Nazi Tanks Advance on Kursk - Prokhorovka Part 1
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- German tanks advance on Kursk, smashing through Soviet defences and setting the stage for one of history’s most legendary tank battles - The Battle of Prokhorovka. In this six part miniseries we will cover the fierce fighting, the strategies, and the men and machines that take part in this battle.
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Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Director: Astrid Deinhard
Producers: Astrid Deinhard and Spartacus Olsson
Executive Producers: Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Marek Kamiński
Community Management: Jake McCluskey
Written by: James Newman
Research by: James Newman
Map animations by: Daniel Weiss
Map research by: Sietse Kenter & Tom Aldis
Edited by: Piotr Tomaszkiewicz
Artwork and color grading by: Mikołaj Uchman
Sound design by: Marek Kamiński
Source literature list: bit.ly/SourcesWW2
Archive footage: Screenocean/Reuters - www.screenocea...
A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
I'M INDY NYDELL AND THIS IS WW 2.
God, how I miss this every Saturday.
@@gmnotyet yeah, me too👍
@@jasonmussett2129 Yeah. I'm not get used to hearing "This is Korean war" yet
Sycophants are not stimulating to say the least..
What happened to Der Schwartzkopf Division??
Try spelling his surname correctly Sir..
Every time you say “state farm,” I keep thinking you’re gonna sell insurance; it’s unavoidable
I was thinking those two words sounded familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
Never thought that kolkhoz is a State Farm
Well if you lived off of a State Farm I have a feeling you’d need life insurance 😂😂😂
@@shapshooter8669
would not need house insurance
@@shapshooter8669well I got State farms Volcano insurance with my wife's rainy day fun and I have to say I'm more than happy with my purchase. No volcano has dared to spring up near my home.
We hope you enjoyed episode one of this six part miniseries. Next episode we will cover the deployment of hundreds of Tanks and guns as the II SS Panzer Corps and the 5th Guards Tank Army prepare for battle! We will be making more of these miniseries now that our weekly coverage is over.
It’s the Timeghost Army that makes this all possible, so join here at: www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
I am hoping that you saw my comment telling you I sent a message by email to timeghost email. I think it got buried in the live chat section by the time i could get back.
-- Cool, that you have not finished(but finished the Big WWII series) with coverage of WWII! I'm so glad this notification popped up right now in recommended videos.
I really appreciate this series and maybe other following going in depth into the details which was not possible during "the first series". And I guess there are still lots of topics to look at a second time and more deeper than back then.
Hats off !
8:40 - Indies german pronounciation has improved a lot - for example the SS Obergruppenführer is a complicated german word and usually butchered by americans but this one was damn good. Same for the word "Das Reich" with the complicate "ch" at the end where usually americans use a kind of Ryke like dyke. Same for Leibstandarte where he speaks out the last "e" like in Porsche which Americans usually cut and wonder, why germans do not understand when they speak about Porsch ... while germans now it with a herable and long "e".
Just to let the non german speaker know that this is really good pronounciation and that he takes care for the german words and its pronounciation and that is a lot of effort at least at this level and through a complete video.
10:15 - and I also like this animation of the conversation in this kind of setup between the 2 generals pictures looking like an old typewriter or stenograph typing the text in real time where other channels throw the full text onto the screen reading that. It is not so distracting cause you follow the narrator and the words coming in where in the full text at once methods you start to read the text while you do not listen to the voice cause your reading is faster and you will be soon ahead of the voice.
@@robertjarman3703we saw it. In pointed to Jake, and Jake answered he’d checked, but if you haven’t heard back from him by end of Sunday, please send again because then the email could have been lost in the spam filters.
You guys have done and continue to do amazing work. I genuinely think you've pioneered a whole new approach to telling the story and history of conflicts that influences your contemporaries. Keep creating content like this that rivals Sparty's Mustache in its magnificence
So many accounts of this battle just spend 30 minutes repeating the old cliches about two vast tank armies running headlong into each other and causing carnage, and they leave out any real details of the battle.
This channel gives the detail behind the headlines. Well done guys.
5:45 "Have you looked at our caps recently? They have skulls on them. ... Are we ... are we the baddies?"
