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Hundreds of Horses Were Flash Frozen In a WWII Lake. How Is That Possible?
A tragic and enthralling tale
War is no stranger to strange stories. The chaotic nature of warfare, combined with the thousands of overlapping circumstances, can lead to some truly bizarre outcomes. One such story does not include artillery, or guns, or human ineptitude. This story only consists of the power of nature, stirred up by natural conditions during World War II.
In the 1940s, disaffected Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte was sent to the Eastern Front to cover the war for Italy. Malaparte was initially a strong supporter of Italian fascism before becoming disillusioned with the movement and the violence that it perpetrated. In 1944, Malaparte wrote a book titled Kaputt, which was based on his experiences covering the war. The book is based on his first hand accounts, but large swaths of it are considered to be fictional. It is from this book that we get a fascinating vignette about a herd of horses that were flash-frozen in Lake Ladoga during one of the brutal winters of the war.
Supposedly, when encamped for a particularly harsh winter, Malaparte witnessed a forest fire breakout along the shores of Lake Ladoga. Lake Ladoga is the lake that divides Finland from Russia. It was the site of the most brutal siege of the war, the Siege of…
