p After the Stalingrad defeat Hitler Germany still had great strength and considerable resources, and doubly so because, taking advantage of the absence of the second front, it could deploy troops eastward from the West. The German generals were bent on avenging Stalingrad, regaining the lost strategic initiative and, ultimately, turning the tide of the war in their favour.

p Hopes were pinned on new weapons. German industry was working round the clock to produce Panther and Tiger panzers with heavy armour and considerable firing power. It was also building Focke-Wulf-igoA planes which flew at over 600 kmph and had four cannon and six machine-guns. "Total mobilisation" enabled Germany to field 42 divisions more on the Soviet-German Front than at the beginning of the war.

p Nazi planners drew up Operation Citadel, envisaging a south-eastward drive from south of Orel and a north- eastward from north of Kharkov. German thrusts were to converge near Kursk, cutting off the Kursk Bulge, and encircling and destroying the Soviet forces in that salient. In general outline, the plan followed the lines of the brilliant Red Army operation at Stalingrad. After the initial success the German offensive would develop deeper into Soviet territory, either east to the Volga or north-east to Moscow.

p Fifty divisions, with another 20 on their flanks, were massed for Citadel. Almost a quarter of these troops were panzer and motorised units. Never since the war broke out was the deployment offerees so massive on a relatively small frontage, 109 never the deployment of panzers and self-propelled guns so concentrated. More than 2,000 planes—three quarters of the Luftwaffe’s strength on the Soviet-German front—would render air support.

p On the night before the jump-off, the German troops heard Hitler’s message. It said in part: "You will participate in large-scale offensive battles, the outcome of which may settle the war. More than ever before, your victory will convince the whole world that all resistance to the German army is, in the end, futile."  [109•1  What an object lesson of how the German imperialists had digested their Stalingrad experience! They were still dreaming of conquering the world!

p The preparations for the German blow were about over. The nazis would strike any minute. Churchill, however, for reasons of his own, kept assuring the Soviet Government that no German offensive would ensue. On June 19, 1943, he wrote that he had reason to believe that Hitler was vacillating and intending "to delay his plans for a large-scale offensive against Russia this summer".  [109•2  On June 27, he wrote that "it may even prove that you will not be heavily attacked this summer".  [109•3  If the Soviet Union had given credence to this information, the German offensive may have spelled disaster.

p However, the nazi intention of mounting a large-scale offensive at Kursk did not escape the notice of the Soviet Command, then engaged in planning a fresh offensive of its own. The question to decide was, who would jump first. The Soviet Supreme Command decided to let the enemy do so, in order to mince up his forces in defensive fighting and then go over to the attack. This was the most realistic plan in those circumstances.

p The German plan, on the other hand, was stamped with the usual brand of reckless adventurism. The Operation Citadel order issued by OKW on April 15, 1943, expressed confidence that it would culminate in a’"rapid and decisive success" and would be a torch that would set the world alight.  [109•4  But the Soviet Armed Forces, with the victories at 110 Moscow and at Stalingrad, stood firmly in the way of the German aggressors.

p The Soviet Command anticipated the direction of the nazi main blows. A strong defence in depth was built and strategic reserves were activated and made ready for battle. The depth of the defences of the Central and Voronezh fronts, standing directly in the way of the nazi assault, added up to 150 to 190 km. And behind them was stationed the Steppe Front, the Supreme Command’s strategic reserve with its own defence lines and fortifications, behind which ran the strategic Don River. All in all, eight defensive zones and lines 250 to 300 km deep were ready by the time the enemy moved into action.

p Soviet reconnaissance obtained exact information about the direction of the nazi main blows, and, what was more, about the zero hour. Ten minutes before the enemy began his artillery build-up, at 02.20 hours on July 5, the Soviet guns opened up with a counter-barrage. The nazis suffered considerable casualties and spent something like two hours restoring order in their lines and then began their artillery bombardment. The Soviet side replied with another artillery shoot.

p Heavy fighting ensued. The nazi offensive developed slowly, the Germans suffering heavy losses. The Soviet troops engaged in an active type of defence, manoeuvring the reserves and mounting swift counter-blows against enemy wedges. It was the first time the Red Army committed its tank armies and large anti-tank artillery units.

p The courage of the Soviet soldiers and officers was boundless.

p In one air battle A. K. Gorovets, flying a LA-5 built on money donated by the collective farmers of Gorky Region, shot down nine nazi bombers, becoming the world’s only flyer to make nine consecutive hits.

