“I believe the Germans put 5,000 tanks into that battle while the Russians had 7,000. The Russians has 12,000 more on the way.”
What’s more, the Russians knew they Germans were coming, and where. Some German had the battle plan on him when his plane crashed, and the Russians got to the crash site first.
Germany had about 2k tanks, called off their attack on the Soviet defenses in depth after a week, and Russia launched a counter attack. It wasn’t really a tank versus tank attack to begin with, it was tanks versus fortified in depth defenses...
Part of the reason for calling off the attack, besides not breaking thru, was the need to send forces to Italy.
However, it was a huge fight, and saw Germany’s largest expenditure of ammunition during the course of the war so far.
“Don’t think that is accurate.”
It’s true. But the Russians had known about the German plans (Operation Citadel) for some time, as British Intelligence knew about it and gave that information to the Soviets. The plane crash was true, and one of the dead occupants was carrying Citadel material. That just added some confirmation.