What a weird and needless article, it clearly had the agenda of de-romanticizing the truce events, but basically goes on to confirm that everything, you think happened, actually happened.
Obviously you can view history from different social constructs, but for me at least, this article did little but waste the time it took to read. I do realize that having studied history and being interested in this event in particular, I was probably going to know what the article contained, but I was still disappointed by it.
> Obviously you can view history from different social constructs, but for me at least, this article did little but waste the time it took to read.
Well, the fact that these were some of the LAST temporary truces and that the high command was actively terrified by these kinds of events and raised them to court martial offenses was something I hadn't known before.
There's also - not mentioned in the BBC piece - a class/political component to that.
The left end of the political spectrum was holding on to "proletarian internationalism", and agitated for workers of one nation refusing to shoot at workers of another.
The fears of the top brass came into being in Russia, where the Bolsheviks used the war as the main lever to gain power in November 1917, because the democratic parties didn't end the war in the February revolution.
(Unexpectedly, really, the prime target for revolutionary upheaval was industrialized Germany.)
Yeah I suppose that's true for me as well. I had heard that the officers were pissed and basically threatened to execute in the field any men caught doing that, but I didn't know that it had effectively worked at eliminating these kinds of event.
From what I read about WWI (not what I learned at school in France), high ranking officers were terrified of insubordination and thought that the lack of result was due to a lack of motivation from the soldiers (and not the fact that germans were the first to massively use machine guns which completely changed engagements).
Some soldiers were court martialed pretty much randomly just as a mean to terrorize the soldiers into obeying orders.
The truce was the basis of today's Doctor Who Christmas episode. This appears to be aligned with one of the most watched shows every year to provide a bit of background for curious Whovians.
Obviously you can view history from different social constructs, but for me at least, this article did little but waste the time it took to read. I do realize that having studied history and being interested in this event in particular, I was probably going to know what the article contained, but I was still disappointed by it.