The greatest tank battle in world history, known as Operation
Citadel, opened during the early hours of 5th July 1943, and its outcome was to
decide the eventual outcome of the war on the Eastern Front. Images of War
Battle of Kursk, is an illustrated account of this pivotal battle of the war on
the Eastern Front, when the Germans threw 900,000 men and 2,500 tanks against
1,300,000 soldiers and 3,000 tanks of the Red Army in a savage battle of
attrition.
Unlike many pictorial accounts of the war on the Eastern Front,
Battle of Kursk draws upon both German and Russian archive material, all of
which are rare or unpublished. The images convey the true scale, intensity and
horror of the fighting at Kursk, as the Germans tried in vain to batter
their way through the Soviet defensive systems. The battle climaxed at the
village of
Prokhorovka, which involved
some 1,000 tanks fighting each other at point-blank range.
During this vicious two week battle the Red Army dealt the
Panzerwaffe a severe battering from which the German war effort was never to
recover fully. Kursk finally ended the myth of German
invincibility.
