What was the Christmas Truce of 1914?

On Christmas Eve, 1914, thousands of guns across the Western Front fell silent. In the haunting silence of the trenches, the sounds of Christmas carols, sung in French, German and English rose through the darkness. As Christmas Day dawned the next morning, some German soldiers ventured from their trenches, hands raised, calling out ‘Merry Christmas’ to their enemies. The allies remained suspicious, wary this may be a trick. But when they noticed the Germans were unarmed, they too climbed from their positions and met in No-Man’s Land.

The Germans had managed to craft some Christmas trees, having received some from Kaiser Wilhelm II, or having lopped off the tops of fir trees, and lighting them with candles. Exchanging gifts of pudding, cigarettes or alcohol, a soldier even found a football and a good-natured, if not rather chaotic, game was played.

Some soldiers compared photos of their wives or families, sometimes even exchanging addresses for correspondence after the war.

There was a sense of disbelief that pervaded the men, surprised and excited by the peace, with many realising just how remarkable and historic this was. 

For some, however, it became a more sombre task: retrieving bodies or fixing their trenches.

The idea of a Christmas Truce had been something floated by Pope Benedict XV early on in the war, but was denied, as the high commands of the nations involved believed the logistics to be too difficult to negotiate, or a peace a rather uninteresting prospect.

This didn’t stop the soldiers on the front lines from doing it themselves. They adopted a kind of live-and-let-live policy, in which they would not fire unless fire upon, and this allowed for the creation of the ad-hoc ceasefire we now call the Christmas Truce.

This didn’t last forever. In some places, they managed to make it last until New Year’s, but for most, hostilities resumed in the days following Christmas. Those soldiers who had, the day before, been exchanging gifts or laughing with one another, or making friends, were back to killing, just as soon as Christmas was over.

While there were no punishments or court-martials for the soldiers involved in the Christmas Truce, the commanders quickly took action to prevent any kind of similar Truce happening again. Noticing the ill-effect events like these had on soldier’s morale, they quashed an attempt to revive the truce in 1915, and there were no subsequent widespread cease-fires on the Western Front until the armistice in November 1918.