Энциклопедия Второй мировой войны. Перелом в ходе войны. 1942-1943

Following a spectacular victory over the Japanese at Midway Island, Allied forces launched a counterattack in New Guinea, and a life-and-death struggle on the remote island of Guadalcanal changed the course of the war in the Pacific theater of operations. The Battle of Kursk - the Wehrmacht's Operation Citadel - was the last chance for the Germans to seize the initiative on the Eastern Front. Its failure crushed Hitler's hopes of winning the war with the Soviet Union. At Kursk, the Germans suffered one of the most brutal setbacks of the entire campaign. The book tells about the turning point, when the fate of the Second World War in Europe began to lean towards the Allies. After the victory in North Africa, the Allied forces assembled the largest amphibious formation in history for the landing in Sicily. Thus began the Italian campaign, which led to the resignation of Mussolini and the inglorious end of the fascist government in Italy ... Unique photographs, maps of military operations, testimonies of battle participants and diaries allow us to imagine the full intensity of hostilities, cruelty and the scale of losses of this period of World War II.
In July 1943, the German army on the Eastern Front consisted of just over 3 million soldiers and 2,400 armored vehicles plus 190,000 soldiers of the "Hitler Axis Powers", while the Red Army numbered 5.8 million people and 7900 tanks.