The Christmas Football Match — First World War Mythology
Did British and German troops really play football? Why should we care?
The First World War seems to have a weird place in both common knowledge and popular culture. Everyone knows it happened. And everyone knows that a lot of people died. The images people tend to have of it are bleak, and it is often referred to as a ‘pointless war.’
Yet, much of what people take from the war is positive. Tales of heroism, war poetry and trench art, and other stories that inspire hope. Possibly the most famous story is that of the Christmas truce and a football game played between British and German soldiers in 1914.
The idea that during one of the bloodiest wars in human history, two sides of warring soldiers could come together to celebrate Christmas day and play football in No Man’s Land is a powerful one indeed. The only issue is that the part about the football match quite possibly didn’t happen.
“The evidence is too hazy to say with any kind of certainty that a match took place” — Mark Connelly
According to Mark Connelly, there was talk about it happening, but it would have been very hard to organise. Not to mention playing in muddy No Man’s Land would have been difficult, and apparently one British letter mentions not being able to find a ball.
Football was probably played by British soldiers and German soldiers somewhere on Christmas day, but maybe not between the two. If you knew the truce was temporary, would you let enemy soldiers near your line? Potentially letting them see what’s happening on your side? Not likely. Especially considering by this point a long war was anticipated by most, including Lord Kitchener.
This isn’t to say it’s all fake. The Christmas truces are certainly real, consisting of a number of tacit ceasefires. Further, these ceasefires weren’t limited to Christmas time. They generally took place far from the main offensives, combined with a shortage of ammunition allowed for ‘live and let live’ attitudes. This meant soldiers would silently agree to purposely miss, fire into the air, or sometimes refrain from shooting at all.¹
Even artillery, a critical aspect of the way operations and warfare were conducted on the Western Front,² partook in these agreements. For example, in the Vosges mountains, artillery fire often was limited to a small wave of fire from both sides at a certain time of day,³ maintaining a facade of war while giving both sides plenty of time and opportunity to stay safe.
These weren’t always fully approved by officers, such as a freshly promoted Lieutenant Ernst Jünger who discovered his men talking across barbed wire to English troops. Naturally, his officer’s nature took over and he ordered his men to take cover. Yet the unspoken ceasefire continued.⁴
Overall then, the spirits of many men in sections along the Western Front were angled towards an understanding of the humanity of the enemy, at least in terms of British and German soldiers. Which matches the spirit of the Christmas football match story quite well really. If there was no real point to be firing upon the enemy, quite often soldiers simply would not.
The story of the Christmas football game encapsulates the ideas of compassion, empathy, and humanity that was seen quite often along that theatre of war, but in a condensed and easy to remember form. While the story details themselves are unclear, the values it holds are based in truth. For this reason, true or not, the story retains some importance when remembering the war.
Matthew Brundrett studied History with Psychology at Keele University, and has recently completed an MA in Modern History at the University of Sheffield. He is currently continuing his MA research related to the First World War with a view to obtaining a PhD. Matthew can be contacted via matt.brundrett@sky.com or on Twitter @Matt_Brundrett
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Sources
- Ziemann, B., Violence and the German Soldier in the Great War — Killing, Dying, Surviving, (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), p. 30
- Lloyd, N., The Western Front, (Viking Publishing, Great Britain, 2021), p. xxii
- Ziemann, Violence and the German Soldier…, p. 95
- Ibid., p. 81
