Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 197 - The Battle of Kursk Part 4: Drowning In Blood

Episode Date: February 27, 2022

The soviets launch their killing blow against the nazi army, ending the Battle of Kursk Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities

like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Lines Loved by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me today is Liam. Yay, Liam. Hello, Liam. How are you doing, buddy? Go fuck yourself, Joe. It's all good. Okay. Oh, buddy. How you doing, buddy? Go fuck yourself, Joe. It's all good. Okay. Oh, buddy. I'm doing okay. As explained to you

before we started recording, my asshole has recently, in violation of the non-proliferation agreement, gone nuclear. Yeah, congratulations to Liam's butthole for splitting the atom um yeah i wasn't aware that we had reached this level of this level of uh of advancement in butthole technology

i was i was pretty impressed and a bit shocked but you know uh yeah my asshole has sustained vision uh many thanks to all scientists living in my butt involved uh yeah happy to see what the next 50 years brings i'm sure it'll be an era of peace and goodwill towards men in my ass we are gonna have to demilitarize liam's butthole um oh dude that ship has sailed um you know all right it's a war zone now we're specifically uh actually on topic because we're talking about kursk part four um if if we finally got there yeah um the longest series in lines led by donkey's history and i don't actually mean that in in length of the episodes but rather the length of time we took to record it um yeah we did it basically real time for the battle of

curse itself i honestly i think the battle might have been shorter um let's see it took me three weeks to write this no maybe a month to write this and then a further uh maybe two months to record it this is honestly pretty embarrassing on our part but that's fine the best part is people would have no idea if we simply didn't fucking talk about it so we're really blowing our own cover because this will come out perfectly on schedule as all of our other

series have come out we're really giving you a peek behind the curtain of sometimes we have no idea what the fuck we're doing we're in constant disarray really he's in armenia i'm in the united states uh he's still drunk uh um again i'll have you know i'm both simultaneously drunk and i'm over oh dude i've had that happen it is your body just a stool harder stool soft there's my stools won't know what to do but that'll be the problem it's actually

questionable how drunk i am in comparison to how sleep deprived i am because i slept about four hours um yeah we normally record at what like five o'clock your time noon my time uh give or take it is now 6 a.m my time and 9 9 p.m. your time because of time zones. Time zones are the fucking devil. I don't know. Who would spend time anyway? Look, I just know that they weren't on my side here. You can blame that person specifically for daylight savings time.

We're on Kursk Part 4. When we left you last time, the German operation Citadel had ground to a halt, leaving me a fresh field of dead Germans and burning tanks in their wake, which is, you know, yeah, the Germans,

dead Nazis, dead. Slow down, everybody. It's a, it's, it's a fun crop to reap is is a field full of dead germans let's push them with like a push them over like a back and like come on

i don't know what we're supposed to do with this crap um now this led to georgi zhukov ordering all soviet forces to hold the germans in place so they could set a stage for the long-awaited northern counterattack, which would be called Operation Kutuzov. Longtime listeners of the show might recognize Mikhail Kutuzov's name being one of the men credited for expelling Napoleon from Russia in 1812. So they're hitting him with a historical own, which the deep history nerd in me can respect more than I probably should. Another thing this did was set the stage for is probably curse defining moment. And honestly, one of the wars defining moments, if you're a tank nerd like myself, or as I've become aware of a lot of the listeners of the show. And that is the final sokarova yeah i think i've pointed this out a few times um nobody's just kind of a fan of tanks like it's like trains yeah oh bloody god you're speaking my language that's right like you

can be a fan of public transit but you're but like if you you're gonna be trained guy it's like nobody just kind of likes tanks a little bit you're gonna be a tank guy rail fan a railie i'm calling you railies now i wish you wouldn't joe yeah it's all right um anyway not gonna i'm not gonna get into the railie fandom it's it's troubling and and and deep oh boy howdy is it joe god is it really i was just fucking with you oh no dude there's tons of fashion weird shit and just a bunch of not great people in it yeah how does it always come back to this like we have a lot of like um like people in the show that are into various subcultures or fans of the show that they're fans of various subcultures they don't know anything about and almost every time they try to explain them to me whether it be like aviation nerds or

railies which i'm sticking to i'm calling you railies um geeks are the fucking worst people alive we're like all these other things like oh yeah but there's like this weird fashion so how does it always appear how is it always a factor in everything we get a lot of good commies in rail fandom but uh i don't know you get the people where you're just like ah let me tell you about germany's train network wink wink nudge nudge it's like why don't you just swallow a bottle of potassium cyanide and you'll have to edit that out now um we we do have to preempt this entire episode by by doing that thing that we do we talk about something completely different um and that is talking about other theaters of world war ii uh now this is because this this would directly impact not just this battle uh or, but the entire Eastern front.

On July 10th, the allies invaded Sicily, finally opening that front that Stalin had been begging for for quite a long time. Everyone in the war, including Hitler knew that any Italian troops standing in the way of the allies would be a little more than filler. And the German military would have to take over the Mediterranean theaters.

Wait, because, you know, the Italians were not reliable. Fun personal connection here. My great uncle was killed at the Battle of Anzio. And until the day she died, my paternal grandmother hated Italians for killing her brother. and my dad had to point out to her and just put it out to me more than once well it would have been the germans by that point number one like your hatred is on the wrong shoulders here i think it may have also been with the fact uh now she was irish and there's nothing the irish love to hate more than italians rightfully so

but is that specifically in italian like an irish thing irish catholic italian catholic yeah i didn't know we were talking like inter-catholic gang war here oh hell yeah i was unaware of this legendary beef yeah you gotta you gotta read up. I'll send you some material. All right. Albert Kesselring, who is the commander-in-chief of the south of the German military, that is in the south of Europe as a whole, normally known for his optimism to the point that he had the nickname Smiling Albert, which is not a nickname. That's tragic. which is not a nickname that I would ever give a magic anyway because like and there's

certain stereotypes that are 100% legit when it comes to like annoying German military officers being upbeat and smiley is not one of them so like anyway this is smiling Albert he smiles when he's not executed

next person that calls me smiling over to getting pistol left. Now, he told everyone that the situation was hopeless and Sicily needed more reinforcements. Any reinforcements, if you haven't been paying attention to the third or the last three episodes of this podcast, would have to be pulled away from the Eastern front and more than likely pulled away from operation Citadel. Hitler finally accepted that operation Citadel would have to stop, but the operations gains, which, you know, no matter how minimal would have to be maintained,

