Citadel : the battle of Kursk / Robin Cross.

First published in 1993 by Michael O'Mara Books, London.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [261]-262) and index.

Crisis in the South -- The dictators -- The vanishing army -- Red Army rising -- The tug of war -- Digging in -- THe dogfight -- Prokhorovka -- Retreat to the Dnieper.

Citadel was the greatest armoured clash in the history of the world and the decisive battle of World War II. Vast armies were engaged, and titanic air battles included the most costly single day of aerial warfare of all time. This was the battle of Kursk which Hitler confessed made his 'stomach turn over'. Citadel was the last great German offensive on the Eastern Front; its aim to claw back the initiative after the surrender of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in January 1943. The location chosen by Hitler was the Kursk salient in the heartland of the Ukraine. The time was 5 July 1943, the codename 'Citadel'. The Red Army, warned of the German plans by the 'Lucy' spy network in Switzerland, was prepared to defend the salient in massive strength and depth. Against its breakwaters Hitler launched his finest armoured divisions, to see them mangled beyond repair.

No sooner had the German thrusts been contained, while within the tantalizing grasp of success, than the Red Army delivered a series of crushing counterblows which were to drive the Wehrmacht back beyond the Dnieper. Characteristically, Hitler had gambled all on a throw of a single dice and had lost the initiative in the East - never to regain it. Citadel provides a detailed picture of the Battle of Kursk, from the strategic tug-of-war waged within both high commands in the agonizing months which preceded the German offensive, to the firsthand experiences of the troops on the ground and the airmen flying over the blazing steppe as the battle reached furnace heat. Citadel is placed firmly within the wider strategic context of the spring and summer of 1943, months in which Hitler and Stalin steeled themselves to take decisions which would decide the course of the war and the shape of the peace which followed.