Transcript of 629. WWI: The Christmas Truce

If you want more from the show, join the Rest is History Club. With Christmas Coming, you can also gift a whole year of access to the history lover in your life. Just head to therestishistory. Com and click Gifts. This episode is sponsored by Hive. Britain revolutionized the future with the might of industrial power. But now you can transform your own energy future and take control with the power of Hive.

Hive makes the most of the sun, with solar panels turning sunlight into greener electricity and enabling you to sell excess back to the grid.

And Hive's thermostats make it possible for you to heat your home without lifting anything more than a thumb and an impressed brow.

Their heat pumps draw warmth from the air, and they keep it exactly where you want it. No smoke, no waste.

Hive's EV charger. Let lets your car charge quietly overnight, recharging while you do too.

Hive brings it all together. Heating, charging, and solar, managed from one simple app in a quiet revolution.

In the long history of power, Hive helps you finally know yours. Head to vivehome. Com to find out more, subject to survey and suitability. Hive app compatible with selected technology. Paid for The surplus requires SEG tariff. Dear mother, I'm writing from the trenches. It is 11 o'clock in the morning. Beside me is a coke fire, opposite me a dugout with straw in it. The ground is sloppy in the actual trench, but frozen elsewhere. In my mouth is a pipe as presented by the Princess Mary. In the pipe is tobacco. Of course, you say. But wait. In the pipe is German tobacco. You say, from a prisoner or found in a captured trench. Oh, dear, no. From a German soldier. Yes, a live German soldier from his own trench. Yesterday, the British and Germans met and shook hands in the ground between the trenches and exchanged souvenirs and shook hands. Yes, all day, Christmas Day, and as I write. Marvelous. Isn't it? That was the 19-year-old Henry Williamson of the London Rifle Brigade writing to his parents in southeast London on the 26th of December, 1914, about the previous day, Christmas Day, 1914. Dominic, what could possibly be more festive than this topic?

You're right, Tom. He's describing the Christmas Truce. Henry Williamson, some of our listeners may be familiar with that name because he is the author of a book called Tark the Otter, a nature classic that I think was published about a decade after the First World War and has never been out of print since then. A real perennial children's classic.

Ring of Bright Water was the film, wasn't it?

That's right. Yeah, Ring of Bright Water. Exactly. So he's describing there a story that I think most people would rank as one of the most poignant of the 20th century. So it's the informal truce between British and German soldiers in no man's land on Christmas on us day, 1914. And I think we always imagine it as this precious oasis, this moment of peace amid the slaughter, hope amid the horror, the very best of humanity, Tom, in the grimace circumstances in human history.

Dominic, your tone there. I'm fearful of where you may be heading with this festive episode.

Where am I going to take it? Actually, who cares about what I think? Because what people really think when they think about the First World War, what does Paul McCartney think?

I tell you what Paul McCartney thinks. He lights a candle to our love, because in love, our problems disappear.

Yeah, of course. That's from the Pipes of Peace, 1983, which was, I think, a number one in Britain and in Ireland, but not in America, which is sad for the Americans.

Well, Paul is playing both a British officer and a German officer on either sides of the trenches, and they get up and they exchange photographs, don't they?

That's right. Yeah. And there are some examples. So the Christmas Truce often appears in popular culture. So for younger listeners, in Britain, there was a very celebrated ad, an advert for Sainsbury's, the supermarket in 2014, which a lot people may remember.

Which was the centenary of it happening.

Exactly. And it's one of those ads that went viral and it had the soldiers playing football between the trenches and we'll come to this issue, whether or not they played football. People who like Doctor Who, the very last Peter Capaldi story was set in no man's land on Christmas Day. That was on 2017. Again, it was the Christmas Truce as the backdrop. I guess it plays a huge part, a central part, actually, in what Michael Gove, when he was Education Secretary, called the Black had a version of the First World War. So this is the idea that basically the war was for nothing. It was a tragic waste. There were these corrupt, cruel old generals sending young men to die when actually the young men just wanted to shake hands, exchange tobacco. Play football. Play football. Exactly. And Tom, it will astound you. I know you're nervous about where I'm going to take this.

I'm not nervous at all. I'm full of festive excitement.

It would astound you to hear.

I have my suspicions as to where you're going with this.

That the reality of the Christmas juice It was a bit more complicated.

Who knew?

We'll be asking today, did it happen? Who started it? And why did they start it? What did the ordinary soldiers think about it? Did they really play football between the trenches? Here's the big question. If they could stop on Christmas Day, how is it that they carry it on? Why didn't they just shake hands and go home?

That is the question that Paul asks in the Pipes of Peace.

Well, Paul, if you're listening, we're going to answer that question today. Let us set the festive scene. It's December 1914. The First World War has been going for almost five months. Britain, France, and Russia on one side, the Allies or the Entente, and Germany and Austria, Hungary on the other. People who listen to our series in the summer, that was episodes 5, 9, 4 onwards, we'll recall that in the late summer and autumn, the Germans launched this huge offensive in the West. They're driven back at the Battle of the Marn, and they end up cutting these trench networks in the chalk, this long defensive line, like a scar through Flanders in Belgium and Eastern France. They dig deeper and deeper as the rains come, and they basically dig in for the long haul. There's constant attempts to break the defenses, but by, let's say, the end of November 1914, the weather has changed. It's pouring with rain, and the fighting, it doesn't dwindle to nothing, but it just dies down a little bit and becomes institutionalized. So that's when you basically get the Western front.

In the winter, there is still It's a feeling, isn't it, that this is temporary and that come the summer, it's the fighting season. We all get out of the trenches and have a traditional Napoleonic-style war. So there isn't yet the sense that this is going to be grinding horror with rats and mud forever and ever.

No, there's rats at the moment, but people think it will change come the spring. That said, by the end of 1914, some people are already, rather like Paul McCartney, calling for peace, the pipes of peace. So there's an open letter by 101 British women suffrage campaigners addressed to the women of Germany and Austria saying, Why can't we... Let's all put pressure on our governments to stop the killing. This is madness.

