Battle of Prokhorovka: A response to history falsifiers
July 12 is one of the most important memorable dates in the history of the Fatherland. On this day in 1943, in the turning point battle of Prokhorovka, the largest battle during the Second World War took place between tank formations of the USSR and Nazi Germany, which became the culmination of the battle on the Kursk Bulge.
Despite the fact that we are separated from this epoch-making event by 76 years, public attention is still focused on it. The tank battle of Prokhorovka and some of its battles were reflected in the memoirs of commanders, in fiction, cinema, and even in the powerful video clip of the Swedish heavy power metal band Sabaton “Panzerkampf”.
Adequate historians and fans of “gluing tanks” long ago figured out the details of the battle: what events preceded it, who made what mistakes, as well as losses.
The conclusion, it would seem, should not leave room for discrepancies and interpretations: Soviet tank crews, showing military valor, courage and will, won in this difficult and bloody battle. The battlefield remained with our troops. The enemy didn't get through. At the Kursk Bulge and near Prokhorovka, the backbone of the fascist armies was broken. The time remaining until the end of the war they only snapped, inexorably rolling back to the west, already clearly understanding that the end of the war and retribution was inevitable.
This was not yet Victory, but the beginning of Liberation.
However, on the eve of May 12, with a regularity and persistence worthy of better use, all sorts of murky “experts” from the category of darned propagandists and falsifiers of history pop up in the media with another revelation: “at Prokhorovka, everything was not so clear.”
The most “savvy” of the “experts” even cite some references, usually related to memoirs (equated to hoodlit) of beaten Nazi generals, from the category: “how I almost won the war.”
The “expert wave” could have been ignored and brushed aside, if not for its consequences, which had not stimulated the aggravation of young and old degenerates in social networks and the secondary press, firmly convinced that “everything is being hidden from us.”
Which becomes the reason for the pandemonium that has become disgusting over the last 30 years: “yes, we won, but they threw corpses at us”, “at Prokhorovka they burned five Soviet tanks per German tank”, and similar weak-minded “analysts”.
The year 2019 was no exception. On the eve of the 76th anniversary of the Battle of Prokhorovka, the editor of the historical section of the newspaper Die Welt, Sven Felix Hellerhof, suddenly stuck out his mug with an article in which he demanded (!) the demolition of the memorial on Prokhorovka Field - on the grounds that “the latest research, based on undoubtedly real photographs , confirm: there was neither a Soviet victory at Prokhorovka, nor even a grandiose tank battle.”
If the article had been published in some far-right pro-fascist newspaper, it could have been safely ignored. But Die Welt is a daily publication on a completely different level, shaping public opinion (over 700 thousand subscribers), and also a member of the LENA creative alliance, which includes seven major European newspapers.
The fact that the editor of the historical section of an influential publication judges a historical event not from documents, but on the basis of “the latest research of undoubtedly real photographs,” raises the suspicion that Die Welt is recruiting not professionals, but some gullible ordinary people from among the ardent fans of the program "The fight of extrasensories".
If we go into detail, Kellerhof is trying to debate with Brezhnev’s interpretation of the events of July 12, which has long lost its relevance, from the multi-volume “History of the Second World War”:
“July 12 became the day the German offensive collapsed” (Vol. 6. P. 154)
The modern multi-volume “History of the Great Patriotic War” does not agree with the overly optimistic assessment of Brezhnev historians and dryly states that:
“As a result of the oncoming battle in the Prokhorovka area, neither side was able to solve the tasks assigned to it... The repulsion of the most powerful attack by the troops of Army Group South was achieved as a result of the common efforts of formations and troops of the Voronezh Front with the participation of strategic reserves” (Vol. 3. pp. 544-547)
Now let’s try to figure out what is behind the concise phrase “in the Prokhorovka area, neither side was able to solve the tasks assigned to it.”
Direct command of the tank formations during the battle was exercised by Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov on the Soviet side and SS Gruppenführer Paul Hausser on the German side. Neither side managed to achieve the goals set for July 12: the Germans failed to capture Prokhorovka, break through the defenses of Soviet troops and gain operational space, and Soviet troops failed to encircle the enemy group.
