

The Spirit of the 1914 Christmas Truce - dctoedt
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-spirit-of-the-1914-christmas-truce-1419006906

======
Spooky23
The key assumption here was the soldiers considered themselves "bitter foes".
I'm not sure this was the case. It required "court martial" \-- ie. throwing
soldiers against the wall and shooting them -- to resume the fighting in some
cases.

I think that anyone who lived for more than a couple of weeks on the Western
front came to the realization that the people engaged in the fight had more in
common than not. The officers and rear echelon folks shot thousands of their
fellow countrymen who cracked under the pressure of constant bombardment and
death.

So as a soldier or junior officer, you faced certain death both in front of
you and behind you. Survival meant huddling for warmth in a fetid hole. Those
poor bastards were cogs in a murder machine -- the only "golden ticket" was
losing a limb.

~~~
dalke
That was my first thought when I read the title. The article itself is more
nuanced:

> But otherwise, soldiers on both sides were likely to think that the more
> formidable Them was the rats and lice, the mold in the food, the cold or the
> comfortable officer at headquarters who seemed, in the words of one soldier,
> an “abstract tactician who from far away disposes of us.”

> But in studying diaries and letters, Mr. Ashworth observed surprisingly
> little hostility toward the enemy expressed by trench soldiers; the further
> from the front, the more hostility. In the words of one front-line soldier,
> “At home one abuses the enemy, and draws insulting caricatures. How tired I
> am of grotesque Kaisers. Out here, one can respect a brave, skillful, and
> resourceful enemy. They have people they love at home, they too have to
> endure mud, rain and steel.”

I believe a goal of the essay is to have the reader start from the idea that
the soldiers were "bitter foes", only to show, through evidence, that that
wasn't the case, and that there are good reasons for what happened.

------
Stratoscope
The classic book on this truce is Stanley Weintraub's Silent Night:

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00311JUGK](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00311JUGK)

And don't miss the Sainsbury's ad in the WSJ article, if you have some kleenex
handy.

Also, from the comments in the article I learned of the fascinating story of
Capt. Robert Campbell, who was captured by the Germans during WWI. When word
arrived at the POW camp that his mother was dying, the Kaiser gave him a two-
week leave to visit his dying mother, on the condition he return afterward.
Out of a sense of duty, he returned as promised. And out of a continuing sense
of duty, he immediately tried to escape!

[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23957605](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-23957605)

~~~
junto
Also, a very good satirical look at WWI was 'Blackadder Goes Forth', with
Rowan Atkinson (I.e. Mr Bean actor), Hugh Laurie (House) and Stephen Fry (QI).
Utter genius comedy with a very dark undertone.

It is a very British humour though. I'm not sure if it travels well?

~~~
thret
I am certain it travels well. Black Adder is right up there with Monty Python
and Fawlty Towers.

------
dalke
The informal truces of the First World War amaze me whenever I read about it.
I have similar feelings when I read about the widespread dissent by US troops
during the Vietnam War, ranging from Search And Avoid missions, to the
"flattop revolts" and suspected sabotage of Navy ships.

The bitterest foes for the troops don't seem to be the enemy troops, but the
politicians and upper staff, who offer the certainty of punishment and slander
of dishonor, while the enemy troops offer only the chance of death or injury.

If true, I begin to understand why John Kiriakou, the only CIA agent jailed
because the US decided to torture people, is a whistleblower and not one of
the government torturers, including those that authorized the program. That
sort of power structure requires that the authorities be able to be worse to
its own people than what the enemy will do.

~~~
schoen
I learned from one of James C. Scott's books that there was a "Memorial to the
Unknown Deserter" created in Bonn, Germany, but local authorities prevented it
from being set up there and it eventually ended up in Potsdam.

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserteurdenkmal_%28Bonn/Potsd...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deserteurdenkmal_%28Bonn/Potsdam%29)

The human figure is formed from the negative space cut out of the stone. (The
inscription from Kurt Tucholsky translates as "Here lived a man / who refused
/ to shoot at his fellow men. / Honor to his memory.")

The German Wikipedia identifies a large number of similar memorials:

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahnenflucht#Denkmale_f.C3.BCr...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahnenflucht#Denkmale_f.C3.BCr_Deserteure)

Although some of them have been extraordinarily controversial in Germany (and
Austria), they do exist; it's hard for me to imagine a similar memorial in the
U.S.

~~~
dalke
Nice, and the negative space is good use of symbolism.

I know of nothing like that in the US. The only references I found
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertion](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertion)
and [http://crookedtimber.org/2013/05/27/memorial-
day-2/](http://crookedtimber.org/2013/05/27/memorial-day-2/) ) were for
Germany and Austria.

A-ha! I found one; "a statue commemorating American draft dodgers and the
Canadians who took them in." [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
columbia/war-resisters...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/war-
resisters-statue-finds-a-home-1.627046) . The image link is broken, but
archive.org has it as
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060113173812/http://vancouver....](https://web.archive.org/web/20060113173812/http://vancouver.cbc.ca/gfx/Vancouver/photos/040923_resister3.jpg)
. I can't make much sense of the image though.

Many groups in the US opposed the statue.

------
gao8a
UEFA also created a powerful piece
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYv6dHy5TJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYv6dHy5TJE)

------
toretore
Rather than assuming that these soldiers negotiated truces out of purely
pragmatic reasons, I think the article completely ignores that most people
actually don't want to lie half-frozen in trenches killing each other. They
had these "truces" because war is hell and everybody wanted a break from it.
If there was nobody there to order them, most would've gone home.

~~~
dalke
How does it ignore that?

It gave examples of how shelling didn't occur during wartime, and how latrines
and food trains weren't targeted, because people wanted food, wanted to eat in
peace, and need to take a crap - and if they did it then the other side would
respond in kind.

I guess I'm confused about how "everybody wanted a break from it" isn't a
pragmatic reason.

But the essay continues: "Initially, this was a purely instrumental impulse,
self-serving cooperation to prevent retaliation." (I think that's your 'purely
pragmatic'.) Followed by:

> With time, however, this sense of responsibility developed a moral tinge,
> tapping into the soldiers’ resistance to betraying those who dealt honorably
> with them. It occurred to them that: The other side didn’t want dinner
> disturbed any more than we do; they also don’t want to fight in rainstorms;
> they also have to deal with brass from headquarters who screw up everything.
> A creeping sense of camaraderie emerged.

I can't help but think that the essay takes on your point whole-heartedly, and
doesn't ignore it.

------
thret
"The philosopher Daniel Dennett has pondered a revealing scenario: Someone is
undergoing surgery without anesthesia but with absolute knowledge that
afterward, she would receive a drug that would erase all memories of the
event. Would the pain be less agonizing if she knew that it would be
forgotten?"

I've only been under anesthesia once, when I had my wisdom teeth out. A few
days beforehand I was struck with this same thought - what if they anesthetics
simply paralysed you, rendering you unable to respond to pain, while
temporarily interfering with your ability to form new memories? What if all
the pain was experienced in full, and you were simply unable to remember it
afterwards? How could anyone know the difference? This made the few days prior
to surgery very uncomfortable.

~~~
bumbledraven
_What if they anesthetics simply paralysed you, rendering you unable to
respond to pain, while temporarily interfering with your ability to form new
memories?_

The drug Versed is supposed to do this. For example patient complaints see
[http://versedbusters.blogspot.com/](http://versedbusters.blogspot.com/) and
the comments on that page.

~~~
thret
Wow. That sounds very much like a date-rape drug.