meaning that effectively the operation could not and would not stop due to the constant unending fighting that would. This seems well within the realm of possibility. Yeah, we can't possibly give up these tiny little salients because remember from part three, we talked about how there was not a continuous line of advance. Germany had been like all of these various German units have been punching tiny individual salients into the larger kursk salience like there was no front to hold germany had punched in tiny tiny little individual bulges within a bulb that were impossible to hold and hitler couldn't possibly uh like understand the fact that one none of these matter and two like this is impossible to hold meaning that operation citadel in his mind would have to go on for eternity or at least until

either the soviet union or germany spontaneously died um which you know we know how that one ends um and he's being told by virtually every single officer in Germany now that we can't keep doing this. Which, of course, as a Hitler is like, I understand. However, we're going to keep doing this because it was a fucking idiot. Now, it was during this meeting that Erwin Rommel, you know, famous Hitler ally until that was no longer politically tenable, openly admitted to other generals that, quote, the whole house of cards would collapse if something was not changed

and nothing was flexed to defend the southern front of Europe. Now, Rommel, it turned out, would be right, as we all know, but he would also be right as far as the eastern front was concerned because hitler was smashing like the german military's head against the wall and hoping

that the skull would win um and then out of the 11th ss soldiers were occasionally uh attacked by the the the red air force but also kept hearing soviet tank engines in the distance of tank engines like not like onesies and twosies but like hey franz do you hear what sounds like several hundred tank engines do you hear what i hear the forest uh it's like uh um the the the lorax um the the forest is making noises. T-34. Arm the woods, kids. The trees will be harmed if the Lorax is armed, Joe. Now, at this point, the Germans in this area were under the belief they were simply being deployed there as security.

They didn't think that they were being thrusted into a major offensive. There was no hint that Kutuzov was coming. There was certainly no hint that the Soviets are making a huge push towards Pokorova. Um, but then one of their units ran into a massive group of Soviet tanks. And as if that wasn't a big enough hint, a cloud of Sturmoviks appeared and began to attack them along with Soviet artillery. I'm starting to think that we might be in the middle of some shit um and like whenever i say this whenever i say there's like a huge group of tanks or a cloud of stromavix i mean like in comparison to what has been occurring in kursk so far so like it's a lot of stuff um and i can't underline enough how just how much material is already at play so the fact that they're running into hundreds and hundreds of tanks and dozens

and dozens of sturmaviks is is an outlier and also it just turn around turn around maybe we should reverse um and it's it it makes hard it makes it kind of hard to uh explain the the scale of everything because i've i've tried to do that for three hours now and i feel like i've almost failed because of how stupidly huge everything is um now uh if you remember the ss units had to advance to take pokorova and the reason reason why they were doing that was to protect the flank of other advancing units. Now, this complicated things when Ford SS position some more and more tanks approaching that this might be a problem. So many they could smell the engine exhaust from miles away. Which is equally gross and impressive impressive it just smells like cigarettes and

diesel man now the ss units by the book had a much better position if if you were looking at a uh you know standard tank warfare manual they had every advantage the terrain in front of them was wide open which is perfect for a tank battle where they would have a range advantage because German tanks, for all of their engineering faults and failures, did have better guns on them. They'd also captured some Soviet positions that were nearby and were able to use them to shore up their defenses. So literally everything was in the hands of the SS here. So the SS advance was canceled in order to prepare what was almost certainly going to be a shit storm. The Soviets on the other side prepared as well. Tankers loaded more fuel and ammo than normal, knowing that pretty much everything they did turned them into a rolling bomb.

Like you can't just strap fuel tanks on the back of a T-34 and be like, this is fine. Right. Furthermore, I'm not a huge tank guy, but I assume in order to be so widely mass-produced, they had to suffer somewhere. T-34's armor, is it thick?

Or is it like... I assume it's not paper-thin. Well, I mean, tank armor is not like a monolith um the front armor and the front turret armor is always gonna be the thickest uh the it gets thinner as you go down the sides thinnest at the rear well second thinnest in the rear thinnest on top um and that is generally speaking i guess right that's generally speaking still common for main battle tanks so not as thin in all of these places especially the counter modern

anti-tank weapons however it has no external storage outside of various like little compartments but they're not armored you'll see the same thing in modern tanks it looks like there's compartments on the outside they look like the rest of the tank but in reality the thin metal um you should absolutely

not store ammo or fuel in those uh because it turns your tank into a gigantic bomb uh which is exactly what they did and the and the tankers were were understanding what they were going to do however you know they they they had no choice in the matter mostly that's more important is like you're gonna load all the shit on your tank and tankers were just like you know boss that seems like a bad idea right um now they were operating these these t-34s were operating and dedicating themselves to the concept of maneuver fighting these t-34s were not going to dig down and fight like we talked about in the last episode, mostly because their boss got yelled

at for burying their tanks, but also because they needed to hold the Germans where they were. That was Zhukov's order. By letting them take Pokorova, that kicks them directly in the grundle. Their plan's fucked. So they have to defend and stop

the SS from taking pokorova and the only way to do that was to you know attack the ss which were in prepared positions that the hint here is things aren't going to go great um i mean they're they're in tanks covered in fuel and ammo um and you know it's not good now soviet tankers were about to launch the attack uh said that they were unable to heat to eat the hot meal that was prepared for them which was out of the norm um they like they knew they were gonna go into like they did the the rank and file soviet tankers didn't know what they're about to go into however when they were getting orders to load up all this ammo all this fuel they and then they were given a hot meal uh they were like i'm getting fucking suspicious here um and then a dog

that's a big juicy steak god damn it's like come on boy let's go for the walk for a walk because you lead them into your car because you're going to the vet um right and uh if that was not uh enough they were given an like an unlimited amount of vodka which uh they did take they they were suspicious i'd fucking take it too yeah gotta take the fucking edge off man uh in order to steady their nerves as some would say uh i i would call that getting shit-faced uh but you know whatever though it's kind of hard to tell if they're shit-faced or not because i don't know what level of drink world war ii well here's the thing they're given several shots it's noted and i don't like that would be enough to fuck me up pretty good but i'm also not a a soviet tank crewman circa 1943 or whatever right so like it

i think that might just be a completely different level of drinking and this is just enough to make it. So they're not shaking behind the controls or something. Right. They're definitely at the, like the methadone level of vodka here. Now, by this point,

the Soviet tank or had become desegregated by gender with women and men serving together, both from lack of reserves, but for, you know, practicality. If you've ever taken a look at the T-34 in person or in pictures, you might notice that it's notoriously cramped and the hatches are very, very small. So tiny little women will be better to pilot it. Genius.

