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Hitler was not his overbearing self during the planning stages of the Battle of Kursk. He left the planning to his generals and they develop a highly detailed plan. Operation Citadel called for a tactic known as the double envelopment. This would allow the Germans to surround the Soviet defenders in the bulge in the Eastern Europe and cut them off from the rest of the Soviet Union. General Walter Model's 9th would attack the north of the bulge, driving south to the east of Kursk and it would seize the railway. securing the rail line from Soviet attack <ref> Barbier, p 124.</ref>. A Panzer Army, led by General Hoth, would attack the southern part of the salient. This force was expected to drive north and meet Model at Kursk and achieve the objective of cutting off the Soviet units. The Soviets well-aware that an attack was coming decided to adopt a defensive strategy. The Stavka, the Soviet High Command placed a huge number of men and equipment in the Oriel-Kursk region. Russian and Ukrainian civilians were conscripted to build defenses in the area. They laid hundreds of thousands of mines and dug miles of trenches and anti-tank traps. The Red Army also had a huge force of reserves under the command of Marshall Zhukov. They were to either reinforce any area where the Germans threatened to break through and also to launch a counterattack. The Germans had failed to take in the defensive preparations of the Soviets and they placed too much faith on their new weapons<ref> Dunn, Walter, Kursk: Hitler's Gamble, 1943 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997), p. 115</ref>.

==Battle of Kursk==

On the eve of the Battle of Kursk, the Germans had almost ¾ quarters of a million men, 3000 tanks, and some 10,000 artillery pieces. The Red Army had almost 2 million men, 5000 tanks, and 20,000 heavy guns. The Germans had anticipated that they would be outnumbered but they believed that their superiority in training and equipment would allow them to succeed. On the night of July 5th, to pre-empt the attack, the Russians launched a massive artillery bombardment. This initially threw the Germans into disarray and it delayed the attack for three hours. The Germans attacked in the early morning, they attacked the north of the salient with 500 tanks. After 24 hours, they had lost thousands of men and many tanks <ref>Clark, Lloyd. Kursk: The Greatest Battle: Eastern Front 1943. London: Headline Publishing Group, 2012), p. 78</ref>.