Zhukov G.K. Vasilevsky A.M.

“... Our unit was located in the deserted village of Novolipitsy, 10-12 km from the forward positions, and engaged in active combat training and the construction of defensive lines. The proximity of the front was felt: artillery rumbled in the west, flares flared up at night. Air battles were often fought over us, downed planes fell. Soon, our division, like our neighboring formations, staffed mainly by cadets of military schools, turned into a well-trained "guards" combat unit.

It used to be impossible to stick your head out of hiding. But, despite the constant attacks, incessant battles, we found strength, endurance, patience and repulsed the enemy. Only the price was very expensive. How soldier died - no one can count. Very few survived.And every survivor is worthy of a reward ... "

Telenev Yuri Vasilievich:

“Then we didn’t think about awards”

“On the sector of the front where the battle was to take place, the Germans were on high ground, and we were on low ground, in plain sight. They tried to bomb us - the strongest artillery raid lasted approx.For about an hour, there was a terrible roar around, no voices were heard, so they had to shout. But we did not give up and responded in kind: shells exploded on the side of the Germans, tanks burned, everythingshrouded in smoke. Then our shock army went on the attack, we were in the trenches, they stepped over us, then we followed them. The crossing over the Oka began, only

infantry. The Germans began to shoot at the crossing, but since they were overwhelmed and paralyzed by our resistance, they fired randomly, aimlessly. Crossing the river, we joined the fightingThey liberated the settlements where the Nazis still remained "

Yuri Vasilievich proudly says that after the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviet soldiers were only in the mood for victory, no one doubted that we would defeat the Germans anyway, and the victory in the Battle of Kursk was another proof of this.

On the Kursk Bulge, Junior Lieutenant Telenev shot down an enemy Henkel-113 aircraft, popularly called a “crutch”, with an anti-tank rifle, for which he was awarded the Order of the Great Patriotic War after the victory. “In the war, we didn’t even think about awards, and there was no such fashion,” recalls Yuri Vasilyevich. In general, he considers himself a lucky man, because he was wounded near Kursk. If wounded, but not killed - already a great happiness for the infantry. After the battles, there were no entire regiments left - a company or a platoon.“Young people were,” says Yuri Vasilyevich, “reckless,at the age of 19 they were not afraid of anything, accustomed to danger. Yes, you can’t protect yourself from a bullet if it’s yours. ” . After being wounded, he was sent to the Kirov hospital, and when he recovered, he again went to the front, and until the end of 1944 he fought on the 2nd Belorussian Front.

Before the new year 1945, Lieutenant Telenev was demobilized due to a severe wound to his hand. Therefore, I met the victory already in the rear, in Omsk. There he worked as a military instructor at a school and studied at a music school. A few years later, with his wife and children, he moved to Votkinsk, and later to the very young Tchaikovsky, where he taught at a music school and was an instrument tuner.

Volodin Semyon Fedorovich

The events of those days will be remembered for a long time when the fate of the war was decided on the Kursk Bulge, when the company of Lieutenant Volodin held a small piece of land between a birch hill and the stadium of the village of Solomki. Of what the young commander had to endure on the first day of the Battle of Kursk, the retreat was most memorable: and not the very moment when the company, which had beaten off six tank attacks, left the trench, but for other night road. He walked at the head of his "company" - twenty surviving soldiers, remembering all the details ...

For about an hour, the "Junkers" continuously bombed the village, as soon as one party flew away, another appeared in the sky, and everything was repeated all over again - the deafening roar of exploding bombs, the whistle of fragments and thick, suffocating dust. The fighters were chasing the fighters, and the roar of their engines, like a groan, layered above the ground, when the German artillery began to hit and at the edge of the forest, in front of the buckwheat field, a black tank rhombus appeared again.

Ahead was a heavy and smoky military dawn: in an hour the battalion would take up defensive positions on the high-rises, and in another hour everything would start all over again: an air raid, artillery cannonade, rapidly creeping boxes of tanks; everything will be repeated - the whole battle, but with great bitterness, with an irresistible thirst for victory.

Already in seven days they were to see other crossings, other crowds along the banks of Russian rivers - clusters of broken German cars, the corpses of German soldiers, and he, Lieutenant Volodin, would say that this was a just retribution that the Nazis deserved.

In August 1942, a 17-year-old boy was called up for service in the Red Army. He was sent to study at the Omsk Infantry School, but Sasha could not finish it. He signed up as a volunteer, and received a baptism of fire near Vyazma, Smolensk region. The smart guy was immediately noticed. Yes, how not to notice a young fighter who has a true eye and a firm hand. So Alexander Stepanovich became a sniper.

"- It is impossible to remember the battle on the Kursk Bulge without shuddering - horror! The sky is covered with smoke, houses, fields, tanks, combat positions were burning. The thunder of cannonade from both sides. And in such a heavy fire," the veteran recalled, "fate protected me. I remember this case: we, three snipers, chose positions on the slope of the ravine, began to dig trenches, and suddenly - a flurry of fire. We quickly fell into one half-dug trench. The owner of the trench was below, I fell on him, and my neighbor fell on me. And then - a line from a heavy machine gun at our shelter ... The owner of the trench - immediately to death, the soldier who was above me was wounded, but I remained unharmed. One can see fate ... "

For the battle on the Kursk Bulge, Alexander Stepanovich has a medal"For Courage" is an award most revered among front-line soldiers.

“... On the eve of the Battle of Kursk, we, as part of the 125th special communications battalion, were transferred to the city of Orel. By that time, there was nothing left of the city, I remember only two surviving buildings - the church and the station. On the outskirts, some sheds have been preserved in some places. Piles of broken bricks, not a single tree in the whole huge city, constant shelling and bombing. At the temple there was a priest and several female choristers who remained with him. In the evening, our entire battalion, together with the commanders, gathered in the temple, the priest began to serve a prayer service. We knew we were going to attack the next day. Remembering their relatives, many wept. Scary…

There were three of us, radio operator girls. The rest of the men: signalmen, reel operators. Our task is to establish the most important thing - communication, without communication the end. I can’t say how many of us survived, we were scattered all over the front at night, but I think that it was not much. Our losses were very large. The Lord saved me…”

Smetanin Alexander

“... For me, this battle began with a retreat. We retreated for several days. And before the decisive battle, breakfast was brought to our crew. For some reason, I remembered it well - four crackers and two unripe watermelons each, they were still white. We couldn't have been better then. At dawn, huge black clouds of smoke appeared on the horizon from the German side. We stood motionless. Nobody knew anything - neither the company commander, nor the platoon commander. We just stood there. I am a machine gunner and saw the world through a hole two and a half centimeters. All I saw was dust and smoke. And then the tank commander commands: "Sour cream, fire." I started shooting. By whom, where, I don't know. At about 11 am we were commanded "forward". We rushed forward, firing as we went. Then there was a stop, the shells were brought to us. And forward again. Rumble, shooting, smoke - that's all my memories. I would be lying if I said that everything was clear to me then - the scale and significance of the battle. Well, the next day, July 13, a shell hit us on the starboard side. I got 22 splinters in the leg. This is what my Battle of Kursk was like ... "

Oh Russia! A country with a difficult fate.

I have you, Russia, like a heart, one.

I'll tell a friend, I'll tell an enemy

Without you, like without a heart, I can't live!

