This arti­cle first appeared on TomDis­patch.

Here are some people who won't be celebrated in “education packs” sent to schools, although they were crucial in helping bring the war to an end: deserters.

Go to war and every politi­cian will thank you, and they’ll con­tin­ue to do so — with mon­u­ments and stat­ues, war muse­ums and mil­i­tary ceme­ter­ies — long after you’re dead. But who thanks those who refused to fight, even in wars that most peo­ple lat­er real­ized were trag­ic mistakes?

Con­sid­er the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq, now wide­ly rec­og­nized as ignit­ing an ongo­ing dis­as­ter. America’s politi­cians still praise Iraq War vet­er­ans to the skies, but what sen­a­tor has a kind word to say about the hun­dreds of thou­sands of pro­test­ers who marched and demon­strat­ed before the inva­sion was even launched to try to stop our sol­diers from risk­ing their lives in the first place?

What brings all this to mind is an appar­ent­ly heart­en­ing excep­tion to the rule of cel­e­brat­ing war-mak­ers and ignor­ing peace­mak­ers. A Euro­pean rather than an Amer­i­can exam­ple, it turns out to be not quite as sim­ple as it first appears. Let me explain.

Decem­ber 25 will be the 100th anniver­sary of the famous Christ­mas Truce of the First World War. You prob­a­bly know the sto­ry: after five months of unpar­al­leled indus­tri­al-scale slaugh­ter, fight­ing on the West­ern Front came to a spon­ta­neous halt. British and Ger­man sol­diers stopped shoot­ing at each oth­er and emerged into the no-man’s‑land between their mud­dy trench­es in France and Bel­gium to exchange food and gifts.

That sto­ry — bur­nished in recent years by books, songs, music videos, a fea­ture film, and an opera—is large­ly true. On Christ­mas Day, troops did indeed trade cig­a­rettes, hel­mets, canned food, coat but­tons, and sou­venirs. They sang car­ols, bar­be­cued a pig, posed for pho­tographs togeth­er, and exchanged Ger­man beer for British rum. In sev­er­al spots, men from the rival armies played soc­cer togeth­er. The ground was pocked with shell craters and prop­er balls were scarce, so the teams made use of tin cans or sand­bags stuffed with straw instead. Offi­cers up to the rank of colonel emerged from the trench­es to greet their coun­ter­parts on the oth­er side, and they, too, were pho­tographed togeth­er. (Refus­ing to join the par­ty, how­ev­er, was 25-year-old Adolf Hitler, at the front with his Ger­man army unit. He thought the truce shock­ing and dishonorable.)

Unlike most unex­pect­ed out­breaks of peace, the anniver­sary of this one is being cel­e­brat­ed with extra­or­di­nary offi­cial­ly sanc­tioned fan­fare. The British Coun­cil, fund­ed in part by the gov­ern­ment and invari­ably head­ed by a peer or knight, has helped dis­trib­ute an ​“edu­ca­tion pack” about the Truce to every pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school in the Unit­ed King­dom. It includes pho­tos, eye­wit­ness accounts, les­son plans, test ques­tions, stu­dent work­sheets, and vocab­u­lary phras­es in var­i­ous lan­guages, includ­ing ​“Meet us halfway,” ​“What are your trench­es like?” and ​“Can I take your pic­ture?” The British post office has even issued a set of stamps com­mem­o­rat­ing the Christ­mas Truce.

An exhib­it of doc­u­ments, maps, uni­forms, and oth­er Truce-relat­ed mem­o­ra­bil­ia has been on dis­play at city hall in Armen­tières, France. A com­mem­o­ra­tive youth soc­cer tour­na­ment with teams from Britain, Bel­gium, France, Aus­tria, and Ger­many is tak­ing place in Bel­gium this month. The local may­or and the British and Ger­man ambas­sadors were recent­ly on hand for a soc­cer game at a new­ly ded­i­cat­ed ​“Flan­ders Peace Field.”

Vol­un­teers from sev­er­al coun­tries will spend three days and two nights in fresh­ly dug trench­es reen­act­ing the Truce. Pro­fes­sion­al actors, com­plete with peri­od uni­forms, car­ol-singing, and a soc­cer match, have already done the same in an elab­o­rate video adver­tise­ment for a British super­mar­ket chain. One of the judges for a children’s com­pe­ti­tion to design a Truce memo­r­i­al is none oth­er than Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.

