The Presidential Library marking the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Kursk

Early in the morning of July 5, 1943, the German command launched Operation Citadel. With two counter strikes from the north-west, from Orel district, by the forces of Army Group Center, and from the south-west, from the area north of Kharkov, by the forces of Army Group South, it intended to cut off the strategic protrusion of the front line near Kursk and defeat the Soviet troops. The Kursk Bulge (or the Kursk Ledge), up to 150 kilometers deep and up to 200 kilometers wide, was formed in the winter of 1942-1943 during the battles for Voronezh, Kursk, Belgorod and Kharkov. 

On the Kursk bridgehead, the enemy concentrated, according to various estimates, from 780 to 900 thousand people, about 2.7 thousand pieces of equipment, including medium and heavy Panther and Tiger tanks that entered service, as well as a heavy self-propelled artillery mount "Ferdinand", which had good armor protection and strong artillery weapons. Even from 200 meters, the cannon of the Soviet T-34 tank did not penetrate the side armor of the "Tiger", - notes military historian A. V. Isaev in the documentary Kursk Bulge: Our Summer (2013), which is available on the Presidential Library’s portal.  

The Soviet command became aware of the plans of the German leadership in April. John Cairncross, who was part of the Cambridge Five (a network of Soviet agents in the UK), handed over to Moscow a German radiogram intercepted and deciphered by the British, based on a detailed plan of Operation Citadel was restored. For the first time in the entire war, the plans of the enemy were known in advance.

In May-June 1943, the Soviet command strengthened the defences and built up forces in the area of the Kursk Ledge: by the beginning of July, the troops of the Central and Voronezh fronts numbered about 1 million 300 thousand people, more than 3.4 thousand tanks. The forces of the Steppe Front were in reserve: 580 thousand people and 1.5 thousand tanks. Soviet industry was preparing ammunition with increasing power. At the training grounds, our fighters and commanders studied the tactical and technical data of captured "Tigers" and mastered methods of dealing with them. In particular, the calculations of the infantry 45-mm guns were trained to hit the tracks of tanks from close range.

The northern front of the Kursk Bulge was defended by the troops of the Central Front under the command of K. K. Rokossovsky, and the southern front was defended by the troops of the Voronezh Front under the command of N. F. Vatutin. According to the memoirs of the Deputy Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov, presented in the collection The Battle of Kursk: Memoirs, Articles (1973), “as a result of repeated discussions and our evidence, the Supreme Commander finally firmly agreed to meet the offensive Germans with fire of all types of defense in depth <...> and then, having exhausted and bled the enemy, finish him off with a powerful counteroffensive in the Belgorod-Kharkov and Orel directions...".

On the night of July 5, Soviet intelligence officers managed to capture the "language" - the German sapper Bruno Formel - who testified during interrogation that the German troops were put on full alert and at 3:00 Moscow time they would go on the offensive against Kursk. The commander of the Central Front, K. K. Rokossovsky, ordered a preemptive artillery strike on enemy positions at 2:20. As it turned out, the blow was delivered just 10 minutes before the start of the artillery preparation scheduled by the Germans, recalled K. K. Rokossovsky. One can read about this in the collection The Battle of Kursk: Memoirs, Articles (1973), which is available in the Presidential Library. Thus, Operation Citadel, carefully prepared by the German command, began with volleys of Soviet artillery.

The offensive of the Wehrmacht, which was supposed to inflict a crushing blow on the USSR, lasted only one week and already on July 12 ended in complete failure. “Having encountered the heroic resistance of the Soviet troops, the enemy, having suffered huge losses, advanced only 10-12 kilometers in the defense zone of the Central Front and up to 35 kilometers on the Voronezh Front”, - says Colonel V. P. Morozov, candidate of military sciences, in the preface to the collection of memoirs about the Battle of Kursk.

Minefields became a serious obstacle for German technology. In particular, by the end of the first day of the offensive in the 653rd battalion of the Wehrmacht, only 12 Ferdinands out of 45 remained in service. German tanks that broke through the barriers met fierce resistance from Soviet tankers. For 5 days of the offensive, out of 200 Panthers, only 16 of the enemy remained in service, - says A. V. Isaev in the documentary Kursk Bulge: Our Summer (2013).

