Kevin Prenger's Blog - Posts Tagged "christmas"
61 days till Christmas!
There are 61 days left for Christmas 2020! If you already want to get in the mood and if you are interested in the Second World War, I would like to recommend my book Christmas under Fire, 1944: The Last Christmas of World War II. Available at Amazon.com.
Bastogne in Belgium, Christmas 1944. Plagued by biting cold and the nerve-wracking sound of exploding mortar bombs, American soldiers sang Christmas carols. They ate their meagre rations, yearning for well-laid Christmas dinner tables and roasted turkey.
On the Eastern front, German military assembled to listen to Christmas music on the radio, if they had a little respite from the bloody battle against the advancing Red Army. After reading the latest mail from Germany, they wiped away their tears, thinking of their families back home.
In liberated Paris as well as in other European cities, Christmas was celebrated no matter how limited the circumstances may have been. In the major cities in the western part of the Netherlands, occupied by the Germans, civilians scraped the very last bits of food together for a Christmas dinner that could not appease their hunger.
POWs in camps all over the world looked forward to Christmas parcels from home. Even in Nazi concentration camps, inmates found hope in Christmas, although their suffering continued inexorably.
'Christmas Under Fire, 1944' describes the circumstances in which the last Christmas of World War II was celebrated by military, civilians and camp inmates alike. Even in the midst of war’s violence, Christmas remained a hopeful beacon of western civilization.
Bastogne in Belgium, Christmas 1944. Plagued by biting cold and the nerve-wracking sound of exploding mortar bombs, American soldiers sang Christmas carols. They ate their meagre rations, yearning for well-laid Christmas dinner tables and roasted turkey.
On the Eastern front, German military assembled to listen to Christmas music on the radio, if they had a little respite from the bloody battle against the advancing Red Army. After reading the latest mail from Germany, they wiped away their tears, thinking of their families back home.
In liberated Paris as well as in other European cities, Christmas was celebrated no matter how limited the circumstances may have been. In the major cities in the western part of the Netherlands, occupied by the Germans, civilians scraped the very last bits of food together for a Christmas dinner that could not appease their hunger.
POWs in camps all over the world looked forward to Christmas parcels from home. Even in Nazi concentration camps, inmates found hope in Christmas, although their suffering continued inexorably.
'Christmas Under Fire, 1944' describes the circumstances in which the last Christmas of World War II was celebrated by military, civilians and camp inmates alike. Even in the midst of war’s violence, Christmas remained a hopeful beacon of western civilization.
Kriegsweihnacht 1944, Christmas and Nazi propaganda
In 1944, Christmas was celebrated for the sixth time since the Second World War had broken out on September 1, 1939. Men who often shared the same religious background fought each other to the death in sharp contrast with the old Christmas message of Peace on Earth. Christmas under Fire, 1944: The Last Christmas of World War II tells about this last war time Christmas. Below an excerpt from this book. This part is about how Christmas was used in Nazi propaganda.
Soldiers of the Volkssturm celebrate Christmas 1944 in a bunker in Eastern Prussia. On the table mail from the home front. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J28377 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)
On Christmas Eve in a ward in a German hospital, an Oberleutnant lay motionless in bed. It was warm and quiet in the room where he was being treated for the severe injuries he had sustained on the Murmansk front. As he lay there in the corner near the stove, his head on a white pillow, it looked as if he were already dead. His eyes in a pale face were shut, and life seemed to be slipping away from him. All of a sudden, the door of the room was carefully opened and the dark room was lit by the cheerfully shimmering candles in a small fir tree. The soft sounds of German Christmas carols sung by children came closer and closer. As if by miracle, the eyes of the injured soldier opened. Laboriously, he raised himself to see where the light and the singing were coming from. While staring at the lights in the tree, his thoughts went back to past Christmas Days at home. A little smile appeared on his face. "He wants to live," so the story continues, "to live for the Heimat (fatherland) so far away but never so close as in this fateful moment, by the light of the Christmas tree. … And he feels joyous and happy: in this holy moment his fate returns from the frontier of death to within range of life itself. He will be cured.
