Kursk

Soviet T-34 Tank

Kursk had been “the springboard from which the [Germans] had launched [their] summer (1942) offensive,” during which they had pushed southeastward into the Caucus region, and westward towards Stalingrad.[1] But in July 1943, the Russians had pushed the front back almost to where it had started the year before. At Kursk, there occurred the largest tank battle of World War II. It was “an immense knotted mass of tanks,” according to a Soviet colonel who fought there,[2] a showcase, perhaps, of armored warfare as the Soviet T-34 main battle tank took on the German Panzers and Tigers. Above all, Kursk was the climactic battle of the German’s Operation ZITADELLE (Citadel), 4 – 13 July 1943. 

The aim of Operation ZITADELLE was cut off the Russian forces that had invested Kursk. Perhaps it is only a bit of a stretch to describe what happened at Kursk as the eastern front’s equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge. As in the west once the Allies had established their lodgment in Normandy, the Germans line of advance in the east had, since mid-1942 been steadily retreating. Germany was on the defensive. B. H. Liddel-Hart, in his history of the Second World War called the events of 1942 “the turn.” Similar to his thrust through the Ardennes that he would make in December 1944, the purpose of which was to open a hole in the Allied lines and cut off the enemy lines of communications from north to south, Hitler sought to make a “break-through” of the Soviet lines running north-to-south by “pinching off the great salient” of Kursk. It was the principle that “‘attack is the best defense.’”[3]

Model’s Ninth Army struck south from Orel while Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army struck north from Kharov. “Altogether, the attacking German forces numbered 435,000 soldiers, 9,960 artillery pieces and mortars, and 3,155 tanks …. Against these the Soviets brought a million soldiers, 13, 013 artillery pieces and mortars, and 3.275 tanks; in reserve, [they had] 449,133 soldiers, 6, 536 artillery pieces and mortars, and 1,506 armored fighting vehicles.”[4]

The key to the Soviet’s victory at Kursk was that they knew in advance what the German plans were, thanks to Ultra intercepts the British had shared with them. Plus, they had prepared extensive, layered defenses within the city, and they kept a substantial reserve—tactics they had learned during course of the war. “When Hitler abandoned Operation Citadel on July 13, the Germans' last opportunity to influence events on a strategic level in the East was lost.”[5]

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[1] B. H. Liddel-Hart, History of the Second World War (Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky and Konecky, 1970), 480. 

[2] Robert M. Citino, “The Greatest Tank Battle of All Time,” History Net.com, http://www.historynet.com/the-greatest-tank-battle-of-all-time.htm (accessed 28 July 2012). 

[3] Liddel-Hart, 485. 

[4] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War To be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), 296. 

[5] George M. Nipe, Jr., “Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory inWorld War II,” History Net.com, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-kursk-germanys-lost-victory-in-world-war-ii.htm (accessed 28 July 2012).

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For both sides, combined, the number of tanks in the battle of Kursk was close to 8,000.  At El Alamein, the number was 2,000.  In the Persian Gulf War, the total number of tanks and other armored vehicles in the conflict was approximately 10,000.  [Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 249-250].