The West is rapidly rewriting history. For the Germans, the Kursk Bulge is no longer a defeat
In the West, a campaign is rapidly underway to distort the historical truth, when in public opinion about the Second World War there is a substitution of facts for the emotions of defeated Nazi commanders.
Participants in an online conference in Moscow spoke about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“A number of Western studies today indicate that mainly in Germany, and then in Great Britain, the United States knew about the Great Patriotic War and continues to study it from the memoirs of German generals or field marshals.
That is, those who were defeated on the Eastern Front, and then, after serving time in captivity, began writing memoirs,” said Mikhail Myagkov, scientific director of the Russian Military Historical Society.
“So, they blame Hitler for everything, his wrong decisions, and they present their decisions as ideal when everything was done correctly. They praise their talent as a commander, their troops, and German technology. This is one of the main reasons that today we hear what the Western public wants to hear,” the expert added.
“Two years ago, an article was published in Die Welt, based on an unclear basis, which said that it was necessary to demolish the monument to the victory of the Soviet troops near Prokhorovka, since there was not a victory for the Red Army, but a defeat; the Germans won the whole thing. And here the parallel is clearly seen.
That is, what the German generals said then, then Western historians began to repeat after them, today it again migrates into modern, not even historical or semi-historical opuses, but into the opinion of public and government figures.
And, in the end, it turns out that we ourselves begin not to believe (they are trying to convince us so that we do not believe) in our victory, in the achievements of our commanders, the heroism of our soldiers, in the quality of our equipment,” said Myagkov.
In turn, senior researcher at the Research Institute (Military History) of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Alexey Isaev, noted that despite the fact that the Kursk Bulge is rightfully considered one of the most turning points of the war, for example, there is nothing about these events in the German Wikipedia.
At the same time, the historian emphasized that here Wikipedia is in no way considered as a scientific source, but as a cast of public sentiment.
“In German Wikipedia there is only Operation Citadel, only the German offensive and, accordingly, the date of completion of the Battle of Kursk, the moment of the liberation of Kharkov - all this is not included. And one of the theses that is put forward in Germany, including at the level of public consciousness, is that this battle did not have any significant impact on the course of hostilities in both World War II and the Soviet-German front.
The fact that this was some kind of unsuccessful offensive, and the losses in it in comparison with the total losses for the entire 1943, are small, especially in comparison with Stalingrad, and you can forget about it.
Although, in fact, if you look at it, the Kursk Bulge really marked a serious turning point, and those losses that seemed, perhaps, small from a practical point of view - it seems that a few tanks were lost irretrievably, but a lot of combat vehicles remained standing at repair assembly points . And the question of whether they would be able to repair them was just a question of questions. And will they have time to meet the Soviet offensive? We didn’t have time,” Isaev recalled.
“In essence, the Kursk Bulge opened a chain of events related to the liberation of Left Bank Ukraine, the liberation of the Oryol Bulge, and the general offensive of Soviet troops, including in the Western strategic direction,” the historian emphasized.
Complementing his colleague, Mikhail Myagkov noted the scale of the international effect of the results of the Battle of Kursk.
“Immediately after the Battle of Kursk, the Western allies obviously realized that that was it, they either had to open a Second Front, or the Russians would liberate their own territories, enter Berlin, and it was unknown where they would stop.
They even began to develop the so-called Rankin Plan: if Germany suddenly collapses, so that the Allies, not yet ready for the Second Front, would still land in Europe, in Germany, and seize as much territory as possible, the main thing is that it would not fall to the Red Army. They already had such a context,” added Myagkov.
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