That's kind of how they thought of it. I mean, that's my logic, too. It's 2022 here. they thought of it i mean that's my logic too and it's 2022 here i would think just like get the small guys to be tanker get small people to be tankers but uh yeah um the smaller frames of women were able to fit into certain positions specifically the driver's compartment better than most men uh now for instance we've talked about a certain tanker that had uh that had taken part in the spell before uh and that was future tank commander and current gunner alexandra samusanko from her episode about joseph byerly like this is how she cuts her teeth and ends up getting her her tank command position now what happened next continued to be uh uh kind of lost to history

and which is i understand that is strange hearing from us since we're supposed to be kind of lost to history, which I understand that is strange hearing from us, since we're supposed to be telling you this story. But depending on who you ask or what you're talking about, namely the Germans, the battle began as both forces ran just smack dab into one another,

which seems dumb. That's not generally how battles are fought. Unless you're talking about ancient warfare, because quite literally, you have to march into one another. There's little evidence to suggest this is how the Battle of Pokorova started. The main reason being that the SS unit that would face the brunt of the attack, the SS Leibniz start Adolf Hitler, had its soldiers caught in their sleeping bags

as the Soviet tanks finished their deployment into battle. Battle of Trenton round two! Did you just put a dive plane through some SS fucks heart? Unfortunately, the SS is definitely going to end up being the victor here. Spoiler alert. Right. But it just means that how the battle started in certain military history circles,

they give a little bit too much credit, um, to the SS, that being that they were deployed correctly. Uh, you know, the two forces simply ran into one another. Um,

instead of what happened is the Soviets, a hundred percent got the drop on them, right? At least in some way it's, it's a lot more interesting to say that like hundreds of tanks just slammed into one another, like fucking hot wheels or some shit. It's a lot more interesting to say that hundreds of tanks just slammed into one another like fucking Hot Wheels or some shit when in reality it went the way any other battle went.

And that is, the SS had forward infantry units that were acting as a screen. If the Soviets were to attack, they'd have to attack these infantry first. Those infantry could then warn the rest of the German line. Recon, right like hopefully get them out of their sleeping bags in time i assume um now this ss infantry unit was under constant probing attack um or at least that is

what the rest of the ss thought uh like we're gonna leave those guys out there in the middle of the woods they're gonna get fucked with throughout the night. We're going to catch some sleep. Because remember, most of these guys hadn't slept in several days. The meth was no longer keeping them awake. That is when Captain Rudolph von Ribbentrop, no relation, an SS company commander, was ordered to go out and see what exactly was going on on the on this infantry screen um and when he wrote out there he saw what he called a quote wall of purple smoke which is the the sign that germans used for announcing an incoming tank attack like the infantry pulls a smoke grenade that's purple because the radios failed or they just need everybody in the area to recognize. Oh, dear sweet Jesus. There's a wall of Russian tanks coming.

So he looked out of his tank and just saw a wall of purple smoke. Now, almost immediately after that, a soldier on a motorcycle appeared over the horizon, warning the rest of the unit of the incoming Soviet tanks. Ribbentrop said, quote, What I saw left me speechless. In front of me appeared 15 then 20 then 40 tanks and then finally there were simply too many to count oh dear oh no this is how I wanted this word to go at all

because you could tell he just woke up from sleeping for the first time in several days like maybe making some shitty coffee and just like the sun is blotted out by t34 fuck this shitty coffee and just like the sun is blotted out by T-34s. Fuck this. I'm going back to fucking Bavaria.

This shit sucks. The Germans were able to get their tanks, get in their tanks and drive out to meet them due to the almost total failure of Soviet artillery support. For some reason, nobody was coordinating it, not even ammunition distribution to the guns, and they weren't ranged correctly. So it was like a random fit and spurt of supporting artillery. All the boys.

Yeah, which is bad. I mean, it's kind of incredible when you think about when you look at all the previous planning that the Soviets did in this defense and the one like the one massive camel the one massive counter-attack before the other massive counter-attack uh boiled down to just throw tanks at the problem until the problem is solved which is problem solving i can support yeah yeah now the soviet attack was so disjointed and just weird um like it no ability. There was no hope this shit was going to succeed. And that is, for instance, the unit, the 5th Guards Army,

again, solid name, had been slapped together overnight without any real cohesion. Commanders hadn't been introduced to subordinate commanders. Nobody had any idea who they fucking answered to. Nobody was even sure of unit composition like who was leading what platoon who was leading what company people were not

even aware who their commander was in some cases and if that sounds like a war-winning spirit baby yeah see the thing is liam here's a gal here's here's a 40 chess move all right you can't possibly figure out my unit if i don't know what my unit is either. That is true, I suppose. Now, if that sounds half-assed and slapped together on the run the day before that it's going to be used, that's because that's exactly what happened. The Soviets had absolutely no idea how many enemy they were actually attacking, which meant they had accidentally their way into around 300 enemy tanks by 9 a.m. Oh, no. Now, the Soviet offensive was immediately greeted by hundreds of Luftwaffe attacks.

The extra fuel carried by the Soviet tanks meant touching them off into little balls of fire with a single shot. Very, very easy. Even though the Germans were able to attack at will due to a total and complete failure of Red Air Force support. And even when they missed the targets, it helped. And what has to be the greatest success and failure that I've seen in an Air Force. Now, if you remember, this is happening in this the fall right it's a very dry season in most places which was the point right nobody like the germans made a point not to attack in the rainy season in the winter again right definitely not do that again um it you know it rains a lot um these roads get churned into

utter shit and you can't use them so we have to fight in the dry season however and i think we talked about this more extensively in our napoleon and russia series russian dust is a motherfucker it's like known to be a massive yeah it's it's noted to be a massive pain in the ass and every time when the lufwaffe strikes missed completely it would simply send up a gigantic dust cloud uh which would blind the soviet tanks i mean it would also blind the nazis as well but when you're attacking and you're moving around sight is actually more important than when you're sitting behind defensive and just launching tank shells into the dust cloud in front of you. And fire mines. And fire mines.

So this meant that the Soviet tanks, which are now charging it, which are hundreds of Soviet tanks, mind you, are charging at hundreds of German tanks. The Soviet tanks can't fucking see where they're going. This kind of turns into a road rash situation here where tanks are just slamming into one another, unable to see where they're going. I always got to make a

comedy. Like, if you were to shoot this scene, you could play Yakety Sacks over the background, and it fits actually kind of aptly, I think. Now, all this is fine, though. The Soviet tactic was not to

overrun the Germans. It was to drown them in their blood. And I don't mean that as a joke. That was legitimately their plan. The first wave made up of nearly 300 tanks of their own, their mission was not to win. Their mission was not even to break through. Their mission was not to encircle the Germans. The first wave of Soviet tanks was to pin the German line down. So, hit them with such a weight of Soviet armor, they could not move. So, each successive wave would be able to hammer on them. They would not be able to maneuver out of this situation. The Germans would have no choice but to square up and fight them. Maneuver warfare would be out of the question because the sheer weight of their advance would pin them down and force them to fight.

