’d still only managed to get to Unter den Linden by early afternoon, having lain unconscious and unattended for most of the morning then having awoken at Humboldt Hospital where he’d ironically been scheduled to speak that day and had then foolishly insisted on tending to Vivianne first, who’d suffered a nasty head wound that she hadn’t even been aware of receiving.

The Emperor—like Vivianne—was here, in the District of Charlottenburg in West Berlin, to see the show’s star attraction, Annie Oakley, who acquired world fame for her skills with a Colt .45. The young sharpshooter had been invited by the Kaiser for a private performance for the Union-Club. Vivianne found her breaths escalate at the thought of what the impetuous Kaiser was about to do; and what she intended to do, as a result. Was it an ironic twist of history that only months ago Adolf Hitler was born this year? Vivianne glanced down at the program in her gloved hand:

Programme of Miss Annie Oakley’s Private Performance Before the Members and Their Friends of the Union-Club, Berlin, on November 13, 1889, at Charlottenburg Race Course.

There followed a list of up to seventeen feats she would perform, beginning with her exhibition of rifle shooting, followed by clay-pigeon sharp-shooting then various feats involving trapping and agility in weapon handling. She was not fated to get very far in her program before calamity of sorts would strike, Vivianne thought cynically.

“He’s alone...without his family?” she asked von Eisenreich. That would make it much easier, she concluded with an inward sigh.

“Dona prefers the comfort and warmth of the royal palace in Potsdam, and the company of her children,” he responded. “She’s not interested in this sort of thing. She has few interests other than church service, I’m afraid.” Then he leaned his head close to hers to confide. “Ten years ago, Wilhelm was smitten by his beautiful cousin, Victoria Elizabeth, the second eldest daughter of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse and the Rhine. But Ella wouldn’t have him.” Then von Eisenreich surveyed Vivianne with an appraising look and smiled enigmatically. “In fact, she looked a lot like you.”

Vivianne swallowed down a sudden discomfort, not sure of its source. Von Eisenreich went on, “Poor Wilhelm became very self-conscious about his arm and thought himself unattractive. That might be why he chose a plain and simple, but pious woman.”

More like narrow-minded, anti-Semitic and bigoted thought. Unfortunately the Empress fit in too well with the Kaiser’s own bigoted views and apparently her nature only served to exacerbate the Kaiser's arrogance and insufferable nature.

Von Eisenreich chuckled to himself. “I heard that the Empress Dona was called unimaginative and prejudiced by the Emperor’s own mother. Dona hates the English. But don’t we all!” He laughed.

Vivianne thought of the cutting words of the gossiping socialite, Daisy, Princess of Pless: for a woman in that position I have never met anyone so devoid of any individual thought or agility of brain and understanding. She is just like a good, quiet, soft cow that has calves and eats grass slowly then lies down and ruminates.

“Apart from that homosexual, Count Philipp von Eulenburg, I’m the Emperor’s only real friend,” von Eisenreich confided rather smugly to Vivianne as they approached the Royal Box.

As if he felt her stealthy glance, the Kaiser turned to look directly at her. After an unabashedly long appraisal, he let his eyes drift away and leaned out, looking past his aide to focus on von Eisenreich. “Ah, Jurgen! So that’s why you dallied and missed my retinue!” The Kaiser yelled in a coarse Potsdam accent, eyes flitting back critically to Vivianne like she was merchandize. He stood up and clapped von Eisenreich hard on the back, clearly happy to see him. Vivianne got a clear view of his short left arm with dark brown mole on his shriveled hand. She noted that he was rather short in stature for a man, about her height or less, with a squat and slightly lopsided neck—owing to his left arm being shorter than the other. Eisenreich drew Vivianne forward.

“This is the Comptesse d’Anjou,” von Eisenreich said.

She pulled down her hood and curtsied slightly, eyes downcast. “I’m honored and humbled, your Imperial Majesty,” she said.

“No doubt you are!” he responded, swiftly tucking his left hand in his pocket. When she raised her eyes to meet his, Vivianne caught the brief instant as his eyes grew wide and deep with hidden intensity.
Jurgen caught it too. “I thought so, also,” he said with amusement to the Emperor. He was, no doubt referring to her likeness to the Princess Ella.

