The Soldiers peace

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snowhunter

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At Christmas eve of 1915, some the soldiers on boths side of the trench warfare started to sing christmas carols. Realizing that they were singing the same christmas carols, in english or in german, these political adversaries stopped fighting each other, then came up from their trenches and meet each other at no mans land, and celebrated Christmas Eve together.

After this personal and friendly encounter with each other at Chritmas Eve, these soldiers made an aggreement to stop killing each other, and instead shoot over each other trenches, so it sounded and looked like as they were fighting each other, to their respective superiors.

Well, words got out, and horrified superiors on both side ended this famous "Soldiers Peace" of WW1, by starting to rotate soldiers more often from the trenches, and thus, the soldiers never did not get another chance learn to know each other, which made it much easier for them to kill each other :)

There are also other stories from WW1, of how soldiers on boths side of the trenches observing and celebrating Easter, by stopping the war on those holidays.
 
It may have been a brutal war, but it wasn't totally uncivilized.

I daresay you wouldn't see anything like that in Afghanistan even if they weren't muslim.


On this day remember the fallen, so that we do not forget what they fell for.
 
Like the Christians, the Muslims have no trouble fighting each others in wars.

The only time I have read about a large group of Christians changing side, was during the US invasion of Mexico, 1846-48, when about 200 Irish-americans artillery soldiers from Boston, due to their catholic relegion, which they shared with the mexicans, then changed side and fought hard and bravely against the US forces.

The mexican's named these Irish soldiers as the "Santa Patricia Brigade", and are still considered to be some kind of saints in todays Mexico, and the day the surviors of that brigade were executed by the victorious US forces, is still remembered in Mexico as well as in Ireland. Last year, the irish president came to Mexico in order to commemorate and honor the "Santa Patricia Brigade", on the aniversary of the survivors execution.

Mexicans always enjoy talking about the "Santa Patricia Brigade".
 
snowhunter said:
At Christmas eve of 1915, some the soldiers on boths side of the trench warfare started to sing christmas carols. Realizing that they were singing the same christmas carols, in english or in german, these political adversaries stopped fighting each other, then came up from their trenches and meet each other at no mans land, and celebrated Christmas Eve together.

After this personal and friendly encounter with each other at Chritmas Eve, these soldiers made an aggreement to stop killing each other, and instead shoot over each other trenches, so it sounded and looked like as they were fighting each other, to their respective superiors.

Well, words got out, and horrified superiors on both side ended this famous "Soldiers Peace" of WW1, by starting to rotate soldiers more often from the trenches, and thus, the soldiers never did not get another chance learn to know each other, which made it much easier for them to kill each other :)

There are also other stories from WW1, of how soldiers on boths side of the trenches observing and celebrating Easter, by stopping the war on those holidays.
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Must be true, because I've heard a similar story from my grandfather.

How the "civilization" changed people.
 
Today I remembered my great grandfather and grandfather who were in WW1 and 2 respectively.

My great grandfather was on the German side and, according to his military pass, was deployed at the start.

My grandfather was a Luftwaffe service technician for a German bomber airfield outside Leningrad.

Both survived the wars to witness the aftermath.

Lest we forget.
 
Please google "christmas truce world war one" or "christmas truce" to read more about the "Soldiers Peace" of WW 1.

Also, to learn more about the Irish-Mexican soldiers under general Santa Ana, please google "santa patricia brigade", or "saint patric's battalion".
 
It was the christmass of 1914 that the major truce occured. There was a small one in 1915 but only very limited.

Here is a book about it
"Silent night"
Stanley Weintraub
IBSN 0 684 87281 1 or 0 452 28367 1

An interesting point is that it was the germans who started the truce!
 
Googling "Stanley Weintraub", I found that there was an interview of him by Kathryn Jean Lopez about his book "Silent Night", concentrating on the facts about the 1914-15 Christmas Truce, between the british and germans, which included soccer games between them. Worth reading :)
 
Thank you for the "Youtube" movie clip about this interesting subject. And judging from the large numbers of other "Youtube" movie clips and like BBC reportings of this subject, I found that this "Soldiers Peace" of WW1 has been reenacted and reported many times.

Interesting how this ancient Winter Solstice celebration, later turned into a Christian Christmas celebration, observed and respected by soldiers of both sides of WW1, could have, against the wishes of the political elite's of both sides, have ended WW1 in 1914.

To best of my knowledge, nobody seems to know who really started WW1.
 
Nobody in particular started WWI. Although it is universally accepted that the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand was the spark that started the whole thing off (thus you could finger the Serbian Nationalists) it was a sequence of events that transpired through the systems of alliances that saw it escalate beyond any one nations hand.

Germany gets an asterisk beside it's involvement however for a couple of reasons. First in that they were a large factor in urging Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. Second was a gross miscalculation of Britain stance on "splendid isolation" from continental Europe, and Britain's alliance with France. Actually it was more so about the long standing treaty with neutral Belgium that Germany blitzed to get to France, than their treaty with France itself that brought Britain in.

A great link if you want to get into is is here...
http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm
 
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Gary D said:
Second was a gross miscalculation of Britain stance on "splendid isolation" from continental Europe, and Britain's alliance with France. Actually it was more so about the long standing treaty with neutral Belgium that Germany blitzed to get to France, than their treaty with France itself that brought Britain in.[/URL]
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That said, with Kaiser Wilhelm II's ambition to make Germany a colonial power akin to Great Britain, Germany's rapid Naval expansion and his ambitions in Africa (which was already a great sore spot for Britain as per the Boer war), in retrospect Britain's involvement appears a lot more forth coming had anyone in Germany been paying closer attention.
 
Thanks for this link about the many origins of WW1.

Still intersting of how the powers of religious ceremonies and cultural traditions, in this case the Christmas Eve traditions and it's religious influence on both sides combating soldiers, could have altered the course of WW1, in spite of the enormous wealth and political powers exercised by the elite of both sides, which appeared to want this war to happend, in order to strengthen and expanding their political and economical influence over each other.

Any comparisons, to the present days armed conflicts ?
 
snowhunter said:
Any comparisons, to the present days armed conflicts ?
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Not really, The Great War was a unique event between very similar nations. It was born out of the balkan crisis of a few years earlier which lead Serbia to form an alliance with Russia. out of the settlements of the first and second balkan wars, Russia was upset over its role of 'balkan protector' being rejected. After the asassnation, Germany urged Austria-Hungry to b firm and gave it the famious "Blank cheque" to deal with Serbia. Thus started the cascade of events that lead to the start of the war.

Britans role started only with the invasion of Belgum. Although it was in conflict with germany over the naval build up, this was not considered a reason for going to war. There had been discussions with France, but not treaty or agreement existed.

As a start, read "Dreadnought", by Robert K Massie. That has a great description of the origions of The Great War.
 
As a results of these european perpetual ethnic wars the last couple of millenniums or more, Europe, as it's citizens became literate, lost most of it's warmonging kingdoms the last couple of hundred years, and replaced them democraties, or removed the powers of the royalty, although once in a while some nutcase dictators and likewise followers, pops up and do lots of damage.

Where we are heading is anybody's guess ?
 
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