The Easter Truces: The Unknown Truces of WWI
[Transcript of the above video]
Welcome back, and welcome to my second Easter season special. Today I want to dive into an event in World War I that is truly amazing, quite spectacular really, and one that I am 99% sure that you have never even heard of. You heard of the Christmas Truce of 1914 on the Western Front, right? Well, how about not one, not two but three truces that occurred on the Eastern Front from 1915-1917 during Easter? No joke, fraternizations between enemies on the Eastern Front on one of the holiest days for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believers for three consecutive years. These are the Easter Truces of 1915, 1916, and 1917.
Before jumping into these truces, (though I will not dwell long on this, considering that there is so much information concerning the lead up to World War I), let’s back-up and give some background information about how the Eastern Front during the First World War came to be. Out of the two most famous fronts in the Great War, namely, the Western and Eastern Fronts, the Eastern Front is less known by the majority of the general public. With that, let’s dive in.
After the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian Imperial throne, and his wife, Sophie, on June 28, 1914, the Austrian-Hungarian government formerly gave the Kingdom of Serbia their ultimatum on July 23rd, which, in summary, demanded that Serbia punish anyone associated with the assassination of the Austrian heir-apparent and to denounce all and any separatist or nationalist messaging coming from Serbian nationalists who desired to set free every Serbian in Eastern Europe, including those in Austrian-Hungarian territory like Bosnia, and create a quote on quote “Greater Serbia.”[1] If Serbia did not accept the ultimatum, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire would go to war with Serbia; and the Serbian government, after calling up their armed forces, at first accepted the demands, considering that they did not have the total assurance that their ally, the Russian Empire, would back them, until the Russian government issued their “Period Preparatory to Mobilisation” on July 25th, and, because of this, Serbia refused the ultimatum and Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 28th.[2] By late July to early August, Russia was at war with Austria-Hungary and Germany in support of their fellow Slavic nation.[3]
By late March 1915, Russia had penetrated deeply into the Carpathian Mountain area of the front and achieved victories against the Austrian-Hungarian army in that region, with these victories against the Austrian-Hungarian forces continuing the Russian successes in Austrian held Galicia during the first six months of the war.[4] The Russians also by late March 1915 pushed back the German forces out of Russia on the northern regions of the front after the costly victory the Germans gained in the aftermath of the Second Battle of Masurian Lakes in February 1915.[5] That is not to say that the Russians did not suffer defeats; on the contrary, they endured a substantial defeat at Tannenberg Forest in late August 1914 by the hands of the German army and, by the end of 1914, the Germans occupied a lot of Russian Poland.[6] However, even with these past defeats, the very early stages of the spring of 1915 did not look unpromising for the Russian army, even against the Germans. During this time, Easter came to the Eastern Front.
According to Peter Appelbaum, in 1915, orders from superior officers in the Austrian-Hungarian army allowed their soldiers, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish, to fraternize with civilians near the front during the Easter festivities; but the festivities would be shared with their enemy as well.[7] Even though not all soldiers along the Eastern Front partook in the Easter Truce in 1915, (for example, soldiers along the Carpathian section continued fighting during Easter), truces still occurred on Easter in 1915.[8]
For instance, along the Nida River in Poland, Austrian-Hungarian army officer Wincenty Solek astoundingly wrote that on Easter Sunday:
The Muscovites [the Russians] are standing on the bank of the Nida – look! Not really understanding what this meant, we went out and saw that there, on the far bank of the Nida [. . .], the Muscovites were standing in a line, with our boys facing them on the other side, unarmed. The two groups were talking to each other and we could hear them from where we were standing. Baffled by this extraordinary phenomenon, soldiers began to run out from the Russian trenches and from ours and head across the sun-lit no-man’s land and water meadows [. . .] to the river bank. [. . .] Along the entire battle line not a single shot from a machine gun or cannon was to be heard. A festive mood had descended – it was Easter![9]
Historian Graydon Tunstall affirms this fraternization on Easter Sunday by stating that along the Austrian-Hungarian 4th Army front, which was situated not far from the Polish town of Gorlice, “unarmed Russian soldiers climbed out of their trenches…to present gifts to their opponents,” with the Austrian-Hungarian troops in the 4th Army accepting this generosity and joined in the truce.[10]
German soldiers also fraternized with Russian troops on Easter in 1915. Such an example comes from German soldier Sgt. Beckmann, who wrote to his pastor that on Holy Saturday night, “[I]t seemed as though the Russians were holding a singing festival; for those fellows sang with such gusto—it was a sheer delight—though every now and then, shots rang out in between.”[11] Then, Sgt. Beckmann told his pastor in the same letter:
This year, the Russians are celebrating Easter on the same day as us. The Russians have become very friendly toward us; just yesterday, for instance, they sent us Easter cakes and Easter eggs over to our field outpost. Then, three of our riflemen went across to them with a small package of cigars, cigarettes, and cognac, and were received by three Russians. They exchanged cigarettes and chatted for a long time about the war situation and so forth... [...] They told us we should come back again—and bring Wuttky along—as they would be happy to pay.[12]
Another German soldier, Willy Gallaun, stationed near the Polish city of Lodz, related similar extraordinary events on Easter 1915 in a letter he wrote on April 6th:
You will probably find the following account quite incredible. I myself would never have believed that something like this was possible if I had not taken part in it myself. On Easter Sunday we arrived at this position near Lodz. Those whom we were to relieve told us that the Russians had been over and asked that there should be no shooting at Easter. The wish had also been fulfilled. Now the Russians came over to us, right up to the barbed wire barrier. We had to go up and meet them so that they would not…come right down to our trench; it worked of course not. You can’t imagine how the Russians behaved quite like children...They brought bread, butter, ham, sugar and tobacco to exchange with us. We had…long pipes in [our] mouths, and when they saw them, they were so excited that they all wanted one…One of our officers took a photograph of the group. There were Germans, Austrians and Russians standing among each other.[13]
Even in a far northern section of the Eastern Front, in the Courland region of modern day Latvia, German soldier Hans Schiller recalled in his memoir how one of the most memorable times while serving on the Eastern Front was Easter 1915 when:
On this day one exchanges brotherly kisses and forgives all enemies. The evening before, a member of the Parliament had begged for a twenty-four-hour reprieve of all fighting. And this was granted. As soon as the sun rose, we all ran off with our binoculars to see what the Russians had in store for themselves. We saw all their trenches were bedecked with greenery, and all the men were wearing fur caps made of bear pelts. They stood there and waved in our direction with white cloths. Eventually, they became even more trusting. In very small groups they came almost directly in front of our line, brought us vodka, and wanted to have cigarettes in exchange, for it must have been hard to get them. We gave them cigarettes whether or not they had liquor, and they retreated very satisfied.[14]
After the truce, a lot of fighting continued between the Russians and their western enemies in 1915, with the tables turning against the Russians by the fact that their push into the Carpathian section of the front came to a halt by April 10th and the Germans, with Austrian-Hungarian support, mounted successful offensives in May that eventually resulted in the Russians beginning the Great Retreat of 1915 that lasted till August of that year.[15] The Germans and Austrian-Hungarians executed other offensives in August and September along the Eastern Front, with the Germans achieving victories but not knock out blows to Russia and their Austrian Imperial counterparts failing to accomplish their goals in their sector against the Russians.[16]
Jumping ahead to the next truce, from late 1915 to early 1916, the Russians were able to quote on quote “breath” a bit from their defeats and enormous retreat, with the Russians losing around three hundred miles of their territory.[17] Nevertheless, the Russians were still a fighting force worth reckoning with and the year 1916 demonstrated that the Russians would show their enemies this to be true, for in early June 1916 the Russians began a massive offensive, (today called the Brusilov Offensive), which was a breakthrough but was, simultaneously, as historian David Stone argues, “a mixed blessing for Russia,” causing Russia to inflict enormous casualties upon the Austrian army but receiving their own massive amount of casualties as well, (around 1.5 million Russian soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured), and for Russia to sustain food shortages because of the requisition of horses for the front which could not be used to work on Russian farms during the spring and summer.[18] But before the Brusilov Offensive, during late April 1916, there was a gentle peace before the enormous storm that settled over parts of the Eastern Front during Easter of that year.
According to historian Ignác Romsics, fraternizations between the Russian, German, and Austrian-Hungarian troops started at irregular intervals in 1914 and 1915, with the Easter Truce in 1915 as a perfect example, but such interactions between enemies became more on a regular basis in 1916, especially with the Easter Truce of that year.[19] Romsics asserts that along “most sections of the front” soldiers on both sides observed Easter festivities together, and eyewitness accounts attest to such cases.[20]
Very similar to how soldiers of both sides behaved during the Christmas Truce of 1914 on the Western Front, Germans, Austrian-Hungarians, and Russians, as Romsics points out, exchanged drinks and food, took pictures together, and told each other how they wished the conclusion of the war was imminent.[21] Historian Gabriel Župčan affirms this by stating that troops from both armies congregated in no man’s land and gave presents to one another and exchanged embraces that lasted throughout the day and only ended in the evening.[22] These activities are verified by the accounts left behind by soldiers who participated in it.