What Won’t Be Commemorated

Giv­en the rar­i­ty of peace cel­e­bra­tions of any sort, what’s made the Christ­mas Truce safe for roy­al­ty, may­ors, and diplo­mats? Three things, I believe. First, this event — remark­able, spon­ta­neous, and gen­uine­ly mov­ing as it was — did not rep­re­sent a chal­lenge to the sov­er­eign­ty of war. It was sanc­tioned by offi­cers on the spot; it was short-lived (the full fury of shelling and machine gun­ning resumed with­in a day or two, and poi­son gas and flamethrow­ers soon added to the hor­ror); and it was nev­er repeat­ed. It’s safe to cel­e­brate because it threat­ened noth­ing. That super­mar­ket video, for instance, adver­tis­es a com­mem­o­ra­tive choco­late bar whose sales pro­ceeds go to the nation­al vet­er­ans orga­ni­za­tion, the Roy­al British Legion.

Sec­ond, com­mem­o­rat­ing any­thing, even peace instead of war, is good busi­ness. Bel­gium alone expects two mil­lion vis­i­tors to for­mer bat­tle sites dur­ing the war’s four-and-a-half-year cen­te­nary peri­od, and has now added one or two peace sites as vis­i­tor des­ti­na­tions. The coun­try is putting $41 mil­lion in pub­lic funds into muse­ums, exhibits, pub­lic­i­ty, and oth­er tourism infra­struc­ture, beyond pri­vate invest­ment in new hotel rooms, restau­rants, and the like.

Final­ly, the Christ­mas Truce is tai­lor-made to be cel­e­brat­ed by pro­fes­sion­al soc­cer, now a huge indus­try. Top pro play­ers earn $60 mil­lion or more a year. Two Span­ish teams are each worth more than $3 bil­lion. The for­mer man­ag­er of Britain’s Man­ches­ter Unit­ed team, Sir Alex Fer­gu­son, even teach­es at the Har­vard Busi­ness School. Five of the world’s 10 most valu­able teams, how­ev­er, are in Britain, which helps account for that country’s spe­cial enthu­si­asm for these com­mem­o­ra­tions. The Duke of Cam­bridge is the offi­cial patron of the sport’s British gov­ern­ing body, the Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion, the equiv­a­lent of our NFL. It has joined with the con­ti­nent-wide Union of Euro­pean Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tions in pro­mot­ing the Christ­mas Truce soc­cer tour­na­ment and oth­er anniver­sary hoopla. That pack­et of mate­r­i­al going to more than 30,000 British schools is titled ​“Foot­ball Remembers.”

While such spon­sor­ship rep­re­sents only a tiny per­cent­age of the pub­lic rela­tions bud­gets of these orga­ni­za­tions, they have sure­ly cal­cu­lat­ed that asso­ci­at­ing soc­cer with school­child­ren, Christ­mas, and a good-news his­tor­i­cal event can’t hurt busi­ness. All indus­tries keep a close eye on their pub­lic image, and soc­cer espe­cial­ly so at the moment, since in many parts of Europe audi­ences for it are declin­ing as a bar­rage of oth­er activ­i­ties com­petes for people’s leisure time and spending.

For near­ly four years, as we reach the cen­te­nary mark for one First World War mile­stone after anoth­er, there will be com­mem­o­ra­tions galore across Europe. But here’s one thing you can bank on: the Duke of Cam­bridge and oth­er high dig­ni­taries won’t be caught dead endors­ing the anniver­saries of far more sub­ver­sive peace-relat­ed events to come.

For exam­ple, although sol­diers from both sides on the West­ern Front mixed on that first Christ­mas of the war, the most exten­sive frat­er­niza­tion hap­pened lat­er in Rus­sia. In ear­ly 1917, under the stress of cat­a­stroph­ic war loss­es, creaky, top-heavy impe­r­i­al Rus­sia final­ly col­lapsed and Tsar Nicholas II and his fam­i­ly were placed under house arrest. More than 300 years of rule by the Romanov dynasty was over.

