MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · JULY 5 · Battle of Kursk begins (1943)ON THIS DAY · 5 JULY 1943
Battle of Kursk begins
Kursk: the greatest armored battle in history opens against defenses four months deep. Germany’s last offensive in the East dies in a week.
5 JULY 1943 · THE WAR ROOM — WW2, 1936–1945 These maps are reconstructed from published sources · US War Department — Atlas of the World Battle Fronts (1945) · Cliopatria v0.2.1 — dated political boundaries · Regional history institute — Italian annexations of1941, Fiume province and Krk · Regional history institute — Adriatic occupation chronology,1943–1945 · Regional history institute — Zara evacuation and Yugoslav entry,October1944 · Albanian Armed Forces Museum — German takeover after the Italian capitulation · IGM Fiume, 1:25,000, sheet53B II SE — boundary established in1924 · Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute — Lastovo wartime chronology · Natural Earth — physical reference geography · Yugoslavia (1929–1939) location map — international frontier and Adriatic coast · Treaty of Rome (1924), division of Fiume and west-bank boundary · Murli / rowanwindwhistler — Slovakia border changes, 1938–1945 · United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia · Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award
Source details United States War Department, General Staff,1945. US Army official work; public domain Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. CC BY4.0 · Dated polity and constituent territory selections; campaign-dependent occupation overlays reconstructed separately. Regional history institute — Italian annexations of1941, Fiume province and Krk. Historical geographic facts consulted; source prose and artwork not republished Regional history institute — Adriatic occupation chronology,1943–1945. Historical geographic facts consulted; source prose and artwork not republished Regional history institute — Zara evacuation and Yugoslav entry,October1944. Historical geographic facts consulted; source prose and artwork not republished Albanian Armed Forces Museum. Historical control chronology consulted; no source prose or artwork republished Istituto Geografico Militare, Fiume (printed1946; 1927 survey with1931–1940 updates), reproduced by Istituto regionale per la storia della Resistenza e dell’Età contemporanea nel Friuli Venezia Giulia. Independent reconstruction from graticule coordinates and boundary observations; archive page reserves artwork rights.. Geographical-fact reconstruction; original archive artwork not distributed Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute — Lastovo wartime chronology. Historical geographic facts consulted; source prose and artwork not republished Natural Earth. Public domain NordNordWest/Wikipedia. Converted from the published SVG to WGS84; eastern Italian regional territory extracted. Source cites Velhagen & Klasings Großer Volksatlas (1938).. CC BY-SA 3.0 Germany 1924 agreement interpreted alongside the regional history institute and City of Rijeka’s explanation of the Donja/Gornja Drenova division.. Historical geographic facts; citation only Murli; SVG adaptation by rowanwindwhistler (2021). CC BY-SA 2.5; derived geographic paths under the same license · Georeferenced actual published vector regions using eight printed city positions; no map artwork or labels in the atlas. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — The Holocaust in Slovakia. Historical chronology consulted; no source prose or artwork republished Slovak Nation’s Memory Institute — The First Vienna Award. Historical territorial chronology consulted; no source artwork or prose republished The moving front follows the source-map position for 1943-10-15. The source date is kept separate from the chapter anchor; manual registration has the precision of a regional map.
The legacy Italian front ID is retained, while its geometry follows the actual dated front. In June 1944 the front is near Rome, rather than prematurely at the Gothic Line.
The source’s 1943 bridgehead is the nearest regional reference for the Tunisian campaign footprint in November 1942, though it does not resolve the exact front that month. After the May 1943 surrender, the area is Allied-controlled.
Slovak territory is reconstructed from the published 1938–1945 border-change map, which separates the client state from Hungarian and German annexations. This regional source does not resolve small northern frontier changes or survey-level detail. After August 1944, German military occupation supersedes the client-state fill.
Published prewar regional land geometry supplies a geographic reference for military control documented separately. Lastovo is Partisan-held after September 1943; Zara changes after October 1944. These regional fills do not claim continuous control of every rural locality.
The dates of published political outlines retain the resolution available in their sources. Military fronts and operational perimeters have their own source and method records.
reconstruction: 1939–1944 · reconstruction: 1941–1944 · reconstruction: 1942–1943 · reconstruction: 1942–1945 · reconstruction: 1943-10-15 · reconstruction: 1943.8 · reconstruction: 1943–1943 · reconstruction: 1943–1944 · reconstruction: 1943–1945 · reconstruction: Late 1942–May 1943 campaign component; dated control by chapter · trace: 1943-10-15 · vector: 1912–1955 · vector: 1936–1944 · vector: 1936–1945 · vector: 1938–1972 · vector: 1939–1944 · vector: 1939–2023 · vector: 1940–1943 · vector: 1941–1943 · vector: 1941–1944 · vector: 1942–1943 · vector: 1942–1945 · vector: 1943–1943 · vector: 1943–1944 · vector: 1943–1946
Layer records and reconstruction methods
The moment in context The front at Kursk offered Germany an appealing target. Soviet territory projected into German-held ground in a large salient, and attacks from north and south might meet behind it, trapping the forces inside. After Stalingrad, such a victory in Operation Citadel promised to restore confidence in Germany’s ability to take the initiative. Its very shape, however, made the likely target apparent. Soviet intelligence supplied warning, and German delays while awaiting new tanks gave Soviet commanders more time to prepare.
From Kursk and the fall of Mussolini , chapter 10 of The War Room — WW2, 1936–1945 (JUL 1943).
Teach this in 5 minutes Why it happened — A victory after defeat. Stalingrad and Tunis had damaged German standing. Berlin wanted its allies, neutral states and its own public to see that Germany could still seize…The turn — Prokhorovka and the halt order, 12–13 July. On 12 July the southern German attack met a Soviet reserve tank army near Prokhorovka. Hitler also received news of the Sicily landings. He halted…What it changed — The retreat west. Soviet counteroffensives carried the Red Army toward the Dnieper in autumn; Kiev fell in November. The war was moving west, and Germany had to…Then ask the room: Why did Soviet commanders choose to receive the German attack at Kursk before counterattacking? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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