
The Christmas Truce of World War I - jacquesm
http://www.wjpbr.com/wwixmas.html
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lemoncucumber
"The British heard the haunting sound of Germans singing Ã¢â‚¬Å“Stille
NachtÃ¢â‚¬Â (Ã¢â‚¬Å“Silent NightÃ¢â‚¬Â)"

Few things sound more haunting than mangled text encodings.

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blowski
For anyone who prefers the film version, watch Joyeux Noel. It's an 'inspired
by true facts' type movie, but very watchable.

[http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/](http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0424205/)

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univalent
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History has a great segment that talks about this event.

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cafard
Somewhere in _Goodbye to All That_ , Robert Graves writes that the regulars
regarded the Christmas truce in no particularly sentimental light, but as a
commonplace exchange of courtesies between enemies. I don't think that Graves
was then in France; however, at that point in the war, the British forces
would have had a higher proportion of regulars and mobilized reservists than
later.

Grant in his memoirs tells of inspecting the lines in Chattanooga:

'When I came to the camp of the picket guard of our side, I heard the call,
"Turn out the guard for the commanding general." I replied, "Never mind the
guard," and they were dismissed and went back to their tents. Just back of
these, and about equally distant from the creek, were the guards of the
Confederate pickets. The sentinel on their post called out in like manner,
"Turn out the guard for the commanding general," and, I believe, added,
"General Grant." Their line in a moment front-faced to the north, facing me,
and gave a salute, which I returned.'

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fallingfrog
I love this story, because it shows how much potential we as humans have for
compassion, even in these kinds of circumstances. I love it too because of the
cognitive dissonance that it creates. The whole first world war is, once you
start getting into it, confusing. The more you research, the harder it is to
see this particular war as anything other than stupid, stupid, stupid. Maybe
there is an alternate universe where the soldiers just refused to fight on
December 26th, and the war ended right then and there, in 1914, and WW2 never
happened..

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cafard
It is hard at this distance to see it otherwise than as a partially successful
mass suicide of European culture. But it was very popular to start with in
most of the major combatants, and it took until about 1917 for there to be
mutinies and the disintegration of armies.

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gerbilly
There's a Paul McCartney song about it too:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ErrZ-
ipoE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ErrZ-ipoE)

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wiredfool
Yay for SEO spam at the bottom of it.

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choward
And sound. Wtf?

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dang
We can change the URL if there's a more substantive source. If there isn't,
the annoyances are tolerable.

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dsp1234
Maybe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce#Christmas_1914](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce#Christmas_1914)

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humbleMouse
Interesting article. I for one would not be coming out of my trench to
fraternize with the enemy.

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msie
Spend several years in a trench and you might change your mind.

~~~
Someone
Possibly, but at Christmas 2014, the war was 5 months old, and trench warfare
had been going on for around 3 months, tops.

For example, the first battle of the Marne
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Battle_of_the_Marne))
in early September saw significant manoeuvring, and was followed by “the race
to the sea”, which lasted till mid-October
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_to_the_Sea))

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DrScump
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