By Matija Šerić

The Battle of Kursk ended any realistic hopes for a German victory on the Eastern Front. Just days before the battle at Prokhorovka, Anglo-American forces attacked Italy, forcing Hitler to divert valuable units from the Eastern Front. On July 13, Operation Citadel was officially canceled, and Hoth’s Panzer Army was ordered to fight its way back to the positions from which it had launched the attack on July 5.

The Battle of Kursk ended indecisively, but immediately afterward, Soviet counteroffensives inflicted heavy blows on the Germans. The second part of Vasilevsky’s and Zhukov’s plan could now be activated. German commanders, after witnessing the extraordinary Soviet losses, did not believe the Soviets possessed any offensive capacity. However, the true significance of the Battle of Kursk lies not so much in the persistent and firm defense but in the offensive that followed.

Soviet Counteroffensives: Kutuzov and Rumyantsev

Operation Kutuzov began on the northern edge of the Kursk salient on July 12. Soviet forces attacked well-fortified defensive lines with minefields, trenches, barbed wire, and other obstacles. The goal was to destroy German troop concentrations around Orel and Bryansk and to decapitate the entire German central front. The attack met strong resistance but was highly successful. Assault forces were concentrated in a narrow corridor to break open a gap in German lines. Strongly supported by aircraft, a combined infantry-tank attack followed, breaking through the German lines. The attack owed much to the strategy and vision of Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who had been liquidated during Stalin’s purges. On August 5, the Soviets liberated Orel, and by August 18, Bryansk was in Soviet hands.

On the southern part of the Kursk salient, the Rumyantsev counteroffensive was conducted under Zhukov’s direct control. On August 3, an attack was launched using the reserves of the Steppe Front to reinforce the exhausted troops who had had to stop the German attack in July. The goal was the city of Kharkov, from which Red Army troops had been expelled twice before due to skillful German counterattacks. The Red Army liberated Belgorod on August 5. However, near Kharkov, regrouped German Panzer divisions launched a counterattack against the exposed Soviet tank armies and threatened to repeat their previous successes. This time, Soviet troops were deployed much more effectively, and on August 28, Kharkov was finally liberated.

Stalin at the Front

The mood throughout Russia was one of excitement and relief. The victory prompted Stalin to make his only visit to the front during the entire war. On August 1, he left his dacha near Kunstevo by a special train. The locomotive and cars were camouflaged. The dictator arrived at the Western Front, now many kilometers from Moscow, where he spent the night without incident. The next day, he visited the Kalinin Front in the north, where he stayed in a peasant’s hut. He did not visit either officers or soldiers and returned to Moscow the next day.

Stalin’s motives can only be guessed. Perhaps he hoped to impress his entourage, although such a modest visit could hardly do that. Perhaps he felt uneasy about sending so many of his countrymen into combat zones he had never seen. Given that he had accused many others of cowardice, he had strong motives to avoid being accused of the same. Whatever the reason, a few days later he sent a letter to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt explaining the delay in sending a message: “I had to make personal visits to different sectors of the front, and to do so more frequently…”

Celebrating Victory

For those Russians who survived the Battle of Kursk, good days followed. After Stalin’s special announcement that Orel and Belgorod had been liberated, a period of victory salutes began on August 5, 1943. Yuri Levitan, Moscow’s most popular radio announcer, then, with his deep voice, spoke words that would turn into familiar music over the next two years:

“Order of the Supreme Commander to Colonel General Popov, Colonel General Sokolovsky, Army General Rokossovsky, Army General Vatutin, Colonel General Konev… Today, August 5, the units of the Bryansk Front, in cooperation with units of the Western and Central Fronts, after fierce fighting, have taken the city of Orel. Today also, the units of the Steppe and Voronezh Fronts have defeated enemy forces and taken the city of Belgorod.”

After the announcement of the units that first broke into these two cities and the statement that they would receive the titles “Orel Regiments” and “Belgorod Regiments,” for the first time, the following message was broadcast:

“Tonight, August 5, at 24:00, the capital of our country, Moscow, will greet the brave units that liberated Orel and Belgorod with twelve artillery salvos from 120 guns. I express gratitude to all the units that participated in the offensive… Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the fight for the freedom of our country. Death to the German invaders. Supreme Commander, Marshal of the Soviet Union, Stalin.”

With slight modifications, this would become a sacred text that Russia would hear on the radio more than 300 times before the final victory over Germany and Japan. Thus began the period of victory salutes.

Conclusion

There was nothing accidental in the Soviet decision to celebrate the victory at Kursk with the first victory salutes and fireworks. The Soviet command knew that by winning the Battle of Kursk, they had effectively won the war. This view is shared by postwar German historians. According to Walter Görlitz, Stalingrad was the political-psychological turning point, while the German failure in the Kursk offensive and subsequent defeats were the military turning point for the entire war on the Eastern Front. Kursk is indeed the true turning point of the war in the East. The Germans permanently lost the strategic initiative, and the gains they made during the battle would be the last they would achieve during the war. After the Soviet offensives Kutuzov and Rumyantsev, the Red Army recorded victory after victory, while the Germans suffered defeat after defeat.

The German High Command, as was clear even to Hitler, was forced into stubborn and persistent defensive operations in the following phases of the war. Until the summer of 1943, the Germans had mostly advanced, and after the Battle of Kursk, a continuous German retreat followed. The number of casualties on both sides at Kursk is hard to determine with certainty. The Russians claim that 70,000 German officers and soldiers were killed during the defensive phase of the battle. They also claim to have destroyed over 3,000 tanks, 844 artillery pieces, 1,392 aircraft, and 5,000 trucks. The latest Russian statistics acknowledge 70,330 killed, captured, and missing, with 107,517 sick and wounded. The Germans claim to have destroyed 1,800 tanks, 1,000 anti-tank weapons, and captured 24,000 soldiers just on the southern part of the salient.

Despite the heavy losses, the USSR achieved a great victory after which it could no longer lose the war; it was only a matter of how long German resistance would last. The victory gave Stalin great legitimacy at the negotiations in Tehran and other Allied conferences, where the USSR was treated as the most important member of the Anti-Hitler Coalition. Military victories and enormous human losses brought the Soviets political power, which they readily used. On the other hand, at Kursk, the Germans suffered unsustainable losses, lost valuable territory and the strategic initiative, which, alongside the Allied landing in Sicily, placed the Third Reich in an even more difficult position.