Truce and Revolts

[Aetheling]

Was there for a time, genuine peace in No Man's Land ?

1914. Stories tell of the British and German soldiers playing football together in No Man's Land on Christmas day - but is this just a legend ?


Officially by the beginning of 1918 the tide of battle turned and the German armies began to retreat. Demoralised German workers, suffering from food and fuel shortages, threatened revolution at home.  German leaders feared a communist take-over and eventually asked the allies for peace.

Detailed research in 1983 by Guy Pedroncini, based on the French military archives, concludes that altogether 49 infantry divisions were destabilized and experienced repeated episodes of mutiny. This was calculated as:
- 9 infantry divisions were very gravely impacted by mutinous behaviour
- 15 infantry divisions were seriously affected
- 25 infantry divisions were affected by isolated but repeated instances of mutinous behaviour.
As the French Army comprised a total of 113 infantry divisions by the end of 1917, this puts the proportion of destabilized French infantry divisions at 43%.
Conversely, only 12 artillery regiments had been affected by the crisis of indiscipline.*

So the Armistice came by fear of social movements rather than armed superiority ?

*in Pedroncini Guy, Les Mutineries de 1917 [1968], Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.

[Wally]

Was there for a time, genuine peace in No Man's Land ?

1914. Stories tell of the British and German soldiers playing football together in No Man's Land on Christmas day - but is this just a legend ?

Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub (ISBN 0-452-28367-1) tells the story of this event.

Officially by the beginning of 1918 the tide of battle turned and the German armies began to retreat. Demoralised German workers, suffering from food and fuel shortages, threatened revolution at home.  German leaders feared a communist take-over and eventually asked the allies for peace.

....

So the Armistice came by fear of social movements rather than armed superiority ?

That, and the infusion of fresh American forces and supplies. The US role in the war is often over sold but it is hard to argue all those fresh troops weren't a big help to the cause.

[scout1067]

The 1914 Christmas truce has been factually established to have occurred in the British sector of the Western front though I am not certain about the French.  The French tended to be more belligerent and hateful to the Germans.  With reason, I might add, the Germans did occupy 1/3 of the country and had humiliated the French in 1870 to boot.  Revanchism was a strong force in France in the decades after 1870.

The Germans collapsed at home before they collapsed at the front.  They would have collapsed militarily before long anyway.  The fact that the Allies granted an armistice instead of marching all the way into Germany contributed significantly to the "Stab in the Back" theory that Hitler capitalized on so much.

[Wally]

Good points, all.