Silent Night

In December 1914, along the Western Front, German, British and French soldiers stop shooting at one another for a few days around Christmas. The truce is informal and nobody orders it. It starts when German troops sing carols and set candlelit trees on the parapets of their trenches.

British soldiers answer the singing. Men from both sides then climb out into No Man's Land, where they trade food, drink and small gifts. They also bury comrades whose bodies have lain exposed for weeks.

This is popular military history, not a battle narrative. Stanley Weintraub works from soldiers' own letters and diaries, written in several languages, and keeps his focus close on one brief suspension of hostilities. The account is anecdotal, built from individual voices.

The truce was patchy. Bavarian and Saxon units fraternized far more readily than Prussian ones, which shows strains inside the German army itself. Commanders on both sides moved fast to end it, rotating divisions out of the line and ordering fresh attacks. Nothing like it happened again in the later years of the war.