Now, the first unit to face the attack was Ribbentrop's single understrength company of seven Panzer IVs. The few number of tanks didn't seem to bother the Soviets as they simply drove right by them, which like Ribbentrop mentioned this kind of like half comically where he thought that they were going to be like barrel to barrel and like T-34s are just burning right past them. Right. How did that sucks? This honestly ended up being great if you happen to be in Ribbentrop's single understrength company because you could shoot at the T-34's flanks in the rear as they drove by, which is what they did. And this led to a really weird mess of confusion as the Soviet tanks behind the original one saw these Panzers,

or maybe didn't see them because of the dust cloud and assumed they were friendly because why else would they still be alive, right? Sure. At various points, this ended in tank duels at such a close range that their barrels could touch which oh now tiff making making the tanks kiss um when the first soviet charge was broken it wasn't by some masterpiece of german tactics it was by one of their own tank ditches remember how i said that

the germans would reuse soviet defenses because the soviets had built simply so many of them there's the excess laying around and that was the case here the germans had captured soviet positions so you guys check out these fire mines and there was a massive tank ditch which was right in front of the german position that the Soviets had built. And because of the extensive Soviet defensive works and their obvious need to keep these secret, this advancing tank unit was not given any knowledge or map or whatever of the area that they were attacking that would denote these defenses. So they drove blind directly into their own tank ditch um now if you remember that these tank ditches were made to swallow and stop bigger tanks like tigers and panthers t-34s just parked

right in that motherfucker they couldn't get out like they didn't just like endo into it they were like end to end trapped but through the wall of dust smoke and fog as well as the heat of battle more and more tanks just slammed into the ditch now this effectively finished and fixed the problem in something akin to say world war z now you've heard of the corpse road you've heard of the corpse pier i'm here to tell you today about the tank bridge um the tank corpse bridge i guess the the realm of corpse infrastructure only grows larger because so many tanks filled this ditch finally eventually the tanks behind it simply ramped over the tanks

in the ditch and cleared it which is something that should only exist in fucking Call of Duty if it's stupid it works and if it's not stupid god damn it that's right now unfortunately there were accidents now

remember how these tanks are filled on the outside with fuel and ammo one of the ramping tanks which again I need to point out how fucking sick that is touched off somebody's extra fuel tanks in the back

setting the entire tank ditch on fire which again only sets the ambience to make ramping over it even cooler like it's an action movie as long as the tanker didn't look back as long as the tanker didn't look back because cool guys don't look back at explosions um so you have these second and third waves of tanks ramping over a tank ditch that is full of dozens of dead tanks, which are now explosively on fire and throwing themselves. Now, at this point, Soviet officers lost any attempt at command and control as units lost

contact with one another, whether that be through clouds of smoke, burning fuel, or dust, and their own rigid command structure, which meant flexible command was simply not possible. The reason for this is mostly due to the incredibly fragile communication arrays that were installed on T-34s. Now uh communication arrays and antennas and the like were almost universally fragile in world war ii um developing technology so like sure there's there's gonna be hiccups right the soviet ones on the t-34s were installed as kind of like a second thought so they were worse than usual yeah yeah now the main reason for that is obviously these things exposed to enemy fire are going to break get blown up whatever however the way that

they were installed but they could also shake loose uh and if you've ever been in a tank that is turned on you might note that this thing vibrates quite a bit um that happens even more when you start driving around say over broken ground or ramping your tank over other flaming tanks sure yeah uh so at at one point uh communications were limited to at best platoon leaders uh that that's like one out of every four tanks so there's not enough working radios to go around. So as command and control broke down, it turned to a game of follow the leader, which ended up being the fallback idea

of the Soviet military. Like, hey, if you can't talk to anybody, simply follow the guy in front of you, which seems kind of dumb proof. And it is. However, it assumes that the tank that you're following knows where the fuck it's going. Spoiler alert, they did not slowly this broke down even further as soviet tanks fought in individual uh like little clusters with no overall command and control of these units like

the battle of pokorova broke down into an individual tank by tank effort, which is never how that's supposed to happen. Christ. Nobody had any idea where they were going. No clues to what they were doing. And in some cases, no fucking idea who they were shooting at because they simply couldn't see. Oh, and if in case carrying a ton of ammo and fuel was like fragile enough, the Soviet tanks are doing another thing that they're very well known for, acting as personnel carriers. Yeah, well, with fire

tanks strapped to their backs, it seems great. The good news is about the fuel bladder that you're carrying on the rear of your tank is they make it very comfortable to sit on. The Soviet tanks were all carrying as many infantry as they could on top now these guys

got the nickname tank marines which in my opinion the only good badass yeah badass now these soldiers would of course hop off and support their armored comrades as we've underlined continuously throughout the last three hours how important tank and infantry support is now as long as you ignore all of the horrible horrible dangers involved in this uh say like getting set on fire getting thrown off when you take ramps over a ditch or i don't know falling off and getting ran over or whatever um this sounds like a fun job now during one of these attacks all that other shit yes yeah minus the fact it's a horrible death trap it sounds kind of fun uh now during one of these attacks, a Panzer Grenadier Battalion headquarters

was overran and taken by tank marines. Now, during one of these attacks, they nearly killed a famed SS officer named Joachim Peiper, who unfortunately managed to escape. Joachim Peiper is a guy famous for eventually being tracked

down by French Jewish partisans and being set on fire while having his head hacked off. So sweet. Yeah. You're proud to be a Jew. Through all this confusion and the weird accidental stand by Ribbentrop. If you remember, he's the guy that got kind of trapped in the middle of the Soviet advance and

the Soviet advance didn't know he was in the middle of them. Oh, Hey guys. He was able, like the, he and the Soviet advance didn't know he was in the middle of them. Oh, hey guys. He was able, like he and the German line was able to get their shit together somewhat as around 160 Soviet tanks turned towards what is

known as the October State Farm. You know how to name a map. Yeah, it's a solid name. Now, the Germans were dug in there october state farm this is jake from october state farm where is your wheat you have not met your monthly quota of wheat this version of jake from state farm is not very entertaining. Now, the Soviets turned to assault the October State Farm. Now, unfortunately for the Soviet tankers,

one of the men stationed there was legitimately one of the best tank commanders and best tank aces in military history, not just World War II. That's German SS tanker Michael Wittmann. Now, he had been nicknamed the Black Baron, and he would eventually go on to kill at least 100 tanks before his death in 1944.