This story about a miraculous healing by the light of a Christmas tree was published in 1944 in the propaganda bulletin "Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht" (German War Christmas). Starting in 1941, each year prior to the Christmas holidays, the department of culture of the propaganda office of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) issued a compilation of Christmas stories for adults and children, this one being the last. The 1944 issue contained Christmas stories from the front during World War I, such as one about a soldier in France who, while on patrol close to enemy lines, risked his life while fetching a Christmas tree in order to celebrate Christmas. Furthermore, it contained letters to and from the front, poems and folk songs, all of course along the lines of the Nazi Christmas celebration. For the children, it contained fairy tales of Snow White and Mother Holle by the Grimm brothers.
Speeches by the master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, could not be left out of course. A posthumously published contribution of an ode to the German Christmas celebration was included: National Socialist writer and poet Kurt Eggers died in 1943 at the Eastern front serving with the Waffen-SS. He argued Christmas was not about "giving love" and "legends from the far away Jewish land" but about "freedom, honor and justice." He described the Christmas tree as the symbol of the "grandeur of the struggling and defiant life that in danger and in need holds out against any fearsome and difficult situation." According to him, Christmas became "the celebration of victory and the required willingness to fight. ... We therefore do not celebrate our Weihnachtsfest in the sentimental mood, contained in so many strange Christmas carols, but in the hard and inflexible knowledge that we, as the perennial torch bearers, are destined to carry the light of freedom in the world."
Read further
Soldiers of the Volkssturm celebrate Christmas 1944 in a bunker in Eastern Prussia. On the table mail from the home front. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J28377 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)
On Christmas Eve in a ward in a German hospital, an Oberleutnant lay motionless in bed. It was warm and quiet in the room where he was being treated for the severe injuries he had sustained on the Murmansk front. As he lay there in the corner near the stove, his head on a white pillow, it looked as if he were already dead. His eyes in a pale face were shut, and life seemed to be slipping away from him. All of a sudden, the door of the room was carefully opened and the dark room was lit by the cheerfully shimmering candles in a small fir tree. The soft sounds of German Christmas carols sung by children came closer and closer. As if by miracle, the eyes of the injured soldier opened. Laboriously, he raised himself to see where the light and the singing were coming from. While staring at the lights in the tree, his thoughts went back to past Christmas Days at home. A little smile appeared on his face. "He wants to live," so the story continues, "to live for the Heimat (fatherland) so far away but never so close as in this fateful moment, by the light of the Christmas tree. … And he feels joyous and happy: in this holy moment his fate returns from the frontier of death to within range of life itself. He will be cured.
This story about a miraculous healing by the light of a Christmas tree was published in 1944 in the propaganda bulletin "Deutsche Kriegsweihnacht" (German War Christmas). Starting in 1941, each year prior to the Christmas holidays, the department of culture of the propaganda office of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers' Party) issued a compilation of Christmas stories for adults and children, this one being the last. The 1944 issue contained Christmas stories from the front during World War I, such as one about a soldier in France who, while on patrol close to enemy lines, risked his life while fetching a Christmas tree in order to celebrate Christmas. Furthermore, it contained letters to and from the front, poems and folk songs, all of course along the lines of the Nazi Christmas celebration. For the children, it contained fairy tales of Snow White and Mother Holle by the Grimm brothers.
Speeches by the master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, could not be left out of course. A posthumously published contribution of an ode to the German Christmas celebration was included: National Socialist writer and poet Kurt Eggers died in 1943 at the Eastern front serving with the Waffen-SS. He argued Christmas was not about "giving love" and "legends from the far away Jewish land" but about "freedom, honor and justice." He described the Christmas tree as the symbol of the "grandeur of the struggling and defiant life that in danger and in need holds out against any fearsome and difficult situation." According to him, Christmas became "the celebration of victory and the required willingness to fight. ... We therefore do not celebrate our Weihnachtsfest in the sentimental mood, contained in so many strange Christmas carols, but in the hard and inflexible knowledge that we, as the perennial torch bearers, are destined to carry the light of freedom in the world."
Read further