Fun fact: the commander of the Tiger platoon, newly reassigned from working with StuGs, is a promising young officer named Michael Wittmann.
The person that got killed by a Canadian shoemaker?
@@modest_spice6083 The very same! XD
Just some dude who was a better tanker than his enemies… people need to stop idolizing other humans…
@@Ealdorman_of_Mercia I'm idolizing Burnin Sherman and you can't change my mind.
@Ealdorman_of_Mercia so what's the context in him calling Jews and Soviets subhumans again?
Never though I would see the TimeGhost crew giving us an even deeper analisys of my fav WW2 battle after that awesome special regular episode 2 and a hal years ago, but here we are and I cannot express houw grateful I am for it. Thank you TG crew and carry on. Excelsior!
Was literally thinking this morning as I got my breakfast, ‘boy, I do miss the regular Sunday morning WW2 episode’, and lo and behold, here is this special! A special thank you indeed for continuing on with more in-depth WW2 coverage!
It is interesting how the Battle of Prokhorovka came about
On the first day of the operation, the Germans overran the Russian 6th Army and ran into the dug-in 1st Russian Tank Army in the second echelon
Vatutin wanted the 1st Tank Army to counterattack, but Katukov refused and asked the front to change order,
Katukov dig-in the T-34 up to the turret in the ground and thus stopped the German advance
The Germans encountered "weaker resistance" to the east towards Prokhorovka and that's where they then turned
Unfortunately for the 5th Tank Army, they did not have time to dig in, but literally marched into battle
The rest is history
world war 2 series on one of the most devastating battles of WW2? EXCELLENT!!
World war 2 squared?
Are the plans to do more such specials on other events during the war? Cause this is great! I love that you guys are continuing to flush stuff out!
Absolutely!
@@spartacus-olssonthat’s awesome! I really appreciate all the work y’all do!
@@spartacus-olsson I wonder if you'll tell the stories of certain Axis and Allied divisions throughout the war. Especially the obscure ones like those besieged at Dunkirk in 1944-5. So fanatical was the German resolve there that they started eating sawdust instead of surrendering
I hadn't heard of Kursk until (age 10) I read Issue 1 of War Monthly in 1970, the scale of forces involved was shocking,
Quite an eye-opener, as so little info seemed available on E Front. I thought I must have read the most brutal episode of the war little knowing I still had the Winter War, the Kyiv catastrophe, doomed Sevastopol and the Crimea, the bloody, brutal Stalingrad and Caucasus Campaign, the sheer desperation of attempting to reopen routes to Leningrad, plus the appallingly dreadful Rzhev Meat grinder and Op Bagration to discover.
For all its ghastly faults and even allowing for lend lease support, I shall never truly understand just how the Soviet State managed to lose so much at the start, yet sustain a savage defence, then finally go on the offensive.
Who are you talking to on the phone Indy? Its the great WWII mystery of them all... Worthy of its own series...
My headcanon is that its his army of time travelling journalists as they document the war while infiltrated in the various cobelligerents' armed forces
The Man in the High Castle
He answered that in the end-of-WWII Q&A. It might have been Conrad von Hotzendorf?
General Steiner
"That's the legend!?" I could almost hear the words "but is this really the case?" next. Great content and the era really gives itself to a granular historical review.
@@marcel-ifc17 th-cam.com/video/yjkQZ3MmGgY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=V-L7y6aDRSeKrRkF
@marcel-ifc17 I think this video gives a pretty good insight into that question. However obvious the answer seems to be.
Looking forward to this series, I wrote my MA Dissertation on Prokhorovka. Can't wait to see the TGA Analyse
This is absolutely amazing, keeping the channel and history alive. And one of my favorite battles of WW2 as the first episode? Hell yeah, can't wait for more of these!
You know it...
Thanks for watching, stay tuned for more!
I was under the impression that the Battle of Brody (or Dubno) was the largest tank battle of history.
Wait and see 😉
But I’m an internet commenter! I need instant gratification. 😅
By number of tanks Dubno is by far the bigger battle but if you factor in other arms like infantry, artillery and aeroplanes prokhorovka is bigger
@@haroldearlgray5629 I would have to disagree. The actual engagement at Prokhorovka was mostly a tank engagement as part of the larger Operation Citadel.
