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The 1914 Christmas truce was a blow against war
TONY COLLINS explains the deliberately obscured reality of what happened when soldiers on the Western Front famously fraternised in a spirit of unity amid horror of the Great War
DEFIANCE: A World War I German infantryman lights a cigarette for a British soldier during the Christmas truce on the Western Front, 1914
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ON December 25 1914, British and German troops on the Western Front stopped firing at each other, put down their guns, climbed out of their trenches and met in no-man’s land. The bloody slaughter of World War I had been halted.
Thousands of men ignored the patriotic propaganda of their governments, shook hands, and embraced in friendship. They shared food and drink, showed each other photos of their families back home, and even played impromptu football matches together. “It is wicked that we should be shooting each other,” said William Eve, a rifleman in the Queen’s Westminsters regiment.
He wasn’t the only one who felt that way. The fraternisation between British and German troops was hailed by Lenin, then exiled in Switzerland, as a practical example of how to fight the imperialist war.
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