Why Germany Lost the Battle of Kursk 1943 (WW2 Documentary)
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In summer 1943, Germany and the Soviet Union fought the arguably biggest single battle in history with millions of men, thousands of tanks and artillery guns - the battle of Kursk. The German Army wanted to hit the Red Army so hard that they couldn’t go on the offensive again. And indeed, new research shows that the Soviets suffered shockingly high casualties, up to 6 times more men and equipment. But why then did the Germans lose this historic battle?
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» SOURCES
BESSONOV, EVGENI. Tank Rider. Into the Reich with the Red Army. New York, 2017.
GLANTZ, DAVID M./ORENSTEIN, HAROLD S. (Hg.), The Battle for Kursk 1943. The Soviet General Staff Study, London 1999.
GORBACH, VITALY G.: Nad Ognennoy Dugoy: Sovyetskaya aviatsiya v Kurskoy bitve Moscow 2007.
KRIVOSHEEV, GRIGORI F., Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, London/Pennsylvania 1997.
POPJEL, NIKOLAI N., Panzer greifen an, Berlin (Ost) 1964.
ROKOSSOWSKI, KONSTANTIN K., Soldatenpflicht. Erinnerungen eines Frontoberbefehlshabers Berlin (Ost) 1971.
RUTHERFORD, JEFF, Germany’s Total War: Combat and Occupation around the Kursk Salient, 1943, in: The Journal of Military History, 85 (2021), S. 954-979.
STADLER, SILVESTER (Hg.), Die Offensive gegen Kursk 1943. II. SS-Panzerkorps als Stoßkeil im Großkampf, Osnabrück 1980.
TÖPPEL, ROMAN, Kursk 1943: Die größte Schlacht des Zweiten Weltkrieges, 2017.
TÖPPEL, ROMAN, Kursk 1943: The Greatest Battle of the Second World War, Warwick 2018.
WAISS, WALTER: Chronik Kampfgeschwader Nr. 27 Boelcke. Teil 4: 01.01.1943-31.12.1943, Aachen 2007.
»CREDITS
Presented by: Jesse Alexander
Written by: Jesse Alexander
Director: Toni Steller & Florian Wittig
Director of Photography: Toni Steller
Sound: Above Zero
Editing: Toni Steller
Motion Design: Philipp Appelt
Mixing, Mastering & Sound Design: above-zero.com
Research by: Roman Töppel, Jesse Alexander
Fact checking: Jesse Alexander, Florian Wittig
Channel Design: Simon Buckmaster
Contains licensed material by getty images and AP
Maps: MapTiler/OpenStreetMap Contributors & GEOlayers3
Music Library: Epidemic Sound
All rights reserved - Real Time History GmbH 2023
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we both know the summer offensive was like kursk :/
worse, i tried to warn people.
Tanks and aircraft losses are certainly exaggerated. What are your sources exactly when it comes to casualities? Such claims are notoriously unreliable, 3 planes engaging one can easily become 3 victory claims while the one plane can simply be damaged. Also not sure why you feel the need to rewrite city names with politically correct ones that nobody ever used at the time.
Anyone who loves freedom owes such a debt to the Red Army that it can never be repaid.” - Ernest Hemingway
@@Summerland357 yeah, Stalin only killed several million of his own people and millions more Ukrainians nothing to see here move along
Those numbers are totaly nonsece. overall number of Soviet troops was around 12 000 000, number of tanks on average 20 000+. Where did you get this nonsence?
I can’t get over the production value of these videos. It’s really impressive.
thanks!
At the beginning the USSR had 6,000 tanks, at the end they lost 7,000. You're like CNN, the Russians have only shovels left. 😆
I can't get over how the West continues to inflate Soviet casualties, even today.
@@TheRealBillBobMost of initial war tanks were lost not in combat just like aircraft. They just WERE there with no crews fuel and other, like in storage or smth. Also T-26 for example had unique engine-transmittion block (parts couldn't be replaced from one tank to another) Anyways 7 thousand tank in battle of Kursk is way too much if you look at production rates and other.
@@TheRealBillBobAs well as 6k tanks is incorrect since 1) most sources state around 3k and the reserves wich were unused as long as I know.
Both sides suffered grievous losses at Kursk. The Soviets could replace the soldiers and armour they lost, but the Germans could not.
It proved to be their last strategic offensive in the East.
This is a great presentation, thank you!
