Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "The 1914 Christmas Truce" video.

  1. Merry Christmas, Mark, and my fellow history buffs. Thanks for this video. This was the topic I chose for one of two of my senior history papers. In addition to the most famous 1914 Western Front Christmas truce, small versions also occured on the Eastern Front. It seems this sprang from truces of several hours that happened regularly so both sides could retrieve their dead and wounded from no man's land. By Christmas, the men were fed up with the war that was going nowhere, and these short truces around Christmas expanded to the men of both side coming out of the trenches and fraternizing in no man's land. This only happened on small portions of the front, and the ones that succeeded did so because most officers above lieutenant were on Christmas leave. When some high officers came rushing back on word of the "mutinies", it was too late. One English colonel reportedly ordered his men to open fire and was instead shot himself. Christmas and Easter truces occured on various portions of the front in 1915 as well. Unfortunately, by 1916, the animosities of war on both sides made a repeat of 1914 impossible.
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