Extra History - Kursk #1 (Operation Barbarossa) // Historian Reaction
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 มี.ค. 2021
- See the original video here - • The Battle of Kursk - ...
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#WW2 #History
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I think this man is speedrunning Extra History's content, feel like he will get a world record.
Hey I'm all for it. More people who know what they're talking about reacting to extra credits is amazing
Extra history: where you go to learn what school won't teach you.
This is good content from when Extra Credits used to be watchable so I'm all for it.
@@SightUnseen555 Some of the new stuff is good but its obvious the more you watch is that they have an agenda and it really affects the newest episodes. They're overly silly, everyone secretly has an agenda, and the character building is nonexistent.
@@malachiphoniex8501 It's really quite appalling how the same "brand" (even though not a single original member still works there) could make these amazing, in depth, nuanced, and well researched history videos in 2015-2017 and now in 2018+ they literally just REEEEEEE at the thought that a WW2 videogame might have you play as a member of the Wehrmacht and equivocates that with being a literal card carrying nazi.
As my preferred history teacher, i only wish i was in school now and didnt graduate 10 years ago and lived in Ohio so i could petition the school district to get you hired on full time. Field trip to Fredericksburg? Oh heck yea
Love how Extra history is correctly attributing German defeat to Soviet resistance rather than just repeating that old tired myth that “oh the weather was bad and it was too cold for the Germans.” The bad weather did play a role but the Red Army played a bigger one.
Also, regarding the airlift resupply operation at Stalingrad, there was a successful precedent for that which encouraged Hitler and the Wehrmacht to the point of overconfidence. Look up the Demyansk pocket.
They mixed up thenames. The Guy standing is Ribbentrop
Here in Germany in a church there is a coal drawing from one of the soliders killed in Stalingrad it's called "Stalingrad Madona" and was made in the back of a map. An officer that left do to his wounds on one of the last planes to make it out took it with him.
It is kept on display to remind us of the cost of war.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_Madonna
@@woodworkingDad64 thank you for that
Devil Dogs and now Kursk?! Well, I see this as an absolute win!
So glad that he’s watching extra history
All these videos are just great, hope they keep coming for a long time to come! Not long for 50k and its well deserved!
This guy really just deserves so much more fame, just the way how his videos are not about reacting, but actually trying to learn and help people learn more about the subjects is amazing.
Love your vids dude. Can't wait to keep learning about history with you.
I believe Stalingrad was the turning point. Kursk was the last time the Germans/NAZIs were really planning a great offencesive. There after the Germans were damn near always on the back foot.
Great point. I agree.
have to agree, they were already on the offensive by the time of Kursk. it was just the Germans last ditch effort to turn the tide
"never start a land war in asia" the first of the classic blunders
But Moscow and western part of Russia aren't in Asia...
@@ironshrek88 true, but this is a princess bride reference
Starting a battle of wits with a Sicilian when death is on the line a pretty big blunder too.
@@sammather8295 it is only slightly less well known
About the Barbarosa:
Besides oil problem, fear of getting attacked first and ideological conflicts, Hitlers whole “program” was Movement to the East. That was his initial goal, so there is no way he wouldn’t go for USSR. Britain was negotiable, but there was no way attack on Soviets won’t occur, considering who was in charge. You can call it a mistake, but that’s his whole motivation, the idea itself is flawed, not the execution. Germany couldn’t win WW2 is a great video on that topic.
These videos are very enjoyable and have a ton of interesting information to learn from. So cool watching this channel grow like it has. Your doing an amazing job thank you for all you do
Thank you Dave, you're very kind.
The “German aces of world war 2” being a lot more and higher than the allies, this is mainly due to firstly, against the Russians, they had a lot of aircraft and pilots, both are badly maintained and poorly trained. Later on when the allies started gaining air superiority, they had many more aircraft than the Germans, making it so German pilots are able to pick their targets and go back to ground, giving little opportunity for allied pilots to have engagements with axis aircraft. So naturally there are going to be more engagements dictated by the Germans.