"We might lose Kursk!"
"Oh no..anyway send the steppe front" Soviet..probably
And they also got pretty much mauled.
Everything I know about WW2 I learned from Indy. These videos are the best online.
Thanks!
Thank you for the superchat!
Indy, every year you are better at this.
Best channel ever!
Greetings from Colombia.
Excellent! Can't wait for the rest, many thanks to Indy, Sparty, and all the rest for producing the greatest WW2 documentary the world has ever seen!
I was thrilled to see this thumbnail pop up. Having read Martin Caiden's "The Tigers Are Burning" when I was around 10 years old, this particular battle has frequently captured my interest when considering the Eastern Front. As always, I'm really going to enjoy this miniseries! -Erik Wade, Capt., TGA
Thanks for being a member Erik.
Lacking time to watch all the documentaries I'd like, I feel very lucky and immensely pleased to notice the name Prokhorovka, vaguely remembered from a video game, and find out that we're getting a whole mini-series about it. Thank you, this I gotta see!
WHEW! I didn’t time travel after all! When I awakened and checked my subscriptions for new videos and came upon The Battle of Kursk that I know I saw 2+ years ago but it was brand new you can understand my confusion! I’m very excited you will go into detail about this battle within the battle-it deserves its own spotlight. *****Don’t forget, even though STAVKA were pretty sure Kursk was where the Germans were going to attack, Stalin actually got the battle plans from his ‘Lucy’ spy ring based in Switzerland from spy code name ‘Werther’ whom Stalin thought was in OKW. Unfortunately for history, we don’t have his name. I suspect Werther was really the British feeding info from Enigma to the Lucy ring. We know this was done because Stalin wasn’t told about Enigma and Bletchley Park, but whenever the US or UK tried to tip him off, the ever paranoid Stalin didn’t believe them so the Brits fed the info through Switzerland and the Lucy ring.
Brits cant be trusted at all.
eg operation unthinkable
A competent and brilliant narrator with a real voice. Thank you for that!
Nice work. I like this format of a deeper dive into certain events that couldn’t be covered in the scope of the weekly updates.
You should make a documentary on the Forgotten 500, the American airmen shot down by the nazis on the bombing run of oilfields in Romania and saved by the Četniks in Serbia.
This doesn’t make sense.
@@DerDopWhich part?
Are you 5 😅@@DerDop
Funny how četniks were nazi allies and still helped the american airmen
@@SGT51 Actually Guys All Partisans On The Soviet Terriotry Were In Fact Soviet Or Soviet Aligned
Thanks
Thanks!...for keeping the interst of history for me Alive by Making Specials like These
And thank you for watching!
I was lagging behind WW2 from Autumn 1942 until summer 43.
I can't recall so much of this time as I often bingewatched five videos while often doing something else.
2021 and 2022 where quite busy for me.
But now Time Ghost comes down from the heavens and covers old topics once again in even more detail!
Praise be!
I'm Indy Neidell, AWK AWK!! 😂
Sorry, been watching a lot of Sabaton History lately.
I actually went and watched the Panzerkampf episode again as a prelude to watching this.
Thank you for what you do, you're among the best Indy!! 🙂
*Screaming Eagle intensifies*
You guys never chased to impress me ! Best Ww2 series and mini-series in history !
Heck yeah
Oh, I like the new animated graphics being used for the mini-series. 2 thumbs up.
Amazing work! You've pioneered a new approach to historical storytelling about conflict, and it's clearly influencing others.
Well some people say that battle of Brody/Dubno in 1941 was the biggest tank battle in history, where tanks fought against tanks, not against diches and hidden positions.
The Death Ride Kursk does the 4th Panzer Armee's attack and the Soviet Red Army and Red Guards defense in very great detail.
Really glad to see you back in the saddle again re. WWII! Keep these mini-series up--the detail is fascinating. Thanks for posting.
I just rewatched your hour long 'compilation' of the battle of Stalingrad.
This feels like a good follow up.
I like the idea of revisiting stuff, It'd be interesting to do something about the german pockets in france after the ally broked through (maybe a special showing what it was like in those pockets?)
