Christmas 1914: The First World War at Home and Abroad

By December, 1914, it had become clear to even the most optimistic observer that the war would not be over by Christmas. That month brought the first enemy-inflicted deaths of the war, when German warships bombarded three northeast coastal towns; meanwhile, the recently invented airplane was being put to deadly use in raids over the southeast. In France that month, the Battle of the Marne gave a taste of the devastating power of modern warfare—a reality to which troops in the trenches on both si