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by nateb2022·3y ago·view on hn ↗
Joyeaux Noel is a great movie, I watched it a couple years ago and was very impressed.

However, the review contains an unsubstantiated claim:

>[these soldiers] observed the birth of the savior in whose name they were killing each other.

Excuse me? World War I wasn't a religiously motivated war. This claim is absurd. At its core, WW1 was the result of a highly militant nationalism in several European nations. It all erupted upon the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whereupon a complex system of treaties and plans caused the simultaneous mobilization and deployment of several nations' plans to conquer each other.

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Article did not claim the war was religiously motivated, only that killing was "in the name of", as stated in the very next sentence:

> The irony of this gesture is made clear in the opening scenes of "Joyeux Noel," in which schoolchildren of the three nations sing with angelic fervor, each in their own language, about the necessity of wiping the enemy from the face of the earth.