Famous Battles - The Battle of Kursk

Recreation of WWII's most legendary conflict.

The Battle of Kursk (or Kursk Campaign, July 4, 1943 – July 20, 1943), also called Operation Zitadelle by the German Army (Operation Citadel in English), was a significant (deliberate) defensive battle strategy on the Soviets' part in the Eastern Theater during World War II. Having good intelligence on Hitler's intentions, the Soviets established and managed to conceal elaborate layered defense works, mine fields, and stage and disguise large reserve forces poised for a tactical and strategic counterattack end game typical of defensive battle plans. Overall, the campaign, which included the famous sub-battle at Prokhorovka, remains the largest armored engagement of all time, and included the most costly single day of aerial warfare in history. The Germans saw the Battle of Kursk as Operation Zitadelle only; the Soviets saw Zitadelle as the defensive phase of the battle, followed by Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev as an offensive phase.

Though the Germans planned and initiated an offensive strike, the well-planned Soviet defense not only managed to frustrate their ambitions but also enabled the Soviets to follow up the successful defense with counteroffensives—Operation Kutuzov and Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev and exhausted the German abilities in the theater, thereby seizing the initiative for the remainder of the war. In that sense it may be seen as “Phase II” of the turning point in the front that began with the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, which aftermath set the table by establishing the Kursk Salient (also known as the Kursk Bulge), the reduction of which was the objective of the German armies entering July. The subsequent counterattacks retook Oryol (August 5), Belgorod (August 5) and Kharkov (August 23), pushing back the Germans across a broad front, the first successful major Soviet summer offensive of the War.

Kursk further demonstrated that the conflict in the East contained the largest scale of warfare in history, in terms of manpower involved. So well designed was the Soviet defensive planning, that when entering the archetypical counterattack phase, the Soviets were able to attack along four separate axes of advance, and execute a planned stop at a phase line, thus avoiding the pitfalls of overextending during the counterattack and earning this battle's deserved place as a model campaign in war college curricula.

GERMANY	SOVIET UNION
Commanders
Erich von Manstein Hans von Kluge Hermann Hoth Walther Model	Georgiy Zhukov Konstantin Rokossovskiy Nikolay Vatutin Ivan Konyev
Strength
2,700 tanks 800,000 infantry, 2,000 aircraft	3,600 tanks 1,300,000 infantry, 2,400 aircraft
Casualties
German Kursk : 50,000 dead, wounded, or captured 300 tanks 200 aircraft , Soviet Kursk : 500,000 dead, wounded, or captured 900 tanks 200 aircraft	German Kursk : 180,000 dead, wounded, or captured 1,600 tanks 1,000 aircraft , Soviet Kursk : 607,737 dead, wounded, or captured 1,500 tanks 1,000 aircraft