After the Battle of Kursk, Stalin and the Stavka set their sights on recapturing Smolensk, and farther south, the wealth of the Donbas and eastern Ukraine.

Map 1: The Chernihiv-Poltava Offensive

Map 2: The Red Army perspective

I guess you have to be a Red Army officer to understand this one.

Photos:

Ivan Konev, Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1945

General Nikolai Vatutin, Commander of the Voronezh Front, 1943

Konstantin Rokossovsky, Marshal of the USSR.

When Germany attacked Kursk in 1943, they found an enemy that had prepared a complex strategy, and assembled immense forces poised to act as soon as the German attacks stalled. This strategy began with three operations named for three Russian generals from history: Kutuzov, Rumyantsev, and Suvorov — the practice for Operation Bagration.

Map 1: Operation Kutuzov and revenge for Kursk

Map 2: Operation Rumyantsev and the Fourth Battle of Kursk

Map 3: Operation Suvorov, the liberation of Smolensk

This was armoured warfare at its most brutal, with tanks slugging it out at point-blank range. The tanks were as close as 10–15m. Once hit, many of the crews had little chance of bailing out and were splattered all over the insides of their tanks. Those who did try to escape their blazing tanks were mown down and their lifeless bodies left obscenely charred and shrivelled.

Map 1: The Kursk Salient

Map 2: The battle of Kursk — the southern sector

Map 3: The northern sector

Map 4: Another look at the battle of Prokhorovka

Sources:

Ian Baxter, Kursk 1943: Last German Offensive in the East. Havertown, PA: Casemate Publihsers (US), 2019.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

Robin Cross, Citadel: The Battle of Kursk. UK: Lume Books, 2018.

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941–1945. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

Wikipedia: The Battle of Kursk.

Katyusha sound effect by Sound Effect by kuiycb from Pixabay

Some tank sound effects by Dennis from Pixabay