The Kaiser sucked in a breath and straightened with an imperceptible tremble, as if to shake off an old memory. Then he gave Vivianne a cold smile and extended his good hand to her in greeting. She accepted and instantly winced with excruciating pain. He barked out a cruel laugh and said, “The French are, I’m afraid, just like the English when it comes to my German mailed fist!”

Vivianne had heard of his sadistic handshake: he was in the habit of turning his many rings inward prior to clasping one’s hand with a vice-like grip. Somehow, she hadn’t expected him to inflict her with it. Perhaps it was his way of punishing his cousin for not accepting his marriage proposal, she concluded, regretful of her resemblance. The Kaiser hung on to her hand much longer than he needed to, Vivianne decided, squirming and attempting to retract it from his painful grasp. His grip was too strong.

Their eyes locked. And to her frustrated anger, her eyes teared up with the stinging pain through her glove.

In that moment she saw the hurt little boy in that bigoted, arrogant and angry face. She instantly knew that she’d misjudged one of his critical nexuses. Her mission this day might have been prevented. If she’d intersected with his life earlier, and somehow convinced his beloved Ella to accept his proposal, the single-minded but compassionate princess might have softened him, completed him, inspired him to be the great man he could have become instead of the bitter and insecure bully he now was.

Something passed between them and he abruptly let go of her hand with a sudden intake of air. “I beg pardon,” he said, voice softening from that harsh Potsdam accent. “You reminded me of someone I once knew...” In a flush of solicitous emotion, he pulled off her glove to inspect the damage he’d inflicted on her hand. Several red welts had surfaced on the inside of her lower palm where his rings had gouged into her flesh. “Ahh...such dear soft and warm hands...” he cooed in near reverence. “How remarkable...the soft insides of your hands...”

Vivianne slowly pulled her hand away.

They both looked awkward for a moment. Then the Kaiser broke out into a blustery laugh and turned to von Eisenreich.

“So, where’s your good wife, von Eisenreich?”

“Like you, I left her at home with my dear children, where she should be, your Majesty,” von Eisenreich responded cheerfully. “They’re no fun at these sorts of things.”

“Ah, but I wager the Comptesse is,” said the Emperor brashly and took the opportunity to rake her over with appreciative eyes.

Von Eisenreich let loose a conspiratorial laugh, as if to ratify the Kaiser’s innuendo. He then leaned into Vivianne beside him with a chuckle until his shoulder collided into hers. “I brought my lovely companion, the charming Comptesse d’Anjou, to improve my demeanor and make me interesting.”

The Kaiser threw his head back and shouted an open- mouthed laugh of abandon then stomped his foot. “Indeed, she has managed that!” He surveyed Vivianne with critical eyes that flashed with approval. When she’d first been introduced to him, she’d felt the Kaiser’s burning gaze roam over her like the eager hands of a lover. “Good choice,” Wilhelm said.

He’d clearly deduced that she was von Eisenreich’s mistress and Jurgen had as much as confirmed it. The Kaiser had several mistresses of his own and Vivianne had the impression he wouldn’t have minded another.

As Uta had predicted, Vivianne had indeed filled out into what most men commonly considered a woman of striking beauty. And she’d had many years to cultivate it into an irresistible package. She was now over four hundred years old, yet she looked no more than in her early twenties. That arcane quality alone, she knew, was enough to drive men to distraction.

Vivianne had only met von Eisenreich last week at a masked ball and, knowing his weakness for beautiful women, she’d shamelessly flirted with him; within short order she’d seduced his keen interest in her and ensured for herself an invitation to this event.

The Kaiser let his gaze stray to Vivianne as he spoke to von Eisenreich. Then he finally let his eyes rest openly on her with a cool smile. “You speak German very well for a French woman, Comptesse,” he said to her. “I detected no accent when we were first introduced.”

She smiled demurely and didn’t bother to correct him on her German lineage.

Then the show began and their attention was diverted to the ring below. Vivianne’s heart raced when Annie Oakley finally emerged. The diminutive woman stood facing the royal box in a smartly collared buckskin dress, bedecked with glittering metals from contests she’d won, cowboy hat, and holding her Colt .45.

Von Eisenreich leaned his head close to hers. “Chief Sitting Bull gave her the nickname of ‘Little Sure Shot’ because of her dead shot with a pistol, rifle and shotgun. Did you know that she began handling firearms at the tender age of nine to supply her widowed mother with game and eventually paid off the mortgage on her mother’s house.”

