The Great Christmas Truce of World War I

international | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis

Sunday December 26, 2004 05:59

by Robert Ted Hinds

WWI is perhaps my most morbid curiosity where history is concerned. Though one could argue that the beginning of the industrial military complex began with the American civil war, in which major advances in repeating arms, rifled barrels, and cannons were made, the carnage itself was not industrialized until what has come to be known as "The Great War."

Students of history can find much intellectual cannon-fodder in the First World War. It was the first major international conflict in the age of capitalism. It was the inevitable result of empirial hubris, national competition in the capitalist world, and the mysterious alliances that were formed through religious institutions, military despots, and secret societies. The proverbial "shot heard around the world" in Austria in 1914 was itself not far removed from the JFK assassination. A series of inexplainable reactions and oversights led the Arch Duke Ferdinand down a narrow street where he was killed. Tangled alliances exploded and were fueled by greed of capitalist competition.

What was unleashed was the 20th century version of warfare. Total war was nothing less than the visceral reaction of ruling elites like the Hapsburgs, Romanovs, and Rothschilds to the inevitable progression of mankind. The result was a line of unmovable carnage unseen until the firestorms of WWII--Dresden, Tokyo, Bremen, and Hiroshima. In the end it cost the lives of over 16 million soldiers and civilians, a holocaust that has not yet been repeated on this Earth.

But there was a night that befell Christmas on the Western Front in 1914 when men went against orders and met in the muddy fields of No Man's Land to embrace the spirit of humanity and peace, answering a call which all common people of the Earth hear quietly within their own consciousness.

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