Yeah, like Aristophanies.

Right, exactly. And then The Pope gets involved. Pope Benedict, the 15th. He publishes a paper encyclical in November. He says, The War is the Suicide of Civilized Europe. He says, I'd like to mediate a Truce. Everybody ignores him.

But he wasn't wrong, was he?

Yeah, he was quite right. It's It's very rare that you get me commending the Pope, but I take my hat off to him on this occasion.

Well, that's, again, the festive spirit.

Exactly. So a month later, after he's been ignored, he basically appeals to both sides, says, Please stop fighting over Christmas, and I quote, so that the guns may fall silent, at least upon the night the angels sang. Very nice, and everybody, again, completely ignores him. So people listening to this may think, Well, why did these appeals fail? Because both sides had already lost a lot of men. So why did they want to carry on fighting? And the short answer, we talked about this at the end of our First World War series, is that they actually want to keep fighting. They want to achieve their war aims. So the Allies, the British and French, for example, they want to drive the Germans out. The Germans are still in Belgium. They're occupying a 10th of France, so the Allies aren't going to stop. And the Germans themselves aren't going to stop because they think of the war as this desperate struggle for survival. They think they're encircled. They think that if they lose, it will be a total and utter national disaster. I mean, to be honest, they're not wrong because they do lose, and it is.

I mean, you just have to look at Ukraine, don't you? Where there's quite a similar deadlock. There are even trenches. I think there was a Christmas truce, but Obviously, it didn't last because neither side is going to just walk away.

Yeah, they believe in their cause, and they want to achieve their goals. Actually, the fact they've lost so many men actually emboldens them, makes their resistance more dogged. So The British expeditionary force has been almost completely destroyed by this point and replaced by new men. The Germans and the French have lost about half a million men each, but they don't want to stop because they think if they did that, it would dishonor the sacrifice of those men who have fallen. So that's the context. Let's get into the trenches in December 1914. And specifically, we're going to be looking at the 20-mile stretch of the Western front, which is held by the British on one side and the Germans on the other, south of Ypres in Belgium. So the men in these lines are newcomers, by and large. They are reservists, they're new recruits who have been rushed in to take the place of the forces that were originally destroyed in the first few months of the war. And that's true of the Germans as well. So they have poured in young, inexperienced men, often from Saxony and Bavaria, rather than from Prussia. The British always said, The Prussians are the worst.

They're dure and dogged and formidable. Bullet-headed. Yeah. Whereas the Saxons and the Bavarians were jollier. You get the first reports of fraternization between the trenches. This is so interesting. It may surprise some listeners. The fraternization actually begins well before Christmas. It actually happens from early November or so, from the point at which they dig in. What would happen is there would be a informal, shouted arrangement, and possibly agreed by two men in meeting in no man's land or something. We'll have a pause at this particular point in the day so that we can both wash or we can have our evening meals, or Or because there's loads of bodies piled up in no man's land and we'd like to retrieve our mates and bury the dead, or because the weather is really terrible, it's pouring and pouring with rain, the trenches on both sides are flooded, and basically someone shouts out, Should we have a break so that both of us can repair our trenches? Which might strike people as mad, but I mean...

Well, but maybe it doesn't if you are not a professional soldier and you're working in a shop or an or something, and suddenly you find yourself in the winter in mud facing people you know really nothing about, wouldn't that make it likelier that you might try and reach out and have an accommodation because you're not a professional soldier?

Yeah, of course.

What I mean by this point, you are a professional soldier, but you know what I mean. You haven't been raised to it. You haven't been trained to it over many years to fight.

Of course. I mean, it's worth stressing. There is always fraternization in wars. This is not unheard of. There have been lots of examples in wars before this. Remember that in this case, the front lines are very close together. I mean, you can shout from one line and the other line will hear you. And the fraternization generally starts with the Germans. They're shouting in English. And the reason it works that way is because there had been a real trend before the First World War for young German men, almost like Australians or something today, to come and work in London for a little while to improve their English. They work as waiters. It was a stereotype before the war, the German waiter in a London restaurant.

Yeah, so just to focus in on another angle then about what might have fostered fraternization. Is there a sense, even now, that there is still a degree of commonality between Britain and Germany? Because certainly that's there before the war breaks out, isn't it? I guess this is likely to happen between British and Germans and say French and Germans.

Yeah. The reason it wouldn't happen between French and Germans is, of course, the war is being fought on French soil. French losses have been much heavier. For the French, this is existential. This is their homeland from which they're trying to drive the invader. The British are fighting on what they regard as a neutral venue. It's in a way match for them as it is for the Germans. I think we talked about this in previous series. Before the First World War, there was so much stuff about the fraternal links between England and Germany, the Anglo-Saxon heritage, all of that. Of course, that ends up being erased by wartime propaganda. But we're only a few months into the war, so I think there's still a lot of... Well, not a lot, but there is still a slight element of fellow feeling.

I mean, a very obvious symbol of that cultural influence of Germany on Britain is the Christmas tree, which had been brought over by various roles, but particularly by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband. That is a very vivid symbol of this shared culture.

I mean, football, we'll come to football. The Germans have basically imported football from Britain. And some of these people who've been waiters in London are shouting out about football. They're saying, who's top of the first division? How are Tottenham Hotsberg getting on? Or whatever.

Although at this point, football isn't the obsession that it will become for Germans. It's much bigger in Britain, isn't it, than in Germany?