Incredible that Germany could inflict 6-to-1 losses in the biggest battle in history, and still have no real chance.
Which makes the terrible decision to go toe-to-toe at Stalingrad, in city fighting, trading essentially casualty for casualty equally with the Red Army (when considering the combined losses of Germany and its allies at Stalingrad), even more disastrous for Germany.
Imagine if they had used the 6th army in the wide open fighting of places like Kursk, inflicting 6-to-1 losses instead.
The conventional wisdom that Germany was doomed from the start in the East is overstated. Without the massive blunder at Stalingrad (not just massive losses, but massive unnecessary losses), they might well have forced a stalemate in the East, while they still held huge territorial gains.
They did, but Manstein wanted to wait Soviets to attack first.
@@GK-yi4xv Stalingrad was a total mess for the axis. The 6th army, at this point of the war the best army germany had, together with the other axis forces, encircled and completely annihilated. Still they inflicted tremendous casualties among the soviets, even under these circumstances. Low on ammunition, low on food, medical supplies, no support from outside, freezing in the rubbles of Stalingrad. While the axis forces were completely wiped out the soviets could treat their wounded and had enough supplies and reinforcements stadily strengthen the encirclement.
Who knows what would have happened when Stalingrad would have been avoided.
It was hardly strategic, though.
@@GK-yi4xv I just wanted
Appreciate all the work you put in. Between this channel and The Great War your time must be filled with hard work and it does not go unnoticed. Always top quality and the quotes on screen are always my favorite parts :)
thanks for noticing!
@@realtimehistory just one to point out a fact you missed in this vidoe , A spy I think he was British if I remember correctly (with out looking it up) had given information to the Russians that the Germans were going to attack, so of cause the Russians knew the date of the German's attack , a
also one thing to note is that , the German high command had suggested to Adolf Hitler not to attack but make a defensive line and try and hold it until early 1944 this would allow The Wehrmacht to build up their losers and also time for , equipment to be fixed and tested , weather that be tanks or guns. However Hitler disagreed with this idea (big mistake) and it would be a massive lost of live for Germany , but also to the Russians fighting in and around kursk
The most shocking thing about this historic battle is that is ignored in the west. As a kid learning about WW 2 we were never exposed to the russian part in the war.
There was not a lot of detailed information available to Western historians about the Russian front until fairly recently. Soviet losses at Kursk are still not known, as they mentioned in the video. It is thought the Russian government wants to hide a lot of these losses as they tend to reveal how badly their generals performed. When it is to a very large extent your ability to politic within a totalitarian communist system, you don't get really capable commanders. We still see this in Ukraine.
And yet this is a "western" video NOT ignoring it. 😂
I mean the Germans has "capable" commanders and those dudes all died all the same@@ToddSauve
@@kjhnsn7296
The majority of the German air force and all of its navy was lost in the west though and 2/3 of German resources and material expenses went on their air and sea forces, so while the majority of their army WAS on the Eastern Front most of these were non mechanised, horse drawn, poorly equipped second rate divisions. From 1943 it was far more than 20% in the West. In Normandy alone there were ten panzer divisions. Nearly twice as much German armour fought against the western allies in Normandy than the Soviets in Bagration that same summer. The main reason why Bagration took so much ground so quickly was because the Germans gave priority to the Normandy fighting.
@@ToddSauve fairly recently=over 30 years now
Regarding the tsarist general though, it's fascinating how much the german invasion of USSR is compared and contrasted with napoleon's invasion of Russia. And both sides did it it seems. It is said that Hitler studied it before invading and ofc the soviets called this the Great patriotic war. History may not repeat but we love to see it being repeated.
we made a video about Hitler and his view on 1812: czcams.com/video/Tvf9louZhLw/video.htmlsi=wB44i9n9B3xxCEQF
Notice the Russians had operations named after THE 1812 WAR GENERALS
Operation Bagration
Operation KUTUZOV
Title could also be, Germany never had a chance to win the battle of Kursk
Didn’t the Russians have the battle plans? Didn’t they know the exact German moves ahead of time?
@@brennelson9692yeah but decided to bloody the offensive instead, by bombing them in a suprise air raid which resulted in every plane the USSR had being destroyed giving Germany initial air superiority
@@AidenLutz I did not know that. Interesting.
They did have a chance. They just delayed the battle too long
@darbyohara doubt it. The war was lost at that point and the Germans were only bargaining for terms, this is Midway, which the Japanese also were never going to win, at least not what they expected going in.
