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| Battle of Khursk ( July 5, 1943 to August 23, 1943) |
Seventy-eight
years ago, a battle in a remote part of Southern Russia finally turned the
fortunes of the combatants in the Second World War.
The
Nazi forces had just suffered a devastating defeat in Stalingrad but Hitler was
determined to regain momentum. Desperate to defeat the Soviets, he gathered his
forces for one final assault in the summer of 1943 at the city of Khursk, seven
hundred kilometers west of Stalingrad, near the Ukrainian border.
The
numbers associated with the attack and siege of Stalingrad are mind-numbing.
Fought between August, 1942 and February, 1943, the Axis forces totaled 1,040,000
men while the Soviet force totaled 1,143,000.
By
the final count, the Nazi forces had lost perhaps 900,000 soldiers while the
Soviets lost 1,130,000 men. Half the German Luftwaffe had been shot down. The
fate of the civilians who stayed behind to defend the city was worse. Thousand
died of starvation and disease. Indeed, people were reduced to eating rats and
straw. The ferocity of the battle can be gauged by these two facts: the average
life of a soldier in that battle was just one day and, second, only 4,000 German
soldiers returned home alive after Stalingrad. It remains the largest and most
deadly battle ever fought in human history.
The
defeat humiliated Hitler. Determined to regain momentum and to defeat the Soviets
once and for all, he ordered a counter- attack in the beginning of July, 1943.
He aimed to encircle the Soviet forces inside a bulge in the battlefield at the
village of Khursk. He reinforced his army with tanks, aircraft and men from the
Western Front. In all, 900,000 troops, 2,700 tanks and 2,100 planes took part. The
Soviets anticipated the battle and heavily fortified the area. Stalin replied
with 2,500,000 men, 7,360 tanks and up to 3,500 aircraft.
In
contrast to the battle of Stalingrad, the battle of Khursk ended quickly and
with finality. The battle turned out to be a disaster for the Nazi army. In
just five weeks, the Soviets fully defeated Hitler’s armies. It remains the
largest armored (tank) battle in history, with the Germans losing 7,000 cannon
and tanks, 3,000 airplanes, while suffering 710,000 casualties.
The
battle of Khursk finally dismantled the Nazi war machine. The vaunted Luftwaffe
was almost completely destroyed. The Nazis hardly had any motorized artillery or
tanks remaining. From being the most feared offensive juggernaut the world had
ever seen, they were reduced to a purely defensive role. Before Stalingrad, the
Nazis had never lost a battle; after Khursk, they didn’t win a single major
combat for the rest of the war. The Russians proceeded westwards and pushed the
Nazis slowly back across Eastern Europe.
It
was only time before the Third Reich fell. While the Soviets rolled into
Eastern Germany in June of 1944, the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy.
In less than a year, on May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered.
Mohan Ashtakala (mohanauthor.com) is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation." a literary romance. He is published by Books We Love (bookswelove.com)
