629. WWI: The Christmas Truce

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1:29Dear Mother, I am writing from the trenches. It is 11 o 'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire. Opposite me a dugout with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. Ha ha, you say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh, dear, no. From a German soldier. Yes, a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday, the British and Germans met and shook hands in the ground between the trenches and exchanged souvenirs and shook hands.

2:24yes all day Christmas day and as I write marvelous isn't it so that was the 19 year old Henry Williamson of the London Rifle Brigade writing to his parents in southeast London on the 26th of December 1914 about the previous day Christmas day 1914 and Dominic what could possibly be more festive than this topic. You're right, Tom. So he's describing the Christmas truce. And Henry Williamson, some of our listeners may be familiar with that name because he is the author of a book called Tarker the Otter, a nature classic that I think was published about a decade after the First World War and has never been out of print since then.

3:09A real kind of perennial children's classic. Ring of Bright Water was the film, wasn't it? That's right. Yeah. Ring of Bright Water. Exactly. Exactly. So he's describing there a story that I think most people would rank as one of the most poignant of the 20th century. So it's the informal truce between British and German soldiers in no man's land on Christmas Day, 1914. And I think we always imagine it as this sort of precious oasis, this moment of peace amid the slaughter, hope amid the horror. the very best of humanity, Tom, in the grimest circumstances in human history. And Dominic, your tone, your tone there.

3:53I'm fearful of where you may be heading with this festive episode. Where am I going to take it? I mean, actually, who cares about what I think? Because what people really think when they think about the First World Wars, what does Paul McCartney think? I'll tell you what Paul McCartney thinks. He lights a candle to our love. because in love our problems disappear. Yeah, of course. And that's from the Pipes of Peace, 1983, which was, I think, a number one in Britain and in Ireland, but not in America, which is sad for the Americans. Well, Paul is playing both a British officer and a German officer on either side of the trenches, and they get up and they exchange photographs, don't they?

4:32That's right, yeah. And there are some examples. So the Christmas truce often appears in popular culture. So for younger listeners, in Britain, there was a very celebrated ad, an advert for Sainsbury's, the supermarket in 2014, which a lot of people may remember. Which was the centenary of it happening. Exactly. And it's one of those ads that kind of went viral and it had the soldiers playing football between the trenches and we'll come to this issue whether or not they played football. People who like Doctor Who, the very last Peter Capaldi story was set in no man's land on Christmas Day. That was on 2017.

5:05Again, it was the kind of Christmas truce as the backdrop. And I guess it plays a huge part, a central part, actually, in what Michael Gove, when he was education secretary, called the kind of Blackadder version of the First World War. So this is the idea that basically the war was for nothing. It was a tragic waste. There were these corrupt, cruel old generals sending young men to die when actually the young men just wanted to shake hands, exchange tobacco, play football, play football. Exactly. And Tom, it will astound you. I know you're nervous about where I'm going to take this. No, I'm not nervous at all.

5:38I'm full of festive excitement. It would astound you to hear. I have my suspicions as to where you're going with this. That the reality of the Christmas juice was a bit more complicated. Who knew? So we'll be asking today, did it happen? Who started it and why did they start it? What did the ordinary soldiers think about it? Did they really play football between the trenches? And here's the big question. If they could stop on Christmas Day, how is it that they carried on? Why didn't they just shake hands and go home? That is the question that Paul asks in the Pipes of Peace. Well, Paul, if you're listening, we're going to answer that question today.

6:13Let us set the festive scene. So it's December 1914. The First World War has been going for almost five months. Britain, France and Russia on one side, the Allies or the Entente, and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other. and people who listen to our series in the summer that was episodes five nine four onwards will recall that in the sort of late summer and autumn the germans launched this huge offensive in the west they're driven back at the battle of the marne and they end up cutting these trench networks in the chalk this long defensive line like a kind of scar through flanders in belgium and eastern france and they dig deeper and deeper as the rains come and they basically dig in for the long haul and And there's constant attempts to break the defences.

7:00But by the, let's say, the end of November 1914, the weather has changed. It's pouring with rain and the fighting sort of, it doesn't dwindle to nothing, but it just dies down a little bit and becomes kind of institutionalized. So that's when you basically get the Western Front. In the winter, there is still a feeling, isn't there, that this is kind of temporary and that come the summer, you know, it's the fighting season, we'll get out of the trenches and have a traditional Napoleonic style war. so there isn't yet the sense that this is going to be grinding horror with rats and mud forever and ever no there's rats at the moment but people think it will end it will change you know come the spring that said uh by the end of 1914 some people are already rather like paul mccartney calling for peace the pipes of peace so there's an open letter by 101 british women's suffrage campaigners addressed to the women of Germany and Austria saying, you know, why can't we?

