According to the standard narrative of the history of the twentieth century, the combatants of the Great War – the generation of our great-grandparents – were “men of violence”, sailing through a sea of utter destruction and change towards an ocean of even greater violence. Islands of Peace, the book that Dr. Thomas Weber is in the process of completing, tells a radically different story of the First World War and its meaning to the one hitherto told. It reveals a century-long history of a cover-up of Christmas Truces, meetings in no-man’s land throughout the year, and friendly encounters of soldiers with enemy civilians that occurred, not just in 1914, but throughout the war. These events constitute islands of peace in a sea of violence.