Yeah, agreed. So there are reports of informal fraternization. Actually, as Christmas approaches, some of the senior commanders are worried that this might get of hand. So we talked before about a guy called General Horace Smith-Dorian, and he was this very gallant, swashbuckling British Commander who actually, before the war, had shocked people at the public school officer training corps by saying, There should never be a war in Europe. It will destroy civilization. And everyone thought, Gosh, this guy's an absolute... Look at this, this pinko pacifist telling us that he doesn't agree with war and what. Anyway, he's now ended up in command. He issues an order on the fifth of December. He says, It's very common, when you're close to the enemy, for men to slide into a live and let live theory of life. They can become too pally. They lose sight of what he calls the sole object of war and sink into a military lethargy from which it's difficult to arouse them. And so as a result, he says, however tempting and occasionally confusing they may be, Our friendly intercourse with the enemy, unofficial armistices, and the exchange of tobacco and other comforts are absolutely prohibited.

However, I think those keywords there are however tempting and occasionally confusing they may be because it shows that even the man at the top can see the appeal. That actually, sometimes it's a moment of tremendous relief and escapism to shake hands with the opponent. Anyway, we approach Christmas Day. The weather has been dreadful, pouring with rain, and so the recent fighting has been very desultry. And on both sides, British and German, people are thinking a lot about Christmas. So in the British newspapers, there have been all these appeals for the public to send tobacco and sweets and chocolates and Christmas puddings, even. I don't know how they'd cook them, but anyway, Christmas puddings, plum puddings to the front. The Royal Family have organized the sending of 350,000 Princess Mary gift tins. So Henry Williamson, in that quotation, mentioned his Princess Mary stuff. So you'd basically get a tin and it It had Princess Mary's face on it. And inside, there was some chocolate and tobacco and cigarettes and stuff. And you got a lovely Christmas message from George IV.

And that's great. And it's also great because in a hundred years time, it will enable Sainsbury's to use that as a way of flogging their own groceries, weren't it?

Exactly.

So everyone's a winner.

Because it's a huge thing with chocolate and tins in the Sainsbury's advert. Now, that said, although they've got this inspiring message from George IV, one of Britain's very finest Kings, most Most of the men are pretty miserable because they've been sitting there in this rain. They're cold, they're muddy, all of this. But the magic of Christmas, when they wake on Christmas Eve, something has changed. So the rain has stopped. There's been a hard frost overnight, and the ground is dusted with ice and snow. So rather like you see in the adverts and the Paul Magana's video and stuff. Christmas Eve is as normal. There's this slightly desultry fighting and firing on both sides, gunfire. But late that afternoon, the firing starts to die down as normal. And then the Germans do something unexpected. So we mentioned the presents that the British have had from home and the Germans have had presents, too. The Kaiser, our old friend, the Kaiser, has sent them cigarettes and tobacco. But he and his men have also sent them lots of little Christmas trees, hundreds of little Christmas trees all across the front. And as night falls, the Germans start putting up these Christmas trees on the are parapets of their trenches, and they light candles.

Go on, Tom. I can see you're gearing up to say something sardonic about the German candle lighting.

No, not at all. I just wanted to mention at this point a podcast by a mutual friend of ours, Jonathan Wilson, with Rob Draper. It was what it was. Great title. Yeah, it's maybe not the best. But his podcast about the history of football. And in that, they mention a top fact, which is that these Christmas trees that get sent out to all the various regiments and places, they also send them to Uboats They had a very entertaining debate about how exactly you would balance a Christmas tree on a U-boat.

How would you balance a Christmas tree on a U-boat?

Maybe you've lit it with candles and the risk of burning to death in a U-boat, which would be not festive at all. Anyway, I just mentioned that in passing. Also, I just wanted to say about Christmas trees and Christmas Eve for Germans. The Germans, like most people on the continent, have a weird attitude to Christmas. Namely, they don't actually celebrate it on Christmas, do The main focus is Christmas Eve, which always seems to me mad.

It is mad. I don't agree with that.

I mean, it's wrong. But presumably, the British are not really aware of this, and so they'd be startled by this sudden appearance of Christmas trees.

They are startled. So that evening, at about 8: 30, you get the first reports of Carol singing. Again, this is part of the cliché of the Christmas Truce, but it's absolutely true. So at 8: 30, a Royal Irish Rifle's officer reports to headquarters. Germans have illuminated their trenches, are singing songs, and are wishing us a happy Christmas. Compliments are being exchanged, but are nevertheless taking all military precautions. So you get more reports flooding in that the Germans are singing Stillernacht, Silent Night, and the British are replying with the first Noel. I think it's actually quite revealing that these are such mournful carols, aren't they? They're almost slow laments. Very moving, but you're not going to be singing Heart the Herald, Angel, sing. You're not going to be belting that out in the middle of the first World War. Sure. There's some excellent books about the Christmas Truce, which I'll mention a little bit later, but just for the time being. There are loads of accounts of people lighting candles and singing carols, loads of quotations on an online article by the historian Simon Jones. If you Google the Christmas Truce, you'll see it. There's no doubt whatsoever that it's the Germans who take the lead, and they start encouraging the British to come out of their trenches.

I'll just give one quotation. It's a British soldier called Private Frederick Heath. He wrote a letter home a few days later, and said, All down our line of trenches, there came to our ears a greeting unique in war. English soldier, English soldier, a Merry Christmas, a Merry Christmas. They spoke just like that, the Germans. For some little time, we were cautious and did not even answer. Officers fearing treachery, ordered the men to be silent. But up and down our line, when heard the men answering that Christmas greeting from the enemy, how could we resist wishing each other a Merry Christmas, even though we might be at each other's throats immediately afterwards? And so they spend the night singing to each other across no man's land, as he puts it, a night made easier by songs from the German trenches, the pippings of picolos, and from our broad lines, laughter and Christmas carols.

Thought strikes me, which is that we discussed in the series we did earlier this year about the atrocities in Belgium and the sense that the Germans have put themselves beyond the pale, the evil and all of that.

You didn't get that conclusion from me, Tom.

No, I know. But there is a sense on the home front, isn't there? That the Germans are just monstrous. But clearly, there's not a sense of that at all here. They're not thinking this might be a trap.

No, I suppose not. But is that not because they've been there for weeks? They know that the Germans are men just like them, as they will, of course, will discover even more the next day.