As a Lebanese who lived in the war of Lebanon from 1975 to 1990, I feel that the giant battle of Kursk dwarfs literally 100 times any battle that happened during the Lebanon wars between Lebanese, Syrians, Israelis, and Palestinians. Great episode Jesse and crew, as usual, thank you! Keep up the great work
As an Irish UN soldier, UNIFIL I would agree, but harm, pain and death is a very personal experience. Hoping that life's better than 85.
the Eastern Front as a whole dwarfs pretty much any battle or war in our entire history
for real dude, the Eastern Front in world war two makes all middle eastern, or basically any military action throughout the course of literary ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY look like a playground fight
A load of BS
@@Rorschach7012 Enlighten us. No don't because it is not BS.
after the statement about the 1:6 loss ratio, you can turn it off. He doesn't have much in common with reality. It reminds the Germans stories how they lost 3 tanks and the Russians lost almost 300
"Cross of Iron", the 1977 film by Sam Peckinpah and starring James Coburn, is the most realistic depiction of war on the Eastern Front. It's told from the German pov, but accurately displays the ferocity of the conflict on both sides. I highly recommend it to anyone who's watched this video.
One of the best movie about the Eastern front is 1993 or 94 movie german movie called STALINGRAD
@@ettoresorbara2078 Check out “ Generation War “, a German tv production too
It is very interesting how more and more historians are discovering that Hitler was not simply the madman he was portrayed as in the post-war era. Instead, it appears that his generals either didn't follow his orders or persuaded him to take different actions
A lot more people are at fault for what happened in Germany and the more it lies in the past the more people acknowledge that Hitler didn't bring down Germany alone.
There’s a reason why it’s difficult to find his speeches full and unedited.
Exactly
The officer class were aristocracy and always thought Hitler was the corporal...so no real respect
@@lucagerulat307 but in Stalingrad he did made fatal mistakes that cost him the war
Some of the best part of your content is the punchline at the end. Keep up the great work!
In a fight, rule number is to NEVER underestimate your opponent.
19:15 poor Kharkiv; could you imagine being a 5 year old during this nightmare and then live the rest of your life there just to go through the nightmare again at 85 and both times you experience being a civilian in a high intensity war happen to be at the two most physically and mentally vulnerable times in any persons life life.
Indeed, I have seen some touching interviews with older people in Ukraine who experienced just that.
Yeah right, I was thinking the same thing when Russia invaded. Its crazy how a high intensity war is happening on the same grounds 80 years later, against former comrades.
@@BigMeechEJ25thanks to usa
@jessealexander2695 Could you please sent us the link, mr jesse? That sounds like a very interesting and touching interview. I can't imagine how it must be like to experience such a thing in my life
Theres an old ww1 british tank on a plinth in kharkiv from the russian civil war which hit the city hard as well.
Very informative and put together well, Thankyou.
Awesome video!! Been studying Kursk for decades and always glad to learn something new. Always amazes me how Germany went along with that attack after just suffering massive losses at Stalingrad and in Tunisia - yes, everyone comments that most of those forces were Italian, but there still was a significant amount of German combat experience lost there.
If you were "studying Kursk for decades " you would know that his was a piece of garbage propaganda. So not sure what you study, but you could start with something really simple like "Battlefield S4/E1 - The Battle of Kursk"
By then Hitlers thought himself a military genius
You forget that the Wehrmacht had extremely huge losses in the following Soviet offensives against Orel and Bjelgorod. Many damaged tanks from Kursk were destroyed as the Wehrmacht retreated. The Panzerwaffe was indeed a shadow of itself in the fall of 1943 and had lost 2000 tanks since January 1943.
We didn't forget, we talked about those two operations in the video.
But Germany built far more tanks in 1943 than in any previous year, and 1944 was their highest tank production year.
@@lyndoncmp5751Unfortunately, they achieved those production numbers by not diverting production to provide each new tank with adequate spare parts.
Very nice intro explaining the German high command plans for the year 1943 and the future of eastern front war in general, a lot of other documentaries about this battle missed that important point . Excellent work !
Thanks!
Make me wonder why he didn't talk about the almost real time intelligence the allies were feeding the Soviets with the broken codes. I find soviet/marxist sympathizers always leave out that "little" detail". Maybe the fact that the soviets almost lost that battle despite knowing the date, time and where of the attack is kind of embarrassing....sort of like Ukraine now. The Soviet armies have always been a collection, a gaggle of silly ducks furiously quacking and running into each other trying to get to the water.
