When the Germans continued to lose ground, Hitler called off the Kursk offensive on 15 July. However, recent research (2021) has found that the Soviet armour losses were almost 14:1 and it was the overwhelming numbers that allowed the Red Army to halt the Wermacht.
Soviet propaganda at the time claimed that the Wermacht’s overall losses at Kursk included some 50,000 killed and 400 tanks destroyed, a fact still endorsed by today’s Russian historians. It was at Prokhorovka, 15 miles to the south of Kursk, that the greatest battle was fought between some 339 tanks of the II SS Panzer Corps and 672 tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Army. In the greater battle to the south, a 20-mile dent was made in the Soviet defences until here too the Germans ground to a halt. In the north, the German pincer attacking south from Orel, made 10 miles in 5 days until halted by the Red Army. On the morning of 5 July 1943, the Germans advanced to attack the Red Army at the Kursk salient in what would result in the largest tank battle in history.
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