WI A Christmast Peace

Basically if the Christmas Truce during WW I spiraled out of control and caused entire divisions to simply refuse to fight, would it end the war prematurely?


If it did end the war what would the world look like years later?
 
Basically if the Christmas Truce during WW I spiraled out of control and caused entire divisions to simply refuse to fight, would it end the war prematurely?


If it did end the war what would the world look like years later?
Holey moley this is a massive butterfly farm.

Offhand,...I got nuthin'.
 
Both sides did take part in the christmast truce IOT and the senario is that both side's soldiers basically mutiny, so I don't see why not.
 
I think any such attempt would result in mass executions of 'deserters'. The World Powers will have to follow the future Soviet model: if you make your soldiers more afraid of you than of the enemy, they'll fight.
 
The Christmas Truce was orders of magnitude away from open mutiny. It was essentially a contituation of temporary ceasefires between soldiers, particularly during major shared holidays, which has gone on for millenia. As soon as the season ended they went right back to killing each other.

I think any such attempt would result in mass executions of 'deserters'. The World Powers will have to follow the future Soviet model: if you make your soldiers more afraid of you than of the enemy, they'll fight.

That's a bit of a myth, the "Soviet model" mostly failed to decrease the rate of desertion and surrender; in fact it exponentially increased during 1942 due to poor rations and pay, costly battles, constant defeats, and indifferent officers. Only after battles started being won did desertion decrease.
 
That's a bit of a myth, the "Soviet model" mostly failed to decrease the rate of desertion and surrender; in fact it exponentially increased during 1942 due to poor rations and pay, costly battles, constant defeats, and indifferent officers. Only after battles started being won did desertion decrease.

The point is to get across soldiers' minds that the enemy might kill them if they fight, but their own army will kill them if they don't.
 

Perkeo

Banned
Only if the Germans are going to pack up and go home...

They never came to stay - at least not to stay as far as they went.

OTOH it is indeed true that the Germans missed several chances to make a honorable peace due to their greedy demands. By Christmas 1914, the German high command was perfectly aware that the Schliefen plan had failed and that the chances of reaching the original strategic goal of permanently shifting the balance of power in favor of Germany were narrow at best. They should have made a status quo ante bellum peace and sold it to the public as a successful defensive war - which BTW wouldn't have been entirely false.
 
The point is to get across soldiers' minds that the enemy might kill them if they fight, but their own army will kill them if they don't.

not the army, only the guy wearing a funny hat.

that also could give soldiers the idea to, you know, just shoot those people and pretend it was an enemy bullet, no one would care that you're 100 miles away from the front.
 
The Christmas Truce was orders of magnitude away from open mutiny. It was essentially a contituation of temporary ceasefires between soldiers, particularly during major shared holidays, which has gone on for millenia. As soon as the season ended they went right back to killing each other.


I know that the truce was far from open revolt, that's not what I'm getting at.

What I'm asking is if in the scenario that the Christmas truce did turn into open revolt or at least a refusal to continue fighting, what would happen?
 

Perkeo

Banned
I think any such attempt would result in mass executions of 'deserters'. The World Powers will have to follow the future Soviet model: if you make your soldiers more afraid of you than of the enemy, they'll fight.

I don't buy that 'Sowjet model' myth. Despite all harshness of their zampoliti, the Sowjet soldiers had every reason to be MORE afraid of their enemy than of the military police, and defeating tha Nazis was a question of LITERAL survival to the inhabitants of the 'Lebensraum'.
 
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