war is smelly.
Through the reproduction of the screen and the description of the text, we can see the flesh and blood on the battlefield, the smoke filled with gunpowder, and the roar of cannons and the screams of fighting. But no one wants to reproduce that smell. When everything is quiet, waiting for the next attack, lying in the cold trench in the middle of the night, what can you smell? In Flanders in 1914, it was the smell of blood, mixed with the smell of pits, and the smell of rotting corpses that were too late to be buried. The shells blew the ground into a honeycomb, with many torn holes in the vertical and horizontal directions. After a few night raids, it was enough to turn the land it went through into an open-air morgue. The strange smell of quicklime can't hide the choking smell of shells, and it is even more pungent when mixed together. It's there in the rainy season. The rainwater accumulates in the pit and soaks the body so that you can't tell whether it is the cold meal itself that is difficult to swallow, or the poisonous gas in the air is disgusting. When burying the body, dig a little deeper, and you will see the remains of the last war. These stacked dead bodies filled the water floating on the ground with deadly germs. Not to mention lice and mice. The battlefield made them feel like a shower of rain. When the entire country was hit hard, only these two creatures reproduced extremely rampantly. Death in this land may not be the worst thing. After death, it is possible to go to heaven. To live, you can only stay in this hell full of mud, spreading pneumonia, rheumatism, and fear.
However, when the First World War broke out, no one could see these. Both the Germans and the British were intoxicated by it. German elementary school students would recite "Hate of Britain Song", people hummed the poem into a popular tune all over the street, and they even awarded a medal to the person who wrote this crappy poem. They desperately wanted this poem to spread across Europe, letting the world know that they have "only one enemy: Britain". The British did not show any weakness in their counterattack. They also declared that they would defeat the Germans, goug their eyeballs, and cut off their tongues. Looking back today, you will always find the stupid things done in the past, but people will always lose to the passionate spirit of the times. 93 outstanding writers, artists, and scientists signed the "Call to the Cultural Circle" and included cultural celebrities such as Goethe, Beethoven, Kant and others in their slogans to support their beliefs, and they used their reputations to guarantee warfare. conduct. Some artists of the right age went to the battlefield devoutly to enrich their artistic life. Thomas Mann also supported the war, and for this reason he almost broke up with his anti-war brother. Later, he slowly changed his previous views during the protracted war. But after a few decades, war is once again above everything else in life. The criticism and reflection of World War I are like the popular vocabulary of the season. No one wants to mention it. They once again shouted "Can fight for my dear motherland, can fight for me I'm proud to have fought for the noblest defenders so far."
The historical background of the movie "Merry Christmas" (Joyeux Noël 2005) is the Battle of Ypres in the northern battlefield of Belgium in World War I. Four battles made this place almost razed to the ground, leaving only the foundation of the wall. A total of 500,000 British soldiers lay here to guard this place. People have been discussing and researching about where all this started and how it ended. There are more than 7,000 books about why the war started. Regardless of how it started, the hatred must be deeply ingrained anyway. At the beginning of the movie, you can see children from three countries standing in front of the blackboard, reciting the "hate education" they received in their native languages: What the French will never forget is Alsace and Lorraine lost in the Franco-Prussian War, Dude The "Last Lesson" of "The Last Lesson" recorded this beginning; the British gritted their teeth and said that Germans are not humans, and their women and children deserve to die, so that their offspring will not harm the world; the Germans are simpler, and their enemy is only the United Kingdom. .
After the professional soldiers suffered heavy losses, the British set up an amateur army to make young people full of adventurous spirits go to the battlefield with excitement. Brothers William and Jonathan in the Scottish church in the film are one of them. These students set foot on the battlefield during the summer vacation, confident that they would be able to return to normal classes in the fall, but 30% of them never returned. This number of deaths is engraved in the history of Oxford and Cambridge universities. Shocked the society. If they can follow Bernard Shaw’s advice, they may be able to avoid large-scale war deaths and the tragedy of the aristocratic family in the English countryside. In August 1941, Bernard Shaw seriously suggested in the "New Statesman" weekly newspaper that "Soldiers of the various armies should shoot their officers to death and then go home." This "joke" obviously did not amuse British officials. It made them itch with hatred, planning to send him to a military court. In Germany, the whole country is devoted to the enthusiasm of the war. A large number of students who have not graduated falsely report their ages, and the entire grades are enlisted in the army and undergo medical examinations. The death rate for boys aged 18 to 22 in Germany is 37%. Countless families have been destroyed. Whether in Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, or Austria, a new generation of people is dying before they grow up. Unlike the shock of the British, the Germans are more willing to portray this death as a great dedication. The officers pushed the soldiers to death, said some careless eulogy at their graves, and then the nationalist poets were beautifying this sacrifice into a myth.