(Yulia Drunina)

Battle of Kursk: its role and significance during the war

Fifty days, from July 5 to August 23, 1943, the Battle of Kursk continued, including the Kursk defensive (July 5 - 23), Oryol (July 12 - August 18) and Belgorod-Kharkov (August 3-23) offensive strategic operations of the Soviet troops. It is one of the largest battles of the Second World War in terms of its scope, attracted forces and means, tension, results and military-political consequences.

General course of the Battle of Kursk

Huge masses of troops and military equipment were involved in a fierce clash on the Kursk Bulge from both sides - more than 4 million people, almost 70 thousand guns and mortars, more than 13 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery installations, up to 12 thousand aircraft. The fascist German command threw more than 100 divisions into the battle, which accounted for over 43% of the divisions that were on the Soviet-German front.

The ledge in the Kursk region was formed as a result of stubborn battles in the winter and early spring of 1943. Here the right wing of the German Army Group "Center" hung over the troops of the Central Front from the north, and the left flank of the Army Group "South" covered the troops of the Voronezh Front from the south. During the three-month strategic pause that began at the end of March, the belligerents consolidated on the achieved lines, replenished their troops with people, military equipment and weapons, accumulated reserves and developed plans for further actions.

Considering the great importance of the Kursk ledge, the German command decided in the summer to carry out an operation to eliminate it and defeat the Soviet troops occupying the defense here, hoping to regain the lost strategic initiative, to change the course of the war in their favor. He developed a plan for an offensive operation, which received the conditional name "Citadel".

To implement these plans, the enemy concentrated 50 divisions (including 16 tank and motorized), attracted over 900 thousand people, about 10 thousand guns and mortars, up to 2.7 thousand tanks and assault guns and over 2 thousand aircraft. The German command had high hopes for the use of new heavy tanks "tiger" and "panther", assault guns "Ferdinand", fighter "Focke-Wulf-190D" and attack aircraft "Henschel-129".

On the Kursk ledge, which had a length of about 550 km, the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts, who had 1336 thousand people, more than 19 thousand guns and mortars, over 3.4 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, 2.9 thousand aircraft, occupied the defense. To the east of Kursk, the Stepnoy Front, which was in the reserve of the Headquarters of the High Command, was concentrated, which had 573 thousand people, 8 thousand guns and mortars, about 1.4 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, up to 400 combat aircraft.

The headquarters of the Supreme High Command, having timely and correctly determined the enemy’s plan, decided to switch to a deliberate defense on pre-prepared lines, during which to bleed the shock groups of German troops, and then go on a counteroffensive and complete their defeat. There was a rare case in the history of the war when the strongest side, which had everything necessary for the offensive, chose the most optimal variant of its actions from several possible ones. During April - June 1943, a defense in depth was created in the area of ​​the Kursk salient.

The troops and the local population dug about 10,000 km of trenches and communication passages, 700 km of wire fences were installed in the most dangerous directions, 2,000 km of additional and parallel roads were built, 686 bridges were restored and rebuilt. Hundreds of thousands of residents of the Kursk, Orel, Voronezh and Kharkov regions participated in the construction of defensive lines. The troops were delivered 313 thousand wagons with military equipment, reserves and supplies.

Having data on the time of the start of the German offensive, the Soviet command carried out pre-planned artillery counter-preparation in the areas where enemy strike groups were concentrated. The enemy suffered tangible losses, his hopes for a surprise offensive were frustrated. On the morning of July 5, German troops went on the offensive, but the enemy's tank attacks, supported by the fire of thousands of guns and aircraft, crashed against the invincible stamina of the Soviet soldiers. On the northern face of the Kursk ledge, he managed to advance 10 - 12 km, and on the southern - 35 km.

It seemed that nothing living could resist such a powerful steel avalanche. The sky was black with smoke and dust. Corrosive gases from the explosions of shells and mines blinded my eyes. From the roar of guns and mortars, the clanging of caterpillars, the soldiers lost their hearing, but fought with unparalleled courage. Their motto was the words: "Not a step back, stand to death!" German tanks were shot down by the fire of our guns, anti-tank rifles, tanks and self-propelled guns dug into the ground, were hit by aircraft, and were blown up by mines. The enemy infantry was cut off from the tanks, exterminated by artillery, mortar, rifle and machine-gun fire or in hand-to-hand combat in the trenches. Hitler's aviation was destroyed by our planes and anti-aircraft artillery.

When German tanks broke through into the depths of the defense in one of the sectors of the 203rd Guards Rifle Regiment, Senior Lieutenant Zhumbek Duisov, deputy battalion commander for political affairs, whose crew was wounded, knocked out three enemy tanks from an anti-tank rifle. The wounded armor-piercers, inspired by the feat of the officer, again took up arms and successfully repelled a new enemy attack.

In this battle, the armor-piercer Private F.I. Yuplankov knocked out six tanks and shot down one Yu-88 aircraft, junior sergeant G.I. Kikinadze knocked out four, and Sergeant P.I. Houses - seven fascist tanks. The infantrymen boldly let enemy tanks through their trenches, cut off the infantry from the tanks and destroyed the Nazis with machine gun and machine gun fire, and the tanks were burned with Molotov cocktails and knocked out with grenades.

A bright heroic feat was performed by the crew of the tank, Lieutenant B.C. Shalandina. The company in which he operated was bypassed by a group of enemy tanks. Shalandin and members of his crew senior sergeants V.G. Kustov, V.F. Lekomtsev and Sergeant P.E. Zelenin boldly entered the battle with a numerically superior enemy. Acting from an ambush, they let the enemy tanks into direct range, and then, hitting the sides, burned two "tigers" and one medium tank. But Shalandin's tank was also hit and caught fire. On a burning car, the crew of Shalandin decided to ram and crashed into the side of the "tiger" on the move. The enemy tank caught fire. But our entire crew also died. Lieutenant B.C. Shalandin was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. By order of the Minister of Defense, he was forever enrolled in the lists of the Tashkent Tank School.

Simultaneously with the fighting on the ground, there were fierce battles in the air. An immortal feat was accomplished here by the pilot of the guard, Lieutenant A.K. Gorovets. On July 6, as part of a squadron on a La-5 aircraft, he covered his troops. Returning from a mission, Gorovets saw a large group of enemy bombers, but due to damage to the radio transmitter, he could not inform the leader about this and decided to attack them. During the battle, the brave pilot shot down nine enemy bombers, but he himself died.

On July 12, the largest oncoming tank battle in World War II took place in the Prokhorovka area, in which up to 1,200 tanks and self-propelled guns participated on both sides. During the day of the battle, the opposing sides lost from 30 to 60% of tanks and self-propelled guns each.

On July 12, a turning point occurred in the Battle of Kursk, the enemy stopped the offensive, and on July 18 he began to withdraw all his forces to their original position. The troops of the Voronezh, and from July 19 and the Steppe Front, began to pursue and by July 23 they threw the enemy back to the line that he had occupied on the eve of his offensive. Operation "Citadel" failed, the enemy failed to turn the tide of the war in their favor.

On July 12, the troops of the Western and Bryansk fronts launched an offensive in the Oryol direction. On July 15, the Central Front launched a counteroffensive. On August 3, the troops of the Voronezh and Steppe fronts launched a counteroffensive in the Belgorod-Kharkov direction. The scale of hostilities expanded even further.

Our troops during the battles on the Oryol ledge showed mass heroism. Here are just a few examples.

