The Battle of Kursk: The Red Army’s Defensive Operations and Counter-Offensive, July-August 1943

This study was compiled by the Red Army General Staff’s military-historical directorate, which was charged with collecting and analysing the war’s experience. The Battle of Kursk: The Red Army’s Defensive Operations and Counter-Offensive, July-August 1943, offers a peculiarly Soviet view of one of the Second World War’s most critical events. While the Germans defeats at Moscow and Stalingrad showed that Hitler could not win the war in the East, the outcome of Kursk demonstrated beyond a doubt that he would lose it.
This study was compiled by the Red Army General Staff’s military-historical directorate, which was charged with collecting and analysing the war’s experience, and issued as an internal document in 1946-47. The study languished for more than a half-century, before being published in Russia in 2006, although heavily supplemented by commentary and other information not contained in the original. The present work omits these additions, while supplying its own commentary in places deemed necessary.
AUTHOR: Richard W. Harrison earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees from Georgetown University, where he specialised in Russian area studies. He later earned his doctorate in War Studies from King’s College London.