The first battle of Ypres was called by some Germans " The Massacre of Children". What I’m talking about here is not about sending groups of children to gas chambers in World War II concentration camps, but about 100,000 college students who have just arrived at the front line, and students who have not received any formal training. Patriotic passion and the command of the officer, holding a gun, strode to death. Those who are lucky enough to survive will slowly find that the war and the patriotism hyped in the newspapers are fading away, and their lives are nothing but killing and being killed. At first, seeing the impact of death had become numb, and the rotting corpse gradually became a part of the landscape. After the war, people even admitted that if they saw a wounded companion killed, they would secretly thank them for not having to risk rescue him. They are used to advancing and retreating on the battlefield covered with corpses. As for killing the wounded so as not to drag down the march, this kind of extermination practice, some people admit that most of the countries that participated in the war denied it, and the French remained silent.
Contrary to the completely different attitudes after the war, the attitudes of every country during the war were surprisingly consistent-they were all trying their best to incite hatred. At the beginning of the war, many Germans had lived in the UK for many years. When they were called back to the country, their neighbors became enemies overnight. Apart from their own lives for the country, there is really no deep hatred. In order to make the soldiers full of fighting spirit, the British government everywhere established the image of the bloodthirsty German barbarians, and the Germans promoted how the British tortured and killed soldiers who had been begging for mercy. Newspapers and periodicals are basically controlled by the government, and the speeches they publish are subject to approval and filtering. Those poems that tell of the difficult conditions on the battlefield and are full of fear of death are ignored (although this accounts for the vast majority of the manuscripts), and the publications are all encouraging wars. Empty talk. Every day under their orders, thousands of people lined up to die. When more people die in a battle, the easier it is to be recorded in the annals of history, and their commanders will also be remembered as books. Many people are honored for this.
By the end of World War I, more than 9 million people had sacrificed for the war. • British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Gray's predictions come true: "The whole of Europe over the lights have been turned off, they no longer see in our lifetime will be re-lit."
Second, the miracle of Christmas Eve
since August 1914 war only Four months later, no one sang "Germany above all else". They also don't have the strength and passion to sing, all the remaining strength is used to survive, and the endless assaults make them exhausted. The no-man’s land on the Western Front is a land abandoned by God. There is nothing worthy of hope, and nothing worthy of gratitude. The French second lieutenant wrote in the war diary: "Poor little Eros, you happened to be born tonight, then how do you love mankind?"
Both the British and German armies were immersed in their respective mud trenches, no more than a hundred meters apart, and both suffered from the fear of giant rats and bullets. Those mice have never been as over-nourished as they are now, and they gnaw at piles of corpses leisurely every day. They are as big as hunting dogs, and even cats will be torn apart by them for snacks. Henrich Leirsch, who used to be a boiler maker, wrote a poem describing that he saw a dead person every day, and the more he looked at him, the more he felt he was his brother. Later, he bury the strange partner under the rain of bullets. —— "My eyes are wrong-my heart, you can't be wrong, every deceased has a brother's face". The irony is that it was death that brought people's equality. Whether they were Germans, British, French, or Belgians, they all lie together, regardless of official title or nationality, just like dead brothers. Although it is difficult to predict what will happen in the future, someone once said that "a soldier sees himself from other soldiers, and the hatred disappears." When the hatred disappears, the war loses its meaning.
No one expected what would happen on December 24, 1914. A miracle could happen after countless deaths, and the first Christmas after the war started was a night of miracles about peace. It is difficult to find anything similar to this Christmas Eve peace in the history of war. There hasn’t been before, and it’s never happened in the future. At first it was just a male voice singing "Quiet Night". The sad and solemn atmosphere spread in Flanders. The singing melted the hearts frozen by the war, and the thawing river surged down, washing the dry and cracked earth. , British soldiers on the opposite side crawled out of the trenches one after another, but on weekdays they dared not even pop up a bit, for fear of being killed by a sniper. They lit up the silent night with applause, and peace was like a comet once in thousands of years dragging its long golden tail to the ground. When the last note disappeared, the British soldiers shouted "Okay! One more, one more." They blew their bagpipes and sang to the opposite singing. They played a tune, and the German boys would hear a response. Singing. They speak different languages, but they communicate unimpeded in the hall of music. When people who were tired of the roar of bullets and cannons heard the music, it was as if they had been enchanted. After the rapids passed through the rapids, they finally rushed to the sea, and their numb souls were once again burnt with fever. The Christmas trees are neatly lined up on the edge of the German trenches, and candles are decorated around the stage like golden roses dripping with mist in the night. They replaced fireworks with flares, and they were given a night of understanding and love to make everything shine.
