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Thank you for your post and I am agreeing with your point of view regarding cooperative approach. Nearly,100,000 dead in combat between German and Allied armies, soldiers came out of their trenches still freshly dug in what looked like a great moment of confraternity (Brown & Seaton,1995). This phenomenon of fraternization is not a myth of the Great War. On December 24, 1914, German soldiers in many places placed fir trees and paper lanterns on the parapet of their front-line trenches sent by the Emperor, who was convinced ; like the French generals, that the war would be short. Gradually, Christmas carols reverberate on both sides and verbal exchanges occur (Crocker, 2015). In some places, the men come out of the trenches and undertake to recover their dead on the no man's land. Identical events occur on a larger scale on Christmas Day. It seems that the Christmas Truce 1914, just five months after the beginning of the war, was initiated by German soldiers.
References
Brown, M., & Seaton, S. (1995). Christmas truce. Pan.
Crocker, T. B. (2015). The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, and the First World War. University Press of Kentucky.
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I like the way you have posted your point of view. I have found that in several places, this truce of 1914 began the evening before Christmas or the day of the festival. It has sometimes lasted the day and in some places several days. “It spread over two-thirds of the German-British front, and several thousand soldiers took part” (Brown & Seaton, 1914). More extraordinary still is that, totally unorganized, this truce has spread spontaneously and independently. But as for ordinary soldiers from the trenches on both sides, they did not want anything else than the simple and ingenuous human joys that they knew and loved in a peaceful life: light Christmas candles and dress up a Christmas tree; give someone else a Christmas pudding or a box of cigars; make a festive haircut and finally, take off the helmets and hats and have a real football match (Hallifax, 2010). So, these were the thought make them close and allow them to think about the brutality of war.
References
Brown, M., & Seaton, S. (1914). ‘ The Christmas Truce 1914. In the British Story «i March
Ferro m. fl.,» Meetings in No Man’s Land. Christmas.
Hallifax, S. (2010). ‘Over by Christmas’: British popular opinion and the short war in 1914. First
World War Studies, 1(2), 103-121.
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