Kursk

At the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Soviets held a salient near the town of Kursk, 125 miles north of Kharkov. If this bulge could be eliminated, a great encirclement could be accomplished on the scale of the 1941 battles. Adolf Hitler in the spring of 1943 realized that he had to crush the Red Army before it completely surpassed the Wehrmacht in size and quantity.