CNN
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Ukraine’s military incursion into Russian territory in the Kursk region covers part of the same area where the Soviet Union won one of its most important victories over the German invaders in World War II. According to some historians, this victory turned the tide of war in Europe almost a year before the D-Day invasion of Normandy.

The landing of German troops on the beaches of France on June 6, 1944, is often seen in the West as a turning point in Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s conquest of Europe. But historians believe the die for German defeat was cast between July 5 and August 23, 1943, when millions of soldiers and thousands of tanks and armored guns fought for Kursk.

With the victory at Kursk, “the Soviets seized the initiative in the East and held it until the end of the war,” said Michael Bell, executive director of the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

In the spring of 1943, Hitler’s army in the east was badly wounded in the Battle of Stalingrad. The Germans lost nearly a million men in their attempt to take the city on the Volga, destroy the weakened Soviet army, and capture oil fields in the southern Caucasus that would provide the fuel for Germany’s complete conquest of Europe.

Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered that Stalingrad be defended at all costs. The German advance in late summer and autumn 1942 was repulsed in the winter, and the German troops remaining in the city surrendered in February 1943.

As German troops were pushed back along the Eastern Front after Stalingrad, Hitler’s generals looked for a way to regain the initiative in the east and decided to seal off a Soviet salient, a 240-kilometer-long bulge in the German lines running north to south, defended by more than a million men and centered on Kursk.

The generals wanted to attack in the spring, but Hitler postponed the start of the operation, which was named “Operation Citadel”, so that some of the newest German tanks could be sent to the front.

This gave the Soviets ample time to prepare defenses against this obvious attack point, says Peter Mansoor, a history professor at Ohio State University and former commander of the U.S. Army’s armored cavalry.

“It was pretty easy to see that the Germans would have an interest in pushing this bulge out of the front,” Mansoor said.

Germany would deploy up to 800,000 soldiers and around 3,000 tanks to capture this front.

But they faced a formidable defense.

Bell, of the World War II Museum, said the Soviets had prepared a series of defensive lines, dug 3,000 miles of anti-tank ditches and laid 400,000 land mines to defend the salient, while stationing 75 percent of their tanks and 40 percent of their Eastern Front troops in the Kursk salient or in reserve behind it.

Although the new tanks that Hitler wanted for the battle were superior to the Soviet tanks, Stalin’s forces had the edge in terms of numbers, Bell said.

“The Germans have some better equipment, but the numerical superiority is clearly on the Soviet side,” said Bell.

Some estimates suggest that Soviet troop strength in the Battle of Kursk was over 2 million soldiers and more than 7,000 tanks.

The numerical superiority shifted even further to the Soviet side when Allied troops landed on the Italian island of Sicily on July 9, giving Hitler a new front to defend. This prompted him to move some of his troops from the Eastern Front to Italy, historians say.

The remaining German forces failed to break through the Soviet defenses, falling far short of their objectives and never penetrating deep into rear areas.

The losses among Hitler’s forces were enormous: reports of the battle put the number of dead at 200,000 or more and about 1,000 tanks lost.

“The Germans never again succeeded in consolidating forces to the extent they attempted in this battle,” Bell said.

“Kursk destroyed German tank reserves, making it impossible for the Germans to successfully defend the Russian front for the rest of the war,” Mansoor said.

“After Kursk, the Germans could no longer replace their manpower losses and they lost the elite of their tank troops there,” he said.

When Ukrainian forces crossed the border into the Kursk region on August 6, they had an advantage that the Germans did not have in 1943 – surprise.

The offensive was planned in the strictest secrecy and the troop movements were intended to give the impression that it was a matter of reinforcing defensive positions or an exercise in Ukraine.

And Russia is not prepared to defend this territory as it did with the parts of Ukraine it has captured, Mansoor said.

In fact, the defenses Russia has built in the parts of Ukraine’s Donbass region it occupies – layers of trenches, mines, anti-tank weapons, supported by artillery and tanks – closely resemble the Soviet defenses at Kursk in 1943, he said.

“The Russians have not changed their style of warfare significantly,” Mansoor said.

And that could benefit Ukraine today, said the former US Army armored cavalry officer.

By using combined arms, Ukraine has created room for maneuver on Russian territory – by successfully synchronizing infantry, long-range artillery and air forces for mutual support – something that Kyiv’s armed forces had previously failed to achieve.

“It really changes the nature of the war, at least in this part of the front line,” Mansoor said.