7:54Let's all put pressure on our governments to stop the killing. This is madness. Yeah, like Aristophanes. Right, exactly. Aristotrata. And then the Pope gets involved, Pope Benedict XV. He publishes a paper encyclical in November. He says the war is the suicide of civilized Europe. He says, I'd like to mediate a truce. Everybody ignores him. But he wasn't wrong, was he? Yeah, he was quite right. It's very rare that you get me commending the Pope, but I take my hat off to him on this occasion. Well, that's, again, the festive spirit. Exactly. So a month later, after he's been ignored, he basically appeals to both sides, says, please stop fighting over Christmas.

8:28And I quote, so that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang. Very nice. And everybody, again, completely ignores him. So people listening to this may think, well, why did these appeals fail? Because both sides had already lost a lot of men. So why did they want to carry on fighting? And the short answer, we talked about this at the end of our First World War series, is that they actually want to keep fighting. They want to achieve their war aims. So the Allies, the British and French, for example, they want to drive the Germans out. The Germans are still in Belgium. They're occupying a tenth of France.

9:04So the Allies aren't going to stop. And the Germans themselves aren't going to stop because they think of the war as this desperate struggle for survival. They think they're encircled. they think that if they lose it will be a total and utter national disaster i mean to be honest then they're not wrong because they do lose and it is i mean you just have to look at ukraine don't you where there's quite a similar kind of um deadlock um there are even trenches yeah i think there was a a kind of a christmas truce um but obviously it didn't last because neither side is gonna just walk away yeah they believe in their cause and they want to achieve their goals and And actually, the fact they've lost so many men actually emboldens them, makes their resistance more dogged.

9:46So the British Expeditionary Force has been almost completely destroyed by this point and replaced by new men. The Germans and the French have lost about half a million men each, but they don't want to stop because they think if they did that, it would dishonor the sacrifice of those men who have fallen. So that's the context. Let's get into the trenches in December 1914. team. And specifically, we're going to be looking at the 20-mile stretch of the Western Front, which is held by the British on one side and the Germans on the other, south of Ypres in Belgium. So the men in these lines are newcomers, by and large.

10:18They are reservists, they're new recruits who've been rushed in to take the place of the forces that were originally destroyed in the first few months of the war. And that's true of the Germans as well. So they have poured in kind of young, inexperienced men, often from Saxony and Bavaria, rather than from Prussia. The British always said, you know, the Prussians are the worst. They're kind of dour and dogged and formidable. Bullet-headed. Yeah. Whereas the Saxons and the Bavarians were jollier. Yes. So you get the first reports of fraternization between the trenches. This is so interesting. It may surprise some listeners.

10:54The fraternization actually begins well before Christmas. So it actually happens from early November or so, from the point at which they dig in. and what would happen is there would be a sort of informal shouted arrangement and possibly you know sort of agreed by two men in meeting in no man's land or something you know we'll have a pause at this particular point in the day so that we can both wash or we can have our evening meals or because there's loads of bodies piled up in no man's land and we'd like to retrieve our mates and bury the dead or because the weather is really terrible you know it's pouring and pouring with rain the trenches on both sides are flooded and basically someone shouts out you know should we have a should we have a break so that both of us can repair our trenches which might strike people as mad but i mean you know well but maybe it doesn't if you are not a professional soldier and you know you've you're working in a shop or an office or something and suddenly you find yourself in the winter in mud facing people you know really nothing about wouldn't that make it likelier that you might kind of try and reach out and have an accommodation because you're not a professional soldier?

12:00Yeah, of course. Well, I mean, by this point, you are a professional soldier, but you know what I mean. You haven't been raised to it. You haven't been trained to it over many years to fight. Of course. I mean, it's worth stressing, there is always fraternization in wars. You know, this is not unheard of, right? There have been lots of examples in wars before this. Remember that in this case, the front lines are very close together. I mean, you can shout from one line and the other line will hear you. And the fraternization generally starts with the Germans. They're shouting in English. And the reason it works that way is because there had been a real trend before the First World War for young German men, almost like kind of Australians or something today, to come and work in London for a little while to improve their English.