But that's what's interesting, isn't it? Because I would guess that the effect of propaganda in Britain, and indeed in Germany, is to make them think, well, are they men like us? Are they not monsters out to destroy civilization? It seems clear that that hasn't entirely taken root, that propaganda war.

As we will see later in this episode, there are more truces after this, but they dwindle and they disappear by 1916 and 17. I think the truth is that over time, people became brutalized. But at this point, they're not fully brutalized. They still see their opponents as human beings like themselves and not simply as the enemy to kill kill or be killed by.

I suppose also there is a lot of sport-based propaganda, isn't there? Certainly in Britain. I don't know whether it's the same in Germany. You mentioned this is the equivalent of halftime. Perhaps that's also the sense that you fight hard but shake hands. Exactly.

So that's Christmas Eve. What about Christmas Day? Christmas Day dawns cold and foggy, but by mid-morning, the fog has cleared, and it actually turns out to be a lovely crisp winter's day. It's not raining, crucially. For a lot of people, the most striking thing is how quiet it is. The guns have been roaring all this time. But on both sides, a lot of officers say, Well, we won't fire on Christmas Day, so they just stop. And once one side stops, the other generally then stops as well. And then tentatively at first, they've been making a lot of arrangements over the night. We'll get out of the trench if you do tomorrow morning. And men start to do it. And when no one shoots them, other men start doing it. And bit by bit, along probably about two-thirds of this stretch, so we're talking about over a... 12 miles? Yeah, 12 to 15 mile stretch. People get out of the trenches and they venture into no man's land on both sides. And when they get there, what do they do? Well, first of all, they have made arrangements often. I'll give you a tin if you give me some tobacco or whatever.

So they exchange their buttons. They exchange souvenirs. Actually, Henry Williamson used the word souvenirs, I think, didn't he? They exchange buttons and badges. Sometimes they exchange their caps. That seems reckless because you might be shot by your own side.

Yeah, I mean, explaining to the Sergeant Major of that in the morning.

Why you're dressed as a German? The Germans hand over cigars. The British will give them jam or tit. But they'll basically... There's a barter system.

Or a bar of Sainsbury's chocolate.

Exactly. Sometimes they have lunch together. There's a lovely account of the sixth Cheshers who managed to catch a pig and they roasted it in no man's land and shared it with the Germans.

Where the hell did they get a pig from?

God knows. There's a guy called Bruce Benz father, who's often quoted in the accounts of the Christmas Truce, because he became a very popular newspaper cartoonist between the wars. He says, I spotted a German officer, some lieutenant I should think. And being a bit of a collector, I intimated to him that I had taken a fancy to some of his buttons. I brought out my wire clippers and with a few deafed snips, removed a couple of his buttons and put them in my pocket. I then gave him two of mine in exchange. And then what Ben's father says of the truce, the last sight he had of it was one of his machine gunners who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civil life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of the docile Bosch, who was patiently kneeling on the ground while the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck.

My sense of Germans in the first World War is not that they had mullets. That's an unexpected discovery.

Yeah, but he's been in the trenches all this time. The mad thing is this bloke's got a load of clippers. Now, some activities are a more mundane. Actually, both sides spend a lot of the truth fixing up their trenches. And they even share tools with each other to work on their trenches, which is very sweet. Some activities are not so sweet and a bit more sinister. So Simon Jones already mentioned, he quotes a British officer who had a share a cigar with a German sniper. And this sniper very foolishly said, I'm the best shot in the German army. I've killed more men than most of my comments put together. And this British officer said, okay,Right, yeah. And he noted down this bloke's position, said that he could shoot him himself the next day. That's harsh. But actually, the most common thing they did was to bury the dead. There were loads of accounts, actually, you get one from Henry Williamson, of these mass burials. And so they'll bury them all together. The German officers and men will line up on one side of the grave, the British on the other. They sing Psalms, they read prayers in both languages and whatnot.

I mean, none of this sounds that exciting, frankly. There's an awful lot of just loitering and hanging around with your hands in your pockets. But it's clear from people's accounts that men on both sides found this a really remarkable and memorable day. All these letters, the most extraordinary Christmas day imaginable. I wouldn't have missed that unique and weird Christmas day for anything. This one from Captain Sir Edward Hulse. He describes seeing Old Langsine, with which we all, English, Scots, Irish, Prussians, Wurtembergers, joined It was absolutely astounding. If I had seen it on a cinematograph film, I should have sworn that it was faked. But one question as we head into the break, do they talk about the war? I mean, that's the thing that would puzzle. You would think they would, right? That they talk about what they're doing.

Well, unless they want a holiday in every sense from the war.

Yeah, a little bit. I think they do talk about it a bit. But as you say, it's boring to a lot of them. They're not going to start discussing the Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

They want to talk about Gavin and Stacey.

Yeah, they want to talk about football or something, or about how cold they are, or about the quality of their food, or whatever. Actually, the most striking character of them talking about the war, for me, is this guy. We began with Henry Williamson, 19 years old. He watches the burials, and he is struck by the fact that on the German crosses, they write the words, für Vaterland und Freiheit, for fatherland and freedom. And he's really stunned by this. And I quote, Freedom? How was this? We were fighting for freedom. Our cause was just. We were defending Belgium's civilization. And he says to a German bloke standing next to him who speaks English, What's all this? You're the baddies. What are you thinking? And the German says to him, Well, of course, we're fighting for freedom. Our cause is just. We are ringed with enemies. So war was thrust on us? We are defending our parents, our homes, our German soil. Williamson has what he calls a most shaking, staggering thought that both sides thought they were fighting for the same cause. These fellows in gray were good fellows. They were Strangely, just men like ourselves.

Very philosophical. Also, Dominic, I'm amazed that this hasn't turned out to be a myth. I was fully expecting you to debunk it.

Yeah, I don't like debunking. Not on Christmas Day.

