The losses sustained by the German forces in the battle as a whole were relatively light: 252 tanks against nearly 2,000 Soviet tanks, perhaps 500 artillery pieces against nearly 4,000 of their Soviet counterparts, 159 airplanes as against nearly 2,000 Russian fighters and bombers, 54,000 men compared to nearly 320,000 Russian troops. Far from being the graveyard of the German army, as it has sometimes been described, the battle had only a relatively minor impact. It had, to be sure, demonstrated that the Tiger and Panther tanks were far superior to the T-34. But this made little difference;
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