ILLUSTRATING THE LEVELS OF WAR – OPERATION ZITADELLE (KURSK), 5-14 JULY 1943, A CASE STUDY

Abstract

In wartime military organisations function in a dangerous and complexenvironment. Doctrines are designed to ensure standardisation of thinking aboutmilitary conflict and the use of military power. Therefore, it is defined as an explicitset of concepts according to which actions in a given field are discussed andexecuted. However, without proper communication (conveying of information)vital time and opportunities will be lost in a conflict situation. Efforts to standardisemilitary technology (command language) will ensure proper communication withinthe framework of doctrine. However, this is difficult and many debates havedeveloped on the meaning of terms and how they manifested in the past.In this process military historians have a very important responsibility.Until the coining of the concept of operational art and the identification of theoperational level of war in the English-speaking world they tended to identify anyclash of arms as campaigns or battles and also not in a standardised manner. Thisled to confusion as contemporary students on senior military courses throughout theworld are sometimes more bewildered by Military History, rather than being led to aclearer understanding of military terminology. For example, the so-called Battle ofthe Atlantic, 1939 – 1945 was clearly a campaign and not a battle, as the discussionof the term campaign will later indicate.