Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41079 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 485 pages

Review
"A good read. Looks at the traditional approach to Kursk and provides another well-founded interpretation of the battle."

Customer Reviews

Minutely detailed study of epic battle
The Battle of Kursk, or Operation Citadel, was the third great German offensive of the Second World War on the Eastern Front. This book, using sources from the Russian side that have become available since the collapse of the Soviet Union, seeks to examine some of the 'myths' of Kursk and aims to provide a comprehensive narrative of the campaign's operations.

The work is certainly highly detailed, with voluminous notes, battle orders and the like. This makes it, inevitably, difficult to follow at times. The sheer numbers of formations involved can be extremely difficult to grasp. This book is never going to be a best seller like "Stalingrad"; it is too technical in nature.

Having said that, there are some very readable, insightful passages in the book.

The traditional argument for the failure of Citadel - strongly put in the post war memoirs of the leading German High Command survivors - is that the assault failed because Hitler forced the Germans to delay, allowing the Soviets to build up hugely formidable defences and concentrate reserves within the Kursk bulge. This book shows it was not as simple as that.

The Wehrmacht had achieved tactical penetration of Russian lines twice before - during the initial onsalught in 1941 and in the drive towards the south in 1942 - only to fail at the 'strategic' level, hundreds of miles beyond their jump-off point. Thus, the authors argue, it was not so stupid to limit the offensive and seek to 'pinch off' the Kursk salient before attempting other manouveres. There was a wide expectation - on both sides - that the Germans would succeed in this, though the Soviets knew this would be the acid test of their ever-improving Red Army. If they could hold at Kursk, the tactical - as well as the strategic - initiative would pass to Stalin.

The Germans, particularly Hitler, placed much store on the 'new weapons' - the Panther and Tiger tanks and the 'Elefant' self-propelled gun, but these proved either unreliable, too few or inappropriately designed in the battle itself.

The authors maintain that the Kursk battle marked the 'end of blitzkreig' as the Russian lines - for the first time anywhere in Europe up to that point - withstood the first German onslaught. It is difficult to reconcile this analysis with the stark contrast in the Citadel operation - the pinching off of a fortified salient in a static line - to the previous large-scale German operations - the 'schwerpunkt' penetration of an extremely extended front line to a rear area that allowed freedom of armoured movement (see "To Lose A Battle" by Alistair Horne, for example.) I feel this shows that the term 'blitzreig' - so well-beloved of writers seeking to explain the various Allied collapses - is so loose as to be fairly meaningless in a 1943 context.

Kursk, with twenty-twenty hindsight, can be seen as a gifted middleweight finally realising he was trying to knock down a super-heavy. The Russians constantly moved formations in then front of Model's Ninth Army and, in particular, Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army. As defenders, they took losses of three-to-one, but they could afford them. The Germans could not.

This is a painstaking book that requires close examination. There are easier books on the Eastern Front (Alan Clark's "Barbarossa" springs to mind), but, at present, there is none so detailed on this critical and informative campaign.

Well Researched Account of WW2 Pivotal Battle
There is no denying that this account of Kursk by David Glantz and Jonathan House is extremely well researched. The amount of detail is awe inspiring with 165 pages in the appendixes dedicated to OB's, strengths & losses, comparative armour strengths and key German & Soviet documents. The maps, some 32 in all, are very detailed however I must admit that at time they were still hard to read due to the amount of detail. The book itself was well presented and the photos were excellent. The only fault that I could find with the book was that at times it dragged. With the amount of detail being presented you need to catch your breath and close the book. It was not the type of book that had a free flowing narrative that kept you glued to the story, well not for me at least. Beside that however this would rank as the definitive account of this major Eastern Front battle and well worth the effort to read. No decent WW2 library would be complete without this book.

Easily the best account so far of this battle
At last a scholarly account of the battle of Kursk!By using mainly primary sources and recently declassified soviet documents, for the first time I think the "truth" about Kursk comes out. This book lays to rest many of the myths which surround the battle, the greatest one of course being the great clash of armour at Prohkorovka. Rather than getting carried away with numbers and superlatives (about the numbers of men, guns and tanks etc - these are covered in the appendeces-with sources provided)the authors have produced a detailed chronological account of the fighting in and around the Kursk salient. Unlike so many other accounts is does not close the German offensive in the south on the 12 July (it actually went on until the 16-17 July). The fighting in the Orel salient is covered in more depth than I've yet seen (in English) and, as ever with these authors, the use of Soviet sources is superb, adding hugely to our knowledge of how the Soviets saw the battle.The book skillfully weaves the use of memoirs in with primary sources to give us a sense of what it was like. The maps are excellent and there is more than enough numbers, lists and tables for the most hardened reader.

All in all, for the serious student of this conflict, a must buy book!