Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!cica!gatech!amdcad!military
From: zenon@chopin.llnl.gov (Maciej Zenon Pindera)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Kursk - Book on Tactics.
Message-ID: <27338@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Date: 19 Sep 89 06:35:13 GMT
References: <27138@amdcad.AMD.COM> <27189@amdcad.AMD.COM> <27207@amdcad.AMD.COM> <27303@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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Approved: military@amdcad.amd.com



From: zenon@chopin.llnl.gov (Maciej Zenon Pindera)

In article <27303@amdcad.AMD.COM> ssc-vax!shuksan!major@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Mike Schmitt) writes:
>
>AFN Radio had a series of broadcasts with Cornelius Ryan interviewing
>Marshal Konev (or Chuikov - I don't remember) - discussing the The Great
>Patriotic War from the Russian Army perspective.  Obviously, the Marshal
>put forth the Soviet claims of 'decisive victory' during Kursk - that 
>both sides suffered terrible losses - but that Russia was better able to
>absorb the losses.  

  Harrison Salisbury indicates that Zukov had running feuds both with
Konev and Chuikov. So their remarks of him may not be totally
complimentary.
  I don't know whether the true figures for the Soviet side have ever
been published. We may never know the total cost. However the one thing
that we do know, is that Zukov was never timid when it came to
exhanging human life for some objective. For example, when attacking across
a mine field his soldiers would proceed as if the mines did not exist,
the rationale being that the casualties would be about the same if
the area was protected with machine gun emplacements and not mines.
  I guess that the side "better able to absorb the losses" wins.

maciej