Another part of the risk of trying to initiate a truce was defying the orders of the officers. Days before the truces started to occur, Pope Benedict XV had pleaded with the German, English, and Scottish sides of World War I to officially declare a truce on Christmas Day. The sides decided against the truces as generals believed they would be too dangerous, and rightfully so. World War I was a war with no rules, as David Woodward, an American historian, recounts multiple improper uses of the white flagged in World War I, usually used to show surrendering of a troop after battle. Woodward admits the Germans specifically used the flag to trick enemy troops essentially into letting their guard down and then ambushing them with more troops (18). …show more content…
And in turn, they all wanted the bloodshed to stop. Mike Dash, a writer for the Smithsonian and a New York Times best-selling author, explains that by December of 1914, the soldiers were veterans of war, and “familiar enough with the realities of combat to have lost much of the idealism that they had carried into war in August, and most longed for an end.”. The Brits fought not out of hatred for the Germans, but because they believed in a cause (Crocker 222). Before the Christmas Truce, small-scale attacks had left thousands of bodies in No-Man’s Land, many of which were buried during the truce. Alfred Chater, a soldier at the time, recalls the truce in his letters home to his mother. Chater talks about the burials that occurred during the Christmas Truce, and how both sides buried men together in joint burials. The soldiers were sympathetic, even for their enemies. Enough so that they attended the burials of those they had shot at just hours before. Soldiers didn’t want to be at war. The ideals their country had taught them were fading as they grew closer to their enemy. German soldiers told their new English “friends” they wished the War was over (Langrish), but even those who decided the war was pointless, as most of them did, the choice to fight was no longer theirs. Mike Dash says, ”George Eade, of the Rifles, had become friends with a German …show more content…
I grabbed my binoculars and looking cautiously over the parapet saw the incredible sight of our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps and chocolate with the enemy. Later a Scottish soldier appeared with a football which seemed to come from nowhere and a few minutes later a real football match got underway. The Scots marked their goal mouth with their strange caps and we did the same with ours. It was far from easy to play on the frozen ground, but we continued, keeping rigorously to the rules, despite the fact that it only lasted an hour and that we had no referee. A great many of the passes went wide, but all the amateur footballers, although they must have been very tired, played with huge enthusiasm.”
The novel All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, the poem, “In Flanders Field,” by John McCrae and the film, Gallipoli, Demonstrates how war makes men feel unimportant and, forces soldiers to make hard decisions that no one should half to make. In war people were forced to fight for their lives. Men were forced to kill one another to get their opinion across to the opposing sides. When men went home to their families they were too scared to say what had happened to them in the war. Many people had a glorified thought about how war is, Soldiers didn't tell them what had truly happened to them.
German propaganda spread throughout Germany like wildfire. The glory and enthusiasm of going to war to fight for your country aims and ideals was the mood set. Everyone wanted to be a hero, and if you did not want to fight than you would be thought of as a coward,.. “ because at the time even one’s parents were ready with the word ‘Coward’..” (Remarque p.11). The elders glorified war by writing and talking about it, expressing that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing. The soldiers saw the hideous wounds and dying men and distinguishing the false from the true, realizing that there is nothing of their world left. That is how Paul Baumer felt when he was in the Catholic hospital with his friend and comrade Albert Kropp. Looking around at all the wounded solders he saw what a waste war was. Up until this war, nobody had ever seen such a destructive war, partly due to all the advanced technology, and therefore none of the great world powers knew what they were getting themselves into. “ To shed one’s blood for the fatherland is not difficult it is enveloped in romantic heroism” (McKay/Hill/Bucker 904) as explained by a German soldier who volunteered for the front. The fact that the whole country of Germany was patriotic, energetic, and unified towards the war effort glorified it even that much more. Who would not want to fight for their homeland at that time? “ We were still crammed full of vague ideas which gave to life, and to the war also an ideal and almost romantic character” (Remarque 21). Once these combatants experienced the real life threats such as poisonous gasses, rapid machine gun fire and a constant flurry of explosive shells, these were propelled into a New World of killing or being killed. They are fighting with animal like instincts and all their proper manners that they are raised with vanish.
