This is a truly impressive undertaking…The book exudes great numerical dexterity…As soon as the analysis appears, you'll be pleased at the trouble he took to ferret out the numbers from the German sources. Impressive. Just impressive. Glantz, David (2013). Soviet Military Intelligence in War. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis (Routledge). ISBN 978-1-136-28934-7.

The Panzers of Prokhorovka by Ben Wheatley | Waterstones The Panzers of Prokhorovka by Ben Wheatley | Waterstones

Prokhorovka battle (July 1943)] (in Russian). 1998. Archived from the original on 15 July 2015 . Retrieved 17 July 2015. a b The 2nd Guards Tank Corps was initially not part of the 5th Guards Tank Army. It was transferred from the control of the 1st Tank Army to the 69th Army on 10 July, and then to the 5th Guards Tank Army on 11 July ( Glantz & House 2004, p.318). David Glantz, When Titans Clashed: how the Red Army stopped Hitler – the initial period of war on the Eastern Front (1995). There are some issues with the book, however, particularly its handling of the wider context of the Eastern Front. Although Wheatley’s thesis reveals the amazing information of only 16 German tanks lost in a battle that was reputed to have destroyed hundreds, his introduction states the view that the Eastern Front was the crucial theatre of the war because of the severe German losses that occurred there. This ground-breaking new study of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka will transform our understanding of one of the most famous battles of the Second World War, widely mythologized as the largest tank battle in history.Over 70 images, including maps, contemporary photographs, archival images, and reconnaissance and sateliite imagery. The 33rd Guards Rifle Corps was part of the 5th Guards Army, which was transferred from the control of the Steppe Front to the Voronezh Front on 8 July ( Glantz & House 2004, p.323). Of the army's two corps, only this one was present on the battlefield of Prokhorovka ( Glantz & House 2004, p.167). The other corps – the 32nd Guards Rifle Corps – was deployed further west, in the battlefield near Oboyan ( Clark 2012, p.230).

Full article: Citadel, Prokhorovka and Kharkov: The Armoured

The Eastern Front cannot be considered in isolation: more than 250,000 German troops were taken captive at Tunis in May 1943; the Anglo-American landings in Sicily took place two days before Prokhorovka. The war was swinging rapidly in the Allies’ favour. The Third Reich, which had not prepared for a long war, was now faced with war on two fronts, and even temporarily stabilising the Eastern Front by victory at Kursk could not have made much difference in the long run. Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan M. (2004) [1999]. The Battle of Kursk. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1335-9.What are the implications of this reassessment of Prokhorovka? It becomes a tactical victory for the German forces and a tactical disaster for the Red Army; but the German attempt to take the Kursk salient remains a strategic failure, and the fundamental reasons for this remain unaltered. While the battle is generally considered a tactical success for the German side due to the high numbers of Soviet tanks destroyed, [203] in the wider perspective the Soviets successfully completed their defensive operation at Prokhorovka and created the conditions for their decisive counteroffensive, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev, just as planned. [204] Ultimately there was no German breakthrough at Prokhorovka or elsewhere in the Kursk salient, becoming the first time in the Second World War that a major German offensive was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate into their operational or strategic depths. [205] With the end of Operation Citadel, the strategic initiative permanently swung over to the Soviet Union for the rest of the war. [206] Misconceptions and disputes [ edit ] Size of the tank battle and German losses [ edit ] Any chance that the German forces could have built on, and acquired momentum from, their tactical victory in the tank battle was thus lost. Von Manstein protested vigorously and pressed for a modified version of Citadel, ‘Operation Roland’, which would take advantage of the heavy Soviet armoured losses. But in vain. The Western allies were happy to believe a government that they had come to think of as ‘our brave comrade in arms’, while the failure of Hitler’s Operation Citadel seemed to remove any doubts about the outcome of this part of the wider Battle of Kursk. The present academic consensus has it that the cream of Hitler’s armoured formations, the thuggish paramilitary SS Panzer Divisions, were smashed in this battle, losing hundreds of tanks, and never recovering their former capabilities. In reality, diligent archival research reveals that only 16 tanks from the SS formations were lost. In fact, by the end of the Kursk fighting, these units had more tanks than they started with.