Why did the Krauts still press ahead with Operation Citadel/Battle

>>2184047

Because they hadn't failed in a summer offensive yet and thought that this would be Kiev all over again. Plus, the Soviets could pretty reliably be counted upon to make local counterattacks, even full blown counteroffensives, in the midst of German ones; which usually ended badly, I doubt they gave the local fortifications much credence.

>>2184047

Too high on amphetamines.

>>2184047

The idea had been to destroy the growing Russian reserve.

Most of the offensive was cancelled in the first week anyway due to the Allied invasion of Italy.

Because a major military operation like this require months of preparation, so you can't just switch your strategy in the middle of the campaign season. The only alternative would be to simple call the operation off but that meant the best months of the year wasted and the Red Army having an initiative and even more time to prepare, all the while US advances in Italy and the Western Front looming in the near future. In the end, you're fucked anyway, so you might as well take your changes.

>>2184047

by summer of 1943 it was clear that the war was over for Nazi Germany. They basically just decided to say well well just wait till summer time and attack with everything we got and see how it turns out. Well it turned out pretty badly for them since the Kursk Battle was pretty evenly fought on casualties that Germans could not replace but Soviets could and achieved absolutely no objective.

>>2184110
The germans (or Hitler rather) modified Operation Blue on the go at least 2 times and this was before Kursk,

>>2184132
Yeah, but it was after the initial breakthrough.

>>2184119
Causalyies where massively in favor of the Germans you autist. Please don't post things that you happen to think because you are clearly dumb.

>>2184161

Tell me when the soviets had 10x the reserves was it really the same thing?

>>2184161
> Causalyies where massively in favor of the Germans
The only ones who care about causality rates are wehraboo autists 70 years latter. Meanwhile in the real life the German Army was emasculated by the 1943: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caoxNSNcQZs .

Most of their allies were getting uncomfortable with the whole Axis thing. Japan had never actually done anything to help, Finland never liked the idea in the first place, Hungary and Romania didn't even have real militaries by this point due to Stalingrad. Germany believed that a major victory was required to keep it together.

Like 90% of German "strategy" in the war was trying to jew a few extra divisions out of their friends.

>>2185443
>The Germans were the real Jews in the end

>>2184047
Dumping more troops into the Kursk salient's defense made it an even more enticing target for the Wehrmacht, ironically enough.

Operation Citadel's job was to encircle the salient and remove all soviet soldiers trapped in the encirclement from the war, either by leaving them isolated or forcing them to surrender with their supplies cut. The best-case-scenario goal however was for this offensive to be so devastating that it would bring the Soviets to the table to discuss possible terms for peace and get Germany out of war with the Soviets.

at the start of the operation, a whooping 25-28% of the entire Red Army's strength on the Eastern Front was in this salient. if Germany was able to remove an entire fourth of the Red Army in this operation, it certainly could put momentum back in their favor, and deal a devastating blow to the Soviets, probably enough to bring Stalin to the negotiating table to iron out a peace that could give Germany a way out of the war.

>>2184047
I don't even know why they bothered with any major offensives after Kharkov 1943, I guess they got greedy after that and bit off more than they could swallow. They should've kinda just repeated what they did at Kharkov, just wait, maybe nip at Soviet flanks, just wait for another Red Army offensive to overextend and then counterattack.