The First World War witnessed an appalling number of casualties. Due partly to this fact, some historians, developed the perception that commanders on both sides depended on only one disastrous approach to breaking the stalemate. These historians attributed the loss of life to the reliance on soldiers charging across no-man’s land only to be mowed down by enemy machineguns. The accuracy of this, however, is fallacious because both the German’s and Allies developed and used a variety of tactics during the war. The main reason for battlefield success and eventual victory by the Allies came from the transformation of battlefield tactics; nevertheless, moral played a major role by greatly affecting the development of new tactics and the final outcome of the war.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, it becomes very apparent that some of the soldiers do not feel as if World War I was their fight, when comrades begin discussing the origin of war. One comrade, Albert states that a war is initiated by “one country badly offending the other” (204). This lead to a discussion over why the soldiers are fighting when truly it is one person or a small group of people that are directly offended by an opposing group in a similar position of power. Therefore, why must they discover the true horrors of war while simultaneously putting their lives on the line, when the ones who began the predicament, propelled false advertisement with propagandas that romanticized and glorified war don’t have to live as if the next second may be their
football (soccer) is ‘weak and feminine. It is evident that these boys believed in sporting
The soldiers in the Second Company form this bond between each other that represents that of all wartime buddies. They develop these friendships where they depend on each other so that they can make it through the war. The young soldiers play cards, smoke together and joke around together to pass time when they are not fighting. Their reactions towards dying friends show their love for one another. “Suddenly little Kropp throws his cigarette away, stamps on it savagely, and looking around him with a broken and distracted face, stammers “Damned sh*t, the damned sh*t!”” (page 18). Even after their good friend Kemmerich passes away, the circle of friends is able to pull together and get through it all. They have a deep love for each other. Some soldiers like Paul and Katczinsky even feel a father/son relationship with each other. “We don’t talk much, but I believe we have a more complete communion with one another than even lovers have” (page 94). The war has brought them together. It has made them rely on each other for survival and has brought them to forget the horrors of war.
The Christmas truce of 1914 represents an example of religion in world war 1. The soldiers on opposing sides called for an informal cease fire on Christmas to celebrate the holiday together (Christmas Truce of 1914). The Christmas truce presents a testament to the religious underlining that the war had. They stopped the war to celebrate a holiday solely based on the birth of a religious figure, Jesus Christ. Even in the bleak times of war, the soldiers stayed strong in their faith and joined with each other to celebrate. It is said that the soldiers sang Christmas carols together and even played a game of soccer (Christmas Truce of 1914). Without religious propaganda, the
The first Unknown Soldier’s corpse was from a battlefield in France. His remains were then put into a casket and sent to America. On the day of the tomb’s opening there was a large celebration that many attended to show reverence to the unknown, and to other men that died in battle. In America the soldier’s casket was followed by a large parade of military men to his resting place on top of a hill at the Arlington National Cemetery. In the video, US Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the narrator says, “In the amphitheatre of the Arlington Cemetery President Harding delivered a speech about the tomb. He then placed a congressional medal on the casket.” In this short video you can see the grief on all the civilians’ faces. This ceremony was a special part of America’s history. People were beginning to realize how real war was. People saw first hand that soldiers were putting their lives on the line for the sake of the U.S. citizens’ freedom. There were many soldiers to choose from to put into the tomb from each war. People who were high up in the military
The Truce between the germans and the allies on christmas eve and day happened because the germans and allies wanted to have a calm time.This would lead to no firing because christmas was a time of remembering each other and to have a time to enjoy with others around you.The reason that this also happened was to go into the middle of the battle field which was called no mans land and retrieve the lives of their fallen teammates that had been killed in the war.In the time of this most soldiers bodies were retrieved and sent back for a memorial and to honor them in a funeral.When the truce started a soldier from the german trenches came out and started singing a song that was about christmas and to be free in the world.The hard part for the soldiers during the time was retrieving all the
There are burials, and memorial gatherings for the deaths of the gladers, or the people of the
Christmas is a time of sharing and togetherness, but what would you do if all of that was taken from you? World War One, 1914, the men who fought for our country expected to be in the comfort of their own homes sharing dinner and exchanging gifts with loved ones like any other year but instead were faced with the horrific conditions of the trenches; most of their friends already presumed dead.
The Civil War was one of the bloodiest and deadliest conflicts in U.S History. In Gettysburg there were three consecutive days in July, were the most soldiers were hurt. There were a total of 51,000 soldiers who were missing, wounded, or dead (Goodheart 1). There was no place to bury all the dead. There were about 7,000 bodies of the soldiers left in the battlefield. Some were buried in shallow graves and had very little identification (Goodheart 1). With the heat and rain the town started to smell like decaying animals mixed with the odor of human bodies (Borrit 5). The governor decided to make a National Cemetery were all of the dead soldiers would have a place to be honored. This is where one of the famous addresses
In Paul Fussell’s book, The Great War and Modern Memory, he discusses some of the ways in which World War I affected the men who fought in it, specifically those in the trenches. One of Fussell’s main points in his book as he tries to characterize World War I was the widespread irony that spread in its wake. Even though the focus of his book is based upon the British perspective of World War I, Fussell also briefly mentions the effects of the war upon other countries involved in the war.
Since 1945, approximately sixteen million American Soldiers and their families have been stationed in Germany. (Smyser,97) The Germans were never hostile towards the Americans, they were considered their friends and interacted with each other on a daily basis. After Germany’s defeat in World War Two, America occupied the defeated Germany and the Germans relied on Ame...
People have celebrated a mid-winter festival since pre-historic times. They marked the beginning of longer hours of daylight with fires and ritual offerings. The Roman festival of Saturnalia -- a time for feasting and gambling -- lasted for weeks in December. Germanic tribes of Northern Europe also celebrated mid-winter with feasting, drinking and religious rituals.