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It wasn’t long before German forces had been pushed back beyond their original starting point before Operation Citadel had begun.Ī few weeks later, the Soviets launched Operation Rumyantsev on the southern side of the salient and by 23 August the Battle of Kursk was over. Operation Kutuzov was launched on 12 July towards the north of the Kursk salient. With the Germans now withdrawing forces from the East, the Soviets went on the attack. Throughout the Battle of Kursk, the Soviets had held back a large reserve force to deploy the moment the German offensive came to a halt.

Operation Roland launched on 14 July and after three days had failed to produce the decisive breakthrough that Manstein had hoped for. The offensive was short-lived military fatigue coupled with the spring rains reduced mobility and ground both armies to a halt by mid-March. The Germans re-organised and launched a counteroffensive under the command of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein.

In early 1943, the Soviets looked to capitalise on their morale-boosting win at Stalingrad and began an offensive against the Germans in the south, retaking territory including the city of Kursk. However, the mechanised Battle of Kursk witnessed the world’s largest armoured confrontation, as two sides equipped with a combined 8,000 tanks squared off. When it came to bloodshed, nothing on the Eastern Front could quite top the meat grinder that was Stalingrad, a bloody urban conflict that caused 2 million casualties and included the total annihilation of the German 6th Army. Many of which occurred on the Eastern Front, as Hitler’s Wehrmacht clashed with Stalin’s Red Army during Operation Barbarossa. After advancing a mere eight miles, the German attack ground to a halt.WWII, the greatest conflict in human history, had more than its fair share of significant battles.

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. Between them, these four men commanded around 2.8 million men, 8,000 tanks and 4,200 aircraft…Ĭommander of the southern German pincer.