Good to have that background back. Ganna bring Joakim or Per to speak of this battle in any chapter?
@@jumafallout who knows, who knows… 😉
Love it! I really enjoy eastern front battle stories, especially between early 1943-end of 1944.
Hello World War II I'm pretty new to the channel ( maybe around July or August this year ) and I have thoroughly enjoyed the episodes I have watched and this Channel is one I look to for GOOD INFORMATION I also definitely enjoyed this particular episode and I'd like to ask if you plan on doing more episodes like these in the future I'd certainly like to see more on the Invasion of Poland in 1939 as it's quite undercovered in my opinion. That's really all I have to say oh wait I also wanted to say Indy your pronunciation of names was quite good. Thanks for the effort you put into your content 👋.
We do plan to have more specials like this covering different events of the war, as to what exactly though you'll just have to wait and see. Thanks for the suggestion!
Looks like I'll have to wait and see then 😂 looking forward to it though thanks for the work you put in to your content it's really just marvellous 👍
As always, thank you for your work, your dedication to ensuring that history does not fall into dusty shadows. It's all to easy to forget what happened, and ignoring history which opens up for such terrible things to potentially happen again. We cannot forget what happens during war, and specially not the lessons to be learned from it.
YES I needed my WW2 fill after finally catching up with the channel (it took me binging all year)
Great idea. Really looking forward to this kind of detail on the battle.
Stay tuned for more!
Delicious absolutely delicious plz do cover the Kokada track, hurtgen forest, seelow hights. Perhaps even a special on the different siege's that went on during the war
I think the real reason Indy's looking forward to doing this mini series is the necessity to constantly pronounce all these Russian place names.
excellent- and motivational!
reorganizing the amps and wires- lots and lots of wires /cables for the subwoofers to make space for a new HTPC in the rack-
comparatively speaking - should be easy after this great intro to the series
Great vid, would love to see more of this kind of mini-series
Wonderful. You should do some other combat specials, like Lyiudnikov "island" in Stalingrad, the siege of Kholm, the siege of Arnhem Bridge, or Sugar Loaf hill in Okinawa.
The story telling is masterful!
We’re back boys.
Thanks for doing this. I happen to be studying this battle currently.
And thanks for watching.
Thanx so much WWII channel. Keep up with these reports.
Excited for this series!
For those interested in the engineering aspect of this battle, I recommend the book of Paul Kennedy “Engineers of Victory” notably the chapter on how to defeat the blitzkrieg. He goes in detail on the multiple ways the allies successfully defended against the German blitzkrieg, precisely on the battle of El Alamein and Kursk.
This is great to find this miniseries now so that I can just go onto the next one without waiting 😋
Hi Indy
These mini series are interesting to watch after the full series world war 2,want more of this.
Thanks
Like you i enjoy this mini serie. 😀 And your animated map are again improved (how is this possible ?😁) Keep the good work.
Fantastic series, love even more than ww2 series parts
From the fields of Prokhorovka, to the shores of Overlord
Hope to see more of these in-depth battles! Also really liking the 3D maps
Thanks guys!
Fun to hear those magic words "I'm Indy Neidell, this is World War II" again (not quite how he said it this time, but you know what I mean).
I had to rub my eyes! I think this is the town you take on sudden strike 4 the Kursk battle in the German campaign. Love this channel
Hell of a subject matter at Christmas time. I thought maybe the Battle of the Bulge? Happy Holidays all.
hi Indy, looking forward to this miniseries.
Any plans for future miniseries or special episode?
We do plan to do more of this type of content in the future.
- Jake
@@WorldWarTwo hopeful, we could get an special episode on the Danish August "Revolt" of 1943 in the future. It would be nice to have someone in English go in-depth with it
Great episode.....
Can’t wait to watch the rest of this series…. Yall make better documentaries on ww2 then the fuckin history channel.
