[sidney]

We may. Now, not long ago I was watching the more recent Russian documentary entitled Soviet Storm: WW2 In the East, giving an unprecedented Russian perspective on the war’s most decisive and bloody theatre of war.

As expected, there was an entire episode dedicated to the Zitadelle offensive. There the authors paid particular attention to the battle of Prokhorovka. Although they stopped short of saying that the 2nd SS Panzer Corps destroyed the entire 5th Guards Army, they did acknowledge that the Germans fought well and that they inflicted terrible losses on the Russian armour through potent mix of new tactics (der Keil - the Wedge formation), and new Panther, and especially, Tiger tanks, as well as the expert use of their 88's quickly deployed there.

However, in spite of von Manstein's impression that he could see cracks in the Russian defence, the 2nd SS Panzer Corps was facing the entire Steppe front (an inexact equivalent of German Army Group (Heeresgruppe)) left as a strategic reserve, and now rushing to contain the German breakthrough, and more importantly, the Corps could not make contact with Walter Model's 9. Armee (north pincer - failed to advance more than 20 km) and was consequently obliged to withdraw, and thus leave the battlefield to the Red Army.

To some extent similarly to the last great victory of the British Army at El Alamein, the carefully planned offensive, such as Zitadelle was, degenerated into desperate shoot-out between German and Russian tanks, and... admittedly, the German side won the contest, but was unable to exploit it further, and thus the offensive failed.

The assertion that the German main defensive effort suddenly had to refocus on the island of Sicily and the 150 km stretch across the Apennines, is incorrect. It is true that the Germans initially withdrew the entire 2nd SS Panzer Corps and intended to send it to Italy. However, because of the danger that Belgorod-Kharkov offensive posed to the entire German front, in the end only the 1st SS Panzer Division LSAH was extracted from the Corps and sent to Italy.

In short, the evidence presented in Die Welt is likely correct, many more Russian tanks were destroyed in the battle of Prokhorovka, but they could always send some more, while the Germans could not.

Hope that I did not overdo this.