What was the Christmas Truce?

Amid the bloodshed of World War I, the Pope pled for a truce on Christmas Day. The commanding powers refused the truce, but soldiers across Europe crossed battle lines to spend Christmas the enemy. Check out our HowStuffWorks article to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Candice Gibson, joined by staff writer Josh Curious
like a cat Clark Merry Christmas in July. Josh, Well,

(00:22):
Merry Christmas to you too, Candice. That's funny you say
that because number one, I've been drinking eggnog all day
and number two my question kind of has to do
with Christmas, and actually it space more around war, but
Christmas fits in there somewhere. So you know, World War One,
you know, it changed the face of war forever. So

(00:42):
we we saw chemical warfare for the first time, machine
guns started being used thanks flamethrowers. Um, favilions were engaged
in bad Yeah. Worst of all, this is the first
time that civilians were actually targeted because of planes being
able to drop bombs. Um. You know these weren't you
are are very sophisticated, you know, laser guided missiles. These

(01:03):
were just bombs that were often just dropped out of
the side by the pilot and wherever they landed is
where they landed. Lots of civilians died like that. Um,
Both sides targeted passenger vessels in the Atlantic. You know,
the Germans sunk the Lusitania, which was a pretty big deal. Um,
so it was war was horrible before, but war got

(01:27):
exponentially more horrible from World War One on. And one
of the reasons for that was the advent of trench warfare.
And from what I understand, the trenches in World War
One dragged on for countries across and actually there are
I think one soldier for every four inch four inches
of trench or something like that. So the conditions in

(01:48):
these trenches were awful. But actually it has to do
with trenches. My question is that in some stretch of
these trenches on Christmas, I heard that they both stopped fighting,
that there was Christmas truce. Is that fact or fiction?
Because I don't know. Juxtaposed against the horror of World
War One, it seems hinky, Well, this will warm your

(02:11):
heart if the July heat hasn't already. But that's actually
a fact. Pope Benedict actually pleaded for both sides to
call a truce on Christmas, and while the Germans considered
the truth, the Allied forces wouldn't have anything to do
with it. But on Christmas Eve, as the Germans were
allowing their little Christmas trees or ten and bombs and

(02:31):
put them out towards the front of their trenches and
started singing their favorite German carols. You know. The British
caught one of those on the other side of their
trenches and they wanted to join in the merriment, and
so both sides held up little signs of a truth.
Will you stop fighting now? And the British said, okay,
if you guys promise, and so they came out of
their trenches and it actually, you know, I'm making a

(02:53):
lot of this, but it was a very poignant moment,
very much in the Christmas spirit. Um. Some of the
guys how to pick up game of soccer. One of
the soldiers a juggler, and he performed. People shared packages
of goodies that their families had send to the front
lines of war, and no fighting occurred, and the sides
managed to drop, you know, the cause of the war
and all their beliefs and all their violence and just

(03:14):
enjoy the evening together. So the people at the top
refused to have a truce, but the guys actually fighting
did it on their own. They did in some instances,
and um along some parts of the trenches. It lasted
all the way until New Year's but then eventually the
commanding officers had their say and people had to get
back down to business, get back to war, get back
to war. That's a great story, it is, and if

(03:35):
you want to read it and its interior day you
can check out what was the Christmas Trups on how
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