In the battle for a stronghold southwest of the village of Vyatka on July 13, the commander of a rifle platoon of the 457th rifle regiment of the 129th rifle division, Lieutenant N.D. Marinchenko. Carefully disguised, he unnoticed by the enemy led a platoon to the northern slope of the height and from close range brought down a shower of fire from machine guns on the enemy. The Germans began to panic. They ran, dropping their weapons. Capturing two 75-mm cannons at a height, Marinchenko's men opened fire on the enemy. For this feat, Lieutenant Nikolai Danilovich Marinchenko was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On July 19, 1943, in the battle for the settlement of Troena, Kursk Region, a heroic feat was accomplished by the gunner of a platoon of 45-mm guns of the 896th Infantry Regiment of the 211th Infantry Division, Sergeant N.N. Shilenkov. The enemy here repeatedly went over to counterattacks. During one of them, Shilenkov let German tanks 100 - 150 meters away and set fire to one of them with cannon fire and knocked out three of them.

When the cannon was smashed by an enemy shell, he took the machine gun and, together with the arrows, continued to fire at the enemy. Nikolai Nikolaevich Shilenkov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

On August 5, two ancient Russian cities, Orel and Belgorod, were liberated. On the evening of the same day, an artillery salute was fired in Moscow for the first time in honor of the troops that had liberated them.

By August 18, the Soviet troops, having inflicted a heavy defeat on the Army Group Center, completely liberated the Oryol bridgehead. The troops of the Voronezh and Steppe fronts at that time were fighting in the Kharkov direction. Having repulsed the strong counterattacks of the enemy's tank divisions, our units and formations liberated Kharkov on August 23. Thus, the Battle of Kursk ended with a brilliant victory for the Red Army.

The date of August 23 is now celebrated in our country as the Day of Military Glory of Russia - the defeat of the Nazi troops in the Battle of Kursk (1943).

At the same time, it should be noted that the victory in the Battle of Kursk went to the Soviet troops at a very high price. They lost over 860 thousand people killed and wounded, more than 6 thousand tanks and self-propelled guns, 5.2 thousand guns and mortars, over 1.6 thousand aircraft. Nevertheless, this victory was joyful and inspiring.

Thus, the victory at Kursk was new convincing evidence of the loyalty of Soviet soldiers to the oath, military duty and combat traditions of our Armed Forces. Strengthening and multiplying these traditions is the duty of every soldier of the Russian army.

The historical significance of the victory at Kursk

The Battle of Kursk is one of the most important stages on the way to victory in the Great Patriotic War. The crushing defeat of fascist Germany on the Kursk Bulge testified to the increased economic, political and military power of the Soviet Union. The feat of arms of the soldiers merged with the selfless work of the home front workers, who armed the army with excellent military equipment and provided it with everything necessary for victory. What is the world-historical significance of the defeat of the Nazi troops near Kursk?

Firstly, the Nazi army suffered a severe defeat, huge losses, which the fascist leadership could no longer make up for with any total mobilizations. The grandiose battle of the summer of 1943 on the Kursk Bulge demonstrated to the whole world the ability of the Soviet state to defeat the aggressor with its own forces. The prestige of German weapons was irreparably damaged. 30 German divisions were defeated. The total losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to more than 500 thousand soldiers and officers, over 1.5 thousand tanks and assault guns, 3 thousand guns and mortars, more than 3.7 thousand aircraft. By the way, pilots of the French Normandie squadron fought selflessly together with Soviet pilots in the battles on the Kursk Bulge, who shot down 33 German aircraft in air battles.

The enemy's armored forces suffered the heaviest losses. Of the 20 tank and motorized divisions that took part in the Battle of Kursk, 7 were defeated, and the rest suffered significant losses. The chief inspector of the Wehrmacht tank forces, General Guderian, was forced to admit: “As a result of the failure of the Citadel offensive, we suffered a decisive defeat. The armored forces, replenished with such great difficulty, were put out of action for a long time due to heavy losses in people and equipment ... The initiative finally passed to the Russians.

Secondly, in the Battle of Kursk, the enemy's attempt to regain the lost strategic initiative and take revenge for Stalingrad failed.

The offensive strategy of the German troops suffered a complete collapse. The Battle of Kursk led to a further change in the balance of forces on the front, made it possible to finally concentrate the strategic initiative in the hands of the Soviet command, and created favorable conditions for the deployment of a general strategic offensive of the Red Army. The victory near Kursk and the exit of Soviet troops to the Dnieper ended in a radical change in the course of the war. After the Battle of Kursk, the Nazi command was forced to completely abandon the offensive strategy and go on the defensive on the entire Soviet-German front.

However, at present, some Western historians, shamelessly falsifying the history of the Second World War, are trying in every possible way to belittle the significance of the victory of the Red Army near Kursk. Some of them claim that the Battle of Kursk is an ordinary, unremarkable episode of the Second World War, others in their voluminous works either simply keep silent about the Battle of Kursk, or speak about it sparingly and unintelligibly, other falsifiers seek to prove that the German The fascist army was defeated in the Battle of Kursk not under the blows of the Red Army, but as a result of Hitler's "miscalculations" and "fatal decisions", due to his unwillingness to listen to the opinion of his generals and field marshals. However, all this has no basis and is in conflict with the facts. The German generals and field marshals themselves recognized the groundlessness of such assertions. “Operation Citadel was the last attempt to keep our initiative in the east,” admits the former Hitlerite Field Marshal, who commanded the group ar
Miy "South" E. Manstein. - With its termination, tantamount to failure, the initiative finally passed to the Soviet side. In this regard, the Citadel is a decisive turning point in the war on the Eastern Front.

Thirdly, the victory in the Battle of Kursk is a triumph of Soviet military art. In the course of the battle, Soviet military strategy, operational art and tactics once again proved their superiority over the military art of the Nazi army.

The Battle of Kursk enriched the Russian military art with the EXPERIENCE of organizing a deeply echeloned, active, stable defense, conducting a flexible and decisive maneuver of forces and means in the course of defensive and offensive operations.

In the field of strategy, the Soviet Supreme High Command took a creative approach to planning the summer-autumn campaign of 1943. The originality of the decision was expressed in the fact that the side that had the strategic initiative and overall superiority in forces went over to the defensive, deliberately giving an active role to the enemy in the initial phase of the campaign. Subsequently, within the framework of a single process of conducting a campaign, after the defense, it was planned to switch to a decisive counteroffensive and develop a general offensive. The problem of creating an insurmountable defense on an operational-strategic scale was successfully solved. Its activity was ensured by the saturation of the fronts with a large number of mobile troops. It was achieved by carrying out artillery counter-preparation on the scale of two fronts, extensive maneuvering of strategic reserves to reinforce them, and delivering massive air strikes against enemy groupings and reserves. The headquarters of the Supreme High Command skillfully determined the plan for conducting a counteroffensive in each direction, creatively approaching
choosing the directions of the main attacks and methods of defeating the enemy. Thus, in the Oryol operation, Soviet troops used concentric strikes in converging directions, followed by fragmentation and destruction of the enemy grouping in parts. In the Belgorod-Kharkov operation, the main blow was delivered by the adjacent flanks of the fronts, which ensured a quick break-in of the enemy's strong and deep defenses, cutting his grouping into two parts and the exit of Soviet troops to the rear of the enemy's Kharkov defensive area.

In the Battle of Kursk, the problem of creating large strategic reserves and their effective use was successfully solved, strategic air supremacy was finally won, which was held by Soviet aviation until the end of the Great Patriotic War. The headquarters of the Supreme High Command skillfully carried out strategic interaction not only between the fronts participating in the battle, but also with those operating in other directions.

Soviet operational art in the Battle of Kursk for the first time solved the problem of creating a deliberate positional insurmountable and active operational defense up to 70 km deep.

