Aware that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient months in advance, the Soviets built a defence in depth designed to wear down the German panzer spearheads. The Soviets had intelligence of the German intentions, provided in part by British intelligence service and Enigma intercepts. It was also hoped that large numbers of Soviet prisoners would be captured to be used as slave labour in Germany's armaments industry. It was thought that a victory here would reassert Germany's strength and improve her prestige with allies who were considering withdrawing from the war.

The plan envisioned an envelopment by a pair of pincers breaking through the northern and southern flanks of the salient. By eliminating the Kursk salient they would also shorten their lines of defence, taking the strain off of their overstretched forces. The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off a large number of forces that they anticipated would be in the Kursk salient assembling for an offensive. For the Soviets, the decisive victory gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war. For the Germans, the battle represented the final strategic offensive they were able to mount in the east. The German offensive was countered by two Soviet counteroffensives, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev (Russian: Полководец Румянцев) and Operation Kutuzov (Russian: Кутузов). The German offensive was code-named Operation Citadel (German language: Unternehmen Zitadelle) and led to one of the largest armoured clashes in history, the Battle of Prokhorovka. The Battle of Kursk was a World War II engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk (450 kilometres or 280 miles southwest of Moscow) in the Soviet Union in July and August 1943. Green areas show German advances on Kursk Orange areas show the destruction of an earlier Soviet breakthrough.

The eastern front at the time of Operation Citadel.

Battle zone eastern front tank game