Ark of the Lost Angels

Depiction of the Christmas Truce from the January 9th 1915 edition of The Illustrated London News _{(Credit: Wikimedia Commons)}

In 1914, the soldiers on the Western Front of World War I laid down their arms and met in No Man’s Land.

During the dog days of summer in 1914, millions of boys across Europe marched off to the slaughterhouse, beaming with pride to fight for their nations and take part in their generation’s great adventure, excited at the prospect of their baptism by fire to manhood, and under the impression that they would be home in time to celebrate the holidays with their families.

“The war will be over by Christmas.”

The prevailing attitudes would soon make way for the cruel realities of warfare in the 20^th century. As weeks dragged into months, and positions became entrenched, the technological advances of the 20^th century would cause The Great War to outstrip all past conflicts. Entire platoons were blown to bits in their trenches and foxholes by artillery barrages which would roll continuous thunder for days. Entire companies would charge across a no-man’s land pockmarked with craters in the mud mixed with putrefying human remains only to be cut down by machine gun positions at the enemy trenches. Chemical weapons would scorch lungs and suffocate those unlucky to be caught within the clouds of poison spread with reckless abandon over the front. Every advance cost hundreds of lives for a scant few meters of ground. The soldiers lived amongst rats carrying disease, feasting on the corpses. They endured biting, bitter colds over the wintertime followed by sweltering, scorching summers. There were never enough supplies nor soldiers.

Three more Christmases would pass before the armistice was declared in November of 1918, and the war would not officially end with the Treaty of Versailles until the following summer. Many of those boys would not live to see the end of the war. The ones who would return home as profoundly different men. Broken men. World War I set the stage for its sequel which would start twenty years later which would finish reshaping the world order and cement the new great powers for the next century.

In 1914, however, such concerns were far off from the minds or awareness of the boys in the trenches. On that first Christmas Day of the war, a heartwarming truce would occur.

Prelude to Conflict

Popular wisdom states that Gavrilo Princip fired the first shot of the War to End All Wars. The assassination of Astro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in June 1914 is widely cited as the inciting incident for The Great War. In actuality, Franz Ferdinand’s assassination was the spark which lit a tinderbox already primed for ignition. Had the events of that day in Sarajevo happened differently, some other inciting incident would have come along to push the nations in Europe already primed for war over the edge.

The origins of World War I lie in the complex games the European powers were playing against each other in the decades leading up to the conflict. Europe hadn’t seen major conflicts since the end of the Napoleonic Wars about a century prior. Since then, more minor conflicts had broken out between some nations, but the great powers of Europe mostly competed with each other in other ways, especially with their colonies overseas.

Decades of political maneuvering had left all of the powers with a series of alliances with each other, and hostile feelings towards each other. Germany was a powerful nation after its unification in 1871 and was a threat to the power of the British Empire and France. Tsarist Russia was on its decline, but still held an immense amount of influence. Everyone knew everyone else, and everyone hated each other.

British Queen Victoria reigned from the age of 18 when she took the throne in 1837 to her death at 81 in 1901. Being familiar with the state of Europe after the last great wars and the upheaval which followed, Queen Victoria attempted to bring all of the royal houses closer together. She orchestrated a series of marriages between various royal lineages over her years to ensure everyone was related to each other in some fashion. Her logic would be that if all the royal families of Europe were one giant family themselves, their nations would never go to war with each other.

It almost worked.

In the upheaval after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, Britain, Germany, and Russia all attempted to avoid going to war. King George V of Great Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were all cousins, and communicated in the weeks leading up to the official declarations of war attempting to resolve the conflicts before they truly began. They were unsuccessful, and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Germany backed Austria-Hungary, and Russia backed Serbia. Russia also had an alliance with France, meaning France was at war with Germany as well. Germany mobilized troops and decided to reach France through Belgium, who was allied with Great Britain. Britain sided with France and Russia against Austria-Hungary and Germany. Germany would then convince the Ottoman Empire, which threatened some of the British colonial endeavors in the Middle East, to join the war on their side. The Entente Cordiale or the Allies made up of Great Britain, France, Russia, and their associated nations faced off against the Central Powers, consisting of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire along with their associated nations. The United States would join the Allies in 1917, and only arrive in Europe in large numbers by the spring of 1918.

Despite the myriad of reasons for why the War to End All Wars ignited, the simple fact remains that the great powers of Europe mobilized their armies and sent them on a collision course toward each other. An entire generation would be sacrificed in the name of proving which empire was superior. In the aftermath of the war, most of those empires would fall. The world would go towards conflict again by the late 1930s as the men who survived the first war threw their sons into the second.

But for a brief moment in 1914, there was a spot of hope.

Peace on Christmas Day

It was not universal, nor was it planned, but across the Western Front, the soldiers of Great Britain and Germany both laid down their arms in many sectors to observe Christmas Day in 1914. The Christmas Truce is one of the most enduring stories from the war.  

