The short-term goal of the attack on the Soviet Union was to conquer the area west of the Astrakhan-Arkhangelsk line. Therefore, Hitler decided to attack the USSR. The offensive in the UK did not look encouraging.

It has become certain that Germany will not wait for the end of the war on the Western Front before launching a new attack on Eastern Europe.įrance fell under the German military boot in 1940. Hitler's obsession with the destruction of communism led to intolerance of everything that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin did. This meant approaching Hitler's sources of supply and another reason for the German destruction of Soviet forces. The Soviets wasted no time, and in June 1940 they conquered the Baltic, northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, and moved their troops closer to Romanian oil. CHAPTER 1: German-Soviet Relations on the Verge of World War IIĪlthough he signed a non-aggression pact in 1939 with USSR, Adolf Hitler did not renounce the idea of destroying communism, which would later prove to be the main occupation during the second year of the war. The battles in the bloody triangle Brody-Dubno-Lutsk were preceded by extensive preparations, but neither the course itself nor the results of the clash are negligible. The numerical situation shows how large this battle is in terms of the percentage of losses ahead of the one in Kursk. The battle, which began on June 23rd and ended on June 30th, swept 2,648 Soviet tanks out of a total of 5,000 and 100 German tanks from the battlefield. Opposing forces concentrated around the cities of Brody, Dubno, and Lutsk in the form of six Soviet mechanized corps of General Mikhail Kirponos, which retaliated with a counterattack by the rapidly advancing first Panzer group marching towards Kyiv.

When Wehrmacht forces attacked the USSR on June 22nd, 1941, Western Ukraine was the first to be hit. A far bigger one, but also a more infamous and unknown tank battle was the one for Brody and it happened two years earlier. Prokhorovka was big, but not the biggest tank battle. It is time for historical facts to come alive and drop light on the real truth. Germans lost only 80 tanks, while the Soviets lost an unbelievable number of 400 tanks. Precisely 978 tanks took part in the battle, 306 German and 672 Soviet.

Truth be told, the significance of the battle of Prokhorovka is great and must not be diminished. This battle signified a collision of Soviet tanks and the German 2nd SS Panzer Corps which resulted in huge losses in manpower and weapons. Many studies, books, and documentaries have taught us that the Battle of Prokhorovka in 1943 was the biggest tank battle ever.

What was the biggest tank battle in ww2