![]() No sooner had the German thrusts been contained, while within the tantalizing grasp of success, than the Red Army delivered a series of crushing counter-blows with were to drive the Wehrmacht back beyond the River Dnieper.Ĭharacteristically, Hitler had gambled all on a throw of a single dice and had lost the initiative in the East - never to regain it. ![]() Against its breakwaters Hitler launched his finest armoured divisions, only to see them mangled beyond repair. The Red Army, warned of the German plans by the ‘Lucy’ spy network in Switzerland, was prepared to defend the salient in massive strength and depth. The date was 5 July 1943, the codename ‘Citadel’. The location chosen by Hitler was the Kursk salient in the heartland of the Ukraine. This was the battle of Kursk - a battle so terrible that even Hitler confessed it made his ‘stomach turn over’.Ĭitadel was the last great German offensive on the Eastern Front its aim was to claw back the initiative after the surrender of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943. Two vast armies engaged one another on land and in the air, in a conflict that included the most costly single day of aerial warfare of all time. It was the greatest armoured clash in the history of the world - and the decisive battle of World War II.
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