Add to this that Luftwaffe pilots weren't rotated out of the line to train new pilots. The western allies would take the successful pilots out of the line to teach new pilots combat tactics.
There was also apparently a habit for squadron mates of Luftwaffe aces to 'donate' their kills to the squadron ace. The ace was seen as the mascot of the squadron and the squadron with the best ace was seen as the best squadron.
@@DERP_Squad it also was usual for some aces to donate their kills to fallen comrades, to give their families something to be proud about.
Most known ace to do this: Franz Stigler (imo)
Fun fact. Soviets before the war trained the German pilots. It was done somewhere at 1933-1937. Can find the link or Wikipedia. If you interested in.
"The Resource War" should be a good series to watch from Extra History.
I could watch these all day
Thank you! Its nice to see other historians perspective on history.
Loving the hoodie. Do you have one saying "History Girl: I came, I saw, I conquered"? I'll buy it in a heartbit
Military History Visualized has a bunch of videos on the Eastern front including Operation Zitadelle(sp?)/Citadel. Including a bunch of Myth videos over there.
Chris, I am so impressed with the growth of your channels in the year or so that I have been a Patron. You were always a good channel to go to for strategy games and a lot of the games that I play now are because of your prior videos. Your enjoyment and the historical elements that you added are infectious. I am willing to bet that this channel will be a order of magnitude(s) more popular than HGG. These video discussions are absolutely addictive.
I was grateful for your support then, and I am grateful for it now. Thank you so much for your kind words.
Love your video's , great way to fuel my interest in history as a hobby :) , do you have any great history books you think i should definitely check out?
Love your channel and Love that hoodie you are wearing. Where can we get merch like that? haha spoke to soon while watching the video lol
Well, Napoleon did indeed capture the Russian capital as well-but the Russian Tsar didn’t seem interested in any negotiations at the time either. 🤔
He didn't..Moscow was not the capital at Napoleon time.
@@user-xn3em7td4q it was St. Petersburg at the time
Awesome story about Zhukov: When Eisenhower introduced Zhukov to Coca Cola, Zhukov while enjoying the beverage didn't want to be seen drinking a western product so he asked if there was a way Eisenhower can make it colorless like Vodka so no one back home would be suspicious and that's exactly what the Americans did and they send Zhukov colorless Coke.
Hitler never played Risk, 7 extra armies. But one hell of a border to defend.
Sabaton has a song about this battle ;) Panzer Kampf
I was gonna say this too. He really should check it out
"Never get in a land war in Asia...... unless you're the Mongols."
That's fair.
@@VloggingThroughHistory here are some rules from the nonexisting book on waging war
1. never invade china , they are to many
2. never march on moscow, the winter will beat you
3. never tell a german engineer something doesnt work, he will make it work as a weapon
4. if the snow starts speaking finnish, DUCK
5. if a general tells you its a foolproof plan, start planing for yourself
@@raikbarczynski6582 6. Poland WILL be conquered, but they will make your life a living hell throughout the process.
@@SightUnseen555 thats a good one
What part of the eastern front was in Asia though? I know there was some fighting in the Caucasus, so some German units might've crossed into Asia there, but that's about it.
Thanks learned a lot I really found this interesting because I’m learning about ww2 and how the Soviets were such a big part
Check Montemayor and his Midway videoes.
Awesome video
Can’t wait till tomorrow for part 2
Love the channel man.
