Victory in Europe Day: 7 important Allied victories against the Nazis

3. The Battle of Kursk – July 5 to Aug. 23, 1943

The largest tank battle in military history, Kursk was the location of an attempted counteroffensive by the Germans following their defeat at Stalingrad.

The goal had been to take the city of Kursk, which served as a salient for the Red Army or a strategic part of the line that allowed them to coordinate attacks in multiple directions.

Approximately 6,000 tanks on both sides took part in the weeks-long battle, along with around 2 million infantry forces and around 4,000 aircraft.

“At the height of the battle on July 12, the Soviets began to counterattack, having built up by then a marked preponderance of both troops and tanks,” noted Britannica.

“Their subsequent successes encouraged them to develop a broad offensive that recovered the nearby city of Orel (now Oryol) on August 5 and that of Kharkov (now Kharkiv, Ukraine) on August 23.”

“[The battle of Kursk] marked the decisive end of the German offensive capability on the Eastern Front and cleared the way for the great Soviet offensives of 1944–45.”