Historic Battlefields Then And Now

Published September 2, 2015
Updated November 6, 2019
Historic Battlefields Stalingrad Comparison

The setting of the Battle Of Stalingrad, then and now. Source: NNM (left) and LiveJournal (right)

Battles are actually unusual in military history. It’s far more common for one side to be willing or able to fight and for the other side to collapse at once or wage a guerrilla war than it is for rival armies to roll the dice on a few confrontations. Battles are what happen when both sides actually show up armed and looking for trouble.

The desperate courage exhibited in battle seems to charge the land itself with energy, as if the places where nations have thrown away the lives of their young men – mostly for reasons that seemed really important at the time – are made sacred with the passage of time. Sometimes the land is literally marked, and sometimes there’s nothing left but a little plaque.

Below, discover some of the historic battlefields that have scarred the land and marred the pages of your history book, and see how they look today.

Gettysburg

 

Verdun

 

Stalingrad


If you enjoyed this look into historic battlefields, you'll like our other posts on the most important battles of ancient Greece and rare color photographs of World War 2.

author
Richard Stockton
author
Richard Stockton is a freelance science and technology writer from Sacramento, California.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
Based in Brooklyn, New York, John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of expertise include modern American history and the ancient Near East. In an editing career spanning 17 years, he previously served as managing editor of Elmore Magazine in New York City for seven years.
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Stockton, Richard. "Historic Battlefields Then And Now." AllThatsInteresting.com, September 2, 2015, https://allthatsinteresting.com/historic-battlefields. Accessed August 16, 2025.