The Battle of the Tanks

On July 5, 1943, the greatest land battle the world has ever seen began when Nazi and Red Army forces clashed near the town of Kursk, on the western border of the Soviet Union. This savage battle of attrition would decide the outcome of the war on the Eastern Front. In The Battle of the Tanks, military historian Lloyd Clark has written the definitive account of an epic showdown that changed the course of history.

Code named “Operation Zitadelle,” the German offensive would cut through the bulge in the eastern front that had been created following Germany’s retreat at the battle of Stalingrad. But the Soviets, well-informed about Germany’s plans through their network of spies, had months to prepare. Two million men supported by 6,000 tanks, 35,000 guns, and 5,000 aircraft convened in Kursk for a confrontation that was one of the most important military engagements in history, the epitome of “total war.” It was also one of the most bloody, and despite suffering seven times more casualties, the Soviets won a decisive victory that became a turning point in the war.

Clark has created much more than a snapshot of the battle itself. Drawing on unprecedented access to the journals and testimonials of the officers, soldiers, political leaders, and citizens who lived through it, he has written a fully integrated political, economic, military and social overview of Germany and the Soviet Union from World War I onward. He pays particular attention to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, and how their respective political motivations and ideological fervor prepared their nations for war, and determined the course of the fighting.

After setting the stage, Clark takes us from the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, through the initial Soviet defeats and the Battle of Stalingrad, showing how this was a conflict like no other—an unbridled war of destruction marked by extreme hatred and brutality. Thus, his depiction of the scale, intensity and horror that marked the fighting at Kursk seems perfectly in keeping with what preceded it. His descriptions of the battle—the opening salvos on the morning of July 5, the massive air battle that followed, the main German armored attack, the final climax at the village of Prokhorovka, which involved some 1,000 tanks facing each other at point-blank range—are arrestingly visceral. Ultimately, Clark shows how Kursk came to represent the protracted industrial and economic struggle Hitler could not possibly win. The battle was destined to be Hitler’s last offensive in the East, and the harbinger of victory for the Soviet Union.

An incisive, exhaustively researched and brilliantly conceived history, The Battle of the Tanks is unique in the annals of World War II literature.