“Early on Christmas morning the guns stop firing. A deathly silence creeps

over the pitted and ruined landscape.

A young soldier peers through a periscope over the top of the trench. Way out

in no-man’s land, he sees a small red shape moving on the barbed wire. A

brightly coloured robin is trapped. One wing is flapping helplessly.” 3

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was mystified in another way. Not only was the soldiers’ humanity emphasized in retrospect, but the war was combined with an element of sport. Stories about a football match between German and English soldiers were quite common. Many war diaries report a football match occurring during the 1914 truce, but whether or not a match was really played is unclear. Historians are still debating if a match was really played or if the soldiers just dramatized the truce. ⁴ Contrary to in 1914, it is certain that a match between German and English soldiers occurred in 1915. ⁵ From one perspective, the Christmas Truce was not unexpected. Several neutral powers tried to convince the warring nations to keep peace during Christmas and to show the minimum of Christianity. The most successful attempt to arrange a truce was the Pope’s appeal. ⁶ He appealed the European powers to keep peace at Christmas, which might have helped to arrange a treaty to end the war. Not surprisingly, the nations would only have accepted peace if they were not disadvantaged by it. ⁷ Not all nations agreed to a truce: Russia, for example, refused, because the orthodox Christmas is almost two weeks

³ Jorgensen, Norman; Harrison-Lever, Brian. In Flanders Fields, (Fremantle: Sandcastle Books, 2002), 32.

⁴ Brown and Ekstein do not believe that a football match was really played. Ekstein, Rites of Spring, 113, Brown, Christmas Truce, 134-135. Terraine and Weintraub do not negate that it might have happened.

Terraine, “Christmas 1914 and After,” in History Today, No. 29 (12), 1979, p. 785, Weintraub, Stanley. Silent Night. The Remarkable 1914 Christmas Truce. (New York: Free Press, 2001), 120.

⁵ Eggers, Erik, „Ausflüge in die Menschlichkeit.“ Frankfurter Rundschau. 20 December 2002. 16. and Goldstein, Richard. “Bertie Fealstead, 106, Soldier Who Joined a Timeout in War” New York Times, July 30

2001.

⁶ Pope Benedict XV appealed the warring nations for peace on December 7. Another attempt to arrange a temporary peace was made by the American Senator Kenyon. Brown, Christmas Truce, 37.

⁷ “Germany was Ready for Christmas Truce,” New York Times, Dec. 11 1914, 2.

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later than the catholic and protestant Christmas, making an official truce impossible. ⁸ On the other hand the truce came totally unexpectedly. Both headquarters forbade a truce and fraternizations and threatened those who ignored their orders with hard punishment. ⁹ That it was not viewed well in the headquarters shows how the truce worked. It was not a happening ordered by the authorities, but a truce made by the average soldier. The view on the whole topic is the view at the bottom of the hierarchy, of the people who were only mentioned as numbers in causality reports. Therefore, in most World War I monographs, the Christmas Truce is ignored. One exception is Ekstein in his book Rites of Spring. Contrary to the common way, his approach to World War I is cultural historical. This paper approaches the Christmas Truce within the context of the Propaganda War. It asks if the propaganda of the warring states influenced the soldiers who took part in the truce, and if so, in what ways. If the soldiers were influenced by the propaganda, did they change their opinion about their opponents in the trenches? Maybe the soldiers bought the propaganda and saw the evil the propaganda had claimed in their opponents. To point out what impact the propaganda had on the soldiers, the first part investigates the different stereotypes which were created by the different propaganda departments. This part is mainly based on secondary literature, such as the Read’s book Atrocity Propaganda 1914-1919. International Propaganda and Communications and Roeter’s book The Art of Psychological Warfare. Primary sources written by propagandists round out this section. The second part will juxtapose how the soldiers adopted the propaganda or made their own opinions about their enemies. This part is very much based on primary sources. Letters of

⁸ “No Truce, Says Russia,” New York Times, Dec. 12 1914, 5.

⁹ Weintraub, Silent Night, 149, Brown, Christmas Truce, 158-159.

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soldiers who took part in the truce will give information about their personal attitudes.

Furthermore, both major books about the truce, Weintraub’s Silent Night and Brown’s

Christmas Truce, are used.

That a truce in the trenches between the opponents could happen is more

impressive if the Propaganda issues and common stereotypes are also focused on. On both

sides, the propaganda was used to create the worst picture of the enemy. The Entente, as

well as the Mittelmächte, maintained large Propaganda organizations. On both sides,

intellectuals supported the stereotypes with countless publications about the rightness of

going to war and to underline the others’ guilt. The German side saw in England a nation

of shopkeepers who would do anything to keep their position in the world as the number

one trade nation. The German Jew Ernst Lissauer created the Hymn of Hate against

England, and received the Roten Adlerorden from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II for this

patriotic act. In his poem he claimed England to be Germany’s worst enemy.

French and Russian they matter not;

A blow for blow, and a shot for a shot; We love them not, we hate them not… We have but one and only hate, We love as one, we hate as one, We have one foe and one alone. He is known to you all, he is known to you all! He crouches behind the dark gray flood, Full of envy, of rage, of craft, of gall, Cut off by waves that are thicker than blood… We will never forgo our hate, We have all but a single hate, We love as one, we hate as one We have one foe, and one alone - England 10

¹⁰ Ousted in Brown, Christmas Truce, 5-6. The English translation loses some of the hatred which is underlined in the German original. The last lines are in German:

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This extremely anti-England poem was not only extraordinarily popular in Germany but it was also part of the German lessons in school. The German self-image is evident in the article, “The Kaiser and His People,” published in the Atlantic Monthly and written by Harvard Professor Kuno Francke. According to Francke, Germany was a country with: “people brimming over with physical and intellectual vitality, flushed with military and industrial success, eager for activity in every field of enterprise and in all parts of the globe.” Furthermore, he takes all blame away from the German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The German Kaiser was not a cruel Hun, he had “Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and the Nietzschean Superman combined in him.” 11

England, as Germany’s opposite, is portrayed as “nettled by German business smartness, alarmed by German naval strength, trying to isolate and check and hem in the upstart of every move.” 12 The poem by Lissauer and the article published by an American Professor of German origin portray the picture of an England which is only interested in its own economic well-being and which uses the moment to destroy a common concurrent. To avoid Germany’s competition with England for the best trade routes, England went to war.

Wir werden dich hassen mit langem Haß,

Wir werden nicht lassen von unserem Haß, Haß zu Wasser und Haß zu Land, Haß der Hämmer und Haß der Kronen, Drosselnender Hass von 70 Millionen, Sie lieben vereint, sie hassen vereint, Sie haben alle nur einen Feind: England.

The German version is printed in Zechlin, Deutsche Judenpolitik und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 96. Fotenote. 76.

¹¹ Francke, Kuno, “The Kaiser and His People,” Atlantic Monthly, Nr. 114. 1914, 566.

¹² Ibid., 566.

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