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halialkers at 04:18pm on 26/10/2011
halialkers at 04:18pm on 26/10/2011On the surface at least. These two questions are asked here to see how people on this community decide on the meaning of historical events in the time-honored field of military history.
The first set of questions concerns the battles in the Kursk Bulge in 1943. Specifically how does this measure up as a victory for either the Nazis or the Soviet Union? How much influence did Operation Husky actually have on the course of the battle? Any at all? None whatsoever? Was it exaggerated by the Allies so as to create the impression that they helped decide something they really did not? Did the Germans even have an actual chance at winning the battle? How much can Manstein be trusted as far as his accounts of the battle and the German concept of it?
As far as the actual fighting is concerned, how much does the mythology around Prokhorovka tend to distract from the reality of the battle? Does this battle tend to reflect the reality of the historiography of this war, as one of the few occasions where the losing side, not the winning side, actually wrote the history books?
The other question concerns the Battle of Jutland. Namely did the Germans win the battle or did the British lose it? Or is this a case of how winning a battle does nothing to win the war, and thus the Germans won the battle but it did nothing whatsoever to contribute to their war effort?
My answers for all of the above after comments on these questions. I realize there's a lot of social historians on the community but these two incidents in military history are also quite revealing in the fields of social history, given how answers to these questions can reflect certain political/ideological backgrounds having nothing to do with the events in themselves.
The first set of questions concerns the battles in the Kursk Bulge in 1943. Specifically how does this measure up as a victory for either the Nazis or the Soviet Union? How much influence did Operation Husky actually have on the course of the battle? Any at all? None whatsoever? Was it exaggerated by the Allies so as to create the impression that they helped decide something they really did not? Did the Germans even have an actual chance at winning the battle? How much can Manstein be trusted as far as his accounts of the battle and the German concept of it?
As far as the actual fighting is concerned, how much does the mythology around Prokhorovka tend to distract from the reality of the battle? Does this battle tend to reflect the reality of the historiography of this war, as one of the few occasions where the losing side, not the winning side, actually wrote the history books?
The other question concerns the Battle of Jutland. Namely did the Germans win the battle or did the British lose it? Or is this a case of how winning a battle does nothing to win the war, and thus the Germans won the battle but it did nothing whatsoever to contribute to their war effort?
My answers for all of the above after comments on these questions. I realize there's a lot of social historians on the community but these two incidents in military history are also quite revealing in the fields of social history, given how answers to these questions can reflect certain political/ideological backgrounds having nothing to do with the events in themselves.
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