During the counteroffensive, the problem of breaking through the enemy’s defense in depth was successfully solved by decisive massing of forces and means in the breakthrough areas (from 50 to 90% of their total number), skillful use of tank armies and corps as mobile groups of fronts and armies, close interaction with aviation , which carried out in full on the scale of the fronts an air offensive, which to a large extent ensured the high pace of the offensive of the ground forces. Valuable experience was gained in conducting oncoming tank battles both in a defensive operation (near Prokhorovka) and in the course of an offensive when repulsing counterattacks by large enemy armored groupings.

The active actions of the partisans contributed to the successful conduct of the Battle of Kursk. Striking at the rear of the enemy, they fettered up to 100 thousand soldiers and officers of the enemy. The partisans made about 1.5 thousand raids on railway lines, disabled more than 1 thousand steam locomotives and defeated over 400 military trains.

Fourthly, the defeat of the Nazi troops during the Battle of Kursk was of great military-political and international significance. He significantly increased the role and international prestige of the Soviet Union. It became obvious that fascist Germany was faced with inevitable defeat by the might of Soviet weapons. The sympathy of ordinary people for our country increased even more, the hopes of the peoples of the countries occupied by the Nazis for an early liberation were strengthened, the front of the national liberation struggle of resistance movement fighters in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway expanded, the anti-fascist struggle intensified both in Germany itself and and other countries of the fascist bloc.

Fifthly, the defeat at Kursk and the results of the battle had a profound effect on the German people, undermined the morale of the German troops, faith in the victorious outcome of the war. Germany was losing influence over its allies, disagreements within the fascist bloc intensified, which later led to a political and military crisis. The collapse of the fascist bloc was laid - the Mussolini regime collapsed, and Italy withdrew from the war on the side of Germany.

The victory of the Red Army near Kursk forced Germany and its allies to go on the defensive in all theaters of World War II, which had a huge impact on its further course. The transfer of significant enemy forces from the west to the Soviet-German front and their further defeat by the Red Army facilitated the landing of Anglo-American troops in Italy and predetermined their success.

Sixth, under the influence of the victory of the Red Army, cooperation between the leading countries of the anti-Hitler coalition strengthened. She had a great influence on the ruling circles of the USA and Great Britain. At the end of 1943, the Tehran Conference took place, at which the leaders of the USSR, the USA, and Great Britain, I.V. Stalin; F.D. Roosevelt, W. Churchill. At the conference, it was decided to open a second front in Europe in May 1944. Assessing the results of the victory at Kursk, the head of the British government, W. Churchill, noted: "Three huge battles - for Kursk, Orel and Kharkov, all carried out within two months, marked the collapse of the German army on the Eastern Front."

The victory in the Battle of Kursk was achieved thanks to the further strengthening of the military and economic power of the country and its Armed Forces.

One of the decisive factors that ensured the victory at Kursk was the high moral, political and psychological state of the personnel of our troops. In a fierce battle, such powerful sources of victories for the Soviet people and their army as patriotism, friendship of peoples, faith in one's own strength and success were manifested with all their might. Soviet fighters and commanders showed miracles of mass heroism, exceptional courage, steadfastness and military skill, for which 132 formations and units received the title of guards, 26 were awarded the honorary titles of Oryol, Belgorod, Kharkov. More than 100 thousand soldiers were awarded orders and medals, and 231 people were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

The victory at Kursk was also won thanks to a powerful economic base. The increased capabilities of Soviet industry, the heroic feat of the home front workers, made it possible to provide the Red Army in huge quantities with perfect models of military equipment and weapons, surpassing the military equipment of Nazi Germany in a number of decisive indicators.

Highly appreciating the role and significance of the Battle of Kursk, the courage, resilience and mass heroism shown by the defenders of the cities of Belgorod, Kursk and Orel in the struggle for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, by Decrees of the President of the Russian Federation of April 27, 2007, these cities were awarded the honorary title "City of Military Glory ".

Before a lesson on this topic and during its conduct, it is advisable to visit the museum of a unit or unit, organize a viewing of documentary and feature films about the Battle of Kursk, and invite veterans of the Great Patriotic War to speak.

In the opening remarks, it is advisable to emphasize the importance of such a historical event as the Battle of Kursk, to emphasize that a radical turning point in the course of the war ended here and a mass expulsion of enemy troops from our territory began.

When covering the first issue, it is necessary, using a map, to show the location and balance of forces of the opposing sides at different stages of the Battle of Kursk, while emphasizing that it is an unsurpassed example of Soviet military art. In addition, it is necessary to tell in detail about the exploits, give examples of the courage and heroism of the soldiers of their kind of troops committed in the Battle of Kursk.

In the course of considering the second question, it is necessary to objectively show the significance, role and place of the Battle of Kursk in Russian military history, to consider in more detail the factors that contributed to this great victory.

At the end of the lesson, it is necessary to draw brief conclusions, answer questions from the audience, and thank the invited veterans.

1. Military encyclopedia in 8 volumes. T.4. - M.: Military publishing house. 1999.

2. The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945: A Brief History. - m., 1984.

3. Dembitsky N., Strelnikov v. The most important operations of the Red Army and Navy in 1943//Landmark. - 2003. - No. 1.

4. History of the Second World War 1939 -1945 in 12 volumes. T.7. - M., 1976.

Lieutenant colonel
Dmitry Samosvat,
Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Lieutenant Colonel
Alexey Kurshev

Dates and events of the Great Patriotic War

The Great Patriotic War began on June 22, 1941, on the day of All Saints who shone in the Russian land. The Barbarossa plan - a plan for a lightning war with the USSR - was signed by Hitler on December 18, 1940. Now it has been put into action. German troops - the strongest army in the world - advanced in three groups ("North", "Center", "South"), aimed at the rapid capture of the Baltic states and then Leningrad, Moscow, and in the south - Kyiv.

Kursk Bulge

In 1943, the Nazi command decided to conduct its general offensive in the Kursk region. The fact is that the operational position of the Soviet troops on the Kursk ledge, concave towards the enemy, promised great prospects for the Germans. Two large fronts could be surrounded here at once, as a result of which a large gap would have formed, allowing the enemy to carry out major operations in the south and northeast directions.

The Soviet command was preparing for this offensive. From mid-April, the General Staff began to develop a plan for both a defensive operation near Kursk and a counteroffensive. And by the beginning of July 1943, the Soviet command had completed preparations for the Battle of Kursk.

July 5, 1943 German troops began the offensive. The first attack was repulsed. However, then the Soviet troops had to withdraw. The fighting was very intense and the Germans failed to achieve significant success. The enemy did not solve any of the assigned tasks and was eventually forced to stop the offensive and go on the defensive.

The struggle on the southern face of the Kursk ledge, in the zone of the Voronezh Front, was also exceptionally tense.

On July 12, 1943 (on the day of the holy supreme apostles Peter and Paul), the largest tank battle in military history near Prokhorovka took place. The battle unfolded on both sides of the Belgorod-Kursk railway, and the main events took place southwest of Prokhorovka. As Chief Marshal of the Armored Forces P. A. Rotmistrov, the former commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army, recalled, the struggle was extremely fierce, “tanks jumped on each other, grappled, could no longer disperse, fought to the death until one of them flared up torch or did not stop with broken tracks. But the wrecked tanks, if their weapons did not fail, continued to fire. The battlefield was littered with burning German and our tanks for an hour. As a result of the battle near Prokhorovka, none of the parties was able to solve the tasks facing it: the enemy - to break through to Kursk; 5th Guards Tank Army - go to the Yakovlevo area, defeating the opposing enemy. But the way to the enemy to Kursk was closed and the day of July 12, 1943 became the day of the collapse of the German offensive near Kursk.