"Excellent " propaganda garbage you mean?? Watch "Battlefield S4/E1 - The Battle of Kursk" is free of unnecessery lies
Great video as always thank you
The sheer numbers involved in the battle along with the losses is staggering!!! Wonderful and informative video!
From what I understand, Model never intended to go very deep from the north. He knew from reconnaissance what the Russians had waiting for him. He said for his panzers to reach Kursk he needed at least six infantry divisions on both flanks of the attacking spearhead. Divisions he did not have. He also knew of the planned offensive in the northeast to retake Orel. He purposely withheld, without telling Hitler, two whole panzer divisions to work on the Hagan line and be ready to use for counterattack. But someone will most likely say I'm wrong
Mödel was a general who believed in offense, even against a larger enemy.
I’m sure his decision was soundly weighed before the battle.
While this is true, when Manstein achieved a breakthrough in the South of the pincer he should have been give the authority to capitalize on it. Not only did Hitler refuse his request to continue the offensive, he also stripped him of desperately needed panzer divisions to send to Italy in the wake of Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.
@@jebbroham1776 it wouldn’t have made much difference anyhow, the Wehrmacht was exhausted at this point. On top of that, their intelligence on the red army was pretty lousy and outdated. The führer was now stripping troops from the eastern front to fight off the Allies on a two front conflict, everything was clearly lost at this point.
@@capoislamort100 It probably wouldn't have been a total loss if Hitler hadn't so long to green light the offensive. He was waiting on the new Panther and Elefant tank destroyer to arrive in sufficient numbers before launching it, but neither proved to have any real impact on the battle. Panther losses were more to mechanical breakdowns than enemy fire and the Elefants were completely defenseless against Soviet infantry because some genius forgot that machine guns matter. The time to launch the attack would have been shortly after Manstein's backhand counteroffensive in late February to mid March which retook Belgorod and Kharkov. This put Manstein in a very strong position for further offensive operations towards Kursk that would have rendered the July offensive completely unnecessary. Lack of supplies and reinforcements ultimately prevented him from doing this though. It could have all been decided in March, but Hitler dithered.
He knew that terrain and the training of his Armoured troops wasn't on his side.
What he should've done though was have Hitler order the main thrust to be with the Second Army where the terrain was more favourable.
This channel and The Great War channel are some of the best historical content on CZcams. Always look forward to the next videos you guys release.
I agree, they provide a format that is clear. True written dialogue in each moment in a battle is much appreciated-these guys are the best .......better than old History TV videos or politically motivated revisiting of history that seems pervasive these days on CZcams.
Here a lot of propaganda as well as the CNN. Second front was started in 1944 when USSR forces came to German’s borders. This story for the stupid children I mean about casualties. Nobody speaks about Italian, Romanian, French and etc, but all they were on the Russian territory and they fought against RKKA
Joined Nebula solely for your documentaries. Great work. Watching it with commercials every 7 minutes on youtube kinda kills the mood.
Love this channel & the team
Absolutely outstanding mini documentary on the Battle of Kursk! I will be signing up with NEBULA. 👌
Evgeni Bessonov's Tank Rider was an amazing story which, including the Battle of Kursk, encompassed many iconic Soviet victories. I highly recommend it
Amazing Channel, i always love detailed video's of battles
So educational and well put together thank you!
Once again I have to say thank you for the brilliant work. It is greatly appreciated.
Another great production Jessie and RTH. And a chuckle worthy outtro.
as many videos and Documentaries covering the KURSK Battle this one's by far i say 100 times more informative I'm almost 6 minutes into the video and learned more of discoveries, that I had no idea about. i Been and been watching, reading a bit for as long as 3yrs. And found not as much as in this video... Thank you wish i could contribute more, it's been earned here.
While German achievements at Kursk may have been impressive, I still consider this battle to have been a Hail Mary of sorts for the German Army. At the end of the day, even with overwhelming success, they would have likely suffered from stifling Soviet counterattacks by the Steppe Army and supply lines west-to-east would have been very tedious to properly manage. It's was pretty clear that the operation would have at best delayed the Soviets a month at most.
you are right, it is even obvious to those who think, but the Gogo's panzer maniacs are a clientele that is not very demanding in terms of reality, you just have to tell them what they want to hear, it gives them a catharsis and the pseudo-historical video reached peak clicks...isn't life beautiful???
