The Panzers of Prokhorovka: The Myth of Hitler’s Greatest Armoured Defeat

Product Information

As the Soviet tanks reached the ditch, which was 4.5m deep, many fell over and into it, while others turned aside to cross the bridge constructed by the Germans for their panzers, thereby exposing their flanks and becoming easy targets. Consequently, the reviewer would recommend The Panzers of Prokhorovka for serious students of the Eastern Front, and those with a detailed understanding of armoured warfare, and in particular the German SS Panzer capability in World War II. The III Panzer Corps met with stiff resistance as well and had great difficulty creating and maintaining a bridgehead across the Northern Donets River. [32] They eventually succeeded by the morning of 6 July, but the delay in their advance kept them from protecting the east flank of the II SS-Panzer Corps. [33]

The Panzers of Prokhorovka : Benjamin William Wheatley The Panzers of Prokhorovka : Benjamin William Wheatley

The foundation of the myth of Prokhorovka was the need of the commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army, Lieutenant-General Pavel Rotmistrov, to explain the heavy losses suffered by the army under his command to Stalin, who was not well-known for a tolerant attitude to bad news. Wheatley, Ben (2023). The Panzers of Prokhorovka: The Myth of Hitler's Greatest Armoured Defeat. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 9781472859082. A remarkable new history of th A document prepared on 17 July 1943 by the 5th Guards Tank Army headquarters summarised the combat losses incurred by the formation from 12 to 16 July inclusive for all of its five corps, as well as smaller units directly subordinated to the army headquarters. [195] The document reported the following irrecoverable losses: 222 T-34s, 89 T-70s, 12 Churchills, 8 SU-122s, 3 SU-76s, and 240 support vehicles. [195] The document reported damaged vehicles still under repair as 143 T-34s, 56 T-70s, 7 Churchills, 3 SU-122s, and 3 SU-76s, with no figures for support vehicles. [195] The document reported personnel casualties as 2,940 killed in action, 3,510 wounded in action, and 1,157 missing in action. [195] This totals 334 irrevocable losses in tanks and self-propelled guns, [187] with another 212 tanks and self-propelled guns under repair, and 7,607 casualties. The historian Karl-Heinz Frieser argued that the majority of the losses reported in the document must have occurred on 12 July. [196] The Eastern Front cannot be considered in isolation: more than 250,000 German troops were taken captive at Tunis in May 1943; the Anglo-American landings in Sicily took place two days before Prokhorovka. The war was swinging rapidly in the Allies’ favour. The Third Reich, which had not prepared for a long war, was now faced with war on two fronts, and even temporarily stabilising the Eastern Front by victory at Kursk could not have made much difference in the long run.

Reviews

Though Valeriy Zamulin, a Russian military historian and former curator of Prokhorovka, Museum, suggests a more modest figure for German losses, he still concludes that they lost as many as 80 tanks – against some 400 Russian losses. Losses in dispute Healy, Mark (2010) [2008]. Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4–17 July 1943. Stroud, UK: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-5716-1.

Full article: Citadel, Prokhorovka and Kharkov: The Armoured

Zamulin, Valeriy (2012). "Prokhorovka: The Origins and Evolution of a Myth". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 25 (4): 582–595. doi: 10.1080/13518046.2012.730391. S2CID 144132258. This ground-breaking new study of the battles of Kursk and Prokhorovka will transform our understanding of one of the most famous battles of the Second World War, widely mythologized as the largest tank battle in history. Attempts to rewrite immutable historical facts, falsify the events of those years, play down the decisive role of the Soviet people in defeating Nazism and freeing Europe from the “brown plague” look unworthy and insulting,’ the ambassador said. The battle which developed and then concluded on June 30 was a confusing morass that swallowed 2,648 Soviet tanks out of a total force of 5,000 versus some 1,000 German tanks. It’s unclear how many tanks of the 1st Panzer Group were destroyed in the battle, but the force did lose 100 of its tanks during the first two weeks of the war. Töppel, Roman (2021). "The Battle of Prokhorovka: Facts Against Fables". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 34 (2): 251–270. doi: 10.1080/13518046.2021.1990559.A rare aerial colour photo of German armour moving into action on the first morning of the Battle of Kursk. Clark, Lloyd (2012). Kursk: The Greatest Battle: Eastern Front 1943. London: Headline Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-7553-3639-5. Dunn, Walter (1997). Kursk: Hitler's Gamble, 1943. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-275-95733-9.