After advancing a mere eight miles, the German attack ground to a halt. To make matters worse, the Germans were now coming under fire from ground-attack aircraft. He had survived arrest, torture and imprisonment during Stalin’s purge of army officers in 1937. Soviet Commander of the northern sector of the Kursk salient. He was mortally wounded in an attack by Ukrainian nationalists in February 1944. Soviet Commander of the southern sector of the Kursk salient. He committed suicide at the end of the war. Nicknamed the Führer’s Fireman, Hitler considered Model one of his best generals. He had been key in the defeat of France in 1940 and, earlier in 1943, had stabilised the front after German failure at Stalingrad.Ĭommander of the northern German pincer. Though the Red Army had succeeded in winter offensives previously, their counter-offensives after the German attack at Kursk were their first successful summer offensives of the war.Between them, these four men commanded around 2.8 million men, 8,000 tanks and 4,200 aircraft…Ĭommander of the southern German pincer. The Battle of Kursk was the first time in the Second World War that a German strategic offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate to its strategic depths. Germany's extensive losses of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Soviet Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. Hitler cancelled the offensive at Kursk after only a week, in part to divert forces to Italy. Because the Allied invasion of Sicily began during the battle, Adolf Hitler was forced to divert troops training in France to meet the Allied threat in the Mediterranean, rather than using them as a strategic reserve for the Eastern Front. The battle was the final strategic offensive that the Germans were able to launch on the Eastern Front. The Germans delayed the offensive while they tried to build up their forces and waited for new weapons, giving the Red Army time to construct a series of deep defensive belts and establish a large reserve force for counter-offensives. Aware months in advance that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient, the Soviets built a defence in depth designed to wear down the German armoured spearhead. The Soviet government had foreknowledge of the German intentions, provided in part by British intelligence's Tunny intercepts. Getty Images Soviet troops going into battle at Kursk with T-34s On 5 July 1943 German forces launched a massive surprise attack, aimed at encircling Soviet forces occupying a bulge that. It was also hoped that large numbers of Soviet prisoners would be captured to be used as slave labour in the German armaments industry. Hitler believed that a victory here would reassert German strength and improve his prestige with his allies, who he thought were considering withdrawing from the war. The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off and enveloping the forces that they anticipated would be in the Kursk salient. On 3 August, the Soviets began the second phase of the Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation with the launch of Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev ( Russian : Полководец Румянцев) against the German forces on the southern side of the salient. Immense in scope, ferocious in nature, and epic in consequence, the Battle of Kursk witnessed (at Prokhorovka) one of the largest tank engagements in world. On the southern side, the Soviets also launched powerful counterattacks the same day, one of which led to a large armoured clash, the Battle of Prokhorovka. After the German offensive stalled on the northern side of the salient, on 12 July the Soviets commenced their Kursk Strategic Offensive Operation with the launch of Operation Kutuzov ( Russian : Кутузов) against the rear of the German forces on the same side. The battle began with the launch of the German offensive Operation Citadel ( German : Unternehmen Zitadelle), on 5 July, which had the objective of pinching off the Kursk salient with attacks on the base of the salient from north and south simultaneously.
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