The story goes that late on Christmas Eve, British soldiers heard German soldiers singing Christmas carols and saw them decorating a Christmas tree and a cessation of hostilities began. The following day, the British soldiers and the German soldiers left their trenches to meet with each other. In some sectors, it was merely a quiet moment for both sides to recover their dead and repair their trenches. In other areas of the front, the British and Germans were friendlier. They would trade items such as buttons and socks, or join together in Christmas celebrations, or even play impromptu games of soccer.

The unique circumstances of the Christmas Truce of 1914 were caused by a few factors. In 1914, the British had seen far fewer casualties and had not engaged in heavy fighting. This also meant fewer German casualties to British soldiers, which meant there was less animosity on both sides. The heaviest fighting was primarily in the French sectors, which led to the ceasefires that did break out being less joyous affairs.

The bloodiest battles of the war would be yet to occur as well. Trench warfare had begun in earnest, but the major offensives which would categorize the horrors of trench warfare were yet to be seen. The battles in 1914 were less costly on both manpower and mental stability than the fiercer fighting which would occur later in the war at places such as Verdun and the Somme, both occurring in 1916 and being brutal campaigns which stretched across several months. In 1914, peacetime was still in the minds of most of the soldiers on both sides, and coming together to celebrate a common holiday was a way to retain that connection with a more innocent time.

Despite no major ceasefires occurring again on Christmas Day during the remainder of the war, there were still Christmas celebrations which took place by all parties involved. What made the Christmas truce so remarkable was its serendipity. In its aftermath, the war would take the turn towards even greater darkness which gave it its horrific reputation. Officers were given orders to ensure another truce did not happen, and certain steps such as constant artillery barrages in the days leading up to Christmas were ordered to keep enemy morale low and ensure there was much more animosity than in the opening months of the war. By 1915, the fighting had grown so brutal that most of the parties involved would have been reluctant to lay down their arms and fraternize with each other anyways.

While smaller truces would be reported throughout the war for a few hours to retrieve the wounded stuck in no man’s land or to recover and bury the dead, the soldiers on both sides would not meet again with such friendliness until after the war. There did exist the policy of “live and let live” which was a series of unofficial understandings which varied from unit to unit with their counterparts on the other side, to not fire on each other between certain hours or not shoot at medical personnel or certain logistical personnel.

The Christmas Truce became a bright spot in an otherwise horrific war.\

The Years Afterward

In many ways, the Christmas Truce was more of an aberration than a testament to some genuine wave of peace-seeking. The world prepared for more conflict. The great empires of Europe would all fall by the time World War II began, with the exception of the British. The German Empire would be dismantled by the Treaty of Versailles and turned into a Republic which would then be overtaken by the National Socialist Party led by Adolf Hitler. The Ottoman Empire disintegrated with Turkey becoming an independent and modern nation, while much of the rest of the former empire’s territory becoming part of the British Empire until after World War II, when they were given their independence. Russia pulled out of the war early due to its revolutions in 1917. The February revolution deposed the Tsar for a provisional government, and then in October when the Bolsheviks took power, igniting a civil war which would end in 1922 with the Bolsheviks again victorious and the territory of the Russian Empire becoming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soviet Union would grow its territory after World War II through occupation of territory taken during its counter offensive against Nazi Germany.

World War II was fought very differently and would set the stage for fiercer conflicts to come. Major ceasefires and cessations of hostilities on holidays would never be the norm again, as exemplified by the Siege of Bastogne, where American forces were trapped by the Germans outside the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. Between December 20^th and 26^th in 1944, American forces fought in the brutal cold and difficult terrain of the Ardennes forest to hold the Germans back. Similarly, the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam saw North Vietnamese forces would launch a surprise attack on several locations across South Vietnam during the agreed-upon ceasefire for the Tet holiday. More recently, Russia’s attempt at a ceasefire during Christmas Day 2023 was roundly rejected by Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion. (The Russian Orthodox calendar celebrates Christmas Day on January 7^th. The disparity is due to the Russian Empire using the older Julian Calendar which was about two weeks behind the Gregorian Calendar which serves as the basis of the modern western world. Many Ukrainians have begun celebrating Christmas on December 25^th with the rest of the world as a way to further distance themselves from Russia.)  

The legacy of the Christmas Truce can be seen today. It’s still spoken of as a legendary moment in an infamous war, where two opposing sides which fought so brutally were able to set aside the fires of war for a moment and come together in a moment of brotherhood. To celebrate a common holiday and display humanity towards an enemy shows the enduring spirit of humanity and the desire to come together in peace and brotherhood.

It is important to remember this in conflict zones around the world where people know no peace. Where war is constant, and suffering is unavoidable. May there be a day when there never needs to be a ceasefire on Christmas or Easter, on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana, on Eid al-Fitr or Eid al-Adha, on any culture’s celebration of their New Year or a country’s independence day because there is no war ever again.

May we take the spirit of the Christmas Truce and build a world where blood never has to be shed again, so that children will never know the horrors of their fathers marching off to give their lives in service of petty squabbles and pointless hatred.