Greetings from central Ohio🇺🇸🇺🇸
My maternal grandfather was a boy during the siege of Leningrad, one of the many smuggled out to safety over the frozen lake. It's harrowing to hear about the sort of hunger and want they experienced in there (from his own lips, as he is still with us, bless him).
and i still keep believing that Salin chose the name Operation Uranus at Stalingrad just for the LOLs it has in english. even if he despised the west
Hey, how about launching a room in clubhouse following a new episode? I guess it may be interesting to have a live conversation for something like an hour. You are making some great content, and I enjoy both early extra history and oversimplified videos and your videos as well. I could bring in some Russian perspective as great part of my grand grand fathers fought in WWII for the soviets
While there were over 80,000 T-34s produced in total, only 56,000 were produced during the war.
Actually, the most mass-produced tank in history is the T-54/55 at 100,000 units.
The Sherman is in third place with 50,000 units, only 6000 fewer than the T-34s produced during the war
The number of Aces for the Germans were also help by a few factors. 1. A lot of early war tallies when many nations still rocked out dated fighters and bombers. 2. The allies were pretty good at supplying large formations of bombers to attack (the Allied fighters had far fewer targets to find). 3. and this is the biggest reason, the Germans did not have the numbers of pilots needed to rotate them from the front lines to rest and recover. If your on the job every day for 5-6 years you have more chances to rack up the count. The Allies rotated crews out for months at a time.
I don't believe the Germans ever credited kills on the ground, though I could be wrong. I know some US commands did credit these.
Fun fact about Verdun: the Central Powers didn’t care about taking Verdun. Their goal was to bleed the Entente because they knew that France did care about Verdun. Therefore, they figured they could use it to bleed the French forces and force a realignment of the front to allow for an offensive elsewhere. However, after the battle started, it’s almost like the Central Powers lost sight of their actual goal, as they started pulling reserves and forces away from the planned offensives to instead reinforce Verdun.
Get this man to 100k by summer
He will have it by Christmas :D
Sabaton also made a song about this song its called Panzerkampf
Into the Motherland the German army march
Along with the distances involved being hard to grasp, the harshness of the weather is too.
I live in a country where it regularly gets to -20 to -30C in the north during winter time, so I'm familiar with cold temperatures.
However, not only were the '41 and '42 winters extremely cold, the troops didn't have the same level of gear that is available today, nor regular access to electric/indoor heating.
I have been on winter exercises in the military, and slept in a (heated) tent during -10C, and even with a stove heating the tent it was striking how much the cold sapped your endurance (and that was with regular/full rations). And we were only out in the field for 10 days as the longest.
So, to have the soldiers being in the field, in much colder conditions, with worse gear - for months - is really hard to get an accurate feel for.
I can kinda wrap my mind around the distances a bit better, because it's easier to extrapolate distances via scaling, but the conditions they did all this in is... something else.
If your reading this I hope you have a nice day :)
I am having a great day. I hope you are as well!
@@VloggingThroughHistory it is now since you replied :D
"Into the Motherland the German Army marched!"
-Sabaton "Panzerkampf"
An interesting battle happened in Stalingrad was the Raid on Tatsinskaya, Soviet tank forces broken through the German defence line outside Stalingrad, however instead of flanking the defence infantry lines , they decided to storm the Tatsinskaya Air Field deep behind German lines and took it by surprise, The airfield was the key of the airlift operation to keep the 6th Army alive as there were many planes waiting to take off and head to Stalingrad to save 6th Army.
The tank forces threw everything they had to destroy the planes as their ammunitions ran low and the raid became one of some rare cases that ... tanks ram planes in the middle of fighting.
6th Army supply line got cut off for days ... Sad fate for them ,those were the days they need the supply most.
Most of the tank force got wiped out before they could break through back to the Soviet line, but they forced the Luftwaffe to supply the 6th Army from other far away airfields after many skilled pilots and needed transport planes were lost during the raid.
As much as this is a huge and important part of our history, the fact that the victory is still portrayed here as the greatest achievement of the past ~100 years kinda saddens me.
By the way, I can't help myself but bingewatch your videos after stumbling upon the Oversimplified ones. Feels weird to finally be into history in the late 20s. Cheers!
