Word: kursk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...looked upon the carnage. It was an old sight. It had been thus at Stalingrad and Kursk, at Kiev and Gomel; it was the Red artillery's savage imprint...
Tactics. After Stalingrad came other triumphs. At Kursk last summer Hitler made his final, desperate attempt to win in Russia. Voronov's cannon mauled many hundreds of the thick-skinned, monstrous "Tigers" (60-ton Mark VI tanks) and "Ferdinands" (70-ton self-propelled guns), crushed Hitler's hopes. At Leningrad, two months ago, Voronov's guns reduced to rubble one of the Wehrmacht's most powerful defense systems...
These men and these weapons thrice beat Manstein: at Stalingrad, Kursk, Zhitomir. But, thrice beaten, he still failed to understand the lesson. For understanding meant loss of hope and faith: the Slav commoner had negated the Junkers' wondrous Blitzkrieg...
Junker's orderly, one-track mind whose processes could often be foretold-and thwarted. He had learned much since the easy conquests in Poland and France. But, like other Junkers, he still held abiding faith in the tank-airplane team. When it failed-as it did at Kursk -the solution was simple: more tanks, more planes...
...this mujik was now a first-rate soldier. In the ruins of Stalingrad he acquired confidence and knowledge. At Kursk, he put the knowledge to its harshest test ("Myi Stalingradtsi," these men boasted, "We're from Stalingrad. We chased them"). The veterans of these two battles became the backbone of every active army...