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Kursk and Metaphor
Jul. 27th, 2012 08:43 pmSixty-nine years ago, the Battle of Kursk had been underway for two weeks; it would last another four. Kursk was the last of the four major battles of the Great Patriotic War, the four years of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Kursk is almost completely absent from the modern Western memory; lacking the cliffhanger drama of the battle of Moscow, the unique horrors of Stalingrad, or the numbing scope of the 3-year siege of Leningrad, Kursk was "just" a long summer battle with no clear narrative. Kursk itself was not one of the great industrial cities of USSR, and the purpose of Operation Zitadelle, the Nazi offensive, was simply to take territory around a bulge in the front line, capturing/killing Soviet troops, shortening the front (thus freeing up some troops to send to the west as the US/British invasion became more inevitable), and giving the Axis a position of strength from which to continue the war on their own terms.
Over a million Soviet soldiers died in the battle, along with 300,000 Axis, and truly staggering amount of war materiel was lost by both sides--twice as many tanks were destroyed in the 6 weeks of Kursk as had been involved in the battle of France three years earlier. Unlike most of the battles of the European war, which were defined by sudden concentrated strikes and sweeping gestures, Kursk was a war of trenches and defense-in-depth, the Nazis throwing their superior tanks and tactics against a vastly larger and well-prepared foe. When the Germans stopped their offensive, they had achieved basically none of their goals, and the Soviets immediately began a counter-offensive that continued until the fall, taking back Orel and Kharkov from the Nazis. The Nazi failure gave the military initiative to the Soviets, who never lost it again.
Paul Carell was a German historian (and "reformed" SS official) whose books Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth were very influential in shaping Western narratives of the Great Patriotic War. He argued that the Axis defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 represented the end of Nazi hopes of victory. However, he argued, the Soviets were unable to follow up Stalingrad with further successes, and by the late spring, the Axis still had a hope of fighting to a draw. (What the nature of that "draw" might be is unclear--by that time, neither Hitler nor Stalin would have been likely to agree to an armistice of any sort.) However, with the failure at Kursk and the success of the Soviet offensive at Kharkov, the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt; the Nazis had irretrievably lost.
That was the end of August, 1943. However, it took another 21 months of fighting before the Soviets captured Berlin and ended the war. Of the 46 months of open warfare between the two great dictatorships, nearly half of it took place after the Third Reich had no feasible hope of doing anything other than losing completely. The invasions of Sicily and Italy; D-Day; Operation Market Garden; the Battle of the Bulge; the V-2; the (second) Warsaw Uprising; the bombing of Dresden--all of these took place during that prolonged collapse.
That's the true lesson of Kursk: a lot of awful fighting can mask the fact that the battle is already lost, or won. By the Iron Law of Institutions, the people in control of the losing side are more willing to fight to the last of their underlings than admit defeat and step down. Even though the war is won, yet the victors can not stop fighting, and there's a lot of damage still to be done.
Over a million Soviet soldiers died in the battle, along with 300,000 Axis, and truly staggering amount of war materiel was lost by both sides--twice as many tanks were destroyed in the 6 weeks of Kursk as had been involved in the battle of France three years earlier. Unlike most of the battles of the European war, which were defined by sudden concentrated strikes and sweeping gestures, Kursk was a war of trenches and defense-in-depth, the Nazis throwing their superior tanks and tactics against a vastly larger and well-prepared foe. When the Germans stopped their offensive, they had achieved basically none of their goals, and the Soviets immediately began a counter-offensive that continued until the fall, taking back Orel and Kharkov from the Nazis. The Nazi failure gave the military initiative to the Soviets, who never lost it again.
Paul Carell was a German historian (and "reformed" SS official) whose books Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth were very influential in shaping Western narratives of the Great Patriotic War. He argued that the Axis defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 represented the end of Nazi hopes of victory. However, he argued, the Soviets were unable to follow up Stalingrad with further successes, and by the late spring, the Axis still had a hope of fighting to a draw. (What the nature of that "draw" might be is unclear--by that time, neither Hitler nor Stalin would have been likely to agree to an armistice of any sort.) However, with the failure at Kursk and the success of the Soviet offensive at Kharkov, the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt; the Nazis had irretrievably lost.
That was the end of August, 1943. However, it took another 21 months of fighting before the Soviets captured Berlin and ended the war. Of the 46 months of open warfare between the two great dictatorships, nearly half of it took place after the Third Reich had no feasible hope of doing anything other than losing completely. The invasions of Sicily and Italy; D-Day; Operation Market Garden; the Battle of the Bulge; the V-2; the (second) Warsaw Uprising; the bombing of Dresden--all of these took place during that prolonged collapse.
That's the true lesson of Kursk: a lot of awful fighting can mask the fact that the battle is already lost, or won. By the Iron Law of Institutions, the people in control of the losing side are more willing to fight to the last of their underlings than admit defeat and step down. Even though the war is won, yet the victors can not stop fighting, and there's a lot of damage still to be done.
