The Greatest Tank Battle of 1941

This tragedy still remains one of the darkest and most mysterious pages of domestic history. This grand battle was far more on a massive scale than the famous tank battle near Prokhorovka. In June 1941, in the Dubno area, eight hundred tanks and assault guns of the 1st tank group of von Kleist faced five mechanized corps of the Red Army, totaling more than 2,800 units of armored vehicles, including 340 of the newest KVs and T-34s. If these two tank armadas had simply collided on a field of suitable size like knightly cavalry, the outcome would have been predetermined. But in reality, our mechanized corps lost most of their tanks under Dubno and, already within a week, began retreating to the old border.

How could this have happened? Why, despite the overwhelming numerical superiority, did the Soviet counterstrike fail to achieve its goal? What were the causes of the crushing defeat of the Red Army? Based on recently declassified documents from both domestic and foreign archives, this book presents, for the first time, not only the Soviet but also the German viewpoint on the greatest tank battle of the Second World War.