Yeah. Like, yeah, he's a Nazi, and he is also in the SS. But, like, those fucking numbers don't lie. Yeah. He can be a very, very bad person bad person but very very good at his job which unfortunately was the case for too many nazis otherwise we would have gotten this far i should point out that accurately counting the kills that he and other tank aces he had during the war especially the ones by the ss is very very very hard to do and there's actually still

some argument on who exactly killed Whitman himself. I think they've eventually pinned it down to a Canadian tank unit using a Sherman Firefly, which, cool. However, we know without a doubt that Whitman was absolutely the most deadly tanker of World War II. But just how many enemy tanks he destroyed

and the exact circumstances has long not been lost to history, but just how many enemy tanks he destroyed and the exact circumstances has long not been lost to history, but rather propaganda. Because the Nazis also knew how good Whitman was at his job. So, you know, that's a problem. However, also,

I'm not sure if it's Whitman or Vittman, but I'm going to go with Whitman. However, Whitman and other Tiger tanks like his were too few in numbers to truly break the Soviet assaults. T-34s simply kept coming, which, you know, was their plan. Remember, pin them down and then drown them in dead tanks. In their own blood, yeah. The Tigers could kill a T-34 at a thousand yards, which is, I guess, the easiest way to explain that if you're a T-34 tanker is bad. It's a very bad disadvantage.

Whereas a T-34 could maybe damage the Tiger's front plate with some luck at 80 to 100 yards. At this point, the Tiger drivers had learned to not only stop at slight angles, but also to never reverse. So they knew their strengths. And if you've parked at a slight angle, it gave you the advantage of if something hit you dead on, which if they're charging at you, of course, they're going to hit you in the front slope of your armor. You would simply glance off because there was no front angle to hit. So like the tiger drivers were learning, because if you remember, they didn't exactly have a lot of pre-deployment training here.

They're learning on the fly. Right. Now that Matt, the Soviet tanks grabbed onto their innate need to dive into the deep black nothingness. We always joke is Russian military culture and effectively suicide charge into the Tigers. As you do. That's one does.

Now they wore them down in numbers or forced them to burn through their ammo, which the Tigers didn't carry all that much of to deal with a wave quite like this, though, to be quite fair. I don't think any tank could deal with an attack quite like this though to be quite fair i don't think any tank could deal with an attack quite like this t-34s were hit and just kept going on fire and then the drivers who are normally left alive the way to explain this is the easiest is either a tank is all killed together that being the driver um and turret crew or the the driver was killed independently or the turret was killed independently. Sometimes, and in a lot of cases, the driver was left alive

while the turret crew burned behind them. Grim, I know. And the drivers driving these burning death traps full of corpses would simply attempt to pilot them while on fire directly into German Tiger tanks. Jesus fuck.

Now, in one case, a tank was hit and the driver, still alive, jumped out to pull his wounded crew to safety. But then he saw an enemy Tiger gunning for a different T-34. He jumped back into the burning T-34 that he had just pulled everybody out of and then crashed it into the tiger killing himself oh i've done that in call of duty exactly like this is some video came as shit that's you know you're loaded up on vodka you haven't slept in three days you got a hot meal in you and you're ready to take some chances you know this is the kind of shit that's like if somebody uh like if you've been playing like battlefield 1942 and like someone jumps out of uh like a fighter plane does a 360 no scope

into another pilot then jumps back into that plane it's like yeah sure fuck it why not now in other cases tank marines would jump off swarm enemy tanks and then sometimes get inside of them because remember it's very hot. So a lot of the German tank crews have their hatches open, which bad idea. These tankweights dive inside and just start frantically knifing Germans. Yeah.

In more than one case, it's noted that it's face-to-head combat. That's right. In more than one case, tank marines jumped inside enemy tanks and got into protractive knife fights with the German tank crews. At which point I'm thinking, use your gun!

You have a gun! Use your gun! Close quarters, man. You can't be too careful. Now, the Soviets somehow were not alone in this. German infantry, desperate and pinned against the wall, did the same thing. Now this led to running

gun battles with Germans and Soviets on the same tanks, each trying to shoot one another around the turret and taking cover around that same turret. What the fuck? Holy shit. A German half-track

driver attempted to ram a t-34 and like at this point like commanders lost the ability to control anything it was a complete insane free for all us people were knifing and shooting each other cuckoo bananas i believe is the phrase i want a veteran of the 10th tank corps said quote

the t-34 has three 100 liter fuel tanks on the right side, an additional 10 liter drum with motor oil on the left side. When an armor piercing shell penetrates the side, fuel or motor oil spills into the tank and a cascade of sparks falls on the uniform

and everything blazes up. God forbid a living being from ever having to witness a wounded, writhing person who is burning alive or ever having to experience the same. That is why there exists amongst tankers a unique, unofficial measure of courage. The number of times you've been on fire inside of your tank. Number of times? Number of times.

I don't like times plural. I don't like times plural. I'm going to be real honest with you. Look you look i'm gonna be straight up with you i i've never been instead of i've never been set on fire once instead of my tank so i got that going for me because i'll call you joe pussy kazabian that's right yeah in comparison to literally any soviet tanker that existed i'm a massive pussy yeah we're german tanker, for that matter. I had a shame to admit it. The Soviet first wave was

destroyed almost entirely, with the German line holding. But the battle wasn't over. By noon, the second wave hit the front, driving into the sector held by the SS Das Reich. They broke through the first line, running into an improvised German tank company made up of captured T-34s, which had to be confused people.

