Kharkov, Kursk, Balaclava, Yalta & Sevastopol
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
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| The Valley of the Shadow of Death - Roger Fenton 1855 |
It is strange that with Ukraine so much in
the news and with several mentions of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych attempting refuge in Balaclava, Kharkiv (very
near the Russian city of Kursk) and Sevastopol, very near Yalta, that
nobody has written about the connection of these places to history. There has
not even been a mention of that war, the Crimean which was really the first
war to be photographed. It was photographed by photographer Roger Fenton who
also photographed the British Royal Family. It was Roger Fenton’s much
discussed photograph (did he add spent shells to make the picture more
photogenic?) The Valley of the Shadow of Death that first gave a glimpse to the
average person of the destructive power of modern warfare. Or perhaps it tell us of what we now call the fog of war.
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| The original minus canon balls? |
Forgotten in the dispatches from Ukraine is the fact that this country has no real mountains and legions, armies and barbarians have moved back in forth, east to west and west to east, through it for hundreds if not thousands of years.
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| Yalta, February 1945 |
Forgotten, too is that great Third Battle
of Kharkov, Feb 20 - March 18, 1943 in which Hitler picked his best general, Erich von Manstein to make
sure this third battle would be a success. After a huge fight with guerrillas and
snipers in the city the Germans finally won. The victory made them
over-indulgent in their hopes for victory which lead to the largest tank battle
of all time in the nearby Russian city of Kursk, July/August 1943.
The Germans lost thousands of tanks which they could not replace as quickly as the
Russians did. The Russians had wisely moved their tank factories east, far
away from the range of German bombers while allies did their job of bombing
German war industry into submission. Forgotten, too is the fact that von Manstein was made a Field Marshall by Hitler when he decisively (before Khakov) defeated the Russians in 7 June, July 4, 1942 at Sevastopol.
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| Eric von Manstein |
