If the other side had won them, the victors might have had entirely different plans for how the world was to be governed and what. The pride with which Germans filmed their seemingly unbeatable Tiger and Panther tanks, Ferdinand heavy tank destroyers, Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter planes, and Henschel Hs 129 ground attack planes at the start of the battle, was replaced by abject horror as the Nazi army ran up against fearless Soviet soldiers and indestructible Soviet weaponry. Here are 15 battles that changed the course of our lives today. This film includes never-before-seen amateur documentary footage of the Battle of Kursk shot by German officers using their personal cameras. No Soviet newsreel operators were on hand in the region during the battle. Witnesses recall that the air on the battlefield was as hot as molten metal. It was the location where the tank fleets of the Soviet Union and the Third Reich faced off against each other.

The unprecedented battle, which changed the course of World War II, lasted over seven weeks, during which night and day coalesced into one burning hellfire.

Seventy years ago, the fate of the world rested on the Kursk Salient, near the village of Prokhorovka.

Greatest tank battle in history