12:45They work as waiters. It's a kind of stereotype before the war, the German waiter in a London restaurant. So just to focus in on another angle then about what might have fostered fraternization, is there a sense even now that there is still a degree of commonality between Britain and Germany? Because certainly that's there before the war breaks out, isn't it? And I guess this is likely to happen between British and Germans and say French and Germans. Yeah. So the reason it wouldn't happen between French and Germans is, of course, the war is being fought on French soil. French losses have been much heavier.

13:18And for the French, this is existential, right? This is their homeland from which they're trying to drive the invader. The British are fighting on what they regard as a sort of neutral venue. It's in a way a match for them as it is for the Germans. And I think we talked about this in previous series. Before the First World War, there was so much stuff about the fraternal links between England and Germany, the Anglo-Saxon heritage, all of that. And of course, that ends up being erased by wartime propaganda. But we're only a few months into the war. So I think there's still a lot of sort of, well, not a lot, but there is still a slight element of fellow feeling.

13:56And I mean, a very obvious symbol of that cultural influence of Germany on Britain is the Christmas tree, right? Which had been brought over by various royals, but particularly by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband. And so, you know, that is a very vivid symbol of this shared culture. I mean, football will come to football. The Germans have basically imported football from Britain. And some of these people who've been waiters in London are shouting out about football. They're saying, who's top of the first division? How are Tottenham Hotspur getting on or whatever? Although at this point, football isn't the kind of obsession that it will become for Germans.

14:33It's much bigger in Britain, isn't it, than in Germany? Yeah, agreed. So there were sort of reports of informal fraternisation. And actually, as Christmas approaches, some of the senior commanders are worried that this might get out of hand. So we talked before about a guy called General Horace Smith Dorian. And he was this sort of very gallant kind of swashbuckling British commander who actually before the war had shocked people at the public school officer training corps by saying there should never be a war in Europe. It will destroy civilization. You know, and everyone thought, gosh, this guy's an absolute, you know, look at this, this pinko pacifist kind of telling us that he doesn't agree with war and whatnot.

15:15Anyway, he's now ended up in command. And he issues an order on the 5th of December, and he says, it's very common, he says, when you're close to the enemy, for men to slide into a live and let live theory of life. They can become too pally, they lose sight of what he calls the sole object of war, and sink into a military lethargy from which it's difficult to arouse them. And so as a result, he says, however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be, friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices and the exchange of tobacco and other comforts are absolutely prohibited. However, I think those key words there are however tempting and occasionally amusing they may be because it shows that even the man at the top can see the appeal.

16:02That actually sometimes it's a moment of tremendous relief and escapism to shake hands with the opponent. Anyway, we approach Christmas Day. The weather has been dreadful, pouring with rain, and so the recent fighting has been very desultory. And on both sides, British and German, people are thinking a lot about Christmas. So in the British newspapers, there have been all these appeals for the public to send tobacco and sweets and chocolates and Christmas puddings even. I don't know how they'd cook them, but anyway, Christmas puddings, plum puddings to the front. The royal family have organised the sending of 350 ,000 Princess Mary gift tins.

16:41So Henry Williamson, in that quotation, mentioned his Princess Mary stuff. So you'd basically get a tin and it had Princess Mary's face on it. And inside there was some chocolate and tobacco and cigarettes and stuff. And you got a lovely Christmas message from George V. And that's great. And it's also great because in 100 years time, it will enable Sainsbury's to use that as a way of flogging their own groceries. Exactly. Exactly. So everyone's a winner. Because there's a huge thing with chocolate and tins in the Sainsbury's adverts. Now, that said, although they've got this inspiring message from George V, one of Britain's very finest kings, most of the men are pretty miserable because they've been sitting there in this rain.

17:20They're cold. They're muddy. All of this. But the magic of Christmas. When they wake on Christmas Eve, something has changed. So the rain has stopped. There's been a hard frost overnight. and the ground is kind of dusted with ice and snow. So rather like you see in the adverts and the Paul McGanners video and stuff. Christmas Eve is as normal. There's this sort of slightly desultory fighting and firing on both sides, gunfire. But late that afternoon, the firing starts to die down as normal. And then the Germans do something unexpected. So we mentioned the presents that the British have had from home and the Germans have had presents too.

