![]() The Soviets, meanwhile, worked assiduously to regain their poise and developed a strategy based on their strengths: the Soviet Union would wear down the Wehrmacht in the field as it mobilized its resources, reformed its armed forces, and gradually rolled out offensive fighting methods it had developed during the 1930s. By the end of 1942, with Hitler having massively extended the fighting front as he reached down into the Caucasus for oil, the Germans were struggling to keep pace with the demands of their unraveling campaign. But German strategic and operational frailties, together with Stalin’s defensive tenacity and organizational prowess, gave Moscow the time it needed to bolster the nation’s defenses. ![]() By failing to overcome the Red Army in 1941 when the Wehrmacht was halted at the gates of Moscow, Hitler was bounced into a protracted, attritional war for which his country was neither mentally nor physically prepared.ĭuring 1941, the poorly primed Soviets struggled to cope with their enemy’s onslaught. Germany’s intense campaigning in the Soviet Union had damaged its ability to wage war successfully. The roots of the Wehrmacht’s failure at Kursk are found not only in the battlefield’s dark Russian soil, but deeply buried in the stony ground of two years of fighting on the Eastern Front. The struggle it spawned was staggering in its scope and consequence. It reveals Kursk as a desperate gamble by Hitler to secure the future of his forces on the Eastern Front-and even Germany’s wider prospects in the war. Only recently has a clearer and more balanced perspective come into view. For decades the battle has been visible only through two distorting prisms-one held by a defeated and divided Germany, and the other by the manipulative and oppressive Soviet regime. Yet the Battle of Kursk remains controversial, with aspects of its conception, conduct, and impact still hotly debated. A Soviet round had struck me in the shoulder, shattering the bone and leaving me gasping for air.Īt the battle’s conclusion, Germany’s inspector-general of armored troops, the wily Heinz Guderian, deemed that Germany had “suffered a decisive defeat”-certainly not the outcome Hitler had in mind when he said that Operation Citadel, as the Germans called the offensive, would be “of decisive importance.” In that same instant I was knocked off my feet as though hit by a heavyweight boxer. The butt kicked and a round was sent hurtling toward a faceless Soviet soldier. I instinctively yelled a warning, dropped to one knee and squeezed the trigger of my rifle. I twisted to see a camouflaged cover being thrown off a trench. ![]() He whimpered as I moved toward him, but was silent by the time that I was at his side. I expected to be cut down any moment or blown to smithereens by the shells that slammed about….I heard my old friend Ernst panting seconds before his right arm was torn from his body by an explosion that flung his rifle at my feet. Ivan bullets zipped around us I could hear them flying past my ears. The 20-year-old lieutenant struggled toward his platoon’s objective on the morning of July 5, 1943, against a weight of fire he had never before experienced. ![]() German infantryman Raimund Rüffer would never forget the first day of Hitler’s offensive toward the Russian city of Kursk. ![]() In 1943, the Soviets and Germans unleashed some 7,000 tanks and 2.6 million men against each other on the steppes of central Russia. The Battle of Kursk: Clash of the Tanks Close ![]()
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