Gettysburg: Battle with the ghosts of past

A green meadow, a few wild flowers, two or three trees standing as if lost in a landscape where the fate of the United States was decided. Gettysburg, the scene of the most bloody battle of the war ever fought by humans against other humans, looks like any nature park today. A green so green, a clear blue sky, black asphalt and the white marble of the monuments. It is impressive.

An it is that without the cannons, the fences that mark former frontlines, and the countless statues of soldiers, generals, falling horses and desperately rushing forward battle units. Gettysburg today is battle with ghosts of the past. Planned like a tour of horror, the plaques, markings, and reconstructed positions illustrate the course of the battles that raged between the Northern Army and General Robert E. Lee Northern Virginia Army from July 1 to 3, 1863. The losses amounted to about 50,000 men. And with that battle, the South had lost its chance to win the war.

Today's Gettysburg National Military Park is bloody ground, illuminated by a friendly sun, under which curious tourists drive their rental cars from battle station to battle station. The first to arrive here in 1863 were southerners who believed they could find some new shoes to their always inadequate equipment in the small town of Gettysburg. But before they reached the warehouse, they were discovered by an advance troop of the North and sealed off the place. No one had planned a battle here, let alone a decisive battle. But now they were here - and Lee firmly believed that he could succeed in beating the numerically and materially oppressive Army of the Potomac.

At High Watermark Point, which marks the furthest advance of the troops of the South towards the North, he almost succeeded. Today you can drive to this point in your car too. 1863 General George Pickett had a longer way over the green: He led an attack here that became known as Pickett's Charge: Through the devastating fire of the defenders on a hill 12,500 men attacked and some even managed to overcome the small stone wall which provided a small protection for the defenders. But they could not conquer and hold the position. And with that also the Lee and his General Longstreet planned attempt to break through the front of the Norths had failed.

Thus all hopes of victory for the South were lost. But Gettysburg also meant that not only the battle but the entire civil war could no longer be won by the South. For Lee's actual plan had been to march into Pennsylvania with 75,000 men, to wear down the Potomac Army, and then to march against defenseless Washington in order to achieve peace according to his own ideas.

Whoever travels the broad circuit today travels back in time and at the same time through the history of the battle, which also wrote cinema history in the film "Gettysburg". Cast in bronze, the men who fought and died here at that time look down at the area without a move. Time frozen. At the feet of some of the statues there are confederate flags, while others have visitors stucked the Union flag into the ground. The approximately 1.2 million visitors who come here every year do not perceive the place as martial or war glorifying, but rather as oppressively normal.

If you want to delve deeper into the history of the events that divided the United States more deeply than any other, you will find countless artifacts, explanatory panels, pictures and relics of the battle in the National Park Museum and the Visitor Center. Here you can also see the film "A New Birth of Freedom", in which Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman retells the story of the battle. Also impressive is the Soldiers' National Cemetery, on which the gravestones of the fallen are arranged by state. It was here that President Abraham Lincoln held his famous "Gettysburg Address" on November 19, 1863, with which today part of the nimbus of this place is connected.

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