![]() Hitler and the German High Command now recognised that the best that could be hoped for on the Eastern Front was stabilisation. ![]() The German Kursk offensive was not, compared with previous operations, ambitious. But it was failure to prevent the subsequent Soviet advance at Kursk that threatened German hopes of holding on to the bulk of their conquests. ![]() The battle took place some six months after the surrender of German forces at Stalingrad had dealt a massive blow to Hitler’s aim of complete victory on the Eastern Front. Was Prokhorovka really a bloody stalemate or, as has recently been argued by German historian Karl-Heinz Frieser, a clear German victory – a conclusion backed by British historian Ben Wheatley in his analysis of the photographs taken immediately after the battle by the Luftwaffe? The strategic context Both have argued that the Battle of Brody, in June 1941, involved more tanks, and was of greater importance, putting an end to Hitler’s hopes of defeating the Soviet Union in a short war. It was certainly one of the greatest tank battles of the war, but the claim that it was the greatest has been challenged by American historian David Glantz and Russian historian Valeriy Zamulin. Hitler thought that this coming battle would "decide whether we shall live or die.A rare aerial colour photo of German armour moving into action on the first morning of the Battle of Kursk. German forces would then be free to focus all their attention on stopping the unrelenting and vengeful Red Army in the east. If his offensive bloodied the western Allies badly enough, Hitler believed they would be compelled to settle for an armistice. By sending three armies composed of nearly 250,000 troops and 1,000 tanks to smash through the Ardennes Forest along the German borders with Belgium and Luxembourg, the Führer hoped to seize the vital port of Antwerp and to drive a wedge between the Americans and the British. With American and British forces bearing down on Germany from the west and the Soviet Union closing in from the east, Hitler decided to launch a massive counterattack against the western Allies. Adolf Hitler once predicted that the Third Reich would “last a thousand years." By December 1944, however, every day brought Nazi Germany closer to destruction. ![]()
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