In a conflict as massive as the Second World War, no theatre can claim absolute centrality to the war's outcome. If any campaign comes close, however, it is the Soviet-German struggle on the Eastern Front. As a result of German tactical and operational superiority, combined with surprise, the first days and weeks of the invasion were a Soviet disaster. Germany fell far short of the human, industrial and raw material resources of the Soviet Union and the British Empire, to say nothing of the United States. Stalingrad is glibly portrayed in popular accounts of the war as a battle dictated by propaganda. As the Soviet offensives of early 1943 slowly ended, they left a front line dominated by an enormous salient around the city of Kursk, ninety miles north to south and sixty miles in depth. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Union's triumph over Nazi Germany became the central mobilizing myth of society.