Christmas Truce

Terri Blom Crocker is a PhD candidate and the senior paralegal for investigations in the Office of Legal Counsel at the University of Kentucky.

In this book Terri Crocker carefully and forensically investigates perhaps the most mythologised of all First World War events. The book makes a major, revisionist contribution to our understanding of the war and its popular memory, and is essential reading for anyone interested in the real history of Christmas 1914."" - Keith Jeffery, author of Ireland and the Great War""Crocker's scholarship reveals the multiple meanings of the Christmas Truce, one of the most iconic moments in the memory of the First World War: did it offer temporary respite from the job, a fraternal bonding opportunity, or was it an anti-war rebellion? This fascinating microhistory has much to tell us about the experience of war, the way it was reported, and the shifting way in which it has been remembered."" - Jenny Macleod, University of Hull""Crocker's book will become essential reading for anyone who wishes to know how the First World War came to be understood as that 'exercise in futility' we have come to accept without question today. It is a sober corrective and a judicious revelation of how and why the myths surrounding this war have become so hard to dislodge."" - Nicoletta Gullace, author of The Blood of Our Sons: Men, Women, and the Renegotiation of British Citizenship during the Great War""[A] sharp look at the so-called 'Christmas truce' of 1914, discovering that distortion has colored many accounts of it - and of World War I itself.... Crocker has created a work perhaps powerful enough to alter the conventional narrative of the incident. She destroys a number of misconceptions.... A storm of debate will no doubt ensue.... the discoveries may be revolutionary in World War I historiography."" - KIRKUS""Powerful and convincing [... ] I hope we hear more from this historian in the future."" - Washington Times""[T]he book makes a welcome assault on the prevailing disillusionment narrative that historians have only recently begun to dismantle. Specifically, Terri Blom Crocker has written a cautionary tale of the power of selection bias in news stories, oral history interviews, and films (including documentaries) to transform a historical event into an icon of antiwar sentiment in the decades that followed it. These virtues make The Christmas Truce valuable reading for anyone interested in an odd moment of the First World War and its evolution in historical memory."" - Michigan War Studies Review""Crocker, through meticulous research, dismantles the revisionist histories put forth in the 1960s by both historian and filmmaker alike to reveal a significant series of events which began independently at various points along the 20-mile Western Front."" - Kaintuckeean