There was a truce, but I suppose then the obvious question is, well, how does it come to an end? Also that question that you mentioned at the start of this first half, why didn't they just stop fighting? Why did they, when Boxing Day came, start shooting each other again? Why did the crumps return? I suppose the biggest question of all, what about the football? Did they play that? If so, did the Germans win on penalties? We will find out after the break.

This episode This episode is brought to you by Ancestry. Hello, James Holland here, joined by Al Murray from Goalhangers World War II podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk. These are those odd days between Christmas and New Year. The house buzzing with laughter, leftovers piled high, festive films murmuring in the background, and trivial pursuit debates still raging around the table. It's the perfect time to sit close, share family stories, and think about people who came before you. Grandparents, great uncles, aunts you hardly knew. Everyone who helped shape the family you're part of today. With an Ancestry Membership, you can take those conversations further. All you have to do is provide what you know about your family history, such as your parents and grandparents' birthplaces. An Ancestry will help you dig through billions of records to uncover fascinating news stories about the lives of your relatives. Maybe it's a great uncle ferry a hurricane north, a grandmother stitching uniforms in a Glasgow mill, or a relative holding the line on the Normandy beaches, and suddenly the stories around your own table take on a whole new depth.

The past isn't behind you.

It runs straight through you. Head to ancestry. Co. Uk/newyear to learn about Ancestry's memberships and start your family history journey today.

Hello, I'm Professor Hannah Fry. I'm Michael Stevens, creator of VSAS.

We thought we would join you for a moment, completely uninvited.

We are not going to stay too long, unless you want us to, of course. We're here to tell you about our brand new show, The Rest is Science. Every episode is going to start with something that feels initially familiar, and then we're going to unpick it and tear it apart until you no longer recognize it at all. You know how banana flavor doesn't taste like bananas? Yeah. What is that about? So it is supposed to taste like an old species of banana that was wiped out in a banana Apocalypse. Now, you will only find it in botanical collections in the garden of billionaires.

Wow.

Banana candy is actually the ghost of a long, extinct banana. If you like scratching the surface, thinking a little bit deeper. Or weirder.

Yes, definitely that, too.

You can join Michael and I every Tuesday and Thursday, wherever you get your podcast. Christmas dawned wrapped in mist to open itself and offer the day like a gift for Harry, Hugo, Hermann, Henry Heinz. With whistles, waves, cheers, shouts, laughs. 'Fröhe Weihnachten, Tommy, Merry Christmas, Fritz. ' A young Berliner, brandishing schnapps, was the first from his ditch to climb. A Schropcher lad ran at him like a rhyme. Then it was up and over every man to shake the hand of a foe as a friend or slap his back like a brother would, exchanging gifts of biscuits, tea, McConnakey stew, tickless jam, for Cognac, sausages, cigars, beer, sauerkraut, or chase six hares who jumped from a cabbage patch, or find a ball and make of a battleground, a football pitch. That was the Christmas Truce by William McGonigal. Oh, no, it wasn't. It was by Carole Anne Duffy, and it was published in 2011, and it was also released as an illustrated children's book. Dominic, you've written perfectly captures the slightly maudlin sentimentality that now surrounds this story. Oh, no. I mean, there's a Paddington-tinged quality of sentimentality about this whole story, I think. Yeah, there But I guess we'll maybe come onto that in a few minutes.

But just for now, the idea that the soldiers made of a battleground a football pitch.

Yeah.

Is this true? This is probably the most famous thing, isn't it, that people know about it?

So this is the thing that has really gathered momentum in the last 20 years or so. So we mentioned the Sainsbury's advert. It's one of the most discussed adverts of the 21st century in Britain. If you Google it, there's loads of commentary about it. It's currently got 26 million views on YouTube. And I think if you ask people now, especially children, what happened at the Christmas Truce, they will say they played football. Now, this has become one of the most bizarrely, one of the most hotly debated questions of the whole First World War, particularly online.

Yeah, because I've read so many different opposing opinions on this.

Yes, mad. And especially on social media, on Twitter or something, people will be ripping into each other about this question.

But what's interesting, it's quite like the Angels of Monds that we did a bonus on. The story that blows up, and that turns out to be completely rubbish. But this one seems to have a substratum of truth.

A tiny substratum of truth, exactly. So let's get into the most... So the most celebrated football story of all. So the one you will see, if you Google it or if you look in a random newspaper report, is that there was definitely a match, at least one match. It was played between the 133rd Royal Saxon Regiment, Germans, and a team of Scottish soldiers. They paid on frozen ground, caps for goalposts, and the result The result, Tom, are you really scoffing?

No, I'm not. I was, Caps for goalposts.

Caps for goalposts, I know. And the result was 3-2 to the Germans. Here's the most famous account that's often quoted from the British side. We provided the football and we set up stretches as goalposts, stretches not caps. And the Reverend Jolly, our padre, acted as ref. They beat us three, two, but the padre had showed a bit too much Christian charity. Their outside Side left shot the deciding goal, but he was miles offside and admitted it as soon as the whistle went. And we spectators were spread nearly too deep along the touch lines with loaded rifles slung on our shoulders.

The Scots are the best at football in the world at this point, aren't they? With their passing game and everything. Whereas the Germans aren't really playing football. I find it improbable that the Scots would lose 3-2 to the Germans, actually.

Well, you'll be right. You're right, Tom. Your historical instincts have served you Well, because this story is total fiction, it's actually from a short story by Robert Graves. Now, Robert Graves did serve on the Western front. He wrote a very, probably the most famous First World War memoir, Goodbye to All That.

But this is fiction.

Yeah, but this is fiction because he didn't actually arrive till 1915.

So this is very, again, like the Angels of Mons, which begins with a piece of fiction that got recycled and is now taken as an authentic report.

