bigger and better
Russia's icy past revisited, by Andrew Roberts (Daily Mail, 26-Jan-09)
The Russians do their war memorials bigger and better than anyone else in the world — by far.
They are majestic, powerful edifices full of Nazi snakes and swastikas being trampled underfoot by the horses ridden by heroes of the Soviet Union.
With 27 million killed in what they call 'The Great Patriotic War', they have much to commemorate.
Yet they do it with such pride, reverence and sheer splendour that to visit their battle sites is more thrilling and immediate than anywhere else I have ever been.
And as a member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides, I am completely addicted to them.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II — prompting a huge upsurge in battlefield touring, with tens of thousands of people visiting the Normandy beaches, Pegasus bridge, Arnhem and the V2 launching sites along the French coast.
These are all great tours, but for the more adventurous and committed battlefield enthusiast, the ultimate World War II tour experience is to be found where the outcome of that conflict was really decided.
Four out of every five Germans killed in combat between 1939 and 1945 died on the Eastern Front, and the biggest battles out there dwarfed anything seen in the West.
Four million people fought in the Kursk campaign, for example, which is considered by military historians to be the biggest battle in the history of mankind.
The Kursk battlefield is the same size as England and I was sceptical that these Russian battles of unimaginable size could really be captured in just an eight-day tour.
Instead — and thanks largely to the charming, super-efficient and highly knowledgeable Oleg Alexandrov, who runs the long-established Three Whales Travel Company — my wife Susan and I had a truly fascinating and hugely enjoyable week...
After a one-hour flight to Volgograd, we visited some of the sites of the battle of Stalingrad, that Manichean six-month struggle in 1942-43 that led to the deaths of more than one million people, and which — in atrocious winter conditions — broke the will of the German Sixth Army.
It might not sound glamorous to visit places called The Tractor Factory, The Grain Elevator, Crossing 62, Pavlov's House and The Mill, but it was in the moonscaped rubble of these places that the Nazis' dream of world domination was finally destroyed.
They are intensely moving places where extraordinary acts of heroism and self-sacrifice took place, and the Russians understandably treat them as almost spiritual.
Russian memorials to World War II are the finest in the world, and Volgograd is dominated by a magnificent 250fthigh statue of Rodina Mat ('Mother Russia', pictured), erected on the summit of the Mamayev Kurgan, a hill that is also the resting place of 35,000 people who died fighting for its control.
The sword she wields weighs 14 tons alone. It is an utterly breathtaking sight and the whole battlefield is instantly comprehensible from the top of it, rather as climbing the Lion Mound puts everything into perspective at Waterloo.
We also visited the underground HQ of Field Marshal Paulus, where he was captured at the end of January 1943 and forced to surrender a quarter of a million men — to Hitler's fury.
The Stalingrad Museum contains the Sword of Stalingrad given to the city by King George VI, and a panorama of the battle 16m high and 120m long...
Our trip was not all World War II-themed, of course; there was also time to visit the Kremlin, St Basil's Cathedral, the Tretyakov Gallery and the bohemian Arbat quarter, but the military sites we visited did make us think again about the war — leaving us with a powerful sense of the supreme role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The Russians do their war memorials bigger and better than anyone else in the world — by far.
They are majestic, powerful edifices full of Nazi snakes and swastikas being trampled underfoot by the horses ridden by heroes of the Soviet Union.
With 27 million killed in what they call 'The Great Patriotic War', they have much to commemorate.
Yet they do it with such pride, reverence and sheer splendour that to visit their battle sites is more thrilling and immediate than anywhere else I have ever been.
And as a member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides, I am completely addicted to them.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II — prompting a huge upsurge in battlefield touring, with tens of thousands of people visiting the Normandy beaches, Pegasus bridge, Arnhem and the V2 launching sites along the French coast.
These are all great tours, but for the more adventurous and committed battlefield enthusiast, the ultimate World War II tour experience is to be found where the outcome of that conflict was really decided.
Four out of every five Germans killed in combat between 1939 and 1945 died on the Eastern Front, and the biggest battles out there dwarfed anything seen in the West.
Four million people fought in the Kursk campaign, for example, which is considered by military historians to be the biggest battle in the history of mankind.
The Kursk battlefield is the same size as England and I was sceptical that these Russian battles of unimaginable size could really be captured in just an eight-day tour.
Instead — and thanks largely to the charming, super-efficient and highly knowledgeable Oleg Alexandrov, who runs the long-established Three Whales Travel Company — my wife Susan and I had a truly fascinating and hugely enjoyable week...
After a one-hour flight to Volgograd, we visited some of the sites of the battle of Stalingrad, that Manichean six-month struggle in 1942-43 that led to the deaths of more than one million people, and which — in atrocious winter conditions — broke the will of the German Sixth Army.
It might not sound glamorous to visit places called The Tractor Factory, The Grain Elevator, Crossing 62, Pavlov's House and The Mill, but it was in the moonscaped rubble of these places that the Nazis' dream of world domination was finally destroyed.
They are intensely moving places where extraordinary acts of heroism and self-sacrifice took place, and the Russians understandably treat them as almost spiritual.
Russian memorials to World War II are the finest in the world, and Volgograd is dominated by a magnificent 250fthigh statue of Rodina Mat ('Mother Russia', pictured), erected on the summit of the Mamayev Kurgan, a hill that is also the resting place of 35,000 people who died fighting for its control.
The sword she wields weighs 14 tons alone. It is an utterly breathtaking sight and the whole battlefield is instantly comprehensible from the top of it, rather as climbing the Lion Mound puts everything into perspective at Waterloo.
We also visited the underground HQ of Field Marshal Paulus, where he was captured at the end of January 1943 and forced to surrender a quarter of a million men — to Hitler's fury.
The Stalingrad Museum contains the Sword of Stalingrad given to the city by King George VI, and a panorama of the battle 16m high and 120m long...
Our trip was not all World War II-themed, of course; there was also time to visit the Kremlin, St Basil's Cathedral, the Tretyakov Gallery and the bohemian Arbat quarter, but the military sites we visited did make us think again about the war — leaving us with a powerful sense of the supreme role of the USSR in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
This entry was posted by Colleen, on
1.26.2009.
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January 30, 2009 12:16 PM
"The Tractor Factory, The Grain Elevator, Crossing 62, Pavlov's House and The Mill..."
All resonate. As for a memorial, I was deeply impressed by the reverence felt at the Piskarev cemetary at St. Petersburg, a mass grave for soldiers and civilians lost in the Siege of Leningrad. The people whose bodies rest there are unknown, but not forgotten...