On Christmas Eve and Christmas in 1914, an amazing, almost fairytale scene occurred in the trenches of the First World War. German and British soldiers, as well as a smaller number of French, broke fire, left trenches,and entered the so-called Nobodys land between the combat lines, where they came into contact with the enemies and changed the gifts.
There were also testimonies of how some soldiers drank too much and fell asleep in opposing trenches, so they appologized to the "residents" of the next morning and went back to their line of battle. One of the witnesses was British captain Robert Patrick Miles, describing his experience as "The Friday (Christmas)".
We are celbrating the most unbelievable Christmas you can imagine. Between us and our friends, there is a kind of unapproved and of course disapproved but very understandable and scrupulously respected embrace. It is strange that, apparently, there is only this part of the combat line - with our right and left sides still keen to shoot each other. The thing started last night - it was a particularly cold night with a white froth - when the Germans soon after the sunset started yelling to us, 'Happy Christmas, English! Of course, our guys returned, and then many on both sides unarmed left the trenches and met on the controversial, hit-cut niche of the land between the combat lines
Almost all soldiers, regardless of their nationality and the side of the war, stopped fighting and changed news, gifts, talked about and sang Christmas songs and even played football. They also exchanged prisoners and buried friends in such an atmosphere. This event reminds us that war is a big nonsense and that people actually have only imposed hatred, even though they do not know each other.
Social Context
Thanks to the complex system of inter-state alliances and treaties at the beginning of the 20th century, the war between Austro-Hungary and the Kingdom of Serbia, which followed the murder of Fr. Francis Ferdinand's throne in Sarajevo in 1914, soon escalated into a world-wide conflict. On the side of Serbia there were the forces of Antant - the United Kingdom, France and Russia, while Austria and Hungary were supported by Germany and the Ottoman Empire.
Before the war, the Germans prepared a strategy that they thought was the only way that Germany could win the war on two battles (Western and Eastern) to force France to surrender as soon as possible. The German plan was in the beginning successful - Germans progressed through Belgium in a relatively short period of time. Their advancement, however, stopped in the battle with Marne. Initially, fire interruptions were agreed upon flooding trenches caused by heavy rain or in order to bring dead bodies out of "no country", but over time they spread to non-subsistence arrangements during meals or during the night, so that eventually there would be cases where soldiers would visit the enemy trenches and change the news.
Such cases occurred most often between the Germans and the British, probably because the Germans had not entered the British soil and because there was not such a historical rivalry between them and the British as between Germany and France
How the Media and the public accepted the news
The first events on the event appeared in the New York Times on December 31, 1914, and at the beginning of January the photographs of soldiers of the wounded soldiers were shown in the British press that were shown to be in "nobodys land". These reports had a positive attitude towards attorney, which was not the case in Germany where no images were published, and the participants were sharply criticized.