Yeah, that's right. Now, there are accounts that are not fiction. So here is one from a soldier who was in that regiment, the 133rd of the Saxons, Lieutenant Johannes Niemann. He gave an interview about it in the 1960s. He describes in this interview, standard stuff. We met in no man's land, we exchanged cigarettes and snaps and chocolate. And then he says, A Scottish soldier appeared with a football which seemed to come from nowhere, and a real football match got underway. The Scots marked their goalmouth with their strange caps, and we did the same with ours. He said, We played for about an hour, and then our commanding officer found out that we were playing, and he said, Come on, stop all this. And we drifted back to our trenches, and the frattenisation ended. Now, this is one of many stories of people playing football.

But it's from this 1960s?

This is from the 1960s, from afterwards. So we'll come back to whether or not this particular story is true or not. There are tons of stories like this, and a lot of real proper first World War military historians. This drives them absolutely bonkers. So there's a who does a lot of consultancy work for TV and documentaries and stuff called Taf Gillingham. And if you look at his online presence, you will see that for the last 15 years, he's been trapped and unable to escape from a Christmas Truce football-related rabbit hole.

So he doesn't believe it?

He doesn't believe it. He's investigated all these stories.

I mean, that thing that the German soldier says about the football which seemed to come from nowhere. I mean, it's a bit like the pig, isn't it?

But I think the pig is I think the pig is true.

But that's what I'm wondering. I mean, if there's a pig, why can't there be a football?

Well, let's see what this bloke, Taff Gilliam, says. He says, Most of these stories are the product of frauds and fantasists after the war. Most accounts of football in letters and diaries at the time say they wanted to play, but they didn't have a ball, or they did have a ball, but their commanding officer wouldn't let them, or they said, We'll play in a few days, but when the few days came around, they were already fighting again, so the football never happened. How However, Tom, this is the twist. He thinks there are two stories that do stand up, so not total debunking today. So one of them is that story by Johannes Niemann, because there's another account by a German soldier in the same regiment who wrote to his mother and said, We played British soldiers. So two men in the same regiment, and these British soldiers were probably Scots, the second Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. They were stationed at a place called Frélingien, which was right on the border between France and Belgium. And then there's a second story that stands up. There was a group of the Norfolk and Cheshire regiments at a place called Völklingen in Belgium.

And there are, again, two different sources, a sergeant and a corporal who mentioned playing football. We had a rare old jollification, which included football in which the Germans took part. Actually, when you see the Sainsbury's advert, the blokes in that advert are from these regimens because this bloke, Taft Gillian, was the military consultant. He said, They have to wear the right caps. You know what military consultants?

I do.

So he made a massive fuss about all this. They had the correct potties and whatnot. And so he was very happy. However, a lot of First World War historians are really bitter. As they see it, the football industry, meaning UEFA, and I'm sorry to say, the English Football Association, have hijacked the Christmas Truce for their own self-interested PR reasons.

Dominic, could I, and this is not something that you often hear on podcasts, stick up for FIFA at this point? What?

That's mad. I know it's Christmas, but that's absolutely disgraceful. The worst organization in the world, Tom.

It was what it was. Jonathan Wilson and Rob Draper in their podcast on this. They discuss the FIFA Museum where I think Rob had been. He reported that FIFA were very skeptical about it. The salient reason that they think it's obviously nonsense is because the pitch would have been too churned up for them to play, which I think is an excellent reason.

But the pitch was frozen.

Yeah, but you can't play on it.

I'll tell you why FIFA don't like it, because it's UEFA who are promoting it. It's an internal football rivalry between two different organizations. This has actually driven historians mad with rage. Lots of First World War historians are really keen to downplay the football, and they point out that actually a lot of soldiers had no interest in playing football. They just wanted to hobnob and smoke cigarettes and bury the dead and all that thing.

Do you think this is because First World War historians were the boy who never played football at school?

Possibly.

They hated sport.

Every now and again, they catch a glimpse of Prince William at a memorial in his capacity as head of the FA. Your friend, Prince William, a fellow Aston Villa supporter, Tom, and it drives them mad with rage. We should stop talking about football because anyone listening to this who loves the first of the war, we steam will be coming out their ears. Let's get back to Henry Williamson, with whom we open the episode.

But can I just say, what have we decided about the football? That there were one or two-One or two desultry games.

That's it.

But it wasn't really a match. They were just kicking it about.

No, they're just kicking a ball around. When it's saying, Oh, they're offside, they're playing left wing and stuff, they're not even playing proper positions. They don't have a referee. It's all a shambles. Anyway, Henry Williamson, how does it end? He describes how it ended in an article he wrote, a very lyrical article for the Daily Express 20 years later. And he says, The next day was quiet. We were waving to each which I think is probably true. They were waving to each other, to their mates, their new mates from Saxony or whatever. And then on the third day, after Christmas, a German sent across a message, At midnight, our staff officer's visit and we must fire our automatic pistolen But we will fire high. Nevertheless, please keep under cover. Then two days after that, there is an order from British headquarters, If you fraternize with the enemy anymore, you will be court-martialed, and if you're found guilty, you'll suffer the death penalty. Then after that, says Henry Williamson, The very light sword over no man's land at night, and bullets cut showers of splinters from the trees, and sometimes human flesh and bone. Now, behind all this is a really fascinating personal story, which some listeners may already be familiar with.

Henry Williamson, as we mentioned, was 19 at the time. He served out the rest of the war. He became a machine gunner. He was gassed, and he didn't leave the army till 1919. He's probably the most famous person to have written about the Christmas Truce, in part because he was profoundly affected by it. He wrote about it about three or four more times in his life, different accounts. It completely defined his life. He became completely obsessed by this idea of the kinship between British and German soldiers. By the 1930s, by which time he'd become a best-selling writer, the writer of these nature classics for children, he had also become a pacifist. And he came to believe that another trench veteran who claimed to speak for ordinary soldiers was also a pacifist like him.

And who was this soldier? What was the name of that man, Dominic?

The name of that man.

Albert Einstein?

No, it was Adolf Hitler.