I very much enjoyed your video and I gave it a Thumbs Up
Informative and wonderful historical coverage video about southern part of citadel operations
Prokhorovka is certainly the most known tank battle of all time, but "Dubno Brody" during the initial invasion (1941) was far bigger in terms of number of tanks :)
Prokhorovka had around 1000 tanks all told. Dubno Brody had over 4000 (on paper) :)
Just wrong. I recommend the works of Dr. Roman Töppel, the leading expert on the Battle of Kursk
It depends on how you calculate it, Dubno Brody had units with more tanks, but tanks that fought against other tanks will be similiar to Prokhorovka since many tanks broke down before being used, some were just not used before the fight were effectively over. A good reason as to why the battle of Kursk is so well known as the biggest tank battle is due to the overall offensive being the last one the germans seemingly could turn the tide back in their favor. Dubno Brody isn't well known as it happened at a time and place that did not see much focus by historians comparred to the large encirclements happening futher north.
@@MrWolfgangtube I've seen several interviews of him, usually on channels like "Military Aviation History", etc. He certainly knows his stuff, but i am not wrong :)
@@sykeskills896 Very true. I was merely giving some pushback against Indy's opening statement of "biggest tank battle in history" :)
It’s just 90 or so seconds into the video that I say this is the LEGEND of prokhorovka and I’m gonna talk about the reality. You really didn’t even watch that far before making that comment?
This will be the best researched documentary of this greatest of battles. Easy call. This team is the best!!
Thank you very much for doing this series!
I'm waiting till a playlist is made to watch this series.
Did i ever said thank you for your work?
I think i did, but I'm sure that it could still be one more!
Thank you.
You never really hear about the year 1943 in ww2 games and films/Documentarys. It's usually always 1939, invasion of poland, to 1940 invasion of france, then 1941 japanese attack pearl harbour then to 1942 in stalingrad and then skips straight to d day 1944, then to berlin 1945. Thats why I find 1943 to be most interesting.
Do you the Russian Campaign or Third Reich?
Exciting series ahead! Trying to get caught up.
Sir the war is over. As unbelievable as it is, it is finished. How about a nice special on growing grain ?
Love your guys video, keep em up! also wanted to shout out a question to Indy on a game I discovered. Were you by chance the voice actor for the radio operator in Helldivers 1? The voice sounded very familiar and thought it might be you.
The Algorithm responded to my demands that Saturday mornings feature WWII with Indy!
I am indeed not a minuscule cog in the machine of the universe!
Aloha
Thank you Time Ghost!
Great to hear more details!
BTW, you don't need music, if that's what I heard. It sounded like an ice cream push cart, but this is December...
The largest tank battle in history was Dubno-Brody, fought June 23, 1941.
It’s literally 90 seconds into the video when I say that this is the LEGEND of prokhorovka and I’m gonna talk about the reality. You really didn’t even watch that far before commenting?
@@Southsideindy Another person made a similar comment as well.
It was @Lockerus
We found “that guy”
I have fought this battle many times, on various wargames (table as well as PC). Different outcomes, which suggests that this huge battle was really closely disputed.
Indy!!!! Thank the gods you are here.
You'll catch Indy every Saturday here on the World War Two channel and Tuesday on the Korean War channel.
What gods?
@@ahmedlisnjic7967Mars, Kartikeya, Ares, Thor, Huitzilopochtli, Sungmanito or one of those guys I’d surmise…
It’s Rooten Tooten Vatutin!
Nice new animation you used at around 10:55.
I would be cool to see a video about the 9th army breakout 45
Roman Töppel's Kursk is the best book I've read on the battle.
Back in the game, I see.
Btw, just checked out the doc where you list all your sources. The 1944-45 ones are still missing. Any plans to complete them?
In fact, other battles had involved more tanks, but never before or since have so many armoured vehicles - more than 800 in all - clashed at pointblank range
Funny that German tanks were operating in the Kursk area again this past August.
man a lot of magic pills would have been taken to get through that mammoth battle with no sleep
Best history teachers in the world: Sabaton, Indy Neidell, Fat Electrician, Count Dankula, and the Metatron
TIK aswell
5:38
Huh, the same guy and corps that I stumbled upon while doing research for an Arma 3 campaign during Operation Cobra.
Once you know them just a little bit you see them time and time again.
In Russia, you don’t march into the motherland, motherland marches into you…
This is why I LOVE YOU, Indy....