Product Description

On Christmas Eve in the early years of World War I, men on both sides left their trenches, laid down their arms and joined in a spontaneous celebration. For a brief time the war stopped, the enemies met in no-man's land and buried their dead, exchanged gifts and even played football together. The stories of men who were there illuminate the fragile truce, and highlight the happenings that occured as the truce spread. It also tells of the reluctant truth, that they had to re-start one of history's most bloody wars.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #800533 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 249 pages

Review
The most famous legend about the First World War must be that of the 1914 Christmas truce, when soldiers from both sides of the trenches laid down their arms and played football in No Man's Land. Astonishingly, the story is quite true, and in this fascinating and well-researched account Weintraub reveals how the ceasefire very nearly became a permanent halt in the fighting on the Western Front. So why did this almost unnatural event take place? By December 1914 both sides had realized the war would not be over by Christmas. German troops began to ship small trees up to the front, sang carols such as 'Silent Night' and encouraged the 'Tommies' in the trenches opposite them to join in. Such contact across the desolate, corpse-covered No Man's Land was met initially with suspicion. However, as some Germans began to leave their trenches, the British cautiously responded. At first the contact was limited, depending on the attitude of the officers present. The British realized they had much in common with their enemy; neither side wanted to be there and they all missed home. There were discussions on the retrieval of bodies that lay everywhere. Local ceasefire agreements allowed both sides to remove and bury their dead, with the understanding that rifles were to be left in the trenches. Incredibly, presents were exchanged between men of all ranks; photographs were taken and even home addresses swapped. Games of football were played and some soldiers even visited the trenches opposite them as guests of honour at meals. Eventually, as the news filtered up to the high-level staff on both sides, carefully worded orders were dispatched to remind officers at the Front that the offensive (sic) spirit should be maintained. In the end troops were rotated out of 'quiet' sectors in order to break down the 'live and let live' mentality that had crept into the trenches. Even then, as troops left they would warn their counterparts they were departing, and advise them to keep their heads down. Meanwhile, news of the fraternization was suppressed as much as possible; the British newspapers eventually got hold of the story but in Germany photographs largely remained unpublished until the end of the war. The final chapter is an intriguing one - a 'what if' analysis of how things might have been different had a permanent truce been put in place in early 1915. Apart from anything else, a Germany not ravaged by four years of war and the Treaty of Versailles would have been a much happier society - and the Nazi Party would never have arisen. This excellent book is a moving testimony to the power of humanity in the worst of circumstances, and a salutary reminder that it is not soldiers who wage war but politicians. (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Stanley Weintraub is a biographer and historian whose subjects have ranged from Victoria to Lawrence of Arabia, and include books on both world wars, the Spanish Civil War and the Korean War. He is Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University and a book critic for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Publishers Weekly.

Excerpted from Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Chapter One: An Outbreak of Peace
By 4 December, as wintry rain made movement impossible, the British commander of the 2nd Corps worried about the 'live-and-let-live theory of life' that had surfaced on both sides. Neither side was firing, for example, at mealtimes, and although little fraternization was apparent, unspoken understandings accepted the status quo, and friendly banter echoed across the lines. The 'death and glory principle', as Lieutenant Charles Sorley, a poet, put it, was, in the circumstances, useless. Unannounced, even unspoken, arrangements lessened the discomfort while discouraging the enmity that encouraged the killing. A Royal Engineer, Andrew Todd, wrote to the Edinburgh Scotsman that soldiers on both sides, 'only 60 yards apart at one place', had become 'very "pally" with each other'. They were so close that they would throw newspapers, weighted with a stone, across to each other, and sometimes a ration tin, and, Rifleman Leslie Walkinton of the Queen's Westminsters recalled, 'shout rem!
arks to each other, sometimes rude ones, but generally with less venom than a couple of London cabbies after a mild collision'.
On the morning of 19 December, so Lieutenant Geoffrey Heinekey, new to the 2nd Queen's Westminster Rifles, wrote to his mother, 'a most extraordinary thing happened...Some Germans came out and held up their hands and began to take in some of their wounded and so we ourselves immediately got out of our trenches and began bringing in our wounded also. 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.'
The initiatives for one of the long war's few humane episodes came largely from the invaders, yet not from their generals or their bureaucrats. Leading intellectuals like Rainer Maria Rilke and Thomas Mann had viewed the war as an essential defence against hostile forces representing cultures less rich and technologies less advanced. In 'Fünf Gesänge' Rilke, the leading lyric poet in the language, celebrated the resurrection of the god of war rather than a symbol of weak-minded peace. In defence of Kultur, Mann went to occupied Belgium to observe the future. To be excoriated as Hun barbarians when Germans allegedly represented the higher civilization appeared to him an absurd inversion of values, a feeling shared by educated young officers at the front who came out of professional life. Although war itself might seem necessary for Germany, a war-time Christmas seemed, to many who took the festival seriously, befouled. Captain Rudolf Binding, a Hussar, wrote to his father on 20!
!
December that if he were in authority, he would ban the observance of Christmas 'this year'.
Ordinary soldiers were oblivious to such sensitivities. As Christmas approached, Tommy and Jerry indulged in occasional and undeclared live-and-let-live cessations of fire. Jeers were swapped where the trenches were close enough to permit it -- 'Engländer!' one side would shout, 'Jerry!' (or 'Fritz!') the other. Most exchanges were in English, for many Germans had lived and worked across the Channel, some as waiters in hotels or seaside resorts, others as cooks, cabbies and even barbers, all summoned home in the last, hectic, pre-war days late in July. So many Germans were allegedly working in England before the war that at a House of Lords debate a speaker charged that 80,000 German waiters remained as a secret army awaiting a signal to seize strategic points. P. G. Wodehouse satirized such nonsense in The Swoop! Or How Clarence Saved England, about a Boy Scout who perceives, in the sporting results in his newspaper, a secret code to alert the Germans. Few readers were amused!
!
.
So much interchange had occurred across the line by early December that Brigadier General G. T. Forrestier-Walker, chief of staff to Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien of II Corps, issued a directive unequivocally forbidding fraternization, 'for it discourages initiative in commanders, and destroys the offensive spirit in all ranks...Friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and the exchange of tobacco and other comforts, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, are absolutely prohibited.'

Customer Reviews

An incredible story that should have been told better
For many people, the story of the World War 1 Christmas truce exists as myth or fable or a cheesy sequence in an 80's Paul McCartney pop video. This book reveals much of the truth of the evolution of the truce and ultimately of its quashing, but given the extraordinary circumstances and the potential significance of the truce, it fails to deliver sufficient punch and tends to drift into the realms of historical tedium.
The tone throughout the book is largely one of casual observation and much of the text suffers from a failure to report just how extreme the events and conditions were, though some passages convey considerable latent power - the account of the burying of corpses in no mans land suggests a kind of inhuman horror to which the soldiers of both sides had become so familiar that it can only be marvelled at, and there are touching moments of clarity and reflection in the contrasts between the peaceful soldiers and the single-minded warmongering of their remote generals.

However, the narrative is too frequently broken up by eye witness accounts and associated stories and satires that add little to the story, that it becomes difficult to read, which is a terrific shame as the story deserves to be told so much better. The book ends on a slightly surreal tone as the author appears to swallow an encyclopaedia of all 20th century social, political and industrial history and then enjoys coughing it up over the final 20 pages.
Overall, the book tells a fascinating story, but does not tell it well, and is likely to be enjoyed more by readers of historical factual reporting than those looking for a good read and some emotional involvement, for whom Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong has much more to offer.