Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk: The Turning Point of World War II

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THE BATTLE OF KURSK is a continuing paradox. On the one hand, it is regularly described as a military epic: history’s greatest armored battle, the first stage on the Red Army’s road to Berlin, an ultimate test of Nazi and Soviet military/political systems. On the other, it is strangely blurred. Compared with Stalingrad or Barbarossa, it remains obscure, its narrative fostering myth as much as history. In the context of Western, particularly English-language, writing on World War II, Kursk is part of an imbalance that focuses on Anglo-American operations. The sheer scale of the fighting, the absence of significant cultural and political reference points, and an understandable interest in the deeds of one’s own countries combine in a literature acknowledging the Russo-German War after Stalingrad as a vital factor in the war’s development and outcome but restricting it to the periphery in terms of page counts.

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