On July 12, the troops of the Bryansk and Western fronts went on the offensive in the Oryol direction, and on July 15, the troops of the Central.

On August 5, 1943 (the day of the celebration of the Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God, as well as the icon of "Joy of All Who Sorrow"), Orel was released. On the same day Belgorod was liberated by the troops of the Steppe Front. The Oryol offensive operation lasted 38 days and ended on August 18 with the defeat of a powerful group of Nazi troops aimed at Kursk from the north.

The events on the southern wing of the Soviet-German front had a significant impact on the further course of events in the Belgorod-Kursk direction. On July 17, the troops of the Southern and Southwestern Fronts went on the offensive. On the night of July 19, the general withdrawal of the Nazi troops began on the southern face of the Kursk salient.

On August 23, 1943, the strongest battle of the Great Patriotic War ended with the liberation of Kharkov - the Battle of Kursk (it lasted 50 days). It ended with the defeat of the main grouping of German troops.

Liberation of Smolensk (1943)

Smolensk offensive operation August 7 - October 2, 1943. In the course of hostilities and the nature of the tasks performed, the Smolensk strategic offensive operation is divided into three stages. The first stage covers the period of hostilities from 7 to 20 August. During this stage, the troops of the Western Front carried out the Spas-Demenskaya operation. The troops of the left wing of the Kalinin Front began the Dukhovshchinskaya offensive operation. At the second stage (August 21 - September 6), the troops of the Western Front carried out the Yelnensko-Dorogobuzh operation, and the troops of the left wing of the Kalinin Front continued to conduct the Dukhovshchinskaya offensive operation. At the third stage (September 7 - October 2), the troops of the Western Front, in cooperation with the troops of the left wing of the Kalinin Front, carried out the Smolensk-Roslavl operation, and the main forces of the Kalinin Front carried out the Dukhovshchinsky-Demidov operation.

On September 25, 1943, the troops of the Western Front liberated Smolensk, the most important strategic center of defense of the Nazi troops in the western direction.

As a result of the successful implementation of the Smolensk offensive operation, our troops broke into the enemy's heavily fortified multi-lane and deeply echeloned defenses and advanced 200-225 km to the West.