One such soldier was Surgeon Lt. Colonel Bernhard Bardach of the 4th Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry Regiment of the Austrian-Hungarian Army wrote the following which took place in his section of the front, which was along the Galicia section of the front in modern north-western Ukraine:
23 April. Easter Sunday! Beautiful weather. Field mass at 8:00 a.m. in the lovely chapel built by the Ulans. Division Chaplain Niezgoda gives an impressive sermon. Then on to Swiçcone with the Ulans, where the table is richly set with all kinds of good food. The entire company joins us at Swiçcone, followed by a festive lunch. There is a sort of fraternity at the front: friend and foe exchange Swiçcone through the barbed wire.[23]
Fellow Austrian-Hungarian army officer and physician Friederich Kohn, who also served along the Galician section of the front, noted how the Easter Truce took place in his area, recalling:
Then suddenly on Easter Sunday, about 5 o’clock in the morning, about twenty Russians came out of their trenches, waving white flags, carrying no weapons, but baskets and bottles. One of them came quite near and one of our soldiers went out to meet him and asked what he wanted. He asked whether we would not agree to stop the war for a day or two and, in view of Easter, meet between the lines and have a meal together. We told him that first we would have to ask the military authorities whether such a meeting would be possible. The Divisional Commander refused permission. Nevertheless at 12 noon the Russians came out of their trenches and brought with them their military band, who came playing at full strength, and they brought baskets of food and bottles of wine and vodka, and we came out too and had a meal with them. We also had food and wine to offer. During the meeting both sides seemed to be embarrassed, but both sides were polite to each other and consumed the food and drinks we offered to each other. After a few hours we all went quietly back to our trenches.[24]
A reason why the Austrian-Hungarian soldiers were able to easily fraternize with the Russians during Easter is presented by Ignác Romsics, who claims that the Austrian-Hungarian troops “felt no hatred toward the enemy they faced. They considered the Russians and Italians to be just as human as themselves.”[25]
In the northern part of the front, Danish-German soldier Christian Bredebro, whose battalion occupied the front near the city of Vilnius, in modern day Lithuania, recollected the following about Easter in 1916:
Just before Easter, in broad daylight, some Russians emerged from the trench with a white flag and waved over at us. One from our company, a Thyringer, immediately followed the call and went down to the river to meet the Russians. The language, however, hindered a conversation. The Thuringian was then sent for another German in the neighboring company, who he knew could speak Russian. Then several Germans went down to the river…including me. The two parties here agreed to first have the three dead Germans brought across the river. The Russians went to the corpses, crossed themselves according to their custom, and then carried them one by one in a tent cloth along a small bridge a little further up the river over to us, without, however, getting down into our trenches. We arranged for transportation to the cemetery behind the front. The officers were initially unaware of our venture. That was one thing. But then we agreed to keep the Easter peace, first in the German and then in the Russian Easter a week later. Every day, Germans and Russians met by the river and exchanged gifts. The Russians came with bread, we gave cigarettes. No shot was fired. The officers were not satisfied, but could not line up and did not intervene either. The non-commissioned officers agreed. The conclusion of the peace was respected from both sides. The peace lasted 4 to 5 weeks.[26]
German soldiers from Germany itself also participated in the truce. For instance, Oskar Grelich wrote in a letter to his family back home in Bruchsal, Germany, on April 24, 1916, Easter Monday, about his Easter experience on the front near Swinjucki in Volhynia; even though Grelich’s experience was not as grand as those soldiers mentioned earlier, he still recounted how there was a truce along his stretch of the trenches, writing:
On Easter Eve they called out: ‘Germanski shoot nix. To-morrow peace!’ And this time Germanski was not ‘damn’ and shot ‘nix’. The Russian was grateful to him, and ever since early yesterday they have treated us to a most beautiful concert. An accordion and mandoline [sic] don’t sound at all bad, and the vast forest in which the Russian trenches are situated resounds unceasingly with a magnificent ‘Inihu’ as beautiful as any one could hear at Easter over in Eichelburg. In the evening the male choir strikes up, and solemn chants-no doubt Easter hymns-ring out into the night in three parts and sung by very good voices…Our men, not to be outdone, showed what they were capable of too, and gave some of their most solemn and moving songs, such as: ‘This is the Day of the Lord’ ‘It is Sunday,’ and ‘Alas, that we must part.’[27]
However, there were some superior officers within the Austrian-Hungarian command who viewed these Easter fraternizations in 1916 as repulsive. For instance, Surgeon Bardach wrote that their “authorities immediately forbid this in the strictest possible terms, taking prisoner 112 Russians and one cadet, who have come up to our barbed wire barricade. This infuriates the Russians, who open heavy artillery fire on our positions, to which we respond promptly. Calm arrives after a while.”[28] Župčan asserts that some high ranking Austrian-Hungarian officers informed their troops to return to their trenches or they would order their artillery to fire upon them, with certain Magyar troops “captur[ing]…Russians who had come to exchange troops and killed two of them.”[29] On the other hand, though Romsics notes that at first the Austrian-Hungarian high command tried to stop general fraternizations, with some court martials taking place, “only a few cases were brought as frontline officers tended to turn a blind eye to the fraternization of the conscripts and even joined in occasionally.”[30]
Not all stoppages of the truce were caused by officers. For example, Danish-German soldier Bredebro related how the truce came to an end in his sector by stating, “It so happened that a German in a neighboring regiment shot a Russian. And then the peace was over. We were soon replaced and moved a 20 km further north.”[31] Nevertheless, for some, the truce would end not with either side flaring animosities toward one another but in a form of friendship. An example can be found in Surgeon Kohn’s account, who recollected that during the truce with the Russians:
I talked with a Colonel who spoke perfect German and he told me that he had lived for several years in Vienna. When I asked him why he was always firing shrapnel at my first aid post- he told me he knew exactly where it was – he promised to leave me alone and he would send a rocket if he had to leave. For the next fourteen days I was left unmolested. Then he sent me a rocket, telling me that his unit was leaving.[32]
The truce came to an end and the Brusilov Offensive, mentioned earlier, eventually occurred. Let’s now fast forward again to get to the last truce.
During the winter of 1916-1917, (which saw a lull to the fighting), the Russians found transporting supplies difficult, and the Russians’ new front, the Romanian Front, caused a strain on the Russian military that ensnared them to not effectively mount offensives on the Eastern Front, which made the hopes of using the Romanian front as a way to achieve victory against Germany and Austria-Hungary nil and void.[33] In addition, the Russian home front faced a crisis economically, socially, and politically, which would end with Imperial Russia coming to a close with the February Revolution of 1917, (which took place in March on the Gregorian calendar).[34] However, Russia stayed in the war and the lull on the Eastern front broke with the Germans and Austrian-Hungarians mounting at minimum five local assaults on the Russian entrenchments from March 26th to April 3rd, 1917, which achieved “mixed successes” and were designed to “off-balance” the Russian army.[35] Soon after this, another Easter truce occurred on the Eastern Front.
Župčan asserts that “acts of fraternization along the Eastern Front intensified around Easter 1917. One such instance—involving German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian soldiers—was actually organized by the Germans themselves.”[36] Historian Holger Herwig concurs by contending that during the confusion in the Russian government, after the February Revolution, the Russian army began to fall apart, since its troops rejected the orders given to them in March and then on April 15th “tens of thousands of Russians left their trenches to join Austrians and Germans in Easter celebrations.”[37] There seemed to have been a method to the German and Austrian-Hungarian commanders allowing their troops to celebrate Easter with the Russians. Historian Manfried Rauchensteiner argues that during the days leading up to Easter Russian troops during this time crossed into no man’s land to try to start parleys with their adversaries and related to their enemy that they would get rid of their officers and establish “soldiers’ councils,” that they did not mind their current government but wanted it to end the war, and that they, the Germans and Austrian-Hungarians that is, should “also abandon the fight and begin a revolution themselves. In this way, the war could be ended very quickly.”[38]
Rauchensteiner further argues that the Austrian-Hungarian superior officers, in reaction to this, ordered their troops on April 6th to not fraternize with Russian troops, which particularly included the Easter season, but they, simultaneously, ordered on April 13th a halt to frontline action in order “to give the Russians the opportunity to revolutionise their own front.”[39] Even though Rauchensteiner does not make this direct connection, he seems implicitly to assert that this attitude toward fraternization changed to a certain extent when the Eastern Front High Command, both German and Austrian-Hungarian, decided that they could use truces as a means to further disrupt the Russian army through utilization of propaganda, while striving “to isolate their own troops as far as possible in order that they were not infected by the spirit of the revolution.”[40] When the High Command observed that they were uncertain about some of their troops’ attitude towards revolution, they took “all precautions…to prevent fraternisation [sic].”[41] Nevertheless, despite efforts from the German and Austrian-Hungarian High Command, Rauchensteiner affirms that on April 15th “there was widespread fraternisation [sic] along the front,” (which was Easter Sunday for Russian Orthodox believers), with it being to such an extent that Austrian General Hermann Kóvess of the 7th Army testified that along his section of the front, “The Russians emerged in groups along the entire lines; they came with their officers, called across to us and waved white flags.”[42] During this truce, Rauchensteiner claims that the Germans and Austrians passed out to the Russian soldiers “leaflets and proclamations to read;” now, Rauchensteiner does not say what kind of reading material the Germans and Austrians passed to their adversaries, but it could have been the propaganda that their superior officers desired to spread to the Russians to encourage disruption in their ranks.[43]
However, like the Easter Truce of 1916, there were superior officers wanted to curtail the Easter fraternizations. For instance, General Kóvess noted how after Russian troops began to cross no man’s land toward their lines “the Russian artillery then shot at its own people.”[44] Rauchensteiner also argues that German and Austrian-Hungarian officers went over to the Russians in order to tell them to return to their trenches.[45] Eventually, the Easter Truce of 1917 came to an end and the war ended on the Eastern Front on March 3, 1918, after the Austrian-Hungarians and Germans achieved great military victories during the summer and autumn of 1917 and after the communist revolution in Russia in November of that year.[46]
Though I presented a sort of summarized retelling of World War I on the Easter Front, I believe it was necessary in order to place the Easter Truces in their proper contexts, especially since it is a front in the Great War that is not well known to us in the Western world. The Easter Truces on the Eastern Front in World War I truly demonstrate how in three consecutive years the tranquility and compassion shown on the Western Front during the Christmas Truce of 1914 was shared between the troops of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. Medical officer Friederich Kohn put it well in his conclusion about his experience in the Easter Truce of 1916: “I have seen demonstrated in front of my own eyes that suddenly people who are trying to kill each other, and will try to kill again when the day is over, are still able to sit together and talk to each other.”[47] The Easter Truces of World War I also illustrate how the troops on the Eastern Front experienced the peace of Christ in the holiest season when peace should fill the hearts of all men because Christ is Risen. He is Risen indeed!
[Thanks for watching. As an announcement, I will be making longer videos on a regular basis from now on, so stay tuned for much more in depth content coming your way soon. If you like what you saw and want to watch more content like this and what I’ve been putting out in my shorts and long videos, click that like button, subscribe, and hit that notification bell. Thank you again and God bless y’all. St. Bede the Venerable, pray for us. Ave Mater Benedicta].
[1] Peter Hart, The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War, (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 23, 26.
[2] Hart, The Great War, 26. Norman Stone, The Eastern Front, 1914-1917, (New York, NY: Scribner, 1975), 42.
[3] Stone, The Eastern Front, 43.
[4] David R. Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2015), 143. Hart, The Great War,
[5] Hart, The Great War, 158, 159.
[6] Ibid, 91.
[7] Peter C. Appelbaum, Habsburg Sons: Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Army, 1788-1918, (Brookline, MA: Cherry Orchard Books, 2022), 274.
[8] Graydon A. Tunstall, Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915, (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2010), 198.
[9] Wincenty Solek, Pamiętnik legionisty, ed. Wiesław Budzyński, (Warsaw, PL, 1988), 103, quoted in, Forgotten Wars: Central and Eastern Europe, 1912-1916, by Włodzimierz Borodziej and Maciej Górny, trans. Jasper Tilbury, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 107.
[10] Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 138. Tunstall, Blood on the Snow, 198.
[11] Arnold Gieseke, Die “Sammlung Kriegsberrichte (1. Weltkrieg)” Feldpostbrief (The “Collection of War Reports (World War I)” Field Post Letter), 61, (Quelle: Beckmann: Abschrift eines Briefes vom 5.4.1915 aus Rorcivuz, Sammlung Kriegsberichte (Source: Beckmann: Transcript of a letter dated April 5, 1915, [Easter Monday] from Rorcivuz, Collection of War Reports). (This source was translated through Google Translate).
[12] Ibid.
[13] Eivind Berggrav, Krigerliv og religiøsitet Erfaringer og dokumenter fra fronten (Warlife and Religiousness: Experiences and Documents from the Front, (Kristiania (Oslo), NO: Steen’ske Bogtrykkeri og Forlag, 1915), 51. (This source was translated by Google Translate).
[14] Hans Schiller, A Tale of Two Fronts: A German Soldier’s Journey Through World War I, trans. Karin Wagner, ed. Frederic Krome and Gregory Loving, (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2024), 53.
[15] See Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 151-157, 169-170.
[16] Ibid, 170-173.
[17] Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 232-233. Hart, The Great War, 163.
[18] Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 255-256. Hart, The Great War, 247.
[19] Ignác Romsics, “War in Puszta: The Great War and the Hungarian Peasantry,” in The Great War and Memory in Central and South-Eastern Europe, ed. Oto Luthar, (Leiden, NL: Brill, 2016), 43.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Romsics, “War in Puszta,” 43.
[22] Gabriel Župčan, “Diplomarbeit Titel der Diplomarbeit Der Tschechoslowakische Legionär in Russland 1914-1920” (“The Czechoslovak Legionnaire in Russia 1914–1920”), (Mag. Phil., thesis, University of Vienna, 2008), 32.
[23] Swiçcone is a Polish food blessed during Easter for families (Appelbaum, ed., Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front, 172). Bernhard Bardach, Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front: The War Diaries of Bernhard Bardach, 1914-1918, trans. and ed. Peter C. Appelbaum, (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2018), 16, 117, 172.
[24] Friederich Kohn, letter to authors, 1981, quoted in Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton, Christmas Truce: The Western Front December 1914, (London, UK: MacMillan Publishers Limited, 2014), 264.
[25] Romsics, “War in Puszta,” 43. (Translated by Google Translate).
[26] Christian O. Bredebro, “April 17, 1916. Easter Peace on the Eastern Front,” The Great War, 1914-1918, modified April 17, 2016, https://denstorekrig1914-1918.dk/17-april-1916-paaskefred-paa-oestfronten/. (Translated by Google Translate).
[27] Oskar Grelich, “Easter Monday, April 24th, 1916,” in German Students’ War Letters, ed. Philipp Witkop, trans. A. F. Wedd, (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1929) 265-266.
[28] Bardach, Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front, 117-118.
[29] Župčan, “Diplomarbeit Titel der Diplomarbeit Der Tschechoslowakische Legionär in Russland 1914-1920” (“The Czechoslovak Legionnaire in Russia 1914–1920”), 43. (Translated by Google Translate).
[30] Romsics, “War in Puszta,” 43.
[31] Bredebro, “April 17, 1916. Easter Peace on the Eastern Front,” https://denstorekrig1914-1918.dk/17-april-1916-paaskefred-paa-oestfronten/. (Translated by Google Translate).
[32] Kohn, Christmas Truce, 265.
[33] Hart, The Great War, 296. Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 270-271, 272.
[34] Hart, The Great War, 296-297. Stone, The Eastern Front, 282.
[35] Stone, The Russian Army in the Great War, 272, 287.
[36] Župčan, “Diplomarbeit Titel der Diplomarbeit Der Tschechoslowakische Legionär in Russland 1914-1920” (“The Czechoslovak Legionnaire in Russia 1914–1920”), 43. (Translated by Google Translate).
[37] Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918, (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014), 315.
[38] Manfried Rauchensteiner, The First World War and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1914-1918, trans. Alex J. Kay and Anna Güttel-Bellert, (Weimar, GER: Böhlau Verlag Ges, 2014), 698.
[39] Ibid, 698-699.
[40] Ibid, 700-701.
[41] Ibid, 701.
[42] The date for Easter is according to the Russian Orthodox calendar, which is provided from Surgeon Bernhard Bardach and the Russian Orthodox liturgical calendar (See Bardach, Carnage and Care on the Eastern Front, 195; “Orthodox Calendar 1917,” accessed April 25, 2026, https://calendar.lenacom.spb.ru/orthodox_calendar_1917_en). Rauchensteiner, The First World War…, 701. General Hermann Kóvess, quoted in Rauchensteiner, The First World War…, 701.
[43] Rauchensteiner, The First World War…, 701.
[44] General Hermann Kóvess, quoted in Rauchensteiner, The First World War…, 701.
[45] Rauchensteiner, The First World War…, 701.
[46] Hart, The Great War, 299-302, 303.
[47] Kohn, Christmas Truce, 265.