WWII history

July 5 marks 75 years since start of history’s largest armor battle

July 5, 2018, marks 75 years since the beginning a landmark operation of World War II, the Battle of the Kursk Salient. Historian Alexei Issayev has prepared this comment for TASS regarding the combat operation has gone down in the military history of the world as the largest-ever battle of armored troops.

By April 1943, the impulse for the offensive, which the Red Army received after the crushing defeat of Nazi forces near Stalingrad at the beginning of the same year was largely warn out and the Soviet troops went over to defensive operations at the recommendation of the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Armed Forces, Marshal Georgy Zhukov.

Switching over to the defensive tactics seemed to be only correct decision. For the first time since the beginning of the war on the Soviet front, the Soviet military commanders received the data on the enemy’s plans. The German forces were preparing for an offensive under a plan codenamed Zitadelle [Citadel] that envisioned the leveling of a bulge in the German-held areas near the city of Kursk [530 km to the south of Moscow], the encirclement of Soviet troops there and a further breakthrough deep into the Soviet territory.