Battle Ends
By August 22nd utter
exhaustion had affected both sides and fighting drew to a close.
The campaign was a decisive Soviet success, for the first time, a major
German summer offensive had been stopped prior to achieving a
breakthrough. This was an outcome that few confidently
predicted. The Red Army had suffered substantially higher
casualties than the Germans. The Germans however had failed to achieve
their goals. From this point on, a new pattern emerged. The initiative
had firmly passed to the Soviets, while the Germans spent the rest of
the war reacting to their moves. A new front had opened in Italy,
diverting German resources and attention. Both sides had their losses,
but only the Soviets had the manpower and the industrial production to
recover fully, as well as the appreciated aid from the American
Lend-Lease program. The Germans never regained the initiative after
Kursk.
Moreover the loss further
convinced Hitler of the incompetence of his General Staff. He continued
his interference in military matters progressively, so that by war's
end he was involved in tactical decisions. The opposite applied to
Stalin, however. After seeing Stavka's planning justified on the
battlefield, he trusted his advisors more, and stepped back from
operational planning, only rarely overruling military decisions.
Predictable
results ensued for both sides: the German army went from loss to loss
as Hitler attempted to personally micromanage the day-to-day operations
of what soon became a three-front war, while the Soviet army gained
more freedom and became more and more fluid as the war continued.