As Major General G. A. Oleinikov, a direct participant and researcher of those events, clarifies in his military-historical essay “The Battle of Prokhorov (July 1943)”:
“Of course, we won at Prokhorovka, not allowing the enemy to break into operational space, forced him to abandon his far-reaching plans and forced him to retreat to his original position. Our troops survived a four-day fierce battle, and the enemy lost its offensive capabilities. But the Voronezh Front had exhausted its strength, which did not allow it to immediately launch a counteroffensive.”
But then, the Voronezh Front managed to pull up reserves and bring them into battle, but the Germans did not have these reserves! It was in the battle of Prokhorovka that the Nazis lost most of their tanks, which influenced the outcome of the entire Battle of Kursk.
If in the zone of the Soviet Central Front, after the start of their offensive on July 5, 1943, the Germans were unable to penetrate deeply into the defense of our troops, then a critical situation developed on the southern front of the Kursk Bulge. Here, on the first day of the battle, the enemy brought into the battle up to 700 tanks and assault guns, supported by aviation. Having met resistance in the direction of Oboyan, the enemy shifted his main efforts to the Prokhorovsk direction, trying to capture Kursk with a blow from the southeast.
The Soviet command decided to launch a counterattack against the wedged enemy group. The Voronezh Front was reinforced by the reserves of the Headquarters (5th Guards Tank, 45th Guards Armies and two tank corps).
On July 12, in the Prokhorovka area, the second largest tank battle of the Second World War took place (the first took place near Dubno, in Western Ukraine, in June 23–29, 1941, in which five corps of the Red Army and four German tank divisions, not inferior to them in numbers, came together), in in which up to 1200 tanks and self-propelled guns participated on both sides.
It should be taken into account that by the beginning of the summer military campaign of 1943, the Germans had a qualitative advantage in tanks, having replenished their tank formations with the latest Tiger and Panther vehicles, while Soviet tank crews fought on T-34-76 and KV-1s vehicles, which were inferior German in terms of gun power and sighting devices. There was still a year left before the mass appearance of our best “thirty-four” T-34-85 and heavy IS-2 tanks in the troops.
Soviet tank units sought to conduct close combat, “grabbing the enemy by the belt,” since the engagement distance of the 76 mm T-34 and KV-1s guns was no more than 800 m, while the 88 mm guns of the Tigers and Ferdinands could shoot at our vehicles from a distance of 2000 m. At a distance, our tankers suffered heavy losses.
On the other hand, knowing the advantage of the Germans, the Soviet troops moved the battles with the Nazi tank fists to a different level: many German tanks were stopped by mines, anti-tank artillery, and burned by infantry and aircraft.
Both sides suffered huge losses at Prokhorovka. In this battle, Soviet troops lost 500 tanks out of 800 (60%). The Germans permanently lost 300 tanks out of 400 (75%). For them it was tantamount to a disaster. After the battle of Prokhorovka, the most powerful German strike group was drained of blood. General Guderian, then Inspector General of the Wehrmacht's tank forces, wrote:
“The armored forces, replenished with such great difficulty, were out of action for a long time due to large losses in people and equipment... and there were no more calm days on the Eastern Front.”
On July 12, 1943, a turning point occurred (and not a collapse, according to the interpretation of Brezhnev historians) in the development of the defensive battle on the southern front of the Kursk ledge. The main enemy forces went on the defensive. On July 13–15, German troops continued attacks only against units of the 5th Guards Tank and 69th Armies south of Prokhorovka. The maximum advance of German troops on the southern front reached 35 km. On July 16, they began to retreat to their original positions.
If 800 destroyed and burned tanks on the Prokhorovsky field, as well as the funeral conclusion of Heinz Guderian for the editor of the historical section of the Die Welt newspaper, “nothing special happened, and the Russians did not win,” then this is his personal dim-witted point of view, nothing more.
Of course, a publication with a weak-minded “military expert” does not express the point of view of German historians, but expresses the opinion of certain political circles and parts of German society who are trying to belittle the contribution of the Soviet people to the victory over fascism, and at the same time get rid of the complex of historical guilt in order to consolidate the Ordnung Pax Germanica in Europe.
Of course, you can’t shut up every stinking Hellerhof, and you can’t put a scarf on every “expert” mouth. But we must oppose the rampant demonic behavior and dancing on the graves of the defenders of the Motherland with the historical truth, no matter how bitter it may be, protect it and disseminate it in every possible way so that the generation of Kol-iz-Urengoi does not grow up among us...
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