Heartwarming as it sounds, it is as true as it gets. On December 7, 1914, Pope Benedict XV suggested to cease-fire for one day, but was obviously declined. However, what happened 18 days later stunned the entire world.
On an early December morning, some German soldiers who had just woken up, walked towards the Allied Boundaries and straight into "No Man's Land". The English, at first shaken by the arrival of the soldiers, especially when they had just woken up, saw that they were unarmed and shouting[in their native language] "Merry Christmas". When they realized his actions, everything became legendary as they sing and dance with each other, Germans and English alike. Both enjoyed a game of football as well as drinking and laughing till the next morning. It is not a guarantee that everybody felt the same love for each other, some soldiers took the opportunity to go back and properly buried the fallen soldiers
This moment would be the first and last chivalry of its kind. Most military now disregards this moment and continued to fight in order to discipline the others. To be honest, if more events like this happened, what would be our relationship with other countries? It makes you wonder why something so simple cannot be attained now because of greed, hatred, and even jealousy.
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-i/christmas-truce-of-1914
Chi I really like your post about the Christmas truce and your reflection at the end about how it would be nice if this could be still seen in the military today if we were respectful and not Jealous. I would like to build on to this idea to add that I think that Christmas Truce provides a solution to the problem of war. In my opinion, I think that when people are left to themselves they are kind and less inclined to fight. The leaders of nations are the ones that are greedy and cause conflict by desiring more land, for example the cause of WWI was imperialism, and reasons that don't directly involve most individuals. The Christmas Day Truce was a moment when the soldiers could ignore their nation's demands and behave like humans and treat their enemy as humans. This is best shown in a quote by Lieutenant Geoffrey Heinekey who said "The Germans then beckoned to us and a lot of us went over and talked to them and they helped us to bury our dead. This lasted the whole morning and I talked to several of them and I must say they seemed extraordinarily fine men. . . . It seemed too ironical for words. There, the night before we had been having a terrific battle and the morning after, there we were smoking their cigarettes and they smoking ours." This shows that if control the soldiers would have been nice to each other but they were told to fight by their country.
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was very interesting and really surprised me. The last thing you would expect during a war is two sides celebrating Christmas together. This just goes to show how exhausted these soldiers were from fighting. The Germans especially suffered because they were constantly on defense and had to be alert at all times. In addition, they had to deal with horrible living conditions in the trenches. BBC describes the German soldiers' living conditions as traumatizing and filthy including details such as the constant smell of feces and dead bodies and the rats that roamed around.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwone/german_experience_01.shtml
Too bad that both sides could celebrate Christmas, but not be true Christians and end the war. That would have been more noble. A temporary break is surprising and good will gesture, but short lived. Too bad they all could not defy their countries government and all walk away from war. They all cannot be arrested for disobeying........just a thought.
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