18:00The Kaiser, our old friend, the Kaiser has sent them cigarettes and tobacco. But he and his men have also sent them lots of little Christmas trees, hundreds of little Christmas trees, all across the front. And as night falls, the Germans start putting up these Christmas trees on the kind of parapets of their trenches and they light candles. Go on, Tom. I can see you're gearing up to say something sardonic about the German candle lighting. No, not at all. I just wanted to mention at this point a podcast by a mutual friend of ours, Jonathan Wilson, with Rob Draper. It Was What It Was Great title Yeah it's maybe not the best but his podcast about the history of football and in that they mention a top fact which is that these Christmas trees that get sent out to all the various regiments and places they also send them to U-boats and they had a very entertaining debate about how exactly you would balance a Christmas tree on a U-boat How would you balance a Christmas tree on a U-boat?

18:55Maybe you've lit it with candles and the risk of burning to death in a U-boat which would be not festive at all Anyway, I just mentioned that in passing. And also, I just wanted to say about Christmas trees and Christmas Eve for Germans. The Germans have, like most people on the continent, have a weird attitude to Christmas. Namely, they don't actually celebrate it on Christmas, do they? The main focus is Christmas Eve, which always seems to me mad. It is mad. I don't agree with that. I mean, it's wrong, but presumably the British are not really aware of this. And so they'd be startled by the sudden appearance of Christmas trees.

19:30They are startled. So that evening at about 8.30, you get the first reports of carol singing. Again, this is part of the kind of cliche of the Christmas truce, but it's absolutely true. So at 8.30, a Royal Irish Rifles officer reports to headquarters. Germans have illuminated their trenches, are singing songs and are wishing us a happy Christmas. Compliments are being exchanged, but are nevertheless taking all military precautions. so you get more reports flooding in that the germans are singing still an act silent night and the british are replying with the first noel um i think it's actually quite revealing that these are such mournful carols aren't they they're kind of like almost slow kind of laments very moving but you know you're not going to be singing heart the herald angels sing you're going to be belting that out in the middle of the first world war and um there's some excellent books about the christmas trees which i'll mention a little bit later but just for the time being there are loads of accounts of people lighting candles and singing carols, loads of quotations on an online article by the historian Simon Jones.

20:29If you Google the Christmas truce, you'll see it. And there's no doubt whatsoever that it's the Germans who take the lead and they start encouraging the British to come out of their trenches. I'll just give one quotation. It's a British soldier called Private Frederick Heath who wrote a letter home a few days later. And he said, all down our line of trenches there came to our ears a greeting unique in war english soldier english soldier a merry christmas a merry christmas they spoke just like that the germans for some little time we were cautious and did not even answer officers fearing treachery ordered the men to be silent but up and down our line one heard the men answering that christmas greeting from the enemy how could we resist wishing each other a merry christmas even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards.

21:17And so they spend the night singing to each other across no man's land, as he puts it, a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pipings of piccolos, and from our broad lines, laughter and Christmas carols. A thought strikes me, which is that we discussed in the series we did earlier this year about the atrocities in Belgium and the sense that the Germans have put themselves beyond the pale, you know, the evil Han and all of that. You didn't get that conclusion from me, Tom. No, I know. I know. But there is a sense on the home front, isn't there, that the Germans are just monstrous.

21:55Yeah. But clearly there's not a sense of that at all here. They're not thinking this might be a trap. No, I suppose not. But is that not because they have been there for weeks? They know that the Germans, men just like them. And as they will, of course, will discover even more the next day. But that's what's interesting, isn't it? Because I would guess that the effect of propaganda in Britain, and indeed in Germany, is to make them think, well, are they men like us? Are they not monsters out to destroy civilization? It seems clear that that hasn't entirely taken root, that propaganda war. As we will see later in this episode, there are more truces after this, but they dwindle and they disappear by 1916 and 17.

22:34And I think the truth is that over time people became brutalized, but at this point they're not fully brutalized. So they still see their opponents as human beings like themselves and not as, you know, not simply as the enemy to kill or be killed by. I suppose also there is a lot of sport-based propaganda, isn't there? Certainly in Britain. I don't know whether it's the same in Germany. So, you know, you mentioned this is kind of the equivalent of half time. Perhaps that's also the sense that, you know. Yeah. You fight hard, but shake hands. Exactly. So that's Christmas Eve. What about Christmas Day?

23:05Christmas Day dawns cold and foggy, but by mid-morning, the fog has cleared, and it actually turns out to be a lovely kind of crisp winter's day. It's not raining, crucially. For a lot of people, the most striking thing is how quiet it is. The guns have been roaring all this time, but on both sides, a lot of officers say, well, we won't fire on Christmas Day, so they just stop. And once one side stops, the other generally then stops as well. And then tentatively at first, they've been making a lot of arrangements over the night. Oh, we'll get out of the trench if you do tomorrow morning. And men start to do it.

