The Germans turned their attention to the area around Kursk. The planning staff of the OKH was hoping for an outcome in 1943 that would force the Soviets to a draw and where a political solution to the war. They were beginning to believe that a long war against the Soviet war machine with endless supplies of men and equipment was a losing proposition. The German officers knew that the summer of 1943 would hold the key to the war in the east. The exhausted German and Soviet armies took the respite to rest and refit. Prelude to the Battle: After the brutal winter of 1942-43 and the Battle of Stalingrad where the German Sixth Army was annihilated, the spring of 1943 turned the melting snow in a sea of mud and the rivers, frozen over during the winter, were now virtually impassable. And their Panzer Armies were smashed with losses they could ill afford to replace. The Germans would never again seize the initiative.

After the devastating defeat at the hands of the Soviet Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad, it was the last chance to get the initiative back on the Eastern Front.ĭespite horrendous casualties, the Soviets not only held the Germans from advancing but pushed them back and by battle’s end had taken the German positions from which they launched their attacks. Operation Citadel, which resulted in the Battle of Kursk took place in July 1943 around the Soviet city of Kursk in western Russia, as Germany launched their last great offensive of the war.

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