Like, we made it through, boys. Record scratch. Wait, what the fuck? Now, it didn't take long for this unit, along with the rest of SS tanks, to turn the 50 Soviet attackers into burning heaps of slag. of slag elsewhere the ss totenkopf panzer group ran to the third guard's rifle corps who managed to pin them down long enough for artillery and the red air force to get called onto them which thanks guys you're kind of late to this whole party totenkopf was hoping to break through the soviet attack and link up with leibniz start who was who's been the one knife fighting and being set on fire throughout all this which as you can imagine

the soviets did not want them to do they held them at bay with waves of t-34s which is like most of their problem solving at this point is like can we fix this by throwing grips of t-34s at you and uh they they just made it rain with fire from every kind of artillery that they had at their disposal now this event this fighting eventually came to a standstill, keeping the two units separated by just a few miles. Relief would not be coming for Leibniztart. With this, the battle ended, at least for now. The Battle of Pokorova is one of those things that has since been turned to a thing of myth,

with thousands of tanks dueling out in the Battle of Giants, ending in a triumphant soviet victory and uh that's not really what happened for one there wasn't thousands of tanks but i mean to be completely honest there was still at least 800 uh which is a lot of fucking takes uh that's a video game ass amount of tanks um now counting assault guns which remember the germans have been using is like a quick fix for their lack of tanks right the the number might be closer to high 900s or even a thousand vehicles being involved in this however one of those things is one of these things is technically true one of these things is technically

true and that is the soviets did kind of win but only in the coldest most tactical imagining of the battle uh and one that the germans at least for the moment believed to be a victory i think that's important to point out here the nazis advance was stopped and they were not allowed to move any further which was juke off's plan right like you cannot allow you pin the Germans down, do not allow them to advance. You know, the counterattack is about to be launched. Sure. But the Germans also kind of believe that they won. They didn't necessarily take the village,

but they did protect the flank of the advancing unit because in their mind, this massive tank force is coming for their flank, which it was not. It was coming for Pokorova. In the reports for Leibnizdorf and Dostoevsky, the two units facing the brunt of the fighting, they list three tanks as total losses between July 10th and July 13th, the battle taking place on the 12th. And in this, one tank is labeled as a loss. Now, you have to parse through some German paperwork language here.

Total losses are tanks that are considered so damaged, they cannot be repaired. So that is three, with one labeled as a loss, meaning it could be repaired. Furthermore, Panzer Grenadiers suffered around 200 dead or missing, with another 350 wounded. That is not that bad when you look at Kursk as a whole. For the scope of the battle, sure.

Now, I point this out because you see these casualty numbers get inflated pretty frequently. And I need to point out here why that is a problem. This is German military records. There's no reason for them to lie about their losses. Because remember what these losses entail, reinforcements. It's in their best interest to be as honest as possible about their losses because if one tank is lost they expect to get one tank in return if or if three tanks is lost they expect to get three tanks in return if one tank is lost uh and is not a complete loss though they need replacement parts for that one tank. This is not some memoir. Probably not. More importantly, a lot of people cite memoirs written by Germans who were not hung after the

war, like Heinz Guderian or whatever, that they change details to make themselves sound better. This is not where those numbers come from. I would not trust Heinz Guderian's memoirs. Now, Soviet's losses per vehicle are not exact but they're thought to be at least 300 total losses with 7 000 casualties 3700 of which were known to be dead or missing rather than wounded but if you notice that's a hell of a ratio to dead to wounded and that is because most of the tankers simply burn to death because of all the fuel fireball

wait is that pitbull is that a pitbull song yeah god damn it mr worldwide going back to world war 2 mr worldwide 2 yeah i hope someone just photoshops him like i don't know like stutter stepping at the battle of pokorova now he's truly mr worldwide and time eternal uh now which is fairly impressive so you remember the beginning of like the original wolverine movie where it's

wolverine through all of the wars of human history but it's just pitbull like mr worldwide is like the psalmist happening behind him dude was in the oss now uh despite all of this somehow this is means to an end remember the soviet school was not to push the germans back it was simply to make sure they could not advance so right In the grand scheme of things, both could make an argument that they won the battle of Pokorovo, or at the very least, it was a stalemate. However, in the grand

scheme of things, the Soviets won because Operation Kutuzov was about to be launched. Organized by Zhukov and the chief of artillery Nikolai Voronov, they would deploy over one million men down from the north of Operation Citadel across the salient in order to shatter the battered Nazi army, and more specifically, Army Group Center, and to the front and at 3 a.m. the heaviest and most well-coordinated Soviet artillery barrage of the entire eastern front

opened fire. It went on for over two hours and at 6 a.m. the main attack began. The Luftwaffe believed that the western front attack was a diversion however and withheld support, ceding control of the air voluntarily

to the Red Air Force, who then, of course, seems to be very strategic. Yeah, seems to be a mistake. Like, I see that we have air superiority and we'll simply give that up. You know, give them a chance, boys. Yeah. By the time the Germans were able to figure out what exactly

was happening, the Soviets had already driven six miles into the German lines. In the northern sector, Hovhannes Bagramian's 11th Guards Army smashed through the German lines and cut off the 5th Panzer Division, though not everything went so smoothly. Also, small side note here, Hovhannes Bagramian, famous hero of the Republic of Armenia,

and we have a metro line named after him, actually. Really? Yeah, it's pretty cool. And a pretty important street through the main center of Yerevan. Now, not everything went so smoothly here. In the Bryansk front, the Soviets ran into some hard fighting. It didn't help that their armor support was incredibly and badly obsolete KV-2s uh which were not what you want helping you it was one of those situations where the soviet counter-attack operation could choose

off as a whole was so fucking big that like some corners were gonna have to be cut in order to like hit these this man power goal and the kv-2 is simply one of those things like, we need tanks, you have tanks at home. Now, the KV-2s wandered into their own minefields, leaving the 14th Soviet Rifle Division to charge ahead on their own, only to get

caught out in the open by the Luftwaffe, who finally showed up to play. This eventually led to something of an unofficial new Soviet tanker tactic because in some of these sectors, specifically the Bryansk Front, which we're now talking about, the Red Air Force didn't have enough manpower to cover it all, right? Like if you happen to be in one of these unlucky fronts,

you're not going to have any air support, which meant the Luftwaffe could simply eat you alive at its own discretion. This became such a problem in the Bryansk front that when tankers saw planes in the air overhead, they'd simply jump out of their tanks and run into the woods. Fair enough. Fair play. Fuck the tanks. If they're still alive in a few minutes, we'll come back or whatever,

which I'm sure was very popular amongst their officers. i can see a lot of people getting in trouble for this yeah see the thing is if you all run away from your tanks the nkvd can't possibly arrest you all if all of us have herpes none of us have herpes i say as i as i sprint into the woods now eventually they did break through, however, creating another problem for the Germans. The Soviet goal was again to pin the Germans down and put them in a situation where they'd be unable to move their forces around

in order to support one another. This is a tactic of theirs they keep using and it works pretty effectively. And it finally seemed to be happening. The 5th Panzer Division demanded help, as did General Rondulik's Bryansk Front. The only unit able to help them was Model's 9th Army. This forced them to run around ragged, trying to put out every little fire that got reported to them as the only still mobile relief force. You can't do that for very long now every unit in operation citadel was abandoning all other

plans they had now switching to the defensive as they got hammered by remember over a million soviets as the soviets broke through at the bryansk front the german station there around the area of bolkov called the fighting quote, the threshold to the battle of hell. Jesus. As the 61st Army and the 20th Tank Corps threw themselves at the Germans. Like in other places, the German line held at first, but that was fine. The Soviet goal is to force the Germans to commit themselves. Even though, like, remember at the very beginning of Citadel, the Soviet plan is, no, we want

them to come into this. We want them to fight us in a grinding battle of attrition. We can do this all day. And that was still their goal. They wanted the Germans not to retreat, which, of course, they eventually would. Spoiler alerts, World War II will end in 1945. They wanted the Germans to commit to a defensive battle because they knew in no situation did they have the manpower to keep this up.

