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The Battle of Kursk Echos Today
Considering the Largest Battle in History
On August 6, 2024, Ukraine launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, marking the largest foreign attack on Russian soil since Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. The attack has significant propaganda value, as the 1943 Battle of Kursk is the single largest battle in the history of warfare and is still commemorated in Russia as one of its greatest military victories. Ukraine’s leadership was very aware of this history.
The Eastern Front
In a 2017 Foreign Affairs essay, historian and Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin recounted that earlier assault through the perspectives of two key figures: Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Stalin, who came to power in 1924, and Hitler, who rose to leadership in 1933, had lives that, according to Kotkin, “run in parallel.” “But it was the intersection that would matter: two very different men from the peripheries of their societies who were bloodily reviving and remaking their countries, all while unknowingly drawing ever closer.”
By the second year of World War II, missteps on both sides initiated a chain of events leading to one of history’s largest — and deadliest — military confrontations. “History is driven by the interaction of geopolitics, institutions, and ideas,”…