He confused Molotov and Ribbentropp, didn't he? :D
For Stalingrad you really should watch TIK : Battle storm Stalingrad series , one of if not the best in depth documentary about the battle
I already asked recently, but now it's more fitting since Kursk is where the series starts:
please react to Verstaubt sind die Gesichter. It's a series, not a documentary, but it is so worth watching
also since this is what the cool kids do:
day 2 of asking
Edit: "I don't think oil was as important as people think"
well, this is what I know, so I could be wrong, but, oil (and resouces in general)
was one of the biggest factors both for Hitlers invasion of the Soviet union
and for Germany losing the war
Edit 2: The Germans were pretty much in Moscow
the Soviets didn't give up. The Russians didn't give up when Napoleon took Moscow,
no, they burned the city, and I doubt that they would give up if the Germans
fully took Moscow, especially under Stalin
WW2 Is my favourite history learning subject, I dont know why it is so appealing to me.
Because it's one of the few wars which can truly be boiled down to good vs evil.
listen to the sabaton song "Panzerkampf". It is about the battle of kursk and has everything a sabaton fan likes: TANKS, TANKS and more TANKS
I remember in a documentary I saw about Barbarossa that it got so cold Germans were getting frostbite or dying of hypothermia just by dropping their pants to use the bathroom. A lot of them had dysentery.
Yay I love history
you should watch the resource war extra history quite the good one
German's pilots were given kill credits for:
1. Aircraft strafed on the ground.
2. In shared kills, the senior ranking pilot received the credit.
3. Crashes of enemy planes did not have to be witnessed, but merely assumed.
No other nation credited kills in these cases. Additionally, in the West, kills needed to be verified by a second pilot.
LOL at the Steam notification popup.
And guess who was one of the top Luftwaffe higher-ups? Manfred con Richtofen’s cousin, Wolfram, who was there the day he died in 1918.
If you have the time, i can really recommend to Watch Kursk and Stalingrad by Kings and Generals!
On a seperate note(thus seperate comment): You could have a shirt saying "I've seen things.... historical things.... as history fanatic" or something similar
I have to remind, that Russia is not a country that can be beaten by "just capturing a capital" Moscov was importand from political stand point, but not from military. It was a major logistic hub but it dosent mean that if it would fall, Russia would just surrender like that. We talking about country that has one of biggest if not the biggest borders and land size in a world. Taking only small part of it dosent change a thing. Napoleon took Moscov but Russians burned it to ground so they cant use it. Poland was one of few to TAKE Moscov AND HOLD IT for long time, did Russians gave up? No.
So Moscov woudnt suddenly make Russia and stalin to surrender.
I recommand to watch this series as it explains a lot of thigns that most do forget or not notice about whole Operation Barbarossa ( th-cam.com/video/ce9Frq_A6-0/w-d-xo.html )
Moscow wasn’t the capital when Napoleon marched on it, but it was still an important city
@@artembentsionov Fair enough, even still, it shows that It takes more then taking one city to force Russians to surrender.
Two in a day Nice
If you and other viewers want to know more about the Eastern Front, I highly suggest Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (Episodes 27-30) - Ghosts of the Ostfront Series.
6:42 there aren't T-34/85 in the early stages of the war, mostly are T-34/57 or the earliest models
The T34 with the 57mm gun was basically not used, only 10 were put into production. The T34s at this point were those with the 76.2mm gun (known to some as the T-34-76).
If you're unfamiliar with the Eastern Front, this simplified but basically true summary may help: The Soviets turning the tide (basically by themselves, though financial support from the Allies did help.) and beginning their almost genocidal march towards Germany and ultimately, Berlin, is a major factor as to why D-Day was started to be planned. The UK and the US were both terrified of the Soviets expanding their sphere of influence and control into Germany, and feared if they didn't do something quickly, France may even come under Soviet control.
