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 complex environment. Doctrines are designed to ensure standardisation of thinking about military conflict and the use of military power. Therefore, it is defined as an explicit set of concepts according to which actions in a given field are discussed and executed. However, without proper communication (conveying of information) vital time and opportunities will be lost in a conflict situation. Efforts to standardise military technology (command language) will ensure proper communication within the framework of doctrine. However, this is difficult and many debates have developed 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 the operational level of war in the English-speaking world they tended to identify any clash of arms as campaigns or battles and also not in a standardised manner. This led to confusion as contemporary students on senior military courses throughout the world are sometimes more bewildered by Military History, rather than being led to a clearer understanding of military terminology. For example, the so-called Battle of the Atlantic, 1939 – 1945 was clearly a campaign and not a battle, as the discussion of the term campaign will later indicate.