23:39And when no one shoots them, other men start doing it. And bit by bit, along probably about two thirds of this stretch, so we're talking about over a kind of 12 to 15 mile stretch, people get out of the trenches and they venture into no man's land on both sides. and when they get there what do they do well first of all they have made arrangements often i'll give you a tin if you give me you know some tobacco or whatever so they exchange their button they exchange souvenirs actually henry williamson used the word souvenirs i think didn't he they exchange buttons and badges they sometimes they exchange their caps that seems that reckless because you might be shot by your own side yeah i mean yeah explaining to the sergeant major of that in the morning why you're dressed as a german um uh the germans hand over cigars the british will give them jam or tit but you know they'll they'll basically sort of um there's a sort of barter system or a bar of saintsbury's chocolate exactly uh sometimes they have lunch together there's a lovely account of the sixth cheshires who managed to catch a pig and they roasted it in no man's land and shared it with the germans the hell did they get a pig from god knows There was a guy called Bruce Bairnsfather Who's often quoted in accounts of the Christmas truce Because he became a very popular newspaper cartoonist Between the wars He says I spotted a German officer Some sort of lieutenant I should think And being a bit of a collector I intimated to him that I'd taken a fancy to some of his buttons I brought out my wire clippers And with a few deft snips Removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket I then gave him two of mine in exchange And then Bairnsfather Says of the truce The last sight he had of it was one of his machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Bosch, who was patiently kneeling on the ground while the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck.

25:33My sense of Germans in the First World War is not that they had mullets. That's an unexpected discovery. Yeah, but he's been in the trenches all this time. The mad thing is, this bloke's got a load of clippers. Now, some activities are a bit more mundane. So actually, both sides spend a lot of the troops fixing up their trenches. And they even share tools with each other to work on their trenches, which is very sweet. Some activities are not so sweet and a bit more sinister. So Simon Jones already mentioned he quotes a British officer who shared a cigar with a German sniper. And this sniper very foolishly said, you know, I'm the best shot in the German army.

26:11I've killed more men than most of my comrades put together. And this British officer said, okay. Rightio. And he noted down this bloke's position so that he could shoot him himself the next day. That's harsh. But actually, the most common thing they did was to bury the dead. There are loads of accounts. Actually, you get one from Henry Williamson of these mass burials. And so they'll bury them all together. The German officers and men will line up on one side of the grave, the British on the other. They sing psalms. They read prayers in both languages and whatnot. arts. I mean, none of this sounds that exciting, frankly.

26:46There's an awful lot of just sort of loitering and hanging around with your hands in your pockets. But it's clear from people's accounts that men on both sides found this a really remarkable and memorable day. You know, all these letters, the most extraordinary Christmas day imaginable. I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas day for anything. This one from Captain Sir Edward Hulse. he describes singing auld lang syne with which we all english scots irish prussians vertenbergers joined in it was absolutely astounding and if i had seen it on a cinematograph film i should have sworn that it was faked but one question as we head into the break do they talk about the war i mean that's the thing that would puzzle that you would think they would right that they talk about what they're doing well unless they want a holiday in every sense from the war yeah a little bit i think they do talk about it a bit but as you say that it's boring to a lot of them they don't really want they're not going to start discussing that the archduke franz ferdinand and they want to talk about gavin and stacy and yeah they want to talk about football or something or about how cold they are about the quality of their food or whatever and actually the most striking account of them talking about the war for me is is this guy we began with henry williamson 19 years old.

28:04He watches the burials and he is struck by the fact that on the German crosses, they write the words, für Vaterland und Freiheit, for Vaterland and freedom. And he's really stunned by this. And I quote, freedom, how was this? We were fighting for freedom. Our cause was just, we were defending Belgium's civilization. And he says to a German bloke standing next to him, speaks English. What's all this? You're the baddies. What are you thinking? And the German says to him, well, of course we're fighting for freedom. Our cause is just. We are ringed with enemies. So war was thrust on us. We are defending our parents, our homes, our German soil.

28:49And Williamson has what he calls a most shaking, staggering thought that both sides thought they were fighting for the same cause these fellows in gray were good fellows they were strangely just men like ourselves very philosophical um and also dominic i'm amazed that this hasn't turned out to be a myth i was fully expecting you to debunk it yeah i don't like debunking not on christmas day so there was a truce but i suppose then the obvious question is well how does it come to an end and also that question that you mentioned at the start of this um first half. Why didn't they just stop fighting?