ISBN 0-7006-0978
472 pages

Preface; Acknowledgments; Prologue; Dramatis Personae; maps; photos; tables; orders of battle; Notes; Selective Bibliography; Index

Appendices: German Order of Battle; Soviet Order of Battle; Comparative Strengths and Losses; Comparative Armor Strengths; Key German Orders; Key Soviet Documents

   No one else has done as much in recent years as Colonel David Glantz—sometimes assisted by co-authors such as Harold Orenstein or, as in this case, Jonathan House—to cause the bookshelves of researchers, collectors, and wargamers to overflow with invaluable tomes devoted to the Russian front. Last year two of Colonel Glantz's Russian front titles were voted by visitors to this website as among the Top Ten WWII books of 1998. This year, his Zhukov's Greatest Defeat and The Battle of Kursk appear likely to repeat that achievement for 1999's Top Ten. With three of those four books coming from the University Press of Kansas, these successes further validate UPK's "Modern War Studies" series as one of the most vital sources for military titles today.
   All of which serves as useful background information about the new book, but more importantly it should be noted right away that The Battle of Kursk, in which the authors have eschewed the controversial approach and unusual stylistic elements of Zhukov's Greatest Defeat, proves to be the best work ever written by Glantz, with or without co-authors. Furthermore, The Battle of Kursk earns the laurels as the best English-language book on the subject. For anyone who appreciates the fine work of Glantz or for anyone who wants to discover nearly all there is to know about Kursk, this book is simply indispensable.
   That having been said, it's still useful to dissect the book, measure its contents, and compare it to other books on the same subject.
   More than anything else, The Battle of Kursk is an account of the preparations, movements, attacks, counter-movements, and counterattacks in July 1943 which permanently wrested the strategic initiative from the German Army. Here's a typical example of how Glantz and House record the action:

   Division headquarters responded promptly. At 0630 hours it ordered its 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment, supported by the four Tiger tanks of its 13th Company, to join the attack and clear Soviet forces out of Storozhevoe on the 2d Regiment's right flank. Fifteen minutes later, it ordered the division's reconnaissance battalion into action to protect the division's left flank against Soviet attacks from Andreevka in the Psel valley. Meanwhile, the divisional artillery and Werfer regiments opened intense fire on Soviet artillery positions north of the Psel, and Stuka dive-bombers began hourly strikes against Soviet defenses to the front.
   Up to now Leibstandarte had been contending only with elements of the already-depleted 2d Tank Corps and small infantry elements from the 183d Rifle Division. The initial German attack penetrated the 169th Tank Brigade's defense rather easily and forced the Soviet tankers to withdraw slowly up the Prokhorovka road and toward Storozhevoe. On the 169th's left, the 99th Tank Brigade wheeled back toward the Psel valley from which it began launching periodic forays against Leibstandarte's flank, supported by 52d Guards Rifle Division infantry. When the Germans resumed their assault, however, they ran straight into the dug-in troopers of the 9th Guards Airborne Division, which was now supported by the remaining tanks of the 169th Tank Brigade and the 57th Tank Regiment and 301st Antitank Artillery Regiment, provided by the 5th Guards Army. As the relative coolness of dawn gave way to the stifling heat and humidity of the full summer day, the fighting took on new ferocity.

   While Glantz and House frame this operational/tactical account with background, context, and conclusions, their text mostly chronicles combat action at army, corps, division, brigade, and regiment level. The material they cover breaks down roughly as follows (not counting all the appendices, endnotes, bibliography, etc):

Earlier stages of the Russo-German War — 7 pages
State of the German and Soviet forces — 37 pages
Preparations for battle — 28 pages
The German attack in the north and Soviet response — 8 pages
The German attack in the south and Soviet response (including Prokhorovka) — 133 pages
Soviet counter-offensives from Orel to Kharkov — 28 pages
Conclusions — 28 pages
German order of battle — 7 pages
Soviet order of battle — 46 pages

   In the section on the state of the German and Soviet forces, coverage of the Red Army is circumscribed by Glantz's intention soon to publish a companion to his Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of the World War, the new volume to comprehensively cover Stalin's armies in 1943. In the meantime, for a fuller treatment of both German and Soviet armed forces at the time of Kursk, readers should refer to Walter Dunn's complementary Kursk: Hitler's Gamble, 1943, itself an excellent book on the battle, which devotes over eighty pages to strength, organization, equipment, and doctrine.
   While Glantz and House utilize more Soviet sources (including The Battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study, which was recently translated and edited by Glantz and Orenstein), in regard to Prokhorovka they reach much the same conclusion as Dunn in Kursk and George Nipe in Decision in the Ukraine. That is, previous accounts of Kursk as a whole and Prokhorovka in particular have tended to over-estimate the number of armored vehicles involved, inflate German tank losses, and overstate the magnitude of the Soviet achievement. Glantz and House also dispel, as did Dunn and Nipe, the simplistic notion from earlier books about Prokhorovka which speak of "a confused free-for-all...like knights on a fifteenth-century battlefield" where "burning Soviet tanks rammed the Tigers."
   Interestingly, Glantz and House do not speculate—as did Dunn and Nipe—about the prospects for German success had Hitler not effectively halted the offensive following Prokhorovka. Where Dunn concludes that continuation of Citadel would have been hopeless given the disparity between the strength of the opponents, Nipe sees sufficient German operational and numerical superiority at the schwerpunkt, especially with commitment of XXIV Panzerkorps, to present the opportunity for victory. Rather than speculating on such possibilities, the authors devote several pages to debunking the myth that Citadel was doomed from the start, emphasizing in particular that leaders on both sides had every reason to expect that, based on past performance, not even defenses as strong as those at Kursk would be able to prevent the German blitzkrieg from penetrating into the enemy's strategic depths.
   Glantz and House also give a broader meaning to "the battle of Kursk," going as they do beyond the usual boundary, Operation Citadel, and seamlessly including the Soviet counter-offensives from Orel to Kharkov as part of a larger, connected campaign. The Battle of Kursk also includes more information on the air operations at Kursk than can be found in other, predominantly ground-based accounts. Further, the authors are fortunate to have the plentiful, nicely executed maps of Darin Grauberger. (Nipe's maps are amateurish at best, and Dunn lacks maps altogether.)
   Of particular note are the appendices. These include the most complete orders of battle yet published for Kursk. The Soviet OB alone runs to some forty-six pages and includes many units down to battalion level. Almost twenty additional pages of tables display exceedingly detailed returns for manpower, casualties, and AFVs for both sides over the course of the battle. All of these appendices will be of inestimable value to wargamers.
   Finally, readers should pay close attention to the book's endnotes. The authors have heavily documented their facts with a plethora of sources in English, German, and Russian and, besides adding more detail to the text, the notes stake out a rich lode of literature for further mining. The sources are carefully compared and contrasted, especially where Soviet and German accounts are at odds, and the notes themselves make fascinating reading.
   Within the last two years Kursk has been the subject of close examination by no fewer than four important new books. The Battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study is a revealing look at how the Soviet military leadership assessed the battle. Nipe with Decision in the Ukraine does a fine job of following II SS and III Panzerkorps on the Russian front, including Kursk, throughout the summer of 1943. Dunn's Kursk: Hitler's Gamble, 1943 does a good job of focusing on Citadel itself and an excellent job of analyzing all the factors that played a part in determining the outcome of that operation. But Glantz and House with The Battle of Kursk have set the new standard by which accounts of the campaign must be judged.
   Highly recommended.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from University Press of Kansas.
   Thanks to UPK for providing this review copy.