In the long history of mankind, the two world wars are undoubtedly unprecedented disasters in the history of human civilization, especially the Second World War, this great war that affected the whole world, brought disasters to almost all countries, among them, the Soviet-German war was particularly tragic, Germany mobilized a total of 14.2 million troops, casualties, disappearances and captured reached 11.8 million, almost everyone was wounded, and the victory of the Soviet Union was not good, a total of 34.6 million troops mobilized, there were 29.6 million non-commissioned casualties, Missing and captured. Civilian casualties totaled about 20 million on both sides, and the key points of this fierce war were the defense of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk. Among them, the Battle of Kursk, as the largest tank battle in human history, has left a strong mark in the entire history of war.
Battle of Kursk
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" >, a world war that determined the fate of the two countries</h1>
Time came to 1943, the fierce Stalingrad defense battle has not yet dissipated, although the Soviet army has achieved a decisive victory, but the fact that a total of one million people on both sides have also hurt both sides, although the German army collapsed, but as the commander of the Southern Army Group, the supreme commander Marshal Manstein has begun to formulate a counterattack plan, the original Soviet-German front situation is very anxious, so, after the defeat of the Battle of Stalingrad, Manstein began to take the initiative to abandon important positions, the entire Southern Army began to shrink, On the one hand, the enemy was paralyzed, and on the other hand, the German attack was also completed.
As early as February, Manstein commanded Army Group South to launch a counterattack against the Soviet Southwestern Front, and in March, it severely damaged the Soviet Southwestern Front, and at the same time, due to the early adventurism of the Soviet Army, it had to abandon the newly retaken Kharkov and fully retreat to the southern region of Kursk. It can be said that at this time the Soviet front had reached a moment of imminent collapse, and the Fifth Army at that time had been destroyed, so the Supreme Command of the Soviet Union had to quickly transfer the First Tank Army, the Twenty-first Army and the Sixty-fourth Army to the direction of Kursk. As a result, the forces of the two sides in the region stabilized and entered a stalemate.
It must be noted that although Germany suffered the worst defeat on the Soviet-German battlefield at Stalingrad, the German army at this time still held part of the strategic initiative and still had the ability to launch a strategic offensive on its own. This is also the basis for Manstein's preparation for a strategic large-scale offensive. At this time, Manstein also understood that the battlefield situation had gradually tilted to the Soviet side, and only by inflicting extremely large casualties on the Soviet army could it regain the initiative, and the German army itself had reached the end of the crossbow, so it was necessary to take advantage of the fact that the Soviet army was unstable in the new occupied area, with the momentum of a quick battle and a quick decision, quickly open the situation, and hit the Soviet army by surprise. In this way, the Germans were able to regain their superiority. At that time, all people with strategic vision knew that this battle around Kursk would almost determine the fate of the Soviet Union and Germany, and once Germany completed the counterattack, it had a breathing space, and the subsequent variables were unknown, and the Victory of the Soviet Army in this battle would completely suppress the German army, so that Germany would no longer have a place to live on the Eastern Front, let alone maintain an offensive posture.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > Second, the micro-master determines the key factors of the war</h1>
As the supreme ruler of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler had an almost fatal flaw: he was good at micro-manipulation. He probably did not know that in the ancient East there was a law of victory for soldiers, that is, he who could do it would not rule, and he would win. Originally, in Manstein's plan, it was through roundabout tactics to directly insert Rostov, so as to complete the strategy of encircling the Red Army, so that the defensive counterattack could be successfully completed. However, Hitler at this time showed a conservative side, in his plan, just to destroy the salient part of Kursk, if Manstein's thinking is at the strategic level, then Hitler at this time showed only the tactics of one city and one place, what can be done, the leader has the final say, Manstein had to accept and formulate the Kursk campaign plan.
