2000), combine to do well by the army’s showpiece. Volume 2 of Armored Bears: The German 3rd Panzer Division in World War II, compiled by the division’s veterans (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole 2013), focuses on personal experiences and anecdotes. Christopher W. Wilbeck’s Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II (Bedford, PA: Aberjona Press, 2004) includes a good analysis of the Tigers’ role with Breith’s corps.
Airpower, whose vital role in Citadel is often marginalized, is well presented in Christer Bergstrom, Kursk: The Air Battle: July 1943 (Hersham, UK: Ian Allan Publishing, 2008). Von Hardesty and Ilya Grinberg, Red Phoenix Rising: The Soviet Air Force in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2012), present Citadel in the context of the Red Air Force’s wartime development. Richard Muller, The German Air War in Russia (Baltimore: Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1992), is a solid counterpoint. And among dozens of aircraft books, Martin Pegg, Hs 129: Panzerjager! (Burgess Hill, UK: Classic Publications, 1997), covers one of the less familiar types.
Among works addressing wider issues related to Kursk, Geoffrey Jukes, Stalingrad to Kursk: Triumph of the Red Army (Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Military, 2011), is excellent on the factors underlying the shift in military power on the Eastern Front. Dana V. Sadarananda, Beyond Stalingrad: Manstein and the Operations of Army Group Don (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1990), summarizes the experiences that directly shaped Manstein’s approach to Citadel and its aftermath. George M. Nipe Jr., Decision in the Ukraine, Summer 1943: II SS and III Panzer Korps (Winnipeg: J. J. Fedorowicz Publishing, 1996), takes these formations through Kursk and afterward. For details of the post-Kursk fighting, Rolf Hinze, East Front Drama, 1944: The Withdrawal Battle of Army Group Center, translated by Joseph G. Welsh (Winnipeg: J. J. Fedorowicz Publishing, 1996), and Crucible of Combat: Germany’s Defensive Battles in the Ukraine, 1943–44, translated and edited by F. P. Steinhardt (Solihull, UK: Helion & Co., 2009), are richly detailed, with minimal “Wehrmacht pathos.”
Most of the accessible biographies and memoirs are of Germans. The best critical analysis, by a substantial distance, of Manstein’s careeer and character is Mungo Melvin, Manstein: Hitler’s Greatest General (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010). Benoit Lemay, Erich von Manstein: Hitler’s Master Strategist, translated by Pierce Heyward (Havertown, PA: Casement Publishers, 2010), runs an honorable second. The German original of Manstein’s memoir, Verlorene Siege (Bonn: Athenaum Verlag, 1955), includes relevant material omitted from Lost Victories (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1958). Alexander Stahlberg, Bounden Duty: The Memoirs of a German Officer, 1932–45, translated by Patricia Crampton (London: Brassey’s, 1990), presents the ambiguities confronting a personal aide involved with the resistance to Hitler. Among the rest, Steven H. Newton, Hitler’s Commander: Field Marshal Walther Model—Hitler’s Favorite General (New York: Da Capo Press, 2006), is solid on Model. F. W. von Mellenthin was XLVIII Panzer Corps’s chief of staff during Citadel. Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956) includes his perspective on the operation.
Senior Russian commanders’ memoirs include Konstantin Rokossovsky, A Soldier’s Duty, translated by Vladimir Talny (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970); and Pavel Rotmistrov’s swashbuckling Stal’naya gvardiya (Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984). The more accessible Stalin’s Generals, edited by Harold Shukman (New York: Grove Press, 1993), includes excellent chapters on Novikov, Vatutin, Vasilevsky, and Rokossovsky. Richard N. Armstrong, Red Army Tank Commanders: The Armored Guards (Atglen, PA: Schiffer Publishing, 1994), includes chapters on Katukov and Rotmistrov.
On the questions of motives and behaviors, Roger R. Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), and Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945 (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), are a definitive combination. Omer Bartov, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), Stephen G. Fritz, Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), and Thomas Kuhne, Belonging and Genocide: Hitler’s Community, 1918– 1945 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), are no less persuasive for the Wehrmacht. Sonke Neitzel and Harald Welzer’s Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012) uses tape recordings of low-ranking German POWs to convey an unfiltered version of the unreflective hardness that informed their behavior in Russia.
Note: These references are intended primarily to serve as a guide to further reading for nonspecialists on this complex subject. As such they have been kept to a minimum, cite the most accessible sources on each subject, and take account of readers’ probable language limitations by citing translations when possible. Those seeking to probe more deeply into the masses of archival data are encouraged to consult the Guide to Further Reading (this page) as an intermediate step.
1 Fostering myth as much as history Roman Toppel, “Kursk: Mythen und Wirklichkeit einer Schlacht,” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte 57, no. 3 (2009): 349–384, and “Legendenbildung in der Geschichtsschreibung: Die Schlacht um Kursk,” Militargeschichtliche Zeitschrift 61 (2002): 369–401, are perceptive and comprehensive on this subject.
2 In terms of page counts Norman Davies, No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945 (London: Penguin Books, 2008), is a useful corrective for the imbalance.
3 “Forgotten year” Karl-Heinz Frieser et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol. 8, Die Ostfront, 1943–44 (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007), p. 277.
4 Two master narratives emerged See as typical English-language versions, and from opposite poles of the presentation spectrum, Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Operation Citadel: Kursk and Orel: The Greatest Tank Battle of the Second World War, trans. Michaela Nierhaus (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1987), and David M. Glantz and Harold L. Orenstein, eds., The Battle for Kursk, 1943: The Soviet General Staff Study (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1999). One features heroic narratives and evocative photos. The other exemplifies Carlyle’s “Dryasdust.” Though dated, each remains useful as a portal into the former combatants’ respective mentalities in the Cold War era.
5 German monopoly of Eastern Front narratives Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies II, The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), is comprehensive and perceptive.
1 Operation Barbarossa The invasion has generated enough discussion and analysis to justify a monograph on its historiography alone. As an introduction, Geoffrey Megargee, War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Lanham, MD: Rowman, 2006),