After the singing, people from different countries crowded in no-man’s land, exchanging gifts and food in their hands. Canned beef, grape pudding, cigarettes, and chocolate. For soldiers who are tired of their food, the ability to change their taste is comparable to a gourmet meal. Of course, the French are still full of guard against the Germans who show goodwill. After all, after years of hate education and hype, it is difficult to erase the brutal image of the German barbarians overnight. Some people don't dare to eat what the Germans hand over, so they have to take a bite before they can rest assured. Many German soldiers speak fluent English because they originally lived in the UK. Most British people also learned German in high school, and French, English, German, and Italian are generally taught in European high schools. They whispered to remind each other where there were landmines. The Germans knew that the British did not have a Christmas tree, so they offered to give them one. A soldier said happily: "We are Saxons, and you are Anglo-Saxons (both belong to the ancient Germanic tribal group), why do we shoot each other?" This simple logic can be regarded as peace-loving People's aspirations also echoed the ancient Chinese poem "It was born from the same root, so why not be too anxious". On that night, they talked, laughed, played bagpipes, and played the harmonica, just like a transnational sorority. After such a night, no one wanted to shoot these new friends the next day. This is not heaven, but they worked hard to maintain peace and built a paradise belonging to them. As a result, we can see them burying their partners together, mourning together, playing football together, exchanging gifts and addresses, hoping to send postcards to each other like friends in the future.
The movie can only show peace in one area, and the peace on Christmas Eve in 1914 was on the entire front, and the superiors could not stop such a large-scale movement. Some British soldiers wanted to sing a few songs on Christmas Eve to let the Germans relax their vigilance, and then they would be able to "have five attacks." But when they sang "Night, the shepherd looks after the flock", they unexpectedly received a warm response from the Germans. The atmosphere suddenly became friendly, and no one wanted to fight. They met "Merry Christmas, we will not tonight." shot". A German soldier told them that he missed his wife and children in London very much. These pleasant conversations lasted a long time, and knee-jerk conversations are much more intoxicating than killing each other. Even in normal times, it is difficult to see such a harmonious and friendly relationship between strangers from different countries. It is even harder to imagine that they were all enemies fighting to the death before today. When they walked together, they found that the other party was also ordinary people just like their own. They weren't brutal beasts. They were closer to the enemy in front of them than the officers who commanded them to die all day long. Once there was a Belgian who wanted to send a letter to his home, but his hometown was already occupied by the Germans, so he threw the letter to the Germans on the opposite side and asked them to send it on their behalf. Unexpectedly, they actually sent it, and they also brought a reply. This is an event that no official will report, and it was slowly unearthed after the war.
The German army also took pleasure in killing people and ignored such things as the "Christmas Truce". Private Adolf Hitler expressed great anger at this absurd armistice, and strongly opposed the German and British troops to spend Christmas together in no man’s land without shooting. His partner ignored his protest, thinking that he was poisoned too deeply and unreasonably. Some British people took the opportunity to shoot at unsuspecting Germans. They were reprimanded by their superiors at the time. He also apologized to each other on behalf of his subordinates and was accepted. There are many things that destroy peace, but none of them can stop most people's eager hope for peace. During the armistice, even sparrows flew back from all directions. It was the first time the soldiers saw animals other than mice in the trenches since the start of the war. They cleared no man's land, filled in gullies and craters, and erected simple goals. The tools of the past have become toys for today's games. American historian Stanley Weintraub explained: "Football is the religious belief of the working class", and it is this that gives them the same passion except for God. Lovers are always better than murder.
On December 30, 1914, when the Saxon soldiers received an order to "prohibit peaceful activities." They were unable to resist, so they wrote a note to the British Hampshire soldiers: "Dear friends, I have to tell you that from now on we are not allowed to meet you outside, but we will always be your partners. . If we are forced to shoot, we will always shoot upwards.” No one will forget that on Christmas Eve, when the Germans reluctantly walked back to their trenches, the British boys used bagpipes to blow "A Long Friendship" Tian Long.