Then Manstein said that the Soviet army can first launch an attack, and now the German army itself is in a state of assembly and can launch a counterattack at any time, so it can lure the enemy to go deeper, only need to consume the Soviet army's supplies and momentum, you can counterattack again, then wrap up and cut off the entire offensive Soviet army's back road, the results will be huge, but Hitler does not think that because of the battle of Stalingrad, his entire operational thinking tends to be conservative, such as this is to lure the enemy deeper, but also to encircle the rear, completely out of his plan. In the case of Party A's disagreement, Manstein had to retreat to the second place, choosing the last set of plans, and must first take advantage of the unstable foothold of the Soviet army after the rapid attack before, and launch an attack before the Soviet army, so as to disrupt the deployment of the Soviet army and complete the purpose of defensive counterattack. It must be noted that at this time, if the German army counterattacks quickly, it may indeed work, but the casualties will also increase, after all, this is to capture the enemy position, even if the enemy's incomplete defensive system, can pose a great threat to the attacking side.
These three plans, if the ancient Chinese strategists had three strategies, hitler chose the next strategy, or the most unfavorable next strategy. The most fatal thing is that although the third plan was reluctantly adopted, but in the specific combat strategy, it was plunged into an endless war, and Manstein wanted to directly fight on both flanks and launch a pincer offensive to eliminate the entire Kursk salient of the Soviet army in one fell swoop, which was supported by Marshal Krueger, commander-in-chief of Army Group Center, but was opposed by Guderian, who was also the third famous German general. Because of this plan, it was inevitable that the armored forces that had slowed down from the Battle of Stalingrad would once again suffer a devastating blow. This led to the bankruptcy of Guderian's plan to reorganize the armored forces.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" >3. Tank torrents in Kursk</h1>
In the midst of constant quarrels, Hitler finally made the decision to adopt the Manstein Plan, which was later known as the "fortress" military operation, but although the planning had been completed between April and May, Hitler's left and right swings and hesitation made the entire German army extremely inefficient in preparing for war, and at this time on the Front front of the German Army, the Soviet Army had completed the construction of basic fortifications. It can be said that the German army has lost the possibility of a frontal breakthrough through Kursk, but Hitler is still full of confidence in his blitzkrieg and finally decided to launch a general attack on July 5.
Nearly 8,000 tanks and tanks were put in between the two sides, and the largest tank battle in history began. Due to the grinding of the German army, the Soviet army actually knew the time when the German army launched the general offensive, so Zhukov decided to preemptively attack and take the lead in shelling the German positions, which not only caused huge losses to the assembled German army, but also disrupted the German army's offensive plan, causing a delay of nearly three hours, but the German Southern Army Group was the head iron, and still launched a counterattack according to the plan, and the Fourth Panzer Army, regardless of losses, hit the Soviet Sixty-seventh Guards Infantry Division retreating step by step. Directly tearing open a large hole in the two lines of defense of the Soviet army. As soon as the Soviet commander Vatutin saw that the German army was so fierce, he immediately launched a quick call for help, and Vasilevsky was also very face-saving, supporting the Second and Tenth Tank Corps of the Fifth Guard Army with a total of 353 tanks. At the same time, the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Union, Comrade Stalin, personally sent a telegram to Vatutin, demanding that at all costs, the German army be prevented from breaking through Kursk.
With the arrival of reinforcements, the German attack was initially contained, and in the case of being unable to break through Oberyan head-on, it was decided to adopt the tactic of breaking through on the right side and turn to Prokhorovka, and the prokhorovka tank battle in which the two sides invested a total of more than 1500 tank armor was officially staged. In this final contest between the Tiger and the T-34, the 88 mm gun of the Tiger tank played a huge advantage, and a large number of T-34s were scrapped by the Tiger tank before they entered the engagement distance, and the Tiger defeated the T-34. The Soviets lost at least more than 200 tanks in the campaign.