Greetings to those who reserve the right and duty to think for themselves.
Well, Manstein did point out that calling off the offensive allowed the Russians to recover all most of the damaged but recoverable tanks. He also later told Hitler that he couldn't understand why Hitler had persisted with the operation long after it had become clear that the Russians were making major investments in defense.
What was impressive,fake data about casualties?
@@play_boy7543 Largely the fact they were able to pull a punch even after they clearly lost the war. Otherwise, it was pretty reckless and stupid
@@extrahistory8956 it wasn't a punch, they were quickly stopped and then pushed back far in a counterattack, it was an attempt of a punch but not punch in the practical outcome,maybe the most correct would be to say a punch over the guard, then they got one in the jaw
Craig Luther, a colleague of Roman Toeppel, sent me and he wan't wrong. I'm also a fan of David Glantz and am working on a video production for him. You've got a nice fresh style and the sound effects on original footage work well. You've included a bit of footage that I don't have myself; specifically some of the Soviet material. All in all a professional production, well done
Military1945 creates *unbiased* documentaries about World War 2 by weaving together a combination of rare and sometimes never before seen film footage with original primary historical sources, include war diaries, situational maps, newspaper collections and photographs. Rare historical material must be carefully preserved, studied by academics and presented to the public in a professional manner.
{ There is only one video on my channel - instructions on how to use the People's Memory website, there are a lot of maps and documents, combat logs, award certificates, headquarters orders and others. Eastern Front (World War II) }
I've been wanting a video about this from you guys.
Very informative thank you
What a massive, grinding, bloody fulcrum of history.
You've done it again, another critical puzzle piece of history filled in. I remembered it was a big battle with tanks, where everyone suffered, but Kursk doesn't get near the same attention as D-Day or even Stalingrad.
This video is so on point, thanks for the great work!
Great work. You are a treasure!
Of all the videos I’ve watched and all I learned about the battle of Kursk, this video is by far the most comprehensive and I learned so much new information
I can also highly recomend Dr. Töppels Book and indeed all his work.
Nice Video. Seeing the losses visualized side by side is always eye opening.
I read somewhere that the 6 : 1 ratio in tanks losses depended on how differently Soviets and Germans accounted losses.
As far as I know, for the formers a tank was considered "lost" when "put out of action" and that included the many which were just damaged but then recovered and repaired.
Meanwhile the Germans wrote off a tank ony when it was destroyed but this meant that at any time they had hundreds/thousands of damaged tanks which would stay parked in the warehouses for several months due to a lack of spare parts and which were sometimes left behind when the Soviets advanced too quickly and/or they lacked the logistic to move them somewhere else.
Hence we highlighted the combat ready vehicles at the counter offensive. But that's not the entire reason for the 6:1 ratio.
@@realtimehistory The difference in the method of statistical calculations is a real reason!
@@rodjarrow6575does it count as a tank loss if the t34 breaks down on the way to the battle, is abandoned, and then hit with soviet artillery? Bc there were plenty of those.
True Germans lied about their loses and quadrupled those of the Soviets.
Super quality video!
A battle of attrition in '43 was the last thing Germany needed. Hitler was utterly unrealistic by that point.
He knew exactly what the situation was.
From the very beginning, he was always in control.
@@capoislamort100 Well in a sense you're right. Hitler was first and foremost a gambler from day one. From remilitarizing the Rhineland in '36 to the battle of the bulge in '44 it was one gamble after another. Though his gambles almost always paid off up to Barbarossa - his riskiest gamble - like all gamblers, over the long haul the House always wins. He knew how risky Citadel was but it was obvious it was a waste of resources the Germans couldn't afford by that point. Even if Hitler had achieved his ambitious objectives for Citadel he no longer had the reserves or other resources to capitalize on that victory.
He literally was against operation Citadel. And the war was kinda already lost since 1939 so it didn't really matter
@@andreamarino6010 He was the Führer if he didn't want Citadel to happen it wouldn't have but yes he had grave doubts about its chances for success. I think by Citadel in Hitler's mind he knew he could no longer win the war but that's different than him seeing the war as lost. There are members of his senior staff who cited Hitler's unrealistic belief that had Citadel achieved its objectives he might be able to negotiate a settlement with Stalin. Even if they'd lost at Kursk the Red Army had grown significantly more powerful than the Wehrmacht by mid '43 so any settlement was unlikely unless paranoid Stalin truly feared the West would never launch a second front in NW Europe and was letting him deal with the brunt of the Wehrmacht alone.
