Battle Opening Summary
Operation Citadel was the codename given by the German's for the attack on Kursk, it was suggested to Hitler as a "Hail Mary" for taking Russia. What came to Hitler as a great idea, turned out to be Germany's worst move in Russia.
Germany started their attack on Kursk with a mere 780,000 men VS almost 2 million Russian soldiers. As well as less men, they also had less tanks, close to 3,000 German Panzer's VS over 5,000 Russian tanks. The reason why Russia had almost double the amount of tanks is because the factories were able to pump out a lot of T-34 Medium tanks compared to the low production rate of the German Panzer's and Tiger's. Although the German forces had fire-power superiority compared the Soviet forces, but were vastly outnumbered.
Below is the German attack plan on Kursk, the blue arrows indicate the German push into Kursk and the dotted red circles are Russian garrisons defending.
Operation Citadel was the codename given by the German's for the attack on Kursk, it was suggested to Hitler as a "Hail Mary" for taking Russia. What came to Hitler as a great idea, turned out to be Germany's worst move in Russia.
Germany started their attack on Kursk with a mere 780,000 men VS almost 2 million Russian soldiers. As well as less men, they also had less tanks, close to 3,000 German Panzer's VS over 5,000 Russian tanks. The reason why Russia had almost double the amount of tanks is because the factories were able to pump out a lot of T-34 Medium tanks compared to the low production rate of the German Panzer's and Tiger's. Although the German forces had fire-power superiority compared the Soviet forces, but were vastly outnumbered.
Below is the German attack plan on Kursk, the blue arrows indicate the German push into Kursk and the dotted red circles are Russian garrisons defending.