Profs & Pints DC: The Christmas Truce of 1914

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Christmas Truce of 1914,” on an unauthorized outbreak of peace and goodwill in the midst of a horrific war, with Christopher Hamner, associate professor of history at George Mason University, scholar of soldiers’ experiences in combat, and author of Enduring Battle: American Soldiers in Three Wars, 1776-1945.

It became clear by December 1914 that the First World War, which had been raging on the European continent for five months, stood little chance of ending any time soon. Soldiers had begun to dig into trenches along the Western Front, and the armies of Britain and France were just at the beginning of a brutal stalemate with German forces that would last for nearly four more years.

Then, as the Christmas holidays approached, something unanticipated happened. Soldiers who had been firing mercilessly at each other just days before suddenly began crossing no-man’s land to talk, exchange…