Something nice for a change

BratwurstDimSum · Nov 11, 2003

I know this is WW1 but I feel it is behind the respect that Germans and British had in WW2 which, unfortunately, did not exist in a lot of cases with the Americans.

A little peace in the Great War
By Luke Harding
Berlin
November 12, 2003

A new book by a German historian has cast fresh light on one of the most extraordinary episodes of World War I and revealed that the celebrated 1914 Christmas truce took place because many of the Germans stationed on the front had worked in England.

The book, Der Kleine Frieden im Grossen Krieg, or The Small Peace in the Great War, shows that the German and British soldiers who famously played football with each other in No Man's Land on Christmas Day 1914 did not always have a ball. Sometimes they kicked around a lump of straw tied together with string, or even an empty jam box.

According to previously unseen letters and diaries sent home by Germans, the soldiers used sticks of wood, their caps and steel helmets as goalposts. The games lasted about an hour. The sleep-deprived players then collapsed, exhausted.

The book, by German author Michael Jurgs, is the first to be written from a German perspective about the impromptu Christmas ceasefire that spread across the Western Front - in defiance of official orders and to the horror of the British high command - five months after the outbreak of war.

It includes extracts from a diary by a German lieutenant, Kurt Zehmisch. The diary was found four years ago in an attic near Leipzig. Zehmisch was a schoolteacher who spoke English and French. He describes how, on Christmas Eve, the shooting suddenly stopped. His Saxon regiment then blew a whistle. The English immediately whistled back.

"Soldier Mockel from my company, who had lived in England for many years, called to the British in English, and soon a lively conversation developed between us." A couple of soldiers from each side then climbed out of their trenches, shook hands in No Man's Land, and wished each other a merry Christmas. They agreed not to shoot the following day. "Afterwards, we placed even more candles than before on our kilometre-long trench, as well as Christmas trees," Zehmisch wrote. "It was the purest illumination . . . the British expressed their joy through whistles and clapping. Like most people, I spent the whole night awake. It was a wonderful, if somewhat cold, night."

According to Jurgs, the fraternisation involving mostly Catholic Saxon and Bavarian regiments was possible because many of the German soldiers spoke good English, as they had worked in Britain. "They had worked as cab drivers and barbers in places like Brighton, Blackpool and London," he said. "When war broke out in August 1914 they were forced to go home. Some even left families behind in England."

A German infantryman described how on Christmas Day, when both sides climbed out of their trenches and over the barbed wire, a British Tommy had set up a makeshift barber's shop in no man's land. The barber was "completely indifferent" to whether his customers were German or British, and charged a couple of cigarettes per haircut, Bavarian Josef Sebald observed. "This was war . . . but there was no trace of enmity between us," he added.

The informal ceasefire stretched all across the 800-kilometre Western Front, where more than 1 million men were encamped, from the Belgian coast as far as the Swiss border. The truce was especially warm along a 48-kilometre line around Ypres, Jurgs notes.

In some parts of the front, meanwhile, the ceasefire lasted for several weeks after Christmas Day 1914. Inevitably, though, the slaughter resumed. "The English are extraordinarily grateful for the ceasefire, so they can play football again," Gustav Riebensahm, of the 2nd Westphalian regiment, wrote in his diary. "But the whole thing has become slowly ridiculous and must be stopped. I will tell the men that from this evening it's all over."

Another soldier also disapproved. An Austrian soldier billeted near Ypres complained that in wartime such an understanding "should not be allowed". His name was Adolf Hitler.

-Guardian Newspaper
Click to expand...

Hoppy · Nov 11, 2003

Mankind........

Squirrel · Nov 11, 2003

It is a shame that they only did it once. Playing a sport with your enemies sounds like a lot more fun than fighting against them.

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