Staggered in Stalingrad only a few months earlier but not yet cowed, Germany launched one of the greatest offensives of the Second World War 75 years ago on September 5. More than 3 million men, approximately 8,000 tanks, and nearly 5,000 warplanes would battle in, around, and over the southern Soviet city of Kursk, where the Red Army halted the vaunted German Blitzkrieg in its tracks.

Jonathan House of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, a leading authority on Soviet military history, discusses the operation and Adolf Hitler’s designs on a victory that would “be a beacon for the whole world.” Instead, the German defeat dashed his hope of regaining dominance on the Eastern Front.

House is co-author of The Battle of Kursk, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, and Stalingrad.