Dan Snow's History Hit - History Hit Presents 'The Christmas Truce'

Episode Date: December 19, 2020

The Christmas Truce was one of the most miraculous episodes in the history of warfare, and History Hit have a major new podcast and film dropping next week. Watch this space…  Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. In the summer of 1914, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary caused a crisis. They are not well equipped for the sort of winter they got in December 1914.

I used to think I knew what mud was before I came out here. As soon as we went up, the Germans let us have it and we were going down like raindrops. At that point, both sides settled down, can't get the advantage, can't get the better of one another and dig in. Life in the trenches took on a terrible rhythm. The feet are swollen and always cold, cold and hurting. Some of these trenches, certainly in November and December of 1914, were literally almost full to the top with water. It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere.

And about seven or eight in the evening, there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches. And there were these lights. Which were evidently makeshift Christmas trees. The silence seemed extraordinary after the usual din. The British army started to hear the Germans singing. Stiller Nacht, and on the other side, the British would respond with Silent Night.

There was a dead silence that morning, right across the land, as far as you could see. I don't think it's happened in the world's history before. You would have thought that peace had been declared. While you were eating your turkey and that, I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I'd been trying to kill a few hours before. From all sides, birds seemed to arrive, and we hardly ever see a bird generally, which shows how complete the silence and quiet was. The events of Christmas 1914 are, in my opinion,

a clear indicator that the cultural similarities between the British and the Germans, which include the shared Christmas tradition, were in many cases stronger than any kind of culturally driven hatred. I left our friends on Christmas Day in a quiet mood, stood upon the parapet and had a final look around and not a shot was fired. Coming next week, the Christmas truce of 1914. New testimony, new perspectives on one of the most remarkable moments of the First World War. Listen on this feed to the double episode on the 23rd and 24th of December. And visit History Hit TV for the feature-length drama documentary which accompanies it.

If you use the code TRUCE, T-R-U-C-E, on checkout you get a month for free and then 80% off your first three months on History Hit TV. The Christmas Truce on History Hit. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers

of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.