Belgorod-Kharkov Offensive

The Belgorod-Kharkov offensive, codenamed Operation Rumyantsev, was the second great Soviet counterblow of the Kursk summer, opened on 3 August 1943 by the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts north of Belgorod. It committed more than a thousand tanks, guns and rocket launchers, the largest Soviet armoured force assembled so far in the war, against a German southern line worn down and short of reserves. Belgorod fell on 5 August; the advance then turned south towards Kharkov, the great Ukrainian city that had already changed hands twice in two years. Manstein fought a delaying battle with the last of his panzer divisions to cover the retreat, but on 23 August Soviet troops raised their flag over Kharkov for the final time, and the Battle of Kursk was over. The German armies fell back to the Dnieper, and the Red Army attacked almost without pause in the months that followed. After Kursk Germany never launched another strategic offensive in the east. This entry is a schematic record; strength and casualty figures for the operation differ sharply between historiographies.