World War I Lecture Series Explores the History of the Christmas Truce of 1914
For an all-too-brief time along the Western front of World War I, small pockets of peace erupted along the British and German trenches in 
the first Christmas of the war, as soldiers broke free of the matrix of their nationalistic brainwashing to fight in a war most of them didn’t even understand, and treated each other like actual human beings, putting aside the manipulation of the rich getting them to fight battles between each other in order to increase war profiteering and create a debt circle between the Allies and Germany that ultimately led to the rise of Hitler amidst the poverty of Germany and henceforth another world war to enrich the military and banking complex.
Anyway, enough of the REAL history lesson.
Kevin Braafladt, Army Sustainment Command historian at the Rock Island Arsenal, explores the story of this unofficial ceasefire in an upcoming Facebook Live lecture, the Christmas Truce of 1914. The free lecture will be presented live at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, December 16 from the Rock Island Arsenal Museum, Rock Island Public Library, and Davenport Public Library Facebook sites.
The lecture is the first program in the resumption of a 10-part World War I military history series hosted by the Rock Island and Davenport Public Libraries, Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center, and the Rock Island Arsenal Museum. The next presentation in the series, the Causes of World War I, occurs at 6:00 pm on January 13, 2021. For more details, please visit the library calendars and Facebook sites.
For Rock Island Public Library event news, please visit the online library calendar at www.rockislandlibrary.org, follow the library on Facebook or Instagram, or call 309-732-READ (7323.)