Tank counterattack. A still from the movie Liberation: Arc of Fire. 1968

Silence over the Prokhorovsky field. Only from time to time a bell bell is heard, calling parishioners to worship in the church of Peter and Paul, which was built with public donations in memory of the soldiers who died on the Kursk Bulge.
Gertsovka, Cherkasskoye, Lukhanino, Luchki, Yakovlevo, Belenikhino, Mikhailovka, Melehovo… These names now hardly say anything to the younger generation. And 70 years ago, a terrible battle was in full swing here, in the Prokhorovka area, the largest oncoming tank battle unfolded. Everything that could burn was on fire, everything was covered with dust, fumes and smoke from burning tanks, villages, forests and grain fields. The earth was scorched to such an extent that not a single blade of grass remained on it. Here the Soviet guardsmen and the elite of the Wehrmacht, the SS Panzer Divisions, met head-on.
Before the Prokhorovka tank battle, there were fierce clashes between the tank forces of both sides in the zone of the 13th Army of the Central Front, in which up to 1000 tanks took part in the most critical moments.
But tank battles in the Voronezh Front took on the largest scale. Here, in the first days of the battle, the forces of the 4th Tank Army and the 3rd Tank Corps of the Germans clashed with three corps of the 1st Tank Army, the 2nd and 5th Guards separate tank corps.
"WE'LL HAVE LUNCH IN KURSK!"
The fighting on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge actually began on July 4, when the German units made an attempt to shoot down the outposts in the zone of the 6th Guards Army.
But the main events unfolded early in the morning on July 5, when the Germans delivered the first massive blow with their tank formations in the direction of Oboyan.
On the morning of July 5, the commander of the Adolf Hitler division, Obergruppenführer Josef Dietrich, drove up to his Tigers, and some officer shouted to him: “We will have lunch in Kursk!”
But the SS did not have to have lunch or dinner in Kursk. Only by the end of the day on July 5 did they manage to break through the defensive zone of the 6th Army. The exhausted soldiers of the German assault battalions took refuge in the captured trenches to refresh themselves with dry rations and get some sleep.
On the right flank of Army Group South, the Kempf task force crossed the river. Seversky Donets and struck at the 7th Guards Army.
Gunner "Tiger" of the 503rd battalion of heavy tanks of the 3rd tank corps Gerhard Niemann: "Another anti-tank gun is 40 meters ahead of us. The gun crew flees in panic, except for one person. He takes aim and fires. A terrible blow to the fighting compartment. The driver maneuvers, maneuver - and another gun is crushed by our tracks. And again a terrible blow, this time to the stern of the tank. Our engine sneezes, but nevertheless continues to work.
On July 6 and 7, the 1st Panzer Army took the main blow. In a few hours of battle, as they say, only numbers remained from its 538th and 1008th anti-tank regiments. On July 7, the Germans launched a concentric attack in the direction of Oboyan. Only in the section between Syrtsev and Yakovlev on a five-six-kilometer front, the commander of the 4th German tank army, Goth, deployed up to 400 tanks, supporting their offensive with a massive strike of aviation and artillery.
The commander of the troops of the 1st Tank Army, Lieutenant General of the Tank Forces Mikhail Katukov: “We got out of the gap and climbed a small hillock, where a command post was equipped. It was half past three. But there seemed to be a solar eclipse. The sun was hidden behind clouds of dust. And ahead, in the twilight, bursts of shots could be seen, the earth took off and crumbled, engines roared and caterpillars clanged. As soon as enemy tanks approached our positions, they were met by dense artillery and tank fire. Leaving wrecked and burning vehicles on the battlefield, the enemy rolled back and again went on the attack.
By the end of July 8, the Soviet troops, after heavy defensive battles, withdrew to the second army line of defense.
300 KM MARCH
The decision to strengthen the Voronezh Front was made on July 6, despite stormy protests from the commander of the Steppe Front, I.S. Konev. Stalin ordered the advancement of the 5th Guards Tank Army to the rear of the troops of the 6th and 7th Guards Armies, as well as the strengthening of the Voronezh Front by the 2nd Tank Corps.
The 5th Guards Tank Army had about 850 tanks and self-propelled guns, including T-34-501 medium tanks and T-70-261 light tanks. On the night of July 6-7, the army moved to the front line. The march was carried out around the clock under the cover of aviation of the 2nd Air Army.
Commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant General of the Tank Troops Pavel Rotmistrov: “Already at 8 o’clock in the morning it became hot, and clouds of dust rose into the sky. By noon the dust had thickly covered the roadside bushes, the wheat fields, the tanks and trucks, and the dark red disk of the sun was barely visible through the gray dust curtain. Tanks, self-propelled guns and tractors (pulled guns), infantry armored vehicles and trucks moved forward in an endless stream. The faces of the soldiers were covered with dust and soot from the exhaust pipes. The heat was unbearable. The soldiers were tormented by thirst, and their tunics, soaked with sweat, stuck to their bodies. It was especially hard on the march for the driver-mechanics. The crews of the tanks tried to make their task as easy as possible. Every now and then someone replaced the drivers, and on short halts they were allowed to sleep.
Aviation of the 2nd Air Army covered the 5th Guards Tank Army on the march so reliably that German intelligence failed to detect its arrival. Having traveled 200 km, the army arrived in the area southwest of Stary Oskol on the morning of 8 July. Then, having put the materiel in order, the army corps again made a 100-kilometer throw and by the end of July 9, strictly at the appointed time, concentrated in the area of ​​​​Bobryshev, Vesely, Aleksandrovsky.
MANSTEIN CHANGES THE DIRECTION OF THE MAIN IMPACT
On the morning of July 8, an even more fierce struggle flared up in the Oboyan and Korochan directions. The main feature of the struggle that day was that the Soviet troops, repelling the massive attacks of the enemy, themselves began to deliver strong counterattacks on the flanks of the 4th German Panzer Army.
As in previous days, the fiercest fighting flared up in the area of ​​the Simferopol-Moscow highway, where units of the SS Panzer Division "Grossdeutschland", the 3rd and 11th Panzer Divisions, reinforced by separate companies and battalions of "Tigers" and "Ferdinands" advanced. Units of the 1st Panzer Army again took the brunt of the enemy's strikes. In this direction, the enemy simultaneously deployed up to 400 tanks, and fierce battles continued here all day.
Intense fighting also continued in the Korochansky direction, where by the end of the day the Kempf army group broke through in a narrow wedge in the Melekhov area.
The commander of the 19th German Panzer Division, Lieutenant-General Gustav Schmidt: “Despite the heavy losses suffered by the enemy, and the fact that entire sections of trenches and trenches were burned by flamethrower tanks, we were unable to dislodge the group that had settled there from the northern part of the defensive line enemy force up to a battalion. The Russians sat down in the trench system, knocked out our flamethrower tanks with anti-tank rifle fire and put up fanatical resistance.
On the morning of July 9, a German strike force of several hundred tanks, with massive air support, resumed the offensive on a 10-kilometer stretch. By the end of the day, she broke through to the third line of defense. And in the Korochan direction, the enemy broke into the second line of defense.
Nevertheless, the stubborn resistance of the troops of the 1st Tank and 6th Guards Armies in the Oboyan direction forced the command of Army Group South to change the direction of the main attack, moving it from the Simferopol-Moscow highway east to the Prokhorovka area. This movement of the main attack, in addition to the fact that several days of fierce fighting on the highway did not give the Germans the desired results, was also determined by the nature of the terrain. From the Prokhorovka area, a wide strip of heights extends in a northwestern direction, which dominate the surrounding area and are convenient for the operations of large tank masses.
The general plan of the command of Army Group "South" was to deliver three strong strikes in a complex manner, which were supposed to lead to the encirclement and destruction of two groupings of Soviet troops and to the opening of offensive routes to Kursk.
To develop success, it was supposed to bring fresh forces into the battle - the 24th Panzer Corps as part of the SS Viking Division and the 17th Panzer Division, which on July 10 were urgently transferred from the Donbass to Kharkov. The start of the attack on Kursk from the north and from the south was scheduled by the German command for the morning of July 11.
In turn, the command of the Voronezh Front, having received the approval of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command, decided to prepare and conduct a counteroffensive in order to encircle and defeat enemy groups advancing in the Oboyan and Prokhorov directions. Formations of the 5th Guards and 5th Guards Tank Army were concentrated against the main grouping of SS Panzer divisions in the Prokhorovka direction. The start of the general counter-offensive was scheduled for the morning of 12 July.
On July 11, all three German groups of E. Manstein went on the offensive, and later than all, clearly expecting the attention of the Soviet command to be diverted to other directions, the main group launched an offensive in the Prokhorovka direction - the tank divisions of the 2nd SS corps under the command of Obergruppenführer Paul Hauser, who was awarded the highest Award of the Third Reich "Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross".
By the end of the day, a large group of tanks of the SS division "Reich" managed to break into the village of Storozhevoye, threatening the rear of the 5th Guards Tank Army. To eliminate this threat, the 2nd Guards Tank Corps was thrown. Fierce oncoming tank battles continued throughout the night. As a result, the main strike force of the 4th German Tank Army, having launched an offensive on a front of only about 8 km, reached the approaches to Prokhorovka in a narrow strip and was forced to suspend the offensive, occupying the line from which the 5th Guards Tank Army planned to launch its counteroffensive.
Even less success was achieved by the second strike group - the SS Panzer Division "Grossdeutschland", 3 and 11 Panzer Divisions. Our troops successfully repelled their attacks.
However, north-east of Belgorod, where the Kempf army group was advancing, a threatening situation arose. The 6th and 7th tank divisions of the enemy broke through to the north in a narrow wedge. Their forward units were only 18 km from the main grouping of SS Panzer divisions, which were advancing southwest of Prokhorovka.
To eliminate the breakthrough of German tanks against the Kempf army group, part of the forces of the 5th Guards Tank Army was thrown: two brigades of the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps and one brigade of the 2nd Guards Tank Corps.
In addition, the Soviet command decided to launch the planned counteroffensive two hours earlier, although the preparations for the counteroffensive were not yet completed. However, the situation forced us to act immediately and decisively. Any delay was beneficial only to the enemy.
PROKHOROVKA
At 08:30 on July 12, Soviet strike groups launched a counteroffensive against the troops of the German 4th Panzer Army. However, due to the German breakthrough to Prokhorovka, the diversion of significant forces of the 5th Guards Tank and 5th Guards Armies to eliminate the threat to their rear and the postponement of the start of the counteroffensive, the Soviet troops went on the attack without artillery and air support. As the English historian Robin Cross writes: “The artillery preparation schedules were torn to shreds and rewritten again.”
Manstein threw all available forces to repulse the attacks of the Soviet troops, because he clearly understood that the success of the offensive of the Soviet troops could lead to the complete defeat of the entire strike force of the German Army Group South. A fierce struggle flared up on a huge front with a total length of more than 200 km.
The most fierce fighting during July 12 flared up on the so-called Prokhorov bridgehead. From the north it was limited by the river. Psel, and from the south - a railway embankment near the village of Belenikhino. This strip of terrain, up to 7 km along the front and up to 8 km in depth, was captured by the enemy as a result of a tense struggle during July 11. The main enemy grouping as part of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, which had 320 tanks and assault guns, including several dozen vehicles of the Tiger, Panther and Ferdinand types, deployed and operated on the bridgehead. It was against this grouping that the Soviet command dealt its main blow with the forces of the 5th Guards Tank Army and part of the forces of the 5th Guards Army.
The battlefield was clearly visible from Rotmistrov's observation post.
