@JMA
If you checked the losses during Kurks, you would find, that with 10.000 KIA and 40.000 WIA the German losses were not high for east front, the next months without any special operations showed even higher losses per month. Kursk showed that Germany had lost the ability to launch a meaningful operation in summer, however, it does not break the backbone of the German forces.
The real change between Kursk in 1943 and the destrcution of the Herresgruppe Mitte one year later was, that the Red Army fought at Kursk "only" with a 3 times higher number of armoured formations (2700 German tanks vs. 8000 Soviet tanks) while this ratio increased to 10 times at the beginning of Bagration (600 German tanks vs. 6000 Soviet tanks).
The east front was characterized by the fact that most formations on both sides were slow infantry divisions with soldiers who did not see a car/truck in years. The side which could launch an successful offensive had the chance to capture huge numbers of enemies that had no possibility to retreat.
On the operational level 1942 the Germans had the initiative, 1943 was more or less a draw, 1944 a clear defeat for the Germans. But not even in 1942 there was a real chance to achieve strategically decisive results.
The high attrition rate for tanks and trucks and the unability to maintain a useful motorization ratio compared to the Red Army were the strategic problem of the German Wehrmacht after December 1941.
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