A surprise for the Soviet command was the infliction of a stronger blow by the enemy not on the northern face of the Kursk Bulge, but on the southern one. On July 12, the largest tank battle in military history unfolded on this sector of the front near the Prokhorovka station. On both sides, up to 1.2 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery mounts were involved in it. The difficult terrain did not allow the full power of the Soviet counterattack to be brought down on the enemy - the 5th Guards Tank Army, which fought the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, was sandwiched between the Psyol River on one side and the railway on the other. The commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant General of the Tank Forces P. A. Rotmistrov, recalled that “when a tank or self-propelled artillery gun failed, shells ran out or a tank caught fire, the Soviet guards did not leave the battlefield, they went to ram”. At the cost of heavy losses in personnel and military equipment, it was still possible to prevent the Germans from breaking through to Kursk.

On the same day, July 12, the troops of the Western and Bryansk fronts on the northern front went on the offensive, and on July 15 - the troops of the Central Front. The Operation Kutuzov or the Orel offensive operation began, which resulted in the liberation of the city of Orel on August 5. On August 3, the Soviet command of the forces of the Voronezh and Steppe fronts began to implement Operation Rumyantsev, or the Belgorod-Kharkov Offensive. On August 5, the Red Army liberated Belgorod, on August 23, after a massive assault, Kharkov. This day is considered the date of the end of the Battle of Kursk.

The Order of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of August 5, 1943 № 2, published the next day in the Pravda newspaper, emphasized that the successes of the Soviet troops on the Kursk Bulge exposed the German legend that the Soviet troops were not able to conduct a successful offensive in the summer. To commemorate the liberation of Orel and Belgorod on August 5, Moscow saluted our valiant troops with 12 artillery volleys from 120 guns. This salute was the first during the years of the Great Patriotic War, so the unofficial name "the city of the first salute" was assigned to Orel and Belgorod.

One of the participants in those historical events was 18-year-old Yuri Mikhailovich Chigiryov. In January 1943, he was drafted into the army and at the end of July, together with his classmates at the Tambov machine-gun school, he was sent to the area of the Battle of Kursk. At night, the cadets were lined up in divisions and announced the order of the Commander-in-Chief - to go to the front. We drove along the hastily laid railway to Mtsensk, where, during the unloading of the wagons, we suffered the first losses: five cadets rushed to swim in the river, and ran into a minefield...

In early August, Yuri Mikhailovich Chigirev, along with his comrades, walked through the streets of the already liberated Orel and, after distribution, was enrolled in the 860th rifle regiment of the 283rd rifle division of the 3rd Army, operating on the Bryansk Front. In its composition, he took part in the Bryansk offensive operation (from August 17 to October 3, 1943), which developed the strategic success of the Battle of Kursk.

The Battle of Kursk, which lasted 50 days, became one of the most significant battles of the Great Patriotic War.

According to the scientific publication "The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" (2011-2015), during the Battle of Kursk, Soviet troops defeated 30 divisions (including 7 tank divisions) of the enemy, whose losses amounted to about 500 thousand people, 3 thousand guns and mortars, over 1.5 thousand tanks and assault guns, over 3.7 thousand aircraft.

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian, Inspector General of the German Tank Forces, stated: “As a result of the failure of the Citadel offensive, we suffered a decisive defeat. Armored troops...due to heavy losses in people and equipment for a long time were put out of action.

The Red Army near Kursk not only withstood a powerful blow from the German troops, but also, having launched a counteroffensive, drove the enemy back in the southern and south-western directions for 140-150 kilometers, created the prerequisites for the deployment of a general offensive of the Soviet fronts, the liberation of the Left-Bank Ukraine and access to the Dnieper. The victory at the Kursk Bulge marked a radical turning point in the course of the entire Second World War: having forever lost the strategic initiative, Germany and its allies were forced to go on the defensive in all theaters of military operations.

Dmitry Kosenko, Presidential Library’s specialist