. Green areas show German advances on Kursk.]]

The Battle of Kursk () refers to a series of German and Soviet operations on the Eastern Front of World War II in July and August 1943. It was the last German blitzkrieg offensive in the east executed by the German forces on a strategic scale during the war, with the hope of another great encirclement of Red Army forces, but ended in a large-scale Soviet counteroffensive and strategic victory. The operations, which included the famous battle at Prokhorovka, remains both the largest series of armored operations and the most costly single day of aerial warfare to date.

Kursk is further notable for the deliberately defensive operation strategy on the Red Army"s part. Having good intelligence on Hitler"s intentions, the Red Army established and managed to conceal elaborate layered defense works, and stage and disguise large reserve forces poised for a tactical and strategic counter-attack typical of defensive battle plans.pp.149-159, Glantz, Soviet Military Deception Though the Germans planned and initiated an offensive strike, the well-planned defense not only frustrated their ambitions, but also enabled the Soviets to follow up with counter-offensives that exhausted the German abilities in the theater, thereby seizing the initiative for the remainder of the war. In that sense it may be seen as the second phase of the turning point that began with the German defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad, whose aftermath set the scene by establishing the Kursk Salient (also known as the "Kursk Bulge"), the reduction of which was the objective of the German armies entering in July. The subsequent counter-attacks retook Orel and Belgorod on August 5, and Kharkov on August 23, pushing back the Germans across a broad front. This was the first successful strategic Soviet summer offensive of the war.

Kursk was a further demonstration that the conflict in the East contained the largest scale of warfare in history, in terms of manpower involved. So well designed was the Soviet defensive planning, that when entering the archetypal counter-attack phase, the Soviets were able to attack along four separate axes of advance, and execute a planned stop at a phase line, thus avoiding the pitfalls of overextending during the counter-attack and earning this operation"s deserved place as a model strategic operation in war college curricula.