When the tide of blood turned

If one was shot through the head in the battle of Stalingrad or the battle of Alamein, the sensation, presumably, would be much the same, but there the similarity would end. The second world war on the Russian front was fought on a catastrophically different scale from that in the West. In the course of it, the Red Army lost more than eight million soldiers killed; the Americans and the British lost fewer than 250,000 each. On top of that, at least 19 million Soviet civilians lost their lives through deportation, hunger, disease and direct violence. In the decisive battle of Kursk of July 1943, 70,000 guns, 12,000 aircraft, 13,000 tanks and mobile guns, 900,000 German and 1.3 million Soviet troops were locked in combat. The heart was torn out of Hitler’s military might and the eventual destruction of Nazi Germany was assured.

While the British and the Americans fought valiantly on the winning side in the war, it was the Red Army that won it.