Pavel Rotmistrov: “A few minutes later, the tanks of the first echelon of our 29th and 18th corps, firing on the move, crashed into the battle formations of the Nazi troops with a head-on attack, literally piercing the enemy’s battle formation with a swift through attack. The Nazis obviously did not expect to meet such a large mass of our combat vehicles and their decisive attack. Management in the advanced units and subunits of the enemy was clearly violated. His "Tigers" and "Panthers", deprived of their fire advantage in close combat, which they used at the beginning of the offensive in a collision with our other tank formations, were now successfully hit by Soviet T-34 and even T-70 tanks from short distances. The battlefield was swirling with smoke and dust, the earth trembled from powerful explosions. The tanks jumped on each other and, having grappled, could no longer disperse, fought to the death until one of them flared up with a torch or stopped with broken tracks. But the wrecked tanks, if their weapons did not fail, continued to fire.
West of Prokhorovka along the left bank of the Psel River, units of the 18th Panzer Corps went on the offensive. His tank brigades upset the battle formations of the advancing enemy tank units, stopped them and began to move forward themselves.
Yevgeny Shkurdalov, deputy commander of the tank battalion of the 181st brigade of the 18th tank corps: “I only saw what was, so to speak, within the limits of my tank battalion. Ahead of us was the 170th tank brigade. With great speed, she wedged into the location of German tanks, heavy ones, which were in the first wave, and the German tanks pierced our tanks. The tanks went very close to each other, and therefore they fired literally at point-blank range, they simply shot each other. This brigade burned down in just five minutes - sixty-five cars.
Wilhelm Res, radio operator of the commander's tank of the Adolf Hitler Panzer Division: “Russian tanks were rushing at full throttle. In our area, they were prevented by an anti-tank ditch. At full speed, they flew into this ditch, due to their speed overcame three or four meters in it, but then, as it were, froze in a slightly inclined position with a cannon pulled up. Literally for a moment! Taking advantage of this, many of our tank commanders fired directly at point-blank range.
Yevgeny Shkurdalov: “I knocked out the first tank when I was moving along the railroad landing, and literally at a distance of a hundred meters I saw the Tiger tank, which was standing sideways to me and firing at our tanks. Apparently, he knocked out quite a few of our cars, as the cars came sideways towards him, and he fired at the sides of our cars. I took aim with a sub-caliber projectile, fired. The tank caught fire. I fired another shot, the tank caught fire even more. The crew jumped out, but somehow I was not up to it. I bypassed this tank, then knocked out a T-III tank and a Panther. When I knocked out the Panther, there was some, you know, a feeling of delight that you see, I did such a heroic deed.
The 29th Tank Corps, with the support of units of the 9th Guards Airborne Division, launched a counteroffensive along the railway and highway southwest of Prokhorovka. As noted in the corps combat log, the attack began without artillery treatment of the line occupied by the enemy and without air cover. This made it possible for the enemy to open concentrated fire on the battle formations of the corps and bomb its tank and infantry units with impunity, which led to heavy losses and a decrease in the rate of attack, and this, in turn, made it possible for the enemy to conduct effective artillery and tank fire from a place.
Wilhelm Res: “Suddenly, one T-34 broke through and moved straight towards us. Our first radio operator began to give shells to me one by one, so that I would put them in the cannon. At this time, our commander upstairs kept shouting: “Shot! Shot!" - because the tank was moving closer. And only after the fourth - "Shot" I heard: "Thank God!"
Then, after some time, we determined that the T-34 had stopped just eight meters from us! At the top of the tower, he had, as if stamped, 5-centimeter holes, located at the same distance from each other, as if they were measured with a compass. The combat formations of the parties mixed up. Our tankers successfully hit the enemy at close range, but they themselves suffered heavy losses.
From the documents of the Central Administration of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: “The T-34 tank of the commander of the 2nd battalion of the 181st brigade of the 18th tank corps, captain Skripkin, crashed into the Tigers and knocked out two enemy tanks before an 88-mm shell hit the tower of his T -34, and the other pierced the side armor. The Soviet tank caught fire, and the wounded Skripkin was pulled out of the wrecked car by his driver Sergeant Nikolaev and radio operator Zyryanov. They took cover in a funnel, but still one of the "Tigers" noticed them and moved towards them. Then Nikolaev and his loader Chernov again jumped into the burning car, started it and sent it straight at the Tiger. Both tanks exploded on impact.
The blow of Soviet armor, new tanks with a full set of ammunition thoroughly shook the exhausted Hauser divisions, and the German offensive stopped.
From the report of the representative of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command in the area of ​​the Kursk Bulge, Marshal of the Soviet Union Alexander Vasilevsky to Stalin: “Yesterday I personally observed a tank battle of our 18th and 29th corps with more than two hundred enemy tanks in a counterattack southwest of Prokhorovka. At the same time, hundreds of guns and all the RSs we have took part in the battle. As a result, the entire battlefield was littered with burning German and our tanks for an hour.
As a result of the counter-offensive of the main forces of the 5th Guards Tank Army southwest of Prokhorovka, the offensive of the SS Panzer divisions "Dead Head", "Adolf Hitler" to the northeast was thwarted, these divisions suffered such losses, after which they could no longer launch a serious offensive.
Parts of the SS Panzer Division "Reich" also suffered heavy losses from attacks by units of the 2nd and 2nd Guards Tank Corps, which launched a counteroffensive south of Prokhorovka.
In the breakthrough area of ​​the Kempf army group south and southeast of Prokhorovka, a fierce struggle also continued throughout the day on July 12, as a result of which the attack of the Kempf army group to the north was stopped by tankmen of the 5th Guards Tank and units of the 69th Army .
LOSSES AND RESULTS
On the night of July 13, Rotmistrov took Marshal Georgy Zhukov, a representative of the Supreme Command Headquarters, to the headquarters of the 29th Tank Corps. On the way, Zhukov stopped the car several times to personally inspect the sites of recent battles. In one place, he got out of the car and looked for a long time at the burned-out Panther, rammed by the T-70 tank. A few tens of meters away stood the Tiger and T-34 locked in a deadly embrace. “That's what a through tank attack means,” Zhukov said quietly, as if to himself, taking off his cap.
Data on the losses of the parties, in particular tanks, differ radically in different sources. Manstein, in his book Lost Victories, writes that in total, during the battles on the Kursk Bulge, Soviet troops lost 1,800 tanks. The collection “Secrecy Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Operations and Military Conflicts” refers to 1,600 Soviet tanks and self-propelled guns disabled during the defensive battle on the Kursk Bulge.
A very remarkable attempt to calculate German losses in tanks was made by the English historian Robin Cross in his book The Citadel. Battle of Kursk. If we shift its diagram into a table, we will get the following picture: (the number and losses of tanks and self-propelled guns in the 4th German Panzer Army in the period July 4-17, 1943, see the table).
Kross' data differs from the data from Soviet sources, which can be quite understandable to a certain extent. So, it is known that on the evening of July 6, Vatutin reported to Stalin that during the fierce battles that lasted all day, 322 enemy tanks were destroyed (at Kross - 244).
But there are also quite incomprehensible discrepancies in the figures. For example, an aerial photograph taken on July 7 at 13.15, only in the area of ​​​​Syrtsev, Krasnaya Polyana along the Belgorod-Oboyan highway, where the SS Panzer Division "Grossdeutschland" from the 48th Panzer Corps was advancing, recorded 200 burning enemy tanks. According to Kross, on July 7, 48 TC lost only three tanks (?!).
Or another fact. As Soviet sources testify, as a result of bombing and assault attacks on the concentrated enemy troops (TD SS "Great Germany" and 11th TD), on the morning of July 9, many fires broke out throughout the area in the area of ​​the Belgorod-Oboyan highway. It was burning German tanks, self-propelled guns, cars, motorcycles, tanks, fuel and ammunition depots. According to Kross, there were no losses at all in the German 4th Panzer Army on July 9, although, as he himself writes, on July 9 it fought stubborn battles, overcoming fierce resistance from the Soviet troops. But it was precisely by the evening of July 9 that Manstein decided to abandon the offensive against Oboyan and began to look for other ways to break through to Kursk from the south.
The same can be said about the Kross data for 10 and 11 July, according to which there were no casualties in the 2nd SS Panzer Corps. This is also surprising, since it was during these days that the divisions of this corps delivered the main blow and, after fierce fighting, were able to break through to Prokhorovka. And it was on July 11 that the Hero of the Soviet Union Guards Sergeant M.F. Borisov, who destroyed seven German tanks.
After the archival documents were opened, it became possible to more accurately assess Soviet losses in the tank battle near Prokhorovka. According to the combat log of the 29th Panzer Corps for July 12, out of 212 tanks and self-propelled guns that entered the battle, 150 vehicles (more than 70%) were lost by the end of the day, of which 117 (55%) were irretrievably lost. According to combat report No. 38 of the commander of the 18th tank corps dated 07/13/43, the losses of the corps amounted to 55 tanks, or 30% of their initial strength. Thus, you can get a more or less accurate figure of the losses suffered by the 5th Guards Tank Army in the battle of Prokhorovka against the SS divisions "Adolf Hitler" and "Totenkopf" - over 200 tanks and self-propelled guns.
As for German losses near Prokhorovka, there is an absolutely fantastic disparity in numbers.
According to Soviet sources, when the battles near Kursk died down and the broken military equipment began to be removed from the battlefields, more than 400 broken and burnt German tanks were counted in a small area of ​​the area southwest of Prokhorovka, where on July 12 an oncoming tank battle unfolded. Rotmistrov, in his memoirs, claimed that on July 12, in battles with the 5th Guards Tank Army, the enemy lost over 350 tanks and more than 10 thousand people were killed.
But in the late 1990s, the German military historian Karl-Heinz Frieser published sensational data he obtained after studying German archives. According to these data, the Germans lost four tanks in the battle of Prokhorovka. After additional research, he came to the conclusion that in fact the losses were even less - three tanks.
Documentary evidence refutes these absurd conclusions. So, in the combat log of the 29th Panzer Corps, it is said that the losses of the enemy amounted to 68 tanks, among other things (it is interesting to note that this coincides with Kross's data). In a combat report from the headquarters of the 33rd Guards Corps to the commander of the 5th Guards Army dated July 13, 1943, it is said that the 97th Guards Rifle Division destroyed 47 tanks over the past day. Further, it is reported that during the night of July 12, the enemy took out his wrecked tanks, the number of which exceeds 200 vehicles. Several dozens of destroyed enemy tanks were chalked up to the 18th Panzer Corps.
We can agree with Kross's statement that the losses of tanks are generally difficult to calculate, since the disabled vehicles were repaired and again went into battle. In addition, enemy losses are usually always exaggerated. Nevertheless, with a high degree of probability it can be assumed that the 2nd SS Panzer Corps lost at least over 100 tanks in the battle near Prokhorovka (excluding the losses of the SS Panzer Division "Reich" operating south of Prokhorovka). In total, according to Kross, the losses of the 4th German Panzer Army from July 4 to 14 amounted to about 600 tanks and self-propelled guns out of 916, which were counted at the beginning of Operation Citadel. This almost coincides with the data of the German historian Engelmann, who, citing Manstein's report, claims that between July 5 and 13, the German 4th Panzer Army lost 612 armored vehicles. The losses of the 3rd German Panzer Corps by July 15 amounted to 240 tanks out of 310 available.
The total losses of the parties in the oncoming tank battle near Prokhorovka, taking into account the actions of the Soviet troops against the 4th German tank army and the Kempf army group, are estimated as follows. 500 tanks and self-propelled guns were lost on the Soviet side, and 300 on the German side. Kross claims that after the Battle of Prokhorov, Hauser's sappers blew up wrecked German equipment that could not be repaired and stood in no man's land. After August 1, so many faulty equipment accumulated in German repair shops in Kharkov and Bogodukhov that it had to be sent even to Kyiv for repairs.
Of course, the German Army Group South suffered the biggest losses in the first seven days of fighting, even before the battle of Prokhorovka. But the main significance of the Prokhorov battle lies not even in the damage that was inflicted on the German tank formations, but in the fact that the Soviet soldiers dealt a severe blow and managed to stop the SS tank divisions rushing to Kursk. This undermined the morale of the elite of the German tank forces, after which they finally lost faith in the victory of German weapons.