Vivianne let her brows rise in impressed surprise. In truth she knew. She knew everything about the American sharp- shooter. At 90 feet Annie could shoot a dime tossed in the air. With the thin edge of a playing card facing her at 90 feet, she could hit the card and puncture it with five or six more shots as it settled to the ground.

Vivianne felt her mouth go dry; she knew what came next.

With a flourishing turn, Annie faced the royal box and announced, “For my final act, I will attempt to shoot the ashes from the cigar of a lady or gentleman in the audience. “Who will volunteer to hold the cigar?” she asked the audience. Vivianne’s heart pounded. She knew that the little sharpshooter from Cincinnati expected no one to volunteer; Annie had simply asked for laughs. Her attentive manager-husband, Frank Butler, always stepped forward and offered himself. Not this time—

Just as laughter bubbled up in the crowd, Kaiser Wilhelm leapt out of the royal box and strutted into the arena to a stunned audience. Laughter turned to gasps as the Kaiser approached the sharpshooter. Annie Oakley visibly stiffened. In horror, Vivianne thought. The two guards scrambled forward from the rafters but the Kaiser gruffly waved them off. Vivianne marveled at Annie’s cool resolve; after handing the cigar to Wilhelm, the performer paced off her usual distance and the Kaiser lit the cigar with flourish.

Several German policemen rushed into the arena in a panicked attempt to preempt the stunt, but the Kaiser brusquely waved them off too. Then he lifted his head and placed the cigar to his mouth in a pose of a statue.

“No,” Annie said. “In your hand, please, Your Majesty,” she instructed. He looked disappointed but did as she’d asked.

Annie raised her Colt and took aim.

Vivianne swallowed the gorge in her throat. This was the moment she’d waited for; the moment for which she’d come. If this volatile and ambitious ruler were removed from the scene, one of the key reasons for World War I would also vanish. An entire world war would likely be averted. She only had to redirect the bullet; it was made of metal, after all. Kill a bully and incriminate and ruin the life of an innocent young woman ... in exchange for over two million lives and the prevention of an age of non-stop violence—

Annie fired.

Nina Munteanu is an ecologist and internationally published author of novels, short stories and essays. She coaches writers and teaches writing at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. For more about Nina’s coaching & workshops visit www.ninamunteanu.me. Visitwww.ninamunteanu.ca for more about her writing.

In Flanders Fields...Lest We Forget (the Tragedy of War)

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago

We lived, saw dawn, felt sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

–John McCrae

Doctor Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John McCrae of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade wrote this poem on May 3, 1915 after the battle at Ypres. The poem was later published in "Punch", December 8, 1915.

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada. This 11th month, 11th day and 11th hour marks the time that the armistice of World War I was signed in 1918. This war that was to end all wars claimed thirty seven million casualties (killing 8.5 million).

World War I is increasingly recognized as the defining event of the twentieth century, "with its total wars, its genocides, its weapons of mass destruction," writes Dennis E. Shwalter, professor of history at Colorado College. "The First World War was a tragic and unnecessary conflict," wrote John Keegan, historian and author of The First World War. "It was nothing less than the greatest error of modern history," wrote Nial Ferguson in The Pity of War.

Could the First World War have been avoided? Could it have been confined to a scale that was not worldwide in its events and its influence? Could it have been shorter by years, with the saving of millions of lives? And could our century's saddest story have had a different ending? These are questions many historians have grappled with: what if England stayed out? What if Sir John French had taken his troops out of the line? What if the Germans won the Marne? What if Falkenhayn had convinced the German chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg, to consider armistice?

Historian, Robert Cowley, in his book, What If? contemplates what even a truncated war would have meant to the twentieth century. What if... what if...

"Without the events of 1914," wrote Cowley, "we would have skipped a more sinister legacy, and one that has permenently scarred out lives: the brutalization the trench warfare, with its mass killings, visited on an entire generation. What men like Adolf Hitler learned in that first Holocaust, they would repeat twenty years later in every corner of Europe...There are times when you can measure the lasting effects of a trauna only by imagining their absence."

So, lest we forget...

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it--Santavana

You may wish to read my previous posts on war and remembering, including one posted on Memorial Day.

Recommended Reading:

Tuchman, Barbara W. 1962. The Guns of August. Ballantine Books.

Cowley, Robert. Ed. 1999. What If? Pan Books

Willmott, H.P. 2003. World War I. DK Publishing. UK