The Christmas Truce of 1914 was in my opinion one of the most glorious moments in human history yet at the same time it also was one of the great missed chances. In spite of the fact that the soldiers had overcome the orders under the special occasion of Christmas (I suppose many would remember the grand promises made in every country that the soldiers would all be back home as heroes by Christmas) they had not been prepared yet to keep it up and take making peace (rather than a temporary truce) into their own hands.
The military command on all sides was seriously terrified about the news of this insubordination and violation of orders and for the rest of the war they took special care to suppress any further "fraternization".
A silent form of protest among the soldiers that was kept up for quite a while after the end of the actual truce was that in some sections soldiers kept up impressive pretenses of shooting and firing "at each other" with surprisingly low casualty rates because there was an unspoken agreement to shoot but not to hit among the common soldiers and the officers had hardly a possibility to prove deliberate missing. Because of this some military outfits were relocated to ensure that they were facing "foreign enemies" whom to kill they would have little alternative simply because they in return would kill them.
The "barbarianization" of warfare (poison gas and all the other atrocities brought forth in WW1) likely also contributed to the failure of the soldiers of making further attempts at declaring peace to each other. The further relationship between the common soldiers of the enemies for the rest of the war is rather baffling. There must have been hatred especially under the direct impression of seeing comrades being killed and also with the propaganda imposed on the soldiers, but on the other hand field-letters and other documents also indicate that the notion was far spread that the common soldier on the other side was as "poor a bugger" as the own men were. Above all there was this really creepy slavish obedience by which soldiers accepted clearly suicidal orders of no purpose and went straight into the machine gun fire in the often futile hope to gain a few meters of muddy ground. Even when word was already spread in November 1918 that an official truth was being negotiated some officers craving for glory ordered charges in which thousands of young men were killed for absolutely no purpose no matter the outcome of those last attacks. There also is the story about a German machine gunner who on the day of the armistice, November 11th 1918 kept firing and killing until exactly 11am (the minute the armistice took effect) after which he supposedly got up, took of his helmet as a salute to the enemy, turned round and walked away. I don't know if there is any truth about this, but it sure stands exemplary for the obey no matter what kind of attitude that was so predominant about this war.
The French mutinies of 1917 are one of the few examples of disobedience in the later course of the war, but their significance should not be overestimated. The thing about this mutiny was that it had the soldiers refuse to go on further frontal attacks against the German trenches on which their new commander Robert Nivelle had send them with extreme unconcern for their losses. They would continue to defend their trenches though and were not trying to contact the Germans to negotiate any armistice. The French High Command had more than 550 soldiers executed and many more sentenced to penal servitude. While the fear in the military high command (which to some degree took power over the political instances in almost all countries involved in the war) was there that soldiers might settle affairs by themselves the readiness to disobey as a unified block (individuals were easy to execute on some pretense by the military high command) was not sufficiently developed among the soldiers of any faction.
Perhaps I got a bit of topic, but I guess that the event of the Christmas Truth of 1914 cannot be thoroughly discussed without also taking a look at the further course of the war. Historians are not supposed to speculate about the might have beens (at least over here this would always cause nose wrinkling of the scientists while I think that it is a little less "outlawed" in the British and American historical discourse), but it remains an interesting question what would have taken place if in 1914 the common soldiers (supported perhaps by some of the lower rank officers) would have taken determined step against the own command in order to make the truce a real peace. Could it have brought about the era of lasting peace in Europe which was later achieved after WW2 and with that long era of uncertainty called the Cold War? I don't know, but in any case it would have been a marvelous testimony of humans ability to learn and settle differences in a way different from those given by the testimony of outright madness which WW1 became.
"What if there was war and nobody goes there?" would be the free translation of a question asked by a German soldier in the book "All quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque which I want to recommend to everyone who is interested in WW1 along with the
excellent movie (which the nazis immediately prohibited after they took power because of its anti-war messages).
Another movie I want to recommend to you is the 2005 movie Joyeux No”l
Joyeux No”l ("Merry Christmas") which is about the Christmas Truce in particular. The movie is in parts a little corny, but it is a pretty kind of corniness. It also exaggerates some things (even from the time of the Christmas Truce there are no reports of soldiers warning the enemy soldiers of an impending artillery bombardment and offering shelter in the own trenches), but it still is a beautiful movie to watch if it is taken with a grain of salt and especially in Christmas time the movie is a very fitting choice.