Kursk in brief about the battle

• The offensive of the German army
• The offensive of the Red Army
• General results
• About the Battle of Kursk even shorter
• Video about the Battle of Kursk

How did the Battle of Kursk begin?

• Hitler decided that it was in the location of the Kursk Bulge that a turning point in the seizure of territory should occur. The operation was called "Citadel" and was supposed to involve the Voronezh and Central fronts.
• But, in one thing, Hitler was right, Zhukov and Vasilevsky agreed with him, the Kursk salient was to become one of the main battles and, undoubtedly, the main one of the future ones.
• That is how Zhukov and Vasilevsky reported to Stalin. Zhukov was able to roughly estimate the possible forces of the invaders.

• German weapons were updated and increased in volume. Thus, a grandiose mobilization was carried out. The Soviet army, namely those fronts that the Germans were counting on, were approximately equal in terms of their equipment.
• In some ways, the Russians were winning.
• In addition to the Central and Voronezh fronts (under the command of Rokossovsky and Vatutin, respectively), there was also a secret front - Stepnoy, under the command of Konev, about which the enemy did not know anything.
• The steppe front became insurance for two main directions.
• The Germans have been preparing for this offensive since the spring. But when they launched an attack in the summer, this did not come as an unexpected blow to the Red Army.
• The Soviet army also did not sit idle. Eight defensive lines were built at the supposed site of the battle.

Tactics of warfare on the Kursk Bulge

• It was thanks to the developed qualities of a military leader, and the work of intelligence, that the command of the Soviet army was able to understand the plans of the enemy and the defense-offensive plan came up perfectly.
• Defensive lines were built with the help of the population living near the battlefield.
  The German side built the plan in such a way that the Kursk Bulge should help to make the front line more even.
• If this succeeded, then the next stage would be to develop an offensive in the center of the state.

The offensive of the German army

The offensive of the Red Army

General results

Intelligence as an important part of the Battle of Kursk

About the Battle of Kursk even shorter
One of the largest battlefields during the Great Patriotic War was the Kursk Bulge. The battle is briefly described below.

All the fighting that took place during the Battle of Kursk took place from July 5 to August 23, 1943. The German command hoped during this battle to destroy all Soviet troops representing the Central and Voronezh fronts. At that time, they were actively defending Kursk. If the Germans had been successful in this battle, the initiative in the war would have returned to the Germans. In order to implement their plans, the German command allocated more than 900 thousand soldiers, 10 thousand guns of various calibers, and 2.7 thousand tanks and 2050 aircraft were allocated in support. New tanks of the Tiger and Panther class, as well as new Focke-Wulf 190 A fighters and Heinkel 129 attack aircraft took part in this battle.

The command of the Soviet Union hoped to bleed the enemy during his offensive, and then conduct a large-scale counterattack. Thus, the Germans did exactly what the Soviet army expected. The scope of the battle was truly grandiose, the Germans sent almost the entire army and all available tanks to the attack. However, the Soviet troops stood to the death, and the defensive lines were not surrendered. On the Central Front, the enemy advanced 10-12 kilometers; on Voronezh, the depth of the enemy’s passage was 35 kilometers, but the Germans could not go further.

The outcome of the battle on the Kursk Bulge was determined by the battle of tanks near the village of Prokhorovka, which took place on July 12. It was the largest tank battle in history, more than 1.2 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery units were thrown into battle. On this day, the German troops lost more than 400 tanks, and the invaders were driven back. After that, the Soviet troops went on an active offensive, and on August 23 the Battle of Kursk was over with the liberation of Kharkov, and with this event the further defeat of Germany became inevitable.