With the large number of Soviet reserves invested, the entire German army was now caught in the sea of people, and Hitler had to consider stopping the fortress operation, and finally what should have been a major armageddon between the two sides turned into a local battle.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" >, the Italian ally</h1>
With the battle of Kursk on the eastern front, the western front also launched a new round of offensive at this time, that is, the Sicily landing launched by the British and American armies on July 10, at this time, Italy as an ally of the German army can be described as very far-reaching, and its own internal situation has been violently turbulent, so that the German army has to deploy troops to support Italy, so as to resist the attack of the Anglo-American coalition army, after all, it is a fire in the backyard, and the German army has to pay attention.
At the same time, although the German army achieved good results in Prokhorovka, the Soviet army on the opposite side still had thousands of tanks, and although the T34 was indeed insufficient, the ants could bite elephants. Hitler could no longer see a victory at the Battle of Kursk, and the shadow of the defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad a few months earlier forced him to consider the problem of entrenching on both the Eastern and Western fronts.
However, Hitler never expected that his Italian allies would be defeated so quickly, and as the Allies landed in Sicily, the Italian army retreated almost without firing a shot, and the entire coastal defense line was destroyed in a very short time, and the Anglo-American army soon invaded Messina.
As the German army transferred troops from the eastern front into the western front, the Kursk campaign, which had just entered the climax of the decisive battle, had to quickly turn into a local war, from a stalemate state to a german inferiority, and the German army had to begin a large-scale retreat, so it returned to the situation of the two sides before the Kursk campaign.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" >5</h1>
War is a game of enemy advance and retreat, the enemy retreats from me, as the German offensive falls into fatigue, the Soviet army launched a counterattack, this time the French "Normandy" air group and the Soviet Air Force, completely won the air supremacy of Kursk, the entire Oryol region of the German army has not seen a little hope, although the German resistance is still complete, but the Soviet Union, which occupies the number of chariots and the superiority of troop strength, does not give a chance at all, after all, all the costs have been paid, and now it is to reap the fruits of victory. This also shows that France, an ally, is far more reliable than Italy, and at this time Italy is engaged in Mussolini's ouster and wants to withdraw from the war completely.
The Germans in The Oryol salient were already in danger of being encircled, and Hitler agreed to abandon oryol's plan to move to the Hagen Line, and after the Battle of Oryol, the huge casualties on both sides had to make each other stop and lick their wounds, and although the Soviet army annihilated nearly 90,000 enemies, it itself paid 420,000 losses.
On the southern front, the final German counterattack also began, as Stalin issued an order for a rapid counteroffensive, causing the Soviet tank units to advance too fast, while their own infantry did not keep up, creating a disjoint. Manstein began a strategy of retreating to buy time to gather forces, a scaled-down version of the Second Plan that was first formulated. After the Germans lured the enemy deeper, the Germans, who had received supplies and ammunition, opened the counterattack mode, while the Soviets were still in pursuit mode, and the Forty-ninth Tank Brigade and the Seventeenth Tank Regiment of the Soviet First Tank Army were surrounded and annihilated by the Germans. But the biggest advantage of the Soviet army was the population, and with the arrival of reinforcements, the front was once again stabilized, and although the Soviet army was forced to retreat, some of its own troops were preserved.
In the Battle of Kharkov, the Soviet army annihilated 300,000 enemies, and their own side also lost nearly 250,000 troops, but after this battle, the German army had no chance to counterattack, and the entire eastern front was completely controlled by the Soviet army.
When it comes to the Battle of Kursk, people often marvel that this is a miracle created by modern science and technology in the war. But I have to admit that this war was a huge disaster for both sides, and although the Soviet Union won the war, the losses were incalculable, after all, it occurred in the Soviet Union. But at the same time, the victory of the war must be accompanied by sacrifice, the Battle of Kursk completely smashed the Initiative of the German Army on the Eastern Front, and the entire Eastern Front battlefield evolved into the Soviet Army's whale devouring and recovering the lost territory and conquering Eastern Europe, and the German army no longer had a threatening attack, and could only be forced to retreat. It can be said that it was the Soviet Union's strategy of exchanging attrition for consumption that successfully pulled the German army into the abyss of war. Precious time was bought for the victory of the entire world anti-fascist league.