BOOK REVIEWS

Silent Night The Remarkable 1914 Christmas Truce Stanley Weintraub

Stanley Weintraub (Evan Pugh Professor Emeritus of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University) has turned his thoughts to th the subject of the Great War before. In "A Stillness Heard Round the World" he discusses the impact of the simple silence  which fell when the guns stopped firing in 1918.  In "Silent Night" he considers another, earlier example of  the war's tumult dissolving into quiet - the Christmas Truce of 1914. He has researched widely and well, unearthing stories, accounts and references from all countries and from all subsequent decades almost, to illustrate the story of  that famous interruption to the business of war.  Perhaps  I should say "interruptions" for it is well known that what we have come to call "The Christmas Truce" actually consisted of several truces, and Stanley Weintraub includes them all. The full story is here, from the first inkling of anonymous soldiers that something was not quite right in the frozen moonlight around Ypres on Christmas Eve, 1914, to the loud proclamations by an English Rock Band decades later, that there was "nothing learned, nothing gained."

I'm not sure that I agree with the band. Something was learned then and things are still being learned now, because the Truce was and is such a potent icon of the war. It still has something to say to us, and Stanley Weintraub gives the message eloquent voice in this excellent book.  The search for contemporary accounts and subsequently-written comments and references must have been a mammoth task.

Stanley Weintraub doesn't try to give too deep an interpretation to those legendary events, and I think he is right - why try to fathom the unfathomable? The accounts and reports speak for themselves, but Mr. Weintraub does a very helpful job of guiding us through them, linking them or setting them opposite each other in way which helps us (it helped me anyway) to try to put together our own interpretation.  He does take the reader into the "What If...." school of historical thought, which is, generally speaking, a rather unproductive line of study, but which has some justification in this case. After all, who has NOT wondered, "What If...."  when considering the Christmas Truce.  

Having read this book I am better informed than I was, and surer of some things, but others continue to puzzle, like the account of the young officer describing how he had just come back from No-Man's Land, where he had been engaged in a very pleasant conversation accompanied by cigars, with a German soldier, a sort of super-sniper. This man had accounted for more British soldiers than a dozen lesser snipers together.  The young officer found him excellent company. A firm picture of "brotherhood" began to form in my thoughts, to be blown away by the officer's next comment; "Anyway, I know where his loophole is now, and I mean to down him tomorrow." The enigma always comes back.

If you have a Great War enthusiast in your family, one of your Christmas present problems is solved. You will be thanked for it!

"Silent Night "is published by Simon and Schuster

Hard Covers

238 pages, 22 black-and-white photographs

ISBN: 0-684-86621-8

Jacket Price £12.99 but available NOW from Ray Westlake Military Books at £10.95 (Look in the "General History" Section.)

Return to the Bookshelf Page

Return to the Hellfire Corner Contents Section