Oh, no.

Yeah. Henry Williamson had a shocking moment there. So he became a huge fan of Hitler. He said, Hitler's a pacifist. Hitler loves the kinship between our two nations. And then in 1939, when war broke out, Henry Williamson, by this point, was basically a fascist. And he said, I shall fly immediately to Germany. He had to be dissuaded by friends or whatever. He said, I want to fly to Germany to meet Hitler. And let's settle this as man to man as trench veterans.

So like Rudolf Hess in reverse.

Like Rudolf Hess in reverse. If I could see him as a common soldier who had fraternized on that far away Christmas Day of 1914, Henry Williamson is a misapprehension here. He thinks that Hitler was at the Christmas Truce, which he wasn't. Might I not be able to give him the amity he so desired from England, the country he admired? This terrible error of judgment from Williamson made him an outcast, really, a political outlaw. Past. So if you Google him now, it says, author of Tarka the Otter, Everybody Loves This Book. Also a bit of a fascist, which is unfortunate. Actually, Tom, it's an object lesson, something I always tell Theo, which is crusading left wing idealism and pacifism can lead you into some very dark places. So that's the important lesson of today's episode.

If that's not an opportune Christmas message, I don't know what is.

Exactly. So what did Henry Williamson's fellow soldiers think about it? Well, actually, first of all, we know that a lot of British officers were seriously alarmed by the Christmas Truce. They thought, the officers, the war is bound to start again, the Germans will attack again, and our soldiers will struggle to fight and to defend themselves if they're wiping away manly tears at the thought of shared tins of jam and roasted pigs and football matches and stuff.

I think they're not wrong.

There's this story called Mike Dash who quotes a young officer, Lieutenant Richards, of the East Lancashire Regiment. This boat, Lieutenant Richards, was absolutely appalled by the Christmas Truce, and he was delighted when this firing started again. He said, Good old fashioned sniping, he said. Great to see some good old fashioned sniping. Because he was really worried. He thought, My men will be killed when the Germans attack because they'll just be They're trying to shake hands and the Germans will bear net them or something. So this is why the headquarters on both sides issue orders, no more fraternization in the period between Christmas and New Year. People like General Smith, Dorian, he'd been to the front lines on Boxing Day, and he said, Come on, this is a bit slack. We can't be doing all this because the war will start again, and we need to be in fighting mood. So that's the officers. What about the ordinary Tomies? Now, most of the accounts that we have ordinary Tom has come, as you've already mentioned Tom, from years afterwards, from a point at which it was common to see the war as a tragic waste. But at the time, the letters and diaries show that most men still very sincerely believed in their cause and wanted to fight to the end.

Well, Dominic, even Henry Williamson, who goes on to become a pacifist, you said he becomes a machine gunner and he's still having a cracker. People in 1919, which I think shows excess enthusiasm for the war.

Yeah, exactly. Another British soldier wrote later, There was not an atom of hate on either side that day, and yet on our side, not for a moment, was the will to war and the will to beat them relaxed.

But that's very sporting ideology, isn't it? You shake hands, but then you go out and you play hard.

Well, here's a perfect sporting message for you. George Eid of the rifle brigade, he wrote to his family about the truce, and he said, I made friends with a German artilleryman who spoke good English. And when we parted, he said, the German bloke said to me, Today we have peace. Tomorrow, you fight for your country. I fight for mine. Good luck. Now that's lovely, but it doesn't suggest to me that they want the war to stop. It suggests that exactly as you say, it's like a sportsman in a rugby match at halftime, smiling and shaking hands, and I'm going to absolutely go for you in the second half. And here is something, actually, that will surprise people, that ordinary soldiers. There were quite a lot of ordinary soldiers who did not approve of the truce at all and refused to honor it. So the second grenadier guards, they had suffered heavy losses before Christmas when the Germans popped up from their trench and shouted, Merry Christmas, the Grenadier Guards shot them.

That would make a brilliant Saint-Tropez advert.

There are accounts of Germans coming across no man's land and the British just shooting them. I mean, this is not unheard of. There are accounts of British units after Christmas, fighting writing among themselves, those who have honored the truce and those who have not. Because the guys who have not honored the truce say to the others, You are traitors, you are weak, all of this thing. What were you thinking of? My mate died on the 12th of December or something, and here are you shaking hands with the people who killed them. Actually, very strikingly, remember, this is happening, as we said, it's an away fixture in Belgium and France. Simon Jones gives the example of a Royal Welsh Fusilier's unit. They'd spent Christmas Day drinking with the Germans. They were withdrawn from the line on Boxing Day, and as they marched back, French women lined the streets to spit at them, saying, How dare you have a great laugh with the people who have invaded our territory and just spoiled our towns.

Do we know was there any fraternization between German and French soldiers?

No, not at all, really. I mean, not surprising. The French are fighting for their native land, and they've lost far more men than the British have. Well, actually, we'll come to an example later in the war where there is a truce between France and Germany, but that's jumping ahead a little bit. So how does it all end? The fighting restarts on Boxing Day in a very half-hearted fashion. It's actually not because the men are reluctant, it's because the weather turns bad again, because the snow turns to sleet, there's flooding in the trenches. So that means there's not that much fighting until New Year. And then in the New Year, the weather improves and the fighting can begin in earnest. Now, by this point, news of the truce has gone around the world. It was broken by the New York Times. Tellingly, I think a paper from a neutral country on the 31st of December. And then you get a series of reports, mainly in Britain, actually. It's interesting that the reports really are predominantly in Britain.

So there aren't any in Germany, really, or France?