p The German troops edged forward very slowly. Their last hope was to try to breach the front at Prokhorovka in a narrow sector (8-10 km) and then proceed to Kursk. The nazi command built up a tremendous armour density—something like 100 tanks and self-propelled guns per kilometre of frontage.

p The Prokhorovka battle, involving 1,200 tanks  [110•1  and a large number of planes on both sides, opened on July 12.

p In a week of fighting the Germans advanced some 6-8 km in the Orel-Kursk direction and some 30-35 km in the Belgorod-Kursk direction, and this at an extremely high price: Hitler’s finest panzer divisions had ceased to exist. Here is how Goerlitz describes the outcome: "The last of the units capable of attacking burnt to cinders; the neck of the panzer weapon was twisted."  [111•1  The time had come for a giant Soviet counteroffensive, which jumped off duly without the slightest hitch—a model of warcraft. A powerful blow was struck on July 12, 1943. Soviet troops attacked from north-east (Western Front under General V. D. Sokblovsky and Bryansk Front under General M. M. Popov) and south-east (Steppe Front under General I. S. Konev and Voronezh Front under General N. F. Vatutin), with troojjs of the Central Front (General K. K. Rokossovsky) participating.

p The Kursk Battle, in which the German Command reckoned on regaining the strategic initiative, revealed the complete failure of the offensive strategy employed by Hitler and his generals. From then on the strategic initiative never again passed out of Soviet and Allied hands.

p The post-Kursk Soviet offensive inflicted heavy losses on the nazis, proving that their defensive strategy, too, was a failure. It became increasingly obvious that Hitler Germany was doomed.

p Orel and Belgorod were cleared of the enemy on August 5, and by mid-August the entire nazi group in the Orel area was smashed. Kharkov was liberated on August 23.

p Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive gained in scale. Huge tracts of Soviet territory were being cleared. The nazi exodus assumed massive proportions. Gradually, the Kursk counteroffensive developed into a strategic general offensive along the frontage running from Velikiye Luki to the Black Sea.

p The Ukraine east of the Dnieper was liberated in AugustSeptember 1943. The Soviet troops reached the river simultaneously along a 6oo-km line. The Dnieper, wide and deep, was a formidable obstacle, on which the nazis pinned their hopes. They fortified the western bank mightily and prepared for a long siege. But the Soviet troops force-crossed the river and captured 23 bridgeheads.

p This forced-crossing on the march after the bitter and 112 sustained offensive fighting, calling no rest, using everything that floated without a- preliminary build-up, without waiting for special river-crossing equipment, has nothing to equal it in the history of wars. It was an exploit not of individual heroes, but of large units of attackers. This is reflected in the fact that 2,000 of those who participated in the crossing were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. The first step had been made in the liberation of the Ukraine west of the Dnieper.

p During the swift Soviet drive to the Dnieper, battles broke out in the southern sector of the front for. the possession of the Donets Basin. It took less than a month to crush the strong enemy force there, and liberate the basin.

p The Red Army used one of the bridgeheads on the western Dnieper bank, nearthe town of Lyutezh, to mount the attack against the distant approaches to Kiev on November 3, 1943. And by 04.00 hours on November 6, the day before the a6th anniversary of the October Revolution, the capital of the Soviet Ukraine had regained its freedom.

p North of Kursk the Red Army performed the Smolensk Operation, crowned by the recapture of the area between the rivers Dnieper and Western Dvina, crossed by the main communication lines from the centre of the country to Byelorussia. Subsequent offensive operations liberated the eastern part of Byelorussia.

p In the summer and autumn of 194$ the Red Army advanced 300-600 km westward, liberating more than 40,000 localities, including 162 towns. The time had come for the final banishment of the enemy from Soviet territory. The hour of retribution was drawing closer, too, for Germany proper.

Marshal of the Soviet Union A. M. Vasilevsky summed tip the purport of the 1941-1943 fighting as follows: "We must stress again and again the organic link between the battle for Moscow, the bat;tle on the Volga and the Kursk Battle. Those were the three biggest politico-military events of the first two years of the Patriotic War, signifying three stages in the Red Army struggle for the possession of the strategic initiative, with the Stalingrad Battle turning out to be decisive in securing a radical change in the course of the Second World War. The battles on the Kursk Bulge consolidated once and for all the strategic initiative of the Red Army."  [112•1