The Day the Troops Refused to Fight: December 25, 1914
▻http://www.thenation.com/blog/193545/day-troops-refused-fight-december-25-1914
100 years ago, on Christmas Day, 1914, in the middle of World War I, British and German soldiers put down their guns and stopped killing each other. The terrible industrial slaughter had already taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men. But on that day, thousands of troops climbed out of the trenches in France and Belgium, sang Christmas carols, and exchanged food, gifts, and souvenirs. They traded German beer for British rum. They even played soccer. It’s a unique event in the history of modern warfare.
The Christmas Truce as depicted in The Illustrated London News in January 1915. (The Illustrated London News)
L’entreprise Sainsbury en profite pour faire une pub ...
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWF2JBb1bvM
“The commercial is for a commemorative chocolate bar. The proceeds from this chocolate bar will go to the Royal British Legion, the official veterans’ organization. It’s another kind of official commemoration of this startling outbreak of peace.”
Why No One Remembers the Peacemakers
▻http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175932/tomgram%3A_adam_hochschild,_thank_you_for_making_war!
Given the rarity of peace celebrations of any sort, what’s made the Christmas Truce safe for royalty, mayors, and diplomats? Three things, I believe. First, this event — remarkable, spontaneous, and genuinely moving as it was — did not represent a challenge to the sovereignty of war. It was sanctioned by officers on the spot; it was short-lived (the full fury of shelling and machine gunning resumed within a day or two, and poison gas and flamethrowers soon added to the horror); and it was never repeated. It’s safe to celebrate because it threatened nothing. That supermarket video, for instance, advertises a commemorative chocolate bar whose sales proceeds go to the national veterans organization, the Royal British Legion.