Extra note: The Soviets, as bloodthirsty and brutal as they were, don't really get enough appreciation for actually beating Germany down and suffering the gruelling losses that it took to take down the Wehrmacht forces. Particularly Americans, I've come to notice, either don't appreciate, or even acknowledge/know about the Soviets role in the war.
2 videos today hype~~
Has this guy done a video on the extra history resources video yet? He might find it interesting
Depends on the scale you're talking, Kursk isn't the largest tank battle in the history, it's just talking about the Operation Citadel as a whole, which involved very large numbers of tank but not individual battles. The largest tank clash at Kursk was battle of Prokhorovka was about 1000 tanks in total but battle of Brody was over 4000 tanks in total
when will be next premire btw i hope you hit 50k subs
Lost the 6th Army and the amount of male and female snipers using Mosin-Nagants chamber in 7.62x54mmR (which is still used today all the way back from 1891) which was shown heavily in the movie Enemy At The Gates. And yes Zaitsev was at Stalingrad racking up 225 kills at the battle of Stalingrad only. No Major Konig, since there was never a Konig registered in the Wehrmacht in WWII and it was also stated as Soviet propaganda to promote a 3 day battle between 2 top snipers with Zaitsev coming up on top.
during the battle of stalingrad the commander of 6th army was promoted by hitler to field marshal towards the end of the battle just to make sure he doesn't defy hitlers orders because according to hitler "no Prussian or german field marshal has ever been known to surrender" basically implying he either had to die in battle or commit suicide if he was to be taken alive he would shame germany
I've read in old New York times that German supply lines were spread so thin they couldn't have marched on Moscow if they wanted to
Oh lol of course they address that right after
And this is one of the reasons old EC/EH crew was so charming - memes: 3:54
The reason there are so many German aces especially with high killcount is mostly because the Luftwaffe had no troop rotation system like US and Britain. While the allied pilotes after a few months had a break to restore stanima, the German pilotes mostly fought nonstop until they either got shot down or the war was over. Saying that as a German, I think would the rotationsystem have been the same on both sides the numbers of aces and their killcount would have been pretty comparable. Maybe still in favor for the germans because in the end they had to face more targets while the Luftwaffe was nearly nonexistant.
After the failure at Kursk Hitler even said that every time he thought about Operation Citadel, his stomach turned
Not only did the Luftwaffe have the most aerial aces of any nation, they also had the most Ace (5 kills) in a Day, Double-Ace (10 kills) in a Day and Triple-Ace (15 kills) in a Day pilots.
The revered history podcaster Dan Carlin has couple of episodes about the eastern front. Hardcore history: Ghosts of the Ostfront
I came. I saw. I subscribed.
You can have a march that combines both channels in stile of sweeter you are wearing maybe, I game I watch I review?
From Berlin to Moscow would be around 1,130 miles. Insane to think about.
5:20 And there are very good reasons for why almost all of the top aces of WW2 were German pilots, pretty much none of them having anything to do with German pilots being better than Allied pilots.
1. German pilots were flying for longer. Some German pilots had been racking up aerial victories since the invasion of Poland (of course some Polish pilots had been racking up victories since the invasion of Poland, but there were fewer of them than German pilots). Giving the average German pilot more time to rack up victories.
2. German pilots flew in a more target rich environment than Allied pilots. Especially as we get into the 1943/44/45 the German pilots are pretty much always outnumbered by Allied pilots. On the one hand this is very bad news if you are a novice German pilot, but if you are an ace this means you have more potential targets in the sky and therefore more opportunities to rack up aerial victories. Allied pilots on the other hand might go several sorties without encountering a single German plane. Giving the average Allied pilot fewer opportunities to rack up kills.
3. German aces kept flying until they died. When an American or British pilot racked up enough victories to become famous they were brought home to do propaganda tours and were generally kept away from the fighting (I don't know about Soviet pilots). When a German pilot racked up enough kills to become famous they stayed with their units to continue flying and racking up more kills.