Not really. There are some reports in Germany, none at all, really, in France. I think it's because in Britain, the stakes are not quite as high as they are. I mean, they're pretty high. Don't get me wrong, they're still high, but it's not quite It is existential as it is for the French and the Germans. Actually, the interesting thing, the Manchester Guardian then was, the voice of liberal opinion says... In fact, most papers say, Oh, wasn't it lovely they had a truce on Christmas Day? Quite surprising that even in the mid of propaganda, people, they applaud it. Manchester Guardian, the simple and unexamined impulse of human souls drawn together in the face of a common and desperate plight. And then the Guardian has this line in the editorial. It says, What would an alien from outer space make of the fact that we could stop on Christmas Day and then start again. Why would we start the killing? And the Guardian says, We might reply with great reason that there was very much to be done yet. That Belgium must be freed from the hideous yoke that has been thrust upon her. That Germany must be taught that culture cannot be carried by the sword.

There's the answer. There is so much at stake as they see it, even in liberal opinion, that people want to restart the war. They're not doing it reluctantly. They're doing it because they believe in it.

You see, this is the classic Sandbrook twist on our Christmas Day special.

Thanks. By mid-January, the war is back on an earnest. We'll be coming to the story of the First World War in 1915, next summer, in the summer of 2026. We're saying this isn't the last truce of the war. There was an official truce at Gallipoli, uniquely in the whole course of the First World War, in May 1915, to enable both sides.

Because that wouldn't have been a Christmas truce, would it?

No. Australians and Turks to bury their dead. There were more small-scale truces at Christmas 1915. Actually, Theo will be shocked to hear this, there was a truce between French and German troops in the Vosges, Christmas 1915. That actually inspired a German soldier, Richard Sherman, to set up the first Youth Hostile Association after the war because he was so inspired.

He wasn't Sherman as in the tanks as well.

No, no, no, no, no.

I mean, that'd be quite a double bill, wouldn't it?

That would be a twist. But by 1916, 1917, there are no truces. Why? Because the battles of the Somme and Verdun, the massive bloodletting means it's pretty much impossible.

Also, you couldn't play football on the battlefield of the Somme. I mean, that would be a total mess.

Well, people tried to. A bloke started when the first day of the Somme, there's a very famous story about a man kicking a ball and chasing after him, shot immediately.

Yeah, but it's not a match. I mean, you can kick a ball, but you can't dribble.

He wrote on the ball, the great European Cup tie final, and then he was shot dead. Oh, God. Yeah, terrible. So what happened to the memory of the Christmas Truce? Here's an interesting thing. Everybody forgot about it. It was completely eclipsed after the war by Allied joy and German, bitterness and victimhood and whatnot. Actually, the Christmas Truce, as we know it today, is really a product of the 1960s, and specifically the play, Oh, What a Lovely War, produced by Joan Littlewood her theater workshop.

In Britain. And so this is something that is only happening in Britain. It's not happening in Germany, for to say. Exactly.

And the theater workshop was this massive... There were massive lefties and pacifists and whatnot in the early 1960s. What they oh, what they produced, Oh, What a Lovely War, the play and then the film at the end of the '60s was an indictment of the First World War, and particularly of the generals and the political establishment and the social hierarchy that lay behind the war. And so the sequence in the film, it's a very moving and memorable sequence to the soundtrack of Silent Night. The whole thing is designed to hammer home the madness of the Western front. And this is what turns the Truce into a symbol for what people see as the horror and the futility of war. So I mentioned at the beginning, there were some excellent books on this. There was a book for the 70th anniversary by Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton in 1984, and then another excellent book by an American historian, Stanley Vintraub in 2001. And then we heard Caroline Duffy's poem, but the real peak of interest came in 2014 with the centenary. Why? I think this actually is also a reflection of its context. The Iraq war is just a few years old.

The war in Afghanistan is still going on. This is the point 2014, when there's lots of stuff in the British headlines about the physical and mental health of ex-servicemen, servicemen, people are wearing Help for heroes, wristbands, and whatnot. When the first World War centenary rolled around, I think the idea of the horror and the pity and the futility of war was very much on people's minds, and the truce was a brilliant symbol of that for people.

Do you think also that there's just a deep feign of sentimentality about football in the British national character? I don't know whether it's as virulent in other countries, probably not. But here, there's nothing like a Memories of an old football star or something to bring tears, a manly tear to the eye. Yeah.

If you ever go to a Remembrance Day match in early November, it's a Premier League game. These days, there's quite a big palaver about soldiers marching out and maybe a band and the last post and all of that thing. I don't remember that happening decades ago, but it's become institutionalized now. Actually, football took over the 2014 commemoration. So your friend Prince William and the then England manager, Roy Hodgson, unveiled a memorial, which was people shaking hands inside, surprise, surprise, a football.

Roy Hodgson, very intelligent.

Positively erudite, Tom.

Owl-like.

Yeah. Surely he listens to the rest of his history.

I'd love to think so. In one of his eight languages.

Exactly. The great irony of all this is the men in the trenches would be amazed that the truce looms so large. Because as we've said, the war went on for them because they believed in it and they wanted to fight it. And that is a really hard thing, I think, for most people now to accept. I think we delude ourselves into thinking that the 1,000 565 days of war were the aberration and the truce better reflects human nature.

That is the Dominic Sandbrooke message to the nation and the world on Christmas Day.

Brilliant.

Happy Christmas, everyone. Yeah.

However, Tom, however, it is Christmas. I agree, the lesson of history is that your neighbors are plotting to kill and eat you. But let's end on a positive Christmasy note. I think you should take us out with some lovely poetry from Carole Anne Duffy's Festive Poem to Inspire the Nation.

Yeah, so some festive poetry, and then perhaps right at the end, a little bit of music. At all that marvell festive day and night, they came and went, the officers, the rank and file, their fallen comrade, side by side, beneath the makeshift, crosses of midwinter graves, beneath the shivering shy stars, and the pinned moon, and the yawn of history, the high, bright bullets, which each man later only aimed at the sky. But Dominic, let's leave the last words on this Christmas morning to Sir Paul McCartney. I light a candle to our love. In love, our problems disappear. But all in all, we soon discover that one and one is all we long to hear. Happy Christmas.

Happy Christmas, everybody.