The following Christmas, machine gun barrages were deliberately timed to drown out any sound of carol singing to prevent spontaneous truces happening again.
The following Christmas, machine gun barrages were deliberately timed to drown out any sound of carol singing to prevent spontaneous truces happening again.
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They went back to war, because they feared punishment. Even the christmas truce didn’t repeat itself. The officers quickly made sure of that. Remember, this was the first year of the war too.
Ultimately, very rarely does a regular person want to go to war. They want to live a peaceful life, unbothered by anyone, doing their stuff. This truce came about because people were so close, that when they started singing carols, the other side sang the same ones, in their language. That is enough to make you stop and think “wait, those are people in there, same as us”.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong but there wasn’t any underlying idology in play, like with Nazis is WW2. So it wasn’t as “good vs evil”.
The German army was conscripted and the British soldiers of the day were men sold on the idea of traveling the world and becoming a hero or a ‘true man’ by cutting down their nations enemies in noble warfare.
It basically was just a job at the start of the war for many. They shot at the enemy because they were soldiers and that’s what soldiers do.
But when their officer told them “You’ll be shot for dereliction of duty” they went back to fighting.
WW1 was a senseless and sad war, driven by the desires of aristocrats.
It’s well documented that the leadership of both sides had some difficulty getting their soldiers to go back to fighting after the truce.
The average soldier did not want to fight. Leadership had to threaten charges of desertions and treason to get them back to fighting.
modern people are able to so easily access excellent multimedia propaganda nowadays that just isnt needed anymore
Hate is so easy to propogate with film
And almost impossible without it