All of this meant that by the end of the war the top aces were almost guaranteed to be Germans, even if the average German pilot was no better than the average Allied pilot (in point of fact by the end of the war the average German pilot was probably worse than the average Allied pilot).
Those 3 points lead to the very same and interesting situation some years later in the Vietnam War ... Vietnamese pilots ruled the ACE score board but ... it totally didn't mean they had air superiority.
German Pilots were same too , they had many Pilot ACE but only could keep the air superiority in the early part of the war, Kursk was the battle that German started to slowly lost the air superiority in the Eastern Front
But ... the German pilots were better than Allied pilots ... as just as your point 1 and 2 showed ... they fought more , so they were alot more skilled than Allied pilots who only had training before facing the German pilots
@@SanarySeggnete Very interesting tidbit of information on Vietnam. I hadn't realized that, but it makes sense.
As for WW2, by the end of the war the best German pilots were probably better than the best Allied pilots due to the amount of experience they had. But the best German pilot was not the average German pilot (some pilots had been fighting since the beginning of the war, enough to dominate the ace charts, but in the grand scheme of things they were very few in number). Due to shortages of both fuel and time new pilots in 1945 were not being trained to the same standards as new pilots in 1939. Being outnumbered didn't mean they were better. It just meant they were more likely to die. Allied pilot training on the other hand had actually improved throughout the war. Although yes, at the beginning of the war it does seem that German pilots were probably better than Allied pilots.
Of course German pilots were better than Soviet pilots pretty much from the beginning of the war to the end of the war. Although the gap closed considerably by the end of the war due both to Soviet pilots gaining experience and to improvements in Soviet pilot training (by the end of the war if two Soviet fighters engaged one German fighter I would give favorable odds to the pair of Soviet fighters, whereas in 1941 it would have pretty much been a turkey shoot for the German pilot).
2:27 EH mislabeled von Ribbentrop as Molotov and vice versa.
I like the story of the Russian women who were working as bombers and were given old planes that were so slow the Germans had trouble shooting them. They intentionally stalled their planes and then glided over German lines and dropped bombs on them. They primarily did this at night and soon got the name the Night Witches by the Germans on the ground who were afraid of attacks at any time during the night.
If you want in depth information about eastern front. There is an excellent russian documentary called Soviet storm. Good thing with it is that its not propoganda documentary but one based on real war and what happened. Its really detailed and well done. One of the most terrirfying about kursk is that soviet army had made trenches on the battle front before the battle that stretched 4500 kilomter in total. Thats from madrid to moscow.
As for merch ideas if it's possible why not try pins, posters, bags or gift bags, plush, wrist bands, stickers, stationary, Cards (info cards/playing cards).
Just went and checked the list of world war two aces and holy shit it really is just all germans. As a Finn I'm proud that we have the highest non-german number but even he is so far down the list.
Only good reaction channel on youtube!
The interesting part about battle of kursk, is that western side and soviet/russian/eastern side have conflicting stories and theories about it, ending up in battle of kursk being more of a political chesspool to this day.
13:35 and this is the first one. one side says it was hitlers own decision, the other side says it was luftwaffe convincing hitler.
Some more information to think about. Do you really believe that when german took citie and villagies in Russia, they didn't take food, oil and etc for army needs? They supply not only from Berlin, but from all territory they conqered. And it was tremendous.
Or do you believe that german soldiers slept and had a rest outdoors? They did it in native people's houses witch were prepeared to cold winters. The other story that russian used scorched earth politic as much as they can. Thousands of citizens went to forests to make diversions. They burned houses, fields, food, cut supply lines. But all of it was work of people, not Winter or distance.
2:27 I don't know if anybody else has brought this up already, but correct me if I'm wrong - haven't they got the labels mixed up here? Molotov is sitting down on the right, Ribbentrop is standing next to Stalin on the left...?
Yep you're absolutely right!