Third, the hope forever
the face of peaceful events in 1914, although the rulers of countries of different measures, but the caliber is very uniform: "not allowed." In Germany, the punishment in the first year is limited to confinement and promotion. In the second year, people involved in peace may face imprisonment and death sentences if they are brought to a military court. The German troops that participated in the peace activities in the first year were replaced by the Prudence regiment with a tough attitude. They were transferred to the Russian steppes, and there has been no news since then.
Such matters involving thousands of people are difficult to keep secret. The news was published on the front pages of several British newspapers, and the Germans strictly controlled the news not to become a topic of formal discussion. Although there are war reporters in every country, photos of the severity of the war and the casualties are not allowed to be leaked. The newspapers publish some approved pictures, and it will take a long time for them to make the real pictures public. Intense discussions also took place in the rear, and the anti-war and nationalists opened up the battle. However, no matter how much they discussed, they couldn't understand the situation of the soldiers in dire straits. Even the relatives of the soldiers couldn't communicate with them, and when they went home to visit relatives, they became taciturn and depressed. They find it painful to be with people who don’t know the frontline. There are many "people crushed by the war" who have undergone dozens of operations in hospitals, constantly replacing artificial limbs and organs to maintain their lives. They are isolated from the world and even their relatives do not know their situation. The United Kingdom did an experiment where only one-third of the soldiers who had experienced war could lead a normal life. Most people suffer from "war neurosis", which is a psychological disease. Most people will not be able to get rid of the sound of war in their ears for their entire lives. They will never forget the stench of war, the wailing of being shattered by artillery shells, and the tragic death of their partners day and night.
In the film, the German soldier Nicholas Sbrink was a famous domestic singer before joining the war. His wife got special permission from the German Emperor to reunite them on Christmas Eve. Sbrink did not have the happiness expected by his wife. He wanted to return to the trenches and spend Christmas with his brothers. He said: "You have to face death to realize that time is passing so fast." The wife will not understand what has happened in the past four months, and her husband will never be able to live a normal life as before. In the front-line theater, everyone has only the past and no future. The best dream is to be able to see the ordinary days before. The humanity faded little by little in the soldiers, which is exactly what the commanders would like to see. This situation developed into a state of "command emergency" during World War II, that is, soldiers only acted according to the above orders, and they were a tool for massacre. At the time of trial, many people believed that they were not guilty of murder, but merely obeyed orders. In order to let the soldiers fight better and eliminate the so-called sympathy, the rulers formulated a set of so-called war logic: "Hell is always with others", and strived to make their killings justified. In the First World War, the situation became more tragic as they went forward. They trampled on the Geneva Convention every day, killing prisoners of war and wounded. Numerous soldiers died not from guns, but from unaided people. Many people have become savage, but some are still resisting and still insisting on chivalry. Even in 1915, when the peace movement was unprecedentedly boycotted, some people walked out of the trenches and sang songs on Christmas Eve. At that time, everyone was shocked watching the German soldier who stood up, but the person on the other side did not open fire, but waited for him to finish singing. Peace is only a short while, but it still keeps calling people's hearts. The soldiers are still writing poems, they have no hatred, "On the banks of the Somme where the corpse is devoured, I am on the opposite bank of you, everywhere, I am opposite you, but you don’t know! The enemy is next to the enemy, people are next to you People, the body is next to the body, warm and close."
In the end, the First World War ended in the defeat of Germany. Belgium opened the "Meinan Gate" in 1927. At 8 o'clock every night, traffic was interrupted and all vehicles detoured. The trumpeter blew the soldiers' funeral horn under the Arc de Triomphe. The ceremony lasted nearly 10 minutes to commemorate the soldiers who died here. This ceremony has continued to this day, only from 1940 to 1944 that it did not take place under German occupation. People waited in silence under the Arc de Triomphe every night. "Even if the sun will set, we will commemorate them tomorrow morning" (Lawrence Binion in "For the Fallen"). If such a tragic result has taught the world a lesson, then it should be that at the beginning of World War II, those former survivors, soldiers who had rushed to the battlefield of World War I with enthusiasm, dragged their descendants onto the streets and raised their counterpoints. The big name of the war. Since then, the United States has launched several wars, and few countries are willing to participate in them.
At the end of the movie, the German soldiers are sitting on the train to the Russian steppes. The chief smashed their harmonica, and they hummed a song that once belonged to Christmas Eve. War can swallow life, but it can't swallow their longing for peace, longing for friendship, and longing for love.
Please indicate the author: Nine-tailed Black Cat
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