The Battle of Kursk - Part 2

**Al Murray** (0:03)
Hello there, Al Murray here.
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Achtung, Achtung, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray, and James Holland, your Second World War podcast, and with all your Second World War needs. And we are, well, it's part two of how many about the epic confrontation between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in the summer of 1943, the Battle of Kursk, of course.

**James Holland** (2:33)
The biggest tank battle in history, isn't it?

**Al Murray** (2:34)
Well, we'll get to that.

**James Holland** (2:35)
And also I think it's appropriate to use Akhtun Akhtun today, cause obviously we've all those tanks of the fifth tank's guards army coming towards you.

**Al Murray** (2:44)
Yes, I think there's a lot of Akhtun going on.
But to quote Georgi Zhukov, before he represented the whole of the Red Army at the buffet, he said, The battle fought in the Kursk, Orel and Belgorod area was one of the most important engagements in the great patriotic war, the Second World War as a whole. Not only were the picked and most powerful groupings of the Germans destroyed here, but the faith of the German army and the German people in the Nazi leadership and Germany's ability to withstand the growing might of the Soviet Union was irrevocably shattered.

**James Holland** (3:17)
And I know we don't do accents on this show, but that was absolutely spot on. You nailed him.

**Al Murray** (3:26)
I mean, the faith of the German army and the German people, was it shattered?

**James Holland** (3:30)
Well, I think it was a bit, because I think it was a bit. I think it was already pretty shattered.
But I think this was the kind of sort of, oh crap moment where they really thought, oh, okay. I think it had been shattered a long time before.

**Al Murray** (3:46)
Yes.

**James Holland** (3:46)
But I don't think even the revisionists could argue that Kursk is anything less than a really significant battle because it's the last time the Germans go forward on the Eastern Front. And just look at the jaw dropping statistics of those who are involved in the scale of it, you know, four million troops plus.

**Al Murray** (4:05)
I know.

**James Holland** (4:05)
69,000 artillery bases and launchers, 13,000 tanks, 12,000 aircraft. I mean, that is a lot.
We might query the biggest tank battle in history, but I don't think there was ever a situation where there were more than 13,000 AFVs, Armored Fighting Vehicles, in an era of that scale. Maybe there were. I don't know.

**Al Murray** (4:28)
Well, compare it, say, with the end of July 1944 There's 380,000 Germans, 812,000 Americans, 640,000 British and Canadian troops in Normandy.
So 1.8 million-

**James Holland** (4:40)
And about 6,000 AFVs.

**Al Murray** (4:42)
Yeah, 1.8 million men in total.

**James Holland** (4:45)
That's like half the size.

**Al Murray** (4:46)
It's half the size. And the densities are greater.

**James Holland** (4:51)
Which is important.

**Al Murray** (4:52)
Which is important.

**James Holland** (4:53)