It's one of the most romantic images of the First World War, British and German soldiers

meeting in no man's land on Christmas Day 1914 for a spontaneous truce and a game of football.

But is this popular, cinematic vision, the whole truth? In today's episode of the History Extra podcast, historian Alex Churchill joins Rachel Dining

to explore what really happened on the 25th of December 1914.

So to kick us off today, what was the Christmas truce of 1914?

Give us a bit of an overview.

The Christmas truce is a bit of a misnomer. It's Christmas trucees or truce-eye.

I don't know what the plural of a truce is. It is a load of spontaneous acts of fraternisation,

not only on the Western Front, elsewhere as well, in Christmas,

and it's specifically referring to 1914 from a British perspective,

where everybody kind of decided randomly in their sectors, if they did anything at all,

decided to poke their heads above the trenches and go and chat to the Germans.

Or kick a football about or swap cigarettes or swap presents.

I think there was one instance of a barrel of beer ring being rolled over to the British,

and I'm sure a plum pudding went the other way.

So, yeah, a spontaneous acts of fraternisation in 1914.

Great. So we've got spontaneous acts of fraternisation, people coming together in 1914.

So, Alex, I wanted to ask you specifically about one story associated with the Christmas truce

that people listening at home definitely will have heard of.

So this is the legendary football match that took place between

German and British soldiers on Christmas Day 1914. So in your words, what do people think

happened on that day? And why might the reality not be what people expect? So I think what people think happened

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