Ostkrieg

by Stephen G. Fritz

  Despite the enduring fascination and exaggerated claims made about the battle at Kursk—the greatest tank battle, the turning point of the war—Operation Citadel can in no way be compared with its predecessors. Where Barbarossa and Blue both aimed at decisive strategic victories that would have defeated, or at least crippled, the Soviet Union, Citadel was little more than a grandiose spoiling attack, “only a limited offensive,” as Hitler put it, designed not to allow the initiative to slip completely from Germany’s hands. Its most important