THE WAR

The Second World War was the biggest most nationwide and lethal war in the history of mankind in the sense that all the potential of the each nation was implicated. It gathered military alliances together – the Allies and the axis of power. The magnitude of the numbers is blood curdling, only between the years 1939 and 1945 the war saw more than 100,000 soldiers mobilized and around 70 million victims affected in a state of total war all across the planet in which the major players assigned all their economic, military and scientific energy and potential to the war’s needs.

The start of the war began with an invasion of the German amy into Poland on the 1st september 1939, marking another step of the Nazi war machine to build its European empire which immediately provoked the most countries of the British Empire and its Commonwealth and France to declare war on the invading Third Reich. Six years later Berlin was taken by the Allies, one part by the Russian Soviet army and the other by American, French and British armies. The Nazi army of Germany officially surrendered the 8 May 1945. The other war in Asia ended on the 15 august 1945 when the Japanese Emperor surrendered his country to the Americans after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped out by American atomic bombs.

This world conflict is remembered for the historical significance of disrupting the very foundation of humanity from that moment until today. The birth of modern fascism and the gradual spread of aggressive ideals of German Nazi culture. The indiscriminate murder of millions of innocent victims of the world population in armed conflict; the deportation and mass extermination of European minority ethnic groups (Jews, Slavs, gypsies…) in Nazi concentration camps; the rapidly changing geography of the world map, and the use for the first time of nuclear weapons of immense destructive power in armed conflict.

The battle of Kursk became to be the greatest tank battle in the war around the town of Prokhorovka. The Germans had run out of reserves, their armoury exhausted and were unable to stop the Soviet counter-offensive launched against the retreating army

Operation Cuidadela took place in July-August 1943 in the same place on the Russia front. This proved to be the last final assault by German forces on the Eastern front, assembling the greater part of its fatigued soldiers and their superior weaponry, their most powerful military units and the most prestigious generals took on the Red Army of the USSR.

The operation was considered one of the most memorable battles in history, around three million soldiers fought. with more than 13,000 tanks, some 12,000 planes, 26,000 heavy artillery and mortars. Around 1,100,000 soldiers perished in that battle.