@@anthonycruciani939 yes but actually no, he's quoted to have said his stomach turned every time he thought about op citadel and Hitler almost never got his way in the eastern front.
EG: He wanted a concentration on the southern push but reinforcements and resupply were prioritized to army group center.
The General Staff and Stavka (Headquarters) are different organizations. The Stavka determines the strategy, determines the direction of the attack, the General Staff prepares the battle, and the Stavka carries out the battle.
They dont 'expect' it to come. They know its coming because the British decrypted German plans and presented them to Stalin TWO MONTHS before the attack. They learned the strength, the attack points, the composition of the German divisions around the salient and most importantly, they learned what the Germans knew about the Soviet order of battle. Bletchley park are massively, massively unrecognised for the contributions to the eastern front.
Alan Turing helped crack the code.
@@tmanw4796
By 1944 there were 9,000 people working at Bletchley Park, working three shifts, 24/7.
Assuming Stalin does not dismiss the intel like before Barbarossa in 1941. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they ain't out to get ya.
Great narration!
Wow. I'm also following on Nebula. Nice production. Thank you!
Thanks!
The Dambuster Raid happened almost exactly 3 months before the Battle of Kursk and crippled industry in the Ruhr for all of that time. I sometimes wonder how much that affected the availability of German equipment at Kursk.
A very well done video.
Great content. Thanks 👋
You're always so historically funny at the end of the video . HAHAHA 😀 !!!! Thank you , I love this channel .
Thanks!
Better documentaries than anything on mainstream tv. Wonderful work. Thank you. :)
very impressive, I enjoy these videos very much!
What is amazing is that despite the almost 2.5 to 1 ratio the Germans still pushed. It either shows the incompetence of the soviets or the competence of the Germans. However, they could have been better off by keeping those units/supplies/men by preparing defense in depth rather than offense for time. Potentially even creating a stalemate for a while (a few months) rather than throwing everything away.
Manstein was stopped by Hitler.... which means war was lost
Even if they pinched out the salient, they would still have had to contain and reduce it . The soviet kotusov counteroffensive would probably have enveloped the envelopers, thus hastening the collapse of the Eastern tront.
So rather like breaking through to the sixth army at stalingrad , it was just as well they didn't succeed .
By the time Kursk was launched, STAVKA already knew who was attacking, and where. All Kursk did was confirm that Germany would lose the war. The wholesale squandering of men and equipment made the job easier for the Soviets.
Great production
Another great documentary
Looking at the loses alone and without knowing the outcome you would expect Germany won the battle. Which shows that in war quantity is more important than quality.
Respect for yet another excellent video. ❤
I enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Your pronunciation of german words is on point. As a german I appreciate this effort.
Incredible.
Babe wake up, Real Time History just dropped an analysis of the battle of Kursk
Great video.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Excellent Episode and presentation.
Quality of these documentaries are really fantastic! Love this channel
Jesse doing a Real Time History video on Kursk? Sign me up!
Excellent content. Will definitely subscribe to Nebula …
thank you
Brilliant!! Great, unpretentious narrative. Lots of information and analyses of what actually happened. When I was studying in Minsk in 1977, as foreign students we got to watch Soviet-era documentaries about this and other key battles. Stripping out the local hyperbole and distortions, one could feel how much our hosts emphasized the suffering of the Soviet people and armed forces.
