The tank battle
at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: an operational
narrative. A
ground-breaking book when first published in Russia in 2005, now Valeriy Zamulin's study of
the crucible of combat during the titanic clash at Kursk - the fighting at
Prokhorovka - is available in English. A former staff member of the
Prokhorovka Battlefield State Museum,
Zamulin has dedicated years of his life to the study of the battle of Kursk, and especially the
fighting on its southern flank involving the famous attack of the II SS Panzer
Corps into the teeth of deeply-echeloned Red Army defences. A product of five
years of intense research into the once-secret Central Archives of the Russian
Ministry of Defense, Zamulin lays out in enormous detail the plans and tactics
of both sides, culminating in the famous and controversial clash at Prokhorovka
on 12th July 1943. Zamulin skilfully weaves reminiscences of Red Army and
Wehrmacht soldiers and officers into the narrative of the fighting, using in
part files belonging to the Prokhorovka Battlefield State Museum. Zamulin has the advantage of
living in Prokhorovka, so he has walked the ground of the battlefield many times
and has an intimate knowledge of the terrain.
Examining the
battle from primarily the Soviet side, Zamulin reveals the real costs and real
achievements of the Red Army at Kursk, and especially Prokhorovka. He examines
mistaken deployments and faulty decisions that hampered the Voronezh Front's
efforts to contain the Fourth Panzer Army's assault, and the valiant,
self-sacrificial fighting of the Red Army's soldiers and junior officers as they
sought to slow the German advance, and then crush the II SS Panzer Corps with a
heavy counterattack at Prokhorovka on 12th July. The combat on this day receives
particular scrutiny, as Zamulin works to clarify the relative sise of the
contending forces, the actual area of this battle, and the costs suffered by
both sides. The costs to General P. A. Rotmistrov's Fifth Guards Tank Army and
General A. S. Zhadov's 5th Guards Army as they slammed into 1st SS Panzer
Grenadier Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 3rd SS Panzer Grenadier Division
Totenkopf and a portion of 2nd SS Panzer Grenadier Division Das Reich were
particularly devastating, and Zamulin examines the nuts and bolts of the
counteroffensive to see why this was so.
Zamulin does not exclude the
oft-overlooked efforts of Army Group Kempff's III Panzer Corps on the right-wing
of the Fourth Panzer Army, as it sought to keep pace with the II SS Panzer Corps
advance, and then breach the line of the Northern Donets River in order to link
up with its left-hand neighbour in the region of Prokhorovka. Zamulin describes
how the Soviet High Command and the Voronezh Front had to cobble together
quickly a defence of this line with already battered units, but needed to
reinforce it with fresh formations at the expense of the counterstroke at
Prokhorovka.
Illustrated with
numerous maps and photographs (including present-day views of the battlefield),
and supplemented with extensive tables of data, Zamulin's book is an outstanding
contribution to the growing literature on the battle of Kursk, and further
demolishes many of the myths and legends that grew up around this
battle.