They wanted the Germans to dig their fucking heels in and fight them. And that is what they did. They committed to grinding attrition warfare that they had no hope of sustaining. Now, eventually, this attrition would break through and the Soviets would be able to advance. A tactical and operational stalemate was fine for the Soviets. It suited their purpose. It was not okay for the German military and it was certainly not a victory. They couldn't win a defensive battle and be good. Remember, they can't win.

At no point can victory be achieved when they're on the defensive. Famously, after the Battle of Wagram in 1809, Napoleon remarked, quote, the animals are learning something. Now, it wouldn't become such a fatalist observation for Napoleon, at least not for a few more years. But this is the same thing the Germans were beginning to see not to call the Soviets animals I'd be racist against myself previous Soviet offensive and victories could always be

counted to some outlying factor even if it wasn't true it wasn't like if it wasn't for the winter in Stalingrad for example if it wasn't for us invading the Soviet Union in the winter there is always something you tack on to the side to put to bury bonds every Soviet victory, to put a permanent asterisk over it. Right. Got to bury bonds that shit.

That way you don't have to internalize your own failure. I mean, America still does this with our wars, right? Oh, you're talking about us never. Virtually every losing power in a war, we'll think of an excuse. And whether it be a battle or war, we didn't lose in our own volition. It was simply X or Y. And here in July and clear weather, the Soviets were launching a force on force offensive and the Germans could not think of a way to stop it. They were losing and

could not think of the reason why. The animals were learning. The German military was virtually dead on its feet. Nobody was able to sleep due to constant combat and soldiers were given a steady supply of booze to keep their mental facilities together. They were breaking down from PTSD.

The constant grinding warfare. And the meth stopped working. Yeah. Not only have the Soviets broken the back of the German military war effort, they've broken the minds of the German soldier, which is just incredible. While propaganda would say otherwise,

it seems like the German military, caught up in the meat grinder of the citadel, had become mentally broken from accumulated combat stress. This included not eating or caring about their own safety. As one soldier put it, quote, I just don't care about anything anymore. Another company commander said, quote, I couldn't deal with it. It was too much for me. I don't want to list all the dead here.

How old our men have become. That sure sounds like PTSD. Fuck, that sucks. No matter how hard the Germans fought to hold on, small cracks began to form in their lines, allowing Soviet forces to burst through and circle small bits and pieces, wiping them out

little by little, and in the end forcing the rest of the German line to attempt to do what they could do to redeploy themselves in something resembling a defensive line with rapidly diminishing means in which to do so. And it's funny that the Soviets are doing this because they learned this a few years before in Finland. This is exactly what the Finnish offensives did. Right. This is exactly what the Finnish offensives did. Right.

Manstein attempted to link his army with the SS units still holding at Pokorova, which would be the last German offensive of Operation Citadel, which was called Operation Roland. This also had the means of stabilizing their line, eliminating at least one of their countless tiny salients they had driven into the Kursk salient. countless tiny salients they had driven into the Kursk salient. Their overarching plans were a failure, but they were able to conduct a fighting withdrawal and make their line semi-more

coherent and make the Soviets' job a little bit harder. As the Germans were grounded into a nub on the ground, Model made up for it with air power. Luftwaffe bombers were flying five sorties a day, stopping only to rearm and refuel, but due to the attrition in the Air Force,

the only ones left flying were the veterans who were still worth their weight in gold, or brand new people who had no fucking idea what they were doing. There's very little in between. Sure. But now, through constant flying, their brains simply weren't working right.

You can't work that hard for that long, no matter how much meth you pump into your pilot. So they began to make bad choices. Their reflexes slowed and soon they began to be shot down or crash at a faster rate. Things were going so badly that by July 20th, Hitler forbade any withdrawal by Army Group Center, which is never a good sign. Like that's like, that's the death knell. You've, you've pulled tactical flexibility away from your commanders,

right? As modal began constructing fallback positions, knowing his lines were getting too thin to keep this shit up. Since Kutuzov had begun things in Sicily had only gotten worse. And Hitler's last meeting with Mussolini was only one day before this, adding to his pissy mood. Things were not going great. Doesn't sound like it. A few days later, Hitler agreed with Model, changing the defensive plan to a more elastic defense, while at the same time ordering the SS Panzer units to redeploy to Italy.

the SS panzer units to redeploy to Italy. Now, if you remember all the way back to our first episode, this elastic defense was what Modal had always wanted in the Kursk area. Like, at the end of all of this, after feeding an entire army into a wood chipper, they

went back to the original plan, which is at this point, you can't do that anymore. That ship's got to fucking sail. Right. The Sun order was to abandon the Orel salient in the north, despite the at this point you can't do that anymore that ship is gonna fucking sail right the sun order was to abandon the orel salient in the north despite the fact the germans had not yet constructed any fallback position since the last order

they were given was to never fall back so yeah if you just let us build this shit before you do it, god damn it! I'm starting to, like, again, I'm starting to think Hitler's not good at his job.

Where's the fucking meth? The Germans began their withdrawal from all of the gains of Citadel, to which there were not really many, anyway, so smoothly and quickly that the Soviets simply let them. Not really having a reason to apply any pressure like oh they're fucking off like let's let's let them fuck off at this point all

operations that the germans would conduct still within the citadel sector mind you would be delaying actions at best uh it like small units divisions whatever throwing up like uh screening yeah yeah so others could retreat and they'd do that over and over again leaving more and more germans dead and uh gaining really nothing for it um good it would turn into a slow but steady retreat to the rest of july and into august remember hitler was the commander-in-chief of the eastern front and his field marshals couldn't do anything without his approval. So, they were left hanging, Citadel technically over, but without any further plans other than just kind of hang out.

