Rating: 
Summary: A break in the war for Christmas
Review: "War is the continuation of politics by another means". So said Carl Von Clauswitz in his treatise "On War". When reading this book, it becomes painfully obvious that war really is a continuation of politics - the generals and the politicians dictate the war, but the soldiers in the trenches dictate the flow.Stanley Weintraub has told us the story of a fascinating truce declared by the soldiers over the Christmas Holiday in 1914. His writing is easy to follow, and the story makes you feel as if you are there. Although it seems that the same premise resurfaces numerous times during the book, this is to illustrate Weintraub's point that the soldiers themselves decided to make this truce happen, not the Generals. I found the variations on the theme interesting to read, and especially interesting to understand how widespread this action really was, rather than a single group of soldiers declaring an informal truce. I personally disagree with the conclusions reached from this study; I do not believe that had the truce continued and ended the war at this point that history would have been altered in the drastic fashion that Weintraub writes of. I recommend this book to all who have the desire to see the humanistic side of soldiers in wartime. I encourage those who have interest in what might have happend to read the last chapter especially carefully to see if you agree or disagree with the author's conclusions.
Rating: 
Summary: Short and repetitious...
Review: Another promising book that is marred by repetition of the facts (the same story is told over and over again by the German, British, French and Belgian troops). It seems that I've been running across this far too much lately in these short historical books, and it's disappointing. I've read some of Weintraub's longer works, and they are very good, but this time, he really dropped the ball.
Rating: 
Summary: Remarkable temporary return to sanity...
Review: Christmas Eve, 1914. A remarkable event was in the offing because two great armies from two different persuasions met not to slit each other's throats but to exchange gift parcels, goodwill and Christmas carols. It is one of the most unheralded events of the First World War, largely unsung in history until Professor Weintraub recreated the strained and eerie peculiarity that held the trenches on that bleak and cold December night. As a schoolboy starting to get fascinated with European history, I came across some references about this event in some books but in very short passages. It is only now that a historian has finally crafted a very poignant story of the events using material from the letters and diaries of the participants, and from newspaper accounts. It is an account of common human decency surfacing in one brief moment in time, in a sea of the savagery of war. It was the men, the ordinary fighting soldiers, not their officers who extemporaneously planned this truce. The first signs and signboards appeared from the German lines, proclaiming that "You no fight, we no fight." And so slowly and almost imperceptibly, the men began to emerge from their mud soaked trenches. They swapped cigarettes and food, helped bury each others dead and even engaged in some games. For that brief moment sanity prevailed, European culture prevailed and the author concludes that "the war restored rules evoking an earlier century and a less complicated world." The unplanned truce lasted through the whole night and all throughout Christmas day. It worried some officers and Generals that its spirit might spread like wildfire and lead to a cessation of hostilites--and to their relief the violence eventually resumed, and would continue for three more Christmases and end six weeks just shy of a fourth. It is a narrative so refreshingly free of sentiment that it reads like a novel about a remarkable chapter in the history of the First World War, when combatants on both sides laid down their arms and invoked the spirit of their shared religious tradition. Remarkable
Rating:
Summary: Masterful account of a true story
Review: Heard the taped version of SILENT NIGHT: THE REMARKABLE
1914 CHRISTMAS TRUCE by Stanley Weintraub . . . imagine a
war that all of a sudden stops because both sides would rather
exchange gifts and play soccer than fight . . . and what if
the soldiers had refused to take up arms again? . . . unfortunately,a few stray bullets escalated the hostilities again--but for too short a time there was an actual cessation of all fighting . . . one infantryman summed up things the best: "Nobody said we couldn't like them. They just said to had to kill them. A bit stupid, isn't it?" . . . this true actually happened, by the way, and Weintraub's portrayal of it is masterful . . . I only wish that ending all wars could be so simple!
Rating:
Summary: Intersting subject, poor presentation
Review: I found this book little more than a long string of anecdotes and quotations, as if the author had a lot of data, but no idea how to put it into either a cogent, readable narrative or a solid piece of history. Thus, it achieves neither. Story lines were diconnected, hard to follow, abruptly dropped, only to be even more abruptly taken up again. Actual eyewitness accounts were inter-mingled with fictional accounts making it hard to understand what actually happened at any given place or time. I hearken back to my college professor for Historical Methods, who said that all research projects had to pass the "so, what" test. This book, in my estimation, does not. I guess that was the author's intent with the addition of the epilogue, which is the most self-indulging bit of pointless speculation that I have ever read. I cannot believe that any historian worth his salt would actually try to specualate on how the rest of history might have gone if some single, and rather obscure, historical event had turn out differently.
Rating:
Summary: The 1914 Christmas truce between the Germans and English.
Review: I give credit to Professor Weintraub for writing about a generally unknown subject of World War I. The most references were from soldier letters and newspaper articles, so Weintraub had to dig for this material. There are few other books on the subject.
This is a short book, but it drags at times, especially in circumstances that seem repetitive. The imformation about the Christmas trees, soccer, and gifts given to the troops was good. Not much material given on circumstances with other Allied troops.
Rating: 
Summary: A disappointment
Review: I have always been fascinated by the Christmas truce of 1914, and was much impressed by the good chapter on the truce which Modris Eksteins has in his book, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. And Stanley Weintraub has done great books which I have found thoroly enjoyable: A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War November 1918, (read 24 Nov 1985); The London Yankees: Portraits of American Writers and Artists in England 1894-1914 (read 29 Apr 1994) and the superlatively evocative Long Day's Journey into War: December 7, 1941 (read 23 Nov 2001). So when I saw this book I at once knew I would have to read it, even though I had such a big TBR pile. But I did not find the book absorbing, and it made me think that maybe there was not enough to make a whole book attention-holding. I see Weintraub has a book, The Last Great Victory: The End of World War II. In view of my experience with his books other than this one, I think I will have to find that book and I think it will be better appreciated by me.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, Disorganized, and Highly Repetitive
Review: I have read over 40 books about World War I, and this is the worst book I've ever read on the subject. The book is boring, disorganized, and relentlessly pursues it pacifist agenda. The book is repititous ad nauseaum. In the author's attempt to convince his readers that the ordinary soldiers didn't want to fight, he presents a huge number of barely discernible short stories and excerpts throughout the book. The text is erratic and disorganized. This unconvincing book seems not like the work of a published author, but the work of a human psychology student's term paper. Much of the book simply consists of word-for-word extracts from other published media. Ignore the positive reviews on the back cover - it's clear these reviewers didn't read more than the first few pages. This book isn't worth the paper it's printed on!
Rating:
Summary: Good Book about a little Known Part of WWI
Review: I liked the book, but I found it a little hard to follow where the author was going at times. One point that further lessened the experience for me was the use of foreign words and expressions. Some were translated but many were not. I have run into this many times before with other authors writing historical books. I really wish authors would translate every word or idiom for common folk like myself.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting topic, flawed presentation
Review: I must agree with other reviewers who commented that the rather extensive re-telling of fictional accounts of the truce do little to portray the events as they actually happened. Perhaps the author borrowed from the fictional accounts because he himself was not able to adequately describe the events of the Christmas truce from an ordinary soldier's point of view? I wonder if a lack of primary source material could have caused the author to rely significantly on fictional accounts? While I find the topic quite fascinating, unfortunately the author's disjointed presentation of the subject matter did little to provide the reader with comprehensive insight into the historical event.
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