Another point is why Germans had qualitative superiority over Soviets in the Kursk battle. This wasn't because the Germans were Übermensch and the Russians were Untermensch. Of course, the Soviet Union was a much more arm country than Germany including the reserves of conquered Europe. Yes, Stalins government managed the feat of "running 100 years in one decade" but it wasn't enough. (By the way, just for information: when the WW1 started and all the warring countries started mobilising their automobile transport the only country which had no effect from this step was Czar's Russia. The reason was simple: while France produced roughly 50000 cars a year, the US half a million, Czar's Russia produced in 1914 only 100 cars (in letters: one hundred)). But there was another reason; before the war the bulk of Soviet industry was in Southern Russia and the Ukraine. It was very vulnerable. When the war started, the Soviets managed a great feat of relocating their industries to the Urals region. But that relocation had one very negative effect: the industry simply couldn't cope with relocation and production simultaneously. So the whole 1942 was a hunger year for the Red Army in terms of weapons and ammunition. The paramount task for the industry was to restore production. First and foremost. Developing new models was impossible in view of this. The Soviets captured their first Tiger tank on Leningrad front in 1942 but simply didn't have resources for developing their answer. Actually, not only the Kursk battle but the whole battle for Ukraine the Soviets led on their old obsolete model of T-34-76 medium tank and improved version of the heavy KV-1 tank (KV-1C), which was improved mainly with a new gear box. The weapon was the same: 76mm gun not adequate for new German tanks. Only in late fall of 1944 Soviet industry managed to produce significant numbers of a new version T-34-85 medium tank and a new model IS-1 heavy tank which were capable of fighting German Tiger and Panther tanks more or less effectively. And what's far more important, the Soviets managed to produce them in very high numbers, much higher than the German's.
You forgot without lend lease the Russians would have been crushed!
I can heartily recommend the 16 Days in Berlin documentary.
great video
Thoroughly enjoyable as awlays and of excellent quality but my only gripe/disappointment (a first in all the years watching your work) is the naming of Kharkov and Kiev, you have used the modern names and not the historically accurate names. This is the same as saying the Byzantine empire defended Istanbul and not Constantinople or that Paulus surrendered at Volgograd and not Stalingrad. You should not let modern politics influence your portrayal of history otherwise it is not true history but a point of view and that is a slippery slope (I appreciate you are far from this but this is an important point to consider). Big fan, thank you again I hope you understand my point which I am making purely out of respect and care for your work and hopefully future work.
"is the naming of Kharkov and Kiev, you have used the modern names and not the historically accurate names. This is the same as saying the *Byzantine empire defended* Istanbul and not *Constantinople* "
English Wikipedia address "Byzantine Empire"
[11] It was not until the 19th century that the 8th-century term "Empire of the Greeks" was replaced with the modern convention of the "Byzantine Empire".[12][13]
{ It is unlikely that the inhabitants of Constantinople knew that they were protected by the Byzantine Empire. }
In Russian, there is no difference between Kyiv and Kiev as they are pronounced the same way. The difference is a manufactured Western talking point to show how "different" Ukrainians and Russians are. The reality is there are few differences. As for Kharkov vs. Kharkiv, they are used interchangeably because Russians will use both pronunciations based on where in Russia they are from. Same in Ukraine, Kharkiv is a majority Russian city, but the names are interchangeable all the time.
@@user-qt1cp1be3u I think you have missed my point and I am not entirely certain what you mean to achieve with your reply. Also I would caution on the use of Wikipedia as a source and would advise checking the quoted sources used in the wikipedia articles. Regardless, the term Byzantine is indeed a modern term, the context however is the same and is the most common way we refer to the Empire of the Romans (not the greeks) at the time.
I think the Germans just didn’t have the resources or manpower to win at Kursk.
From the looks of it they could have easily won if they had double what they had.
Germany could have won if Hitler hadn't wasted most of Germanys resources earlier in the war
@@Enzo012 Yep.
Yes, in a war of attrition, the Germans simply could not compete with the Soviets. Not that many generals on either side much cared about their losses in human beings. They were just cannon fodder in a war of lines on a map. Sad but true.
@@Enzo012Except they didn't. Half their fighting force were wiped out in leningrad and stalingrad. And the soviets could replace men and equipment the Germans couldn't
Interesting to see how signals are an effective war fighting unit even back then. I know that it is taken for granted now.
thank you!
50 Days ? Didn't know it was that long .
Your pronunciation of Russian names and place names is spot-on. Love it.
Thanks
Germany may as well have surrendered after Kursk.
Can we know the sources of such "interesting" casualty numbers, which do not even roughly agree with either Soviet or German estimates?
In replies to other comments asking similar questions, they say the Soviet estimates are from Dr. Toppel's book listed in the video description.
@@NellaCuriosity thanks. Well, now I have to find out where this "eminent expert" got his cosmic numbers from)
As it was said in a different comment, dr Toppel gets the lowest german losses, the highest soviet (while adding about 40% to them), and voila: germans in the failed offense got 1 to 5 kill ratio.
Not suspicious at all.
