Battle of Kursk of Sicily had begun, Adolf Hitler was forced to have troops training in France diverted to meet the Allied threat in the Mediterranean, rather than use them as a strategic reserve for the Eastern Front. Hitler canceled the offensive at Kursk after only a week, in part to divert forces to Italy. Germany's extensive losses of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Soviet Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. The Germans hoped to weaken the Soviet offensive potential for the summer of 1943 by cutting off the forces that they anticipated would be
Kursk submarine disaster Their response was compared to the Soviet style of cover up and stonewalling like that during the Chernobyl disaster. Minister of Defence Sergeyev said in interviews on 21 March 2000, that he had never refused any foreign help. "The Guardian" wrote in a 2002 review of two books, "Kursk, Russia's Lost Pride" and "A Time to Die: The Kursk Disaster": While most experts agreed that a torpedo had exploded, they differed on what caused the explosion. Many Russians did not believe that "Kursk" could be so easily sunk. The tragedy spawned a number of wild conspiracy theories to explain the