By Michael F. Duggan
During the summer of 1943, the Germans and Soviets fought the Battle of Kursk, the largest battle in history. Like so many battles on the Eastern Front, it was a contests of salients, counter-salients, and the reductions (and attempted reductions)of salients. The Germans lost fewer men, but the battle was a strategic victory for the Soviets. It was the last German offensive on the Eastern Front. It was also the largest tank battle and the costliest aerial battle ever fought.
Eighty years ago this December, the Germans launched an offensive on the western front, in the Ardennes. The strategy, to strike hard where the enemy did not expect it, was initially successful. Although it took the Allies by surprise, and the Germans appeared to be making a beeline for Antwerp, it was stopped, and the salient was reduced. It was the last German offensive of the war. A fraction of the size of Kursk, it was the costliest battle for the Allies in western Europe in the Second World War.
In the summers of 1862 and 1863, Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia went on the strategic offensive and crossed the Potomac River, the border between North and South in the U.S. Civil War. The result of his taking the war into Union territory, were the battles of Antietam (September 17, 1862) and Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863). Antietam was the bloodiest single day in U.S. military history, and Gettysburg was the largest land battle ever fought in the Western Hemisphere.
In the spring of 1918, German forces smashed through the allied lines in what is called the Michael Offensive. It was a brilliant initial effort that outran its planning, supplies, and logistics and the Germans were pushed back and the lines, restored.
This week Ukraine launched cross-border operations into the Kursk oblast of western Russia. Unlike the Ukrainian spring and summer offensive of 2023, this one was not advertised. Striking when and where it was not expected, the attack was brilliant in its operational planning, execution, and surprise, and caught the Russians completely off guard (how is it possible that a stretch of the Russian-Ukrainian frontier was so thinly protected; how is it possible that Russian intelligence did not see it coming?). Although nowhere near the scale of its WWII predecessor (this one appears to be a divisional-size operation) it is the largest Ukrainian incursion into Russia of the present war and has created an irregularly-shaped salient several miles deep.
Unlike the Kursk offensive of 1943, the Ardennes offensive of 1944, and the Confederate offensives of the Civil War, the attack does not appear to have a specific military objective other than the hope of drawing Russian troops away from hot spots on the front (one wonders how Ukraine can afford such an operation given Russian advances in the Donetsk region, especially in the area east of the city of Pokrovsk). Otherwise the area involved seems to be of no military value, and the attack is unlikely to have any impact on the outcome of the war. Its purpose appears to be psychological and to send the simple message that Ukraine can still hit back. The war will not be won in the north by attacking Russia there, but such diversions contribute to defeat by thinning out manpower and sending resources to what now amounts to another costly front.
This attack is different from all previous attacks of the war. This is a ground assault on Russian soil. The attack might have caught the Kremlin off guard, but surprise does not by itself guarantee a collapse in morale (did the U.S. give up after the Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor attacks? Did Israel give up after the October 7 attacks?). Given the symbolic importance of Kursk in Russian history, does anybody think that the they will fight with less intensity and determination now?