There are a number of myths about Kursk that gained general acceptance. As with much of the Eastern Front, for many years, much of the historical truths remained hidden. On the Soviet side, the truth was hidden under the shroud of Soviet secrecy and propaganda. On the German side, the truth was “hidden in plain sight.” That is to say that the memoirs of surviving Germans like Manstein, Mellenthin, Guderian and others served as the official account of the battle in the west. In the meantime, a treasure trove of German unit records sat unresearched in the national archives.
In the past 10-15 years or so, much has changed and many of he myths have been challenged. The Soviet records were briefly open, and western historians, notably David Glantz, mined as much as he could. In the meantime, other historians in the west began to actually do the hard work of digging and sifting through the German after action reports.
Some of the myths have been refuted, but some of the historical notions of this battle have been confirmed. I’ll discuss more later as the battle progresses. But as a teaser, Prokhorovka was not what is populuarly believed.
You are right about that. From all of the books I have read on this monumental battle (largely forgotten even though it was the greatest clash of armor in all history), it looks to me as though the Germans were about score a major breakthrough on the southern end of the offensive(the northern end of the attack was going nowhere)yet Hitler called the whole thing off after the Allies invaded Sicily and redeployed a number of key divisions fighting at Kursk.