@@sikasyanDr. Roman toppel wrote and obviously got his doctorate thesis on this, were do you get your idea that an expert on this is wrong.? The man had been researching this most of his life, kursk is a personal passion of his. What can you claim to out do this? I am genuinely asking!
@@mustangmanmustangman4596 Unfortunately, a doctorate is not an argument. In the case of Toppel, we have a man with a doctorate, but with few publications. So his authority is highly questionable. Just as it is doubtful to believe that he is right, if he has been interested in the subject for a long time. Unfortunately, I will not be able to argue against his judgements, as I cannot buy his books and check what sources he relies on. However, his estimates raise a lot of questions. There are army documents based on which casualties are usually estimated. And more often than not, a side's losses are estimated based on its documents. Even if we take negative estimates for the USSR, the losses would be in the ratio of 1:4. This is the most negative of what classical sources can provide. Toppel, on the other hand, seems to take the best figures for the German side and the worst for the Soviet side on purpose. He even took the reserves into counting the strength of the sides - but only on the Soviet side. As I have already mentioned, I can't say now exactly what methodologies he uses. But to go against everyone does not mean to be right.
“They only have 210,000 men.” The scale of these battles is incomprehensible today.
this was awesome! Great production guys!
12:04 to 12:08 That's really impressive. That piece of that tank was in the air for a solid 4 seconds. That means it had to fly up for two seconds and then fall back down for two seconds.
The first reason is that Canaris had leaked the Germans battle plans down to the last detail to the Soviets.
Next was lack of fuel.
And third the mechanical problems they gad with some of their new equipment, especially the Panther.
The rest of the reasons is mere details
Correct , no surprise, no WIN.
what program do you use for the mapping and movement?
thanks
With regards to German hesitation in launching or exploiting the offensive, their army didn’t even have enough forces or reserves to hold any potential breakthroughs, let alone exploit them into a breakout.
Any more ‘daring’ actions would’ve had little to gain while being even costlier (those losses were nothing too sneeze at).
Doesn't it remind you of a certain five month old offensive that is going nowhere right now?
Es sei an die Denkschrift von Generaloberst Ludwig Beck erinnert, der 1938 schrieb, dass ein länger währender Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion nicht zu gewinnen sei. Infolge dessen fand wohl der Blitzkrieg gegen die Sowjetunion statt, wo dann z. B. im Winter die Bekleidung der Soldaten unzureichend war.
What no oil does to a mf
Surprised the Soviets lost so much. I remember hearing the Germans thought they could take the Soviets by surprise but allied intelligence told the soviets about their plans
Yes but actually no, strategically Germany pulled a Halo Reach and won a single engagement whole collapsing across the rest of the central eastern frontm
Thx you for sharing historical events
When a battle results to hand to hand urban combat, your enemies are toast, and defeat is enviable
As I remember it Manstein gave Hitler two limited offensive battle plans for that season with the idea that he would choose one of them. Kursk is the one that he chose though he famously said that it made him very nervous. I'm having a hard time remembering what the second option was so maybe one of your viewers could fill it in for me?
First of all Manstein insisted that the Germans should act as mobile defence. So this means and not attacking ! Hitler said "nein" and the Gemans attacked. And Guderian reports in his memoirs, he asked the Führer, "Why do you want to attack in the East at all? How many people do you think even know where Kursk is? It is a matter of profound indifference to the world whether we hold Kursk or not. Why do we want to attack in the East at all this year?
Fun fact: the British intelligence (Lucy spy ring) told the Russians what the Germans plans were....
@@MakeSomeNoiseAgencyPlaylists Guderian's memoirs are completely unreliable. You really can't quote the memoirs of one of those German generals because they all wrote self-serving bs.
Manstein is always blaming hitler and agrandizing himself
He is a liar and overrated.
Hitler's second choice was somewhere in Ukraine.
Germany’s intelligence was their downfall. Abhorrent estimates time and time again. Manstein wasn’t even aware of something like three entire Soviet armies in the area around the Kursk salient.
I'm confused. I read somewhere that Manstein believed that he could broken through the Soviet Lines, given a little more time; however, his Tiger tanks were redirected to Italy, because of the Allied invasion. Thus, the battle Kursk was won by Russia. On the other hand, a Manstein breakthrough would have only delayed the inevitable.
They didnt lose the battle... they didnt gain what they wanted, but they didn't lose the Battle
The British reading the inigma codes is everything for stalins intelligence on German battle plans