Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works High brain Stuff, Lauren vocal bomb. Here today, I've got a Christmas story for you, and I promise it has a happy ending. The beginning is a little bit harsh though a World War One gave the world its first brush with efficient and widespread death. More than eight point five million people would lose their lives to the war. Troops used trench
warfare for the first time. The hundreds of miles of trenches that marked the landscape from the English Channel to Switzerland held an astounding average of one soldier for every four inches. Both sides held tenaciously to their positions. The Battle of Verdun lasted nine months, caused three hundred thousand deaths and resulted in almost no change in the position of the lines. New technology made its way into battlefields of France, Germany and Belgium, bringing death to soldiers in
new horrible ways. Machine guns, which had made their debut in the American Civil War, became more efficient over the ensuing decades, and by the early twentieth century they could deal six hundred rounds per minute. Chemical warfare was we find in the form of mustard, chlorine, and phosgene gas. Airplanes were used for the first time in major combat,
including the concept of mass casualty bombings. The tank and the flamethrower both made their debuts with mixed results, and the casualties of World War One extended to civilians, making the Great War a total war. In the midst of all this madness, however, an event took place that serves to renew a little faith in humanity. The Christmas Truce was a brief moment of sanity, standing out against the
chaos of war. One of the first public statements Pope Benedict the fifteenth made when he was elected to the papacy was to plea for a truce on Christmas Day. Although the Germans entertained the idea of a Christmas truce, the Allied forces rejected it. Benedict's request fell to the wayside. World War One had begun in earnest on the Western Front in the Flanders area of Belgium. The Christmas season arrived amid heavy fighting. Both sides were dug in and miserable.
Soldiers learned what it meant to live in discomfort and fear. In some cases, enemy soldiers fought from trenches just thirty yards or twenty seven meters from one another, all along the front that Christmas, British and German troops received packages. Inside they found notes of appreciation, chocolates, putting, tobacco, and other tokens in their packages. The German troops received Christmas trees.
The small trees at ten and bombs in German were sent to the front, replete with small candles to light. On Christmas Eve of nineteen fourteen, German soldiers lit the candles and set some trees up on the ledges of their trenches. When they began singing, the British troops joined in. Wary hopeful soldiers began to peer over the trenches. As Christmas broke over Flanders, a truce was carved. From the spirit of the season. Germans held up signs Uni fight,
wen Know Fight. British troops responded with signs proclaiming Merry Christmas. This Christmas did turn out to be a merry one. Today's episode was written by Josh Clark and produced by Tristan McNeil. By the way, if you're listening to data, episode publishes Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. For more on this and lots of other seasonal topics. Visit our home planet, how stuff works dot com.