Celticguy

This battle is often cited as a major turning point in the war on the eastern front. However I think that the numbers beg to differ.

The losses from the operation were far greater on the Soviet side. As you can see....from sources compiled by wikipedia...

1,000 german tanks lost to 7,000 soviet, looks like a 7:1 kill ratio in terms of equipment in terms of guns, tanks, and aircraft. This is considered a soviet victory?!

Also in terms of manpower it was at least a 3:1 kill ratio in favour of the Nazis.

I think this battle in clouded in soviet propaganda sentiments and the real reason for german defeat in Russia is seen in the general overall improvement in Soviet training and tactics and increasing manpower as well as weakening german numbers and morale. More importantly was the opening of the second front by the american and british forces and the diversion of german resources and attention westwards.

As you can see the luftwaffe had complete advantage over the soviet airforce in this battle , however from then onwards the soviet airforce improved drastically.

I think the lesson here is that yet again airpower is key, it's probabaly what prevented the soviets from completely destroying the germans sooner.

Finally, Kursk showed yet another example of the appalling losses the soviets had to suffer to prevent the germans from winning.

Cedar Brown

There is no such thing as a positive kill ratio against the Red Army. No matter how many you kill, you've still lost proportionally less. If I remember correctly, I'm not real big into WWII, Kursk was fought to stop a German offensive and it was successful in that regard.

Anyway, people are quicker to say that they've won than lost. Malplaquet is considered a great victory for Marlborough even though he lost twice as many men as the French.

sculptingman

Winning a battle has nothing to do with losses.
It has to do with who achieves their objective.

The Soviet Objective was to crush Germany's ability to advance.

At great cost, they achieved their objective, so they won. Kursk reversed German fortunes in the East and caused losses the Germans could not afford, even tho they were smaller than Soviet losses.

By the same token, it is not always understood that Napoleon LOST in Russia. The Russians destroyed their own crops in retreat, leaving Napoleon nothing for men or horses. This eventually led to his retreat from Moscow...
And the decimation of his army...

Doing this cost the Russians far more in terms of famine and hardship that winter... but they had driven out Napoleon despite their inability to defeat him in arms...

But it does not matter how you win... all that matters is that you did.

Even after Midway, the US had plenty of major battle in the Pacific... But it was at Midway where Japan suffered the blows that would turn the tide of the war.

Kursk turned the tide of the German invasion and all subsequent victories were the result of ground work laid in Kursk.

Ronaldus Maximus

Hello people. I'm new to this forum and began posting today. WWII is one of my favorites topics and I'll choose this thread as my first post in the WWII forum.

IMO, Zitadelle was not the turning point in the war against Russia. It was the German defeat in the Russian Moscow offensive in the winter of 41-42 after the failure of Operation Typhoon. Zitadelle just confirmed that major German offensives were a thing of the past. After the failure of Zitadelle the Soviet's just produced one offensive after another and completely captured the initiative. It also didn't help Germany that the Anglo-Americans invaded Sicily.

Cheers

Edgewaters

Bingo.

This is one of the truths of war that chess was invented to teach.

sabio

loses are only important in regards to your and your opponents ability to reinforce and replace equipment. If you ever play Starcraft; you'll see this. The Zerg race takes heavy causalities, but they can hatch troops so fast, their loses are actually less in proportion.

Celticguy

In my opinion a major "decisive victory" involves routing the enemy. Napoleon was different, there were no decisive battles in that campaign asuch other than a Napoleon being forced to retreat and getting stranded in the Russian winter. So it's difficult to compare the two.

Also the germans before the Kursk were alread driven out of the Caucausus and were already on the defensive before deciding between a "concentrated" attack to "bleed" the soviet forces or to take the defensive completely. That was the debate at the time. Other than the disaster of the Stalingrad campaign there were no major german advances on the Russian front for 18 months before Kursk.

They caused losses to the Germans, but if you only look at the figures and knew nothing about the battle you would have come to the conclusion the the germans decisively routed the Soviet Forces.

Midway was a decisive victory for the americans, it is not comparable to the kursk for the soviets. The americans sank most of the Japanese aircraft carriers. Japan lost 4 to americas 1, the americans inflicted more casualties losing 300 of their own to about 3,000 japanese dead. So midway was very much a decisive victory for the americans. That historical fact I don't dispute.

I think the major soviets decisive victories came later in 1944 with for example "operation bagration"

Celticguy

I agree without doubt that the defeat of the nazis at the battle of moscow was much more important stragetically and could definately be regarded as decisive action from the soviet union army.

They broke the momentum of the german rapid advance, inflicted great casualties ( recieved more themselves) and forced the germans back 200 miles while saving their capital from capture.

Any chance of the german winning depended on speed and momentum and for that reason historians commonly regard the Russian winter and Stalins asian reserves as the turning point in where the nazis lost the war.

Wobomagonda

I'm not sure of the figures offhand, but I believe that something to the tune of 1/2 of the entire Nazi Armored Corps was destroyed here, including some of their experimental model tanks.

Celticguy

As far as I know they lost about 1,000 tanks ( includes assault guns, about the same as what they lost at the "battle of the bulge".

If you contrast this with the soviet offensive in 1944 "operation Bagration", the germans lost over 2,000 tanks, while the soviet losses were far less than at Kursk, about 3,000.