They couldn't organize any kind of breakthrough. They couldn't organize reinforcements. They couldn't come up with any kind of defensive structure. They had to wait for Hitler. Not saying that Model or Manstein would have been better at this, but they could have acted quicker and they were going to lose either way. There's no way around that.

But they would have lost less. Model and Manstein were very much aware and pretty much everyone else demanded reinforcements or authorization to conduct what was called mobile operations, which

in German military parlance meant withdrawing to a better position. In this way, Hitler's orders were simply just leaving them out there, hanging out in the wind to get hit by a Soviet advance or offensive or

whatever sure and just run uh or or sorry tactical retreat or whatever retreat sure no now if you if you authorized mobile operations the the germans could look at their map like hey look there's a height here we could dig in have the high ground or whatever you know it's still a losing effort of course but like you would be in a better position in that losing effort rather than just like hanging out in the wind or whatever right right hitler somehow refused both of these suggestions he would not allow mobile operations he would not allow the germans to dig in because digging him was defeat now you're Now you're defending. You need to be attacking. Official German

policy, no pussy shit. The official German policy is you will lose and you will lose as fast as possible. Now Hitler deeply distrusted Manstein and Model at this point. It turned out this was at least for good reason. Even though he always disliked these guys.

At this point the two are openly discussing the hope that someone would kill hitler um right now of course neither one of them would do so themselves uh but they would they they noted that um the only reason they would not as quote prussian field marshals do not mutiny. Which, shut up. Yeah, just shut up, you nerd. Kill Hitler. Now, instead, Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt and von Kluge had to approach Hitler and convince him that a tactical withdrawal from the area would be a good idea.

Now, Hitler trusted them as much as Hitler trusted anybody at this point. And it turns out he shouldn't have trusted Kluge either, as he was almost certainly part of the July 20th plot and committed suicide after it failed. Yeah, well, at least he tried. I'll give you a C, sir. Now, their idea worked, and Hitler allowed the withdrawal of Army Group Center and South, whose soldiers adopted a scorched earth policy for anything that they passed through, not just supplies. They also evacuated all men between the ages of

15 and 65, most of whom would be shot and left in a nearby ditch. It was ordered and the Russians should find nothing but quote find nothing but a field of rubble. so kill the countryside effectively. Only if you're such a dick about it.

No need to be such a Nazi about this Nazi shit. The Soviet counteroffensive quickly turned into a general offensive, namely the Belgorod-Karkov offensive and the Red Army hot on the retreating German heels with General Vatut noting

quote, they are burning our bread. Their goal was to out-advance their scorched earth policy, which didn't exactly work. The German withdrawal would pick up speed. Men just being pushed ragged to withdraw faster

and faster, which if you did this several months before, you wouldn't have had to have done that. Now, this broke men's morale to the point that by the time they hit the Dnieper River, a German officer known as men, quote, didn't care they were shot by a Russian or their own officers anymore. So congratulations, Germany, you broke your own military. Now, this brings us to the end of our series. And rather than say this is a triumphant victory or a crushing defeat, we have to kind of explain what this operation meant, because it was neither of those things. At the end of Kursk was a turning point. The Soviets had seized their strategic initiative and they would hold it the rest of the war, which sure is a victory, obviously.

a victory, obviously. The Eastern Front was turned on its head, with the Germans now the ones being on the desperate defensive as their war machines sputtered and struggled to keep up with their losses, which they never would at this point. Their professional and material advantages were shattered and would never make a comeback. The Germans undoubtedly had the better military when Barbarossa and even when Kursk began. But that was all gone now. The thing that made the Nazi war machine tick wasn't its wonder weapons or its fancy tanks like people believe, but at its core were a well-trained and veteran leaders that made the war machine function. After Kursk, that core was all dead, smashed against miles and miles of Soviet defenses. Just for an example, Army Group South, in the beginning of Operation Citadel to the end of August, lost 38 regimental commanders and more than 252 battalion commanders. That is the accumulated experience and education of literally hundreds of years.

literally hundreds of years. In exchange, the Soviets were now the ones at the core with hardened veterans and evolving and learning higher command structure and a rapidly closing technological gap that only continued to close as the Red Army slowly marched towards Berlin. Now, this is the part where, like, we talk about the losses. And the cost of this operation was kind of hard to fathom. Monstrous moment. Fucking astronomical.

It's something that will simply never exist again. Right. In around two weeks of fighting, over 1 million people would become casualties. Thousands of vehicles were destroyed. There's really no agreed upon number of casualties per side, but it's thought to be at least

200,000 Germans and another 800,000 Soviets would become dead or wounded or missing though the numbers would be could honestly be much much higher just for comparison's sake kursk is not the most deadly battle of the war that honor still goes to stalingrad um that that that fucking podium's not being toppled anytime soon. Sure. But that unfolded over five months. With most conservative estimates putting the butcher's bill at around 2 million. Kursk had half of that in two weeks.

Jesus fuck. But it was that way by design and the Soviet plan worked flawlessly. I mean, if you consider a million casualties flawlessly, it could have been a crushing defeat for Germany, but the Soviet counterattack failed to encircle an army group like they did at Stalingrad, but they did bleed the German army white.

Its reserves were depleted and soon the literal children would be pressed into combat as the war slowly and inevitably came to an end. And that Liam is the battle of Kursk. You're welcome. Cause I told you, how are you feeling buddy? Grim man. I'm feeling welcome. Cause I told you, how are you feeling buddy? Grim man. I'm feeling grim.

Feeling great. Um, now that is our, our, our series, the battle of Kursk. I don't have a question from the Legion today. Um,

nobody sent me any. So if you, uh, if you have a question from the Legion, um, send it to me. You can DM me, hit me up on,

um, the discord. the discord if you remember if you'd like to ask us a question donate a dollar get access to the discord you can do it that way anyway Liam thank you for joining me in the last four weeks it took us a while to get here but we got here and

everybody thank you for supporting the show you make everything we do possible maybe if you like, consider supporting the show on Patreon, and you get a whole bunch of fun, honest content. We're very handsome. Also, it helps keep the lights on, which is fun. Liam, plug your shows. Hi, my name is Liam Anderson. I have a leftist Philly sports podcast with my good friend Tom that Joe has been on.

It's called 10,000 Losses. We're recording our bonus on Thursday for this month. I'm also on the famed and wonderful Well, There's Your Problem, which is releasing an episode soon. If we haven't already, Roz just has to edit it. Leave us alone. releasing an episode soon if we haven't already ross just has to edit it leave us alone well i rest assured that uh by the time this episode comes out whatever episode you're talking about will have been released yeah let's hope so it's been a bit and again everybody thank you and until next time um don't invade russia to the soviets i guess