Prohorovka was the tank battle in the largest battle of Kursk
The main reason oil is the big reason for Germany’s invasion is that the Soviets were supplying much of hitlers oil. The Soviets could have ceased those shipments whenever they pleased. Stalin probably would’ve waited until hitler desperately needed oil, prepared his army, and then cut the cable on the German oil reserves.
Don't forget the carolean army of Sweden under Karl the twelfth . They also got wrecked in Russia during the great Northern war .
A key concern for the Germans (which ties with Lebensraum) was farmland.
"Zitadelle" is less the greatest tank battle in history, that's (probably, remember that the numbers are problematic for especially German numbers are misleading because significant numbers where usually down for maintenance) maybe the sub battle of Prokhorovka on the southern flank of the Kursk salient between the 5th Guards Tank Army and General Herman Hoth's 4th Panzer Army along with Paul Haussers II SS Panzer Korps (with the usual ton of new materiel in the hands of the tactically at best moderately competent party stooges...). , but it may very well be the *Greatest Field Battle* (and maybe the *last* of this type of set battle) ever fought.
Kursk was probably the last great attempt to get back to offensive operations and the defeat collapsed the front for some time, especially with the Panther-Wotan line failing to be established on top of the initial humiliation of the Belgorod-Kharkov Strategic Offensive Operation with the fourth (and final) battle of Kharkov taking the jumping-off point for the whole thought process resulting in Zitadelle away from the Germans (it was Field Marshall von Manstein's victory against all odds in the third Kharkov ["von Manstein's backhand blow"] that set up his initial suggestions of mounting an offensive, mind you as soon as possible, maybe even in late winter '43, into the Kursk salient).
In many ways Kurks is the true turning point of the war because the German failure at Stalingrad was not a failure of the operational art, of the swift armoured blow, dealt by operationally flexible commanders wielding the numerically inferior rapier of expert armoured formations. That was a failure of slogging it out in the ruins of positional warfare, always the doom of the Prussian (and later German) army, ever since the days of the Great Elector.
But Zitadelle was not only the collapse of the formerly formidable armoured spearheads, now blunted with unreliable technology and surprised in the first moments of the new offensive (by a preventive Soviet artillery barrage just before sunrise), but also the emergence of the new Soviet art of operational warfare, honed by the brutal winnowing of it's failing commanders and now for the first time having technological parity and professionalism to truly carry out "deep battle" and displaying in the following operations that took them to the Polish border in late '43 it's parity in the operational art with the Germans coupled with a now telling materiel superiority.
If you want to read into the Operations in the East in '43 I'd suggest Glantz' and House's *The Battle of Kursk* , David Glantz' *Colossus Reborn* , Valeriy Zamulin's *Demolishing the Myth: The Tank Battle at Prokhorovka, Kursk, July 1943: an Operational Narrative* , *The Wehrmacht Retreats: Fighting a Lost War, 1943 (Modern War Studies)* b Robert M. Citino (really everything by him is worthwhile and immensely readably, which can not be said of Glantz... and his maps are better) and Roman Töppel's *Kursk 1943: Die größte Schlacht des Zweiten Weltkriegs* and you are really in an insane mood there is the GErman Official military history of World War II Volume 8.... ;).
Best regards
Raoul G. Kunz
Sabaton made a song about Kursk called Panzerkampf.
Maybe a shirt that says I came, I saw, I learned?
For Germany, if you were an ACE, you were kept flying and achieving victory.
For the allies, if you were an ACE, you were sent home as an instructor to teach others how to be a pilot and hopefully and ACE like you.
...and German pilots fly till they die...! :-(
So more for the gaming Channel side of things but, have you played the combat mission games before.
Hey you should complete your oversimplified reactions and look at his videos on the cold war.
If you believe that Kursk was the largest tank battle in the East, then Gettysburg was the largest battle in the Civil War. Brody was the largest tank battle.