The First World War’s Christmas truce is a heartwarming story – but it never happened

The story is genuinely irresistible.

On a frozen battlefield in December 1914, the sound of artillery stops, and British and German soldiers fighting in the First World War climb out of the trenches.

They meet in the hellscape that is No Man's Land, transforming it into a site of warm Christmas spirit. They exchange gifts, sing carols and play football together.

It’s a reassuringly humanising moment that proves ordinary people could still recognise one another as individuals, even if they were still enemies.

The problem is that this version of events is largely a myth.

As historian Alex Churchill explains on the HistoryExtra podcast, what did happen across European battlefields during the Christmas of 1914 was far more limited and fragmented than popular memory suggests.

So, what really happened, and why does the myth persist?

No single Christmas truce, and no football match

“The Christmas truce is a misnomer,” Churchill says. “It’s Christmas truces: plural.”

There was no single, unified ceasefire stretching along the Western Front and crucially, as Churchill emphasises, “fighting didn’t officially stop”.

Instead, what occurred in late December 1914 was a series of highly localised, informal pauses in certain sectors, while in others, the war continued uninterrupted.

That’s one of the biggest misconceptions. Another is the story of the football match – perhaps the single most enduring part of the Christmas truce story.

In retellings, British and German soldiers are said to have organised an impromptu but orderly game in No Man's Land, complete with teams, goals and spectators. It’s subsequently become a symbol of the combatants’ shared culture, values and goodwill.

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But, as Churchill sets out, this almost certainly never happened.

“What people think happened is the equivalent of a Premier League football match with thousands of people watching on a vast open space,” Churchill explains. “But that didn’t happen.” The physical environment alone makes the idea implausible. No Man's Land was not a flat, snowy field. It was a cratered wasteland littered with barbed wire and corpses.

At best, there may have been brief, informal kickabouts, most likely involving soldiers from the same side passing a ball between themselves. The idea of organised, cross-trench football matches is a later embellishment. “That whole image of a giant football game, and a big coming together, didn’t happen on the western front,” she says.

What fraternisation really looked like

The reality of what took place might be more revealing, when stripped of its mythology.

As Churchill explains, it’s true that, in some areas, soldiers cautiously emerged from their trenches to speak to the enemy. They exchanged cigarettes, buttons, food and small souvenirs. Some sang together too, especially in the days leading up to Christmas.

Churchill recounts one episode that captures this reality particularly well.

A territorial officer named George Fletcher – a languages teacher from Eton who spoke fluent German – was determined to arrange a truce in his sector. “He went on this relentless campaign to convince his battalion commander that they should pause the war and have a Christmas,” Churchill says.

But he was unsuccessful.

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“His commanding officer told him to stop being an idiot.”

When Christmas Day arrived, Fletcher’s own section remained quiet and hostile. Disappointed, he took matters into his own hands.

“He wandered down to a Scottish battalion next door,” Churchill explains, “and actually that’s where he experienced the Christmas truce.” There, soldiers were milling about in No Man's Land, talking and sharing cigarettes. A football was being kicked around, but without any real structure. At one point, men even began “scampering in and out of each other’s trenches”.

Even then, the limits were obvious. Fletcher himself eventually felt compelled to intervene. Churchill explains how he thought, “we need to be a bit more sensible about letting the enemy rampage round our lines”.

The episode ended soon afterwards, and the men returned to their positions.

“That’s a good example of what any Christmas truces did look like, and it does have participation from both Germans and British,” says Churchill.

When and if they occurred, they were brief, improvised encounters on borrowed time.

Why truces weren’t repeated

Christmas 1914 took place early in the war, before hatred had fully hardened and before the scale of the conflict became clear. Many soldiers still believed the war might be short. The trench system was not yet as rigid or heavily defended as it would later become.

In subsequent years, officers actively worked to prevent fraternisation, ordering artillery fire during holidays, and emphasising the need to maintain hostility.

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But why does the myth remain so powerful?

The First World War was the first fully industrialised conflict, marked by mass mobilisation, mechanised killing and staggering loss of life. “It’s massively dehumanising,” Churchill says, “and I think the inaccurate stories of the Christmas truces are one small element that we can cling to that shows that actually people were still human and still reasonable.”

But even though the reality was less grand than the later myths suggest, it’s not less meaningful.

Christmas truces weren’t dramatic or cinematic pauses in the war when enemies came together to form friendships. However, they do point to a cautious optimism at a moment when it was still possible, early in the conflict, for enemies to recognise each other’s shared values.

It was an optimism that wouldn’t last.

Alex Churchill was speaking to Rachel Dinning on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.