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Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce Of 1914 by [Weintraub, Stanley]

Silent Night: The Remarkable Christmas Truce Of 1914 Kindle Edition

by Stanley Weintraub (Author)

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SILENT NIGHT brings to life one of the most unlikely and touching events in the annals of war. In the early months of WWI, on Christmas Eve, men on both sides left their trenches, laid down their arms, and joined in a spontaneous celebration with their new friends, the enemy. For a brief, blissful time, remembered since in song and story, a world war stopped. Even the participants found what they were doing incredible. Germans placed candle-lit Christmas trees on trench parapets and warring soldiers sang carols. In the spirit of the season they ventured out beyond their barbed wire to meet in No Man's Land, where they buried the dead in moving ceremonies, exchanged gifts, ate and drank together, and joyously played football, often with improvised balls. The truce spread as men defied orders and fired harmlessly into the air. But, reluctantly, they were forced to re-start history's most bloody war. SILENT NIGHT vividly recovers a dreamlike event, one of the most extraordinary of Christmas stories.

Length: 256 pages

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Stanley Weintraub is Professor of Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University and writes as a book critic for the NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL and WASHINGTON POST.

Product details

File Size: 8557 KB
Print Length: 256 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK; UK ed. edition (November 6, 2014)
Publication Date: November 6, 2014
Language: English
ASIN: B00I1IW6NM
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,679,474 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #3513 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Military > World War I
- #9980 in Books > History > Military > World War I
- #1155370 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction

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Amazon Customer

Four Stars

May 6, 2016

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

heard this story via a musical score which was awesome at Christmas...reading the story was worthwhile

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Donna Westenfeld

Read a few page I think it is great very interesting

December 21, 2014

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Bought as gift for my husband for Christmas. Read a few page I think it is great very interesting.

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Franz

The TRUE Story of the WW I Christmas Truce

February 14, 2015

Format: Hardcover

Christmas Eve, 1914. A remarkable event was in the offing because two great armies from two different persuasions met not to slit each other's throats but to exchange gift parcels, goodwill and Christmas carols. It is one of the most unheralded events of the First World War, largely unsung in history until Professor Weintraub recreated the strained and eerie peculiarity that held the trenches on that bleak and cold December night. As a schoolboy starting to get fascinated with European history, I came across some references about this event in some books but in very short passages. It is only now that a historian has finally crafted a very poignant story of the events using material from the letters and diaries of the participants, and from newspaper accounts.
It is an account of common human decency surfacing in one brief moment in time, in the unfolding savagery of war. It was the men, the ordinary fighting soldiers, not their officers who extemporaneously planned this truce. The first signs and signboards appeared from the German lines, proclaiming that "You no fight, we no fight." And so slowly and almost imperceptibly, the men began to emerge from their mud soaked trenches. They swapped cigarettes and food, helped bury each others dead and even engaged in some games. For that brief moment sanity prevailed, European culture prevailed and the author concludes that "the war restored rules evoking an earlier century and a less complicated world."
The unplanned truce lasted through the whole night and all throughout Christmas day. It worried some officers and Generals that its spirit might spread like wildfire and lead to a cessation of hostilities--and to their relief the violence eventually resumed, and would continue for three more Christmases and end six weeks just shy of a fourth. It is a narrative so refreshingly free of sentiment that it reads like a novel about a remarkable chapter in the history of the First World War, when combatants on both sides laid down their arms and invoked the spirit of their shared religious tradition. Remarkable in its proof that decency isn't far off the surface in every human failing.

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Barry Francis

Christmas Miracle in Flanders

January 5, 2013

Format: Hardcover

Every year at Christmas time I like to re-read Stanley Weintraub's compelling book Silent Night which tells the story of a true Christmas miracle: the remarkable 1914 Christmas truce on the Western Front during the First World War.

On Christmas eve that year hundreds of thousands of British and German soldiers emerged from the frozen trenches of Flanders and came together in no-man's land to celebrate Christmas. It started with the tentative raising of a Christmas tree and caroling from the German lines followed by a similar response from the British. Soon, the soldiers were shaking hands, singing carols together, drinking beer and exchanging souvenirs, including helmets and belt buckles and cigars. A Christmas dinner table was set up between the lines and they even played a game of soccer with the Germans winning 3-2.

This remarkable story was compiled from the letters, diaries and memoires of the soldiers involved. Author Weintraub describes the events as "something that shouldn't have happened but did happen. It was a soldiers' mutiny that bubbled up from the ranks and, for a moment, it stopped the war." Officers on both sides tried to stop the fraternization (a capital offense) but were powerless to halt the makeshift peace for several days. And finally, when the shooting resumed, much of it was intentionally off the mark.

The author asks the pertinent question: "What if the men on both sides had simply refused to take up arms again?" Sadly, that didn't happen so we will never know the answer.

Barry Francis

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