The impact rip­pled through the Russ­ian army. An Amer­i­can cor­re­spon­dent at the front watched through binoc­u­lars as Russ­ian and Ger­man enlist­ed men met in no-man’s‑land. Lack of a com­mon lan­guage was no bar­ri­er: the Ger­mans thrust their bay­o­nets into the earth; the Rus­sians blew across their open palms to show that the Tsar had been swept away. After Novem­ber of that year, when the Bol­she­viks — com­mit­ted to end­ing the war — seized pow­er, frat­er­niza­tion only increased. You can find many pho­tographs of Russ­ian and Ger­man sol­diers pos­ing togeth­er or even, in one case, danc­ing in cou­ples in the snow. Gen­er­als on both sides were appalled.

And here are some peo­ple who won’t be cel­e­brat­ed in ​“edu­ca­tion packs” sent to schools, although they were cru­cial in help­ing bring the war to an end: desert­ers. An alarmed British mil­i­tary attaché in Rus­sia esti­mat­ed that at least a mil­lion Russ­ian sol­diers desert­ed their ill-fed, bad­ly equipped army, most sim­ply walk­ing home to their vil­lages. This lay behind the agree­ment that halt­ed fight­ing on the East­ern Front long before it end­ed in the West.

In the final weeks of the war in the West, the Ger­man army began melt­ing away, too. The deser­tions came not from the front lines but from the rear, where hun­dreds of thou­sands of sol­diers either dis­ap­peared or evad­ed orders to go to the front. By ear­ly autumn 1918, the Berlin police chief esti­mat­ed that more than 40,000 desert­ers were hid­ing in the Ger­man cap­i­tal. No won­der the high com­mand began peace negotiations.

Don’t hold your breath either wait­ing for offi­cial cel­e­bra­tions of the war’s mutinies. Noth­ing threat­ened the French army more than the most stun­ning of these, which broke out in the spring of 1917 fol­low­ing a mas­sive attack hyped as the deci­sive blow that would win the war. Over sev­er­al days, 30,000 French sol­diers were killed and 100,000 wound­ed, all to gain a few mean­ing­less miles of blood-soaked ground.

In the weeks that fol­lowed, hun­dreds of thou­sands of troops refused to advance fur­ther. One group even hijacked a train and tried to dri­ve it to Paris, although most sol­diers sim­ply stayed in their camps or trench­es and made clear that they would not take part in addi­tion­al sui­ci­dal attacks. This ​“col­lec­tive indis­ci­pline,” as the gen­er­als euphemisti­cal­ly called it, was hushed up, but it par­a­lyzed the army. French com­man­ders dared launch no more major assaults that year. To this day, the sub­ject remains so touchy that some archival doc­u­ments on the mutinies remain closed to researchers until the 100th anniver­sary in 2017.

Parades for Whom?

From Bavaria to New Zealand, town squares across the world are adorned with memo­ri­als to local men ​“fall­en” in 1914 – 1918, and stat­ues and plaques hon­or­ing the war’s lead­ing gen­er­als can be found from Edin­burgh Cas­tle to Per­sh­ing Square in Los Ange­les. But vir­tu­al­ly noth­ing sim­i­lar cel­e­brates those who served the cause of peace. The Pol­ish-Ger­man rev­o­lu­tion­ary Rosa Lux­em­burg, who argued against the sup­pres­sion of free speech both in the Kaiser’s Ger­many and in Sovi­et Rus­sia, spent more than two years in a Ger­man prison for her oppo­si­tion to the war. The elo­quent British philoso­pher Bertrand Rus­sell did six months’ time in a Lon­don jail for the same rea­son. The Amer­i­can labor leader Eugene V. Debs, impris­oned for urg­ing resis­tance to the draft, was still in a fed­er­al pen­i­ten­tiary in Atlanta in 1920, two years after the war end­ed, when he received near­ly a mil­lion votes as the Social­ist Par­ty can­di­date for president.

The French social­ist Jean Jau­rès spoke out pas­sion­ate­ly against the war he saw com­ing in 1914 and, due to this, was assas­si­nat­ed by a French mil­i­tarist just four days before the fight­ing began. (The assas­sin was found inno­cent because his was labeled a ​“crime of pas­sion.”) Against the oppo­si­tion of their own gov­ern­ments, the pio­neer social work­er Jane Addams and oth­er women helped orga­nize a women’s peace con­fer­ence in Hol­land in 1915 with del­e­gates from both war­ring and neu­tral coun­tries. And in every nation that took part in that ter­ri­ble war, young men of mil­i­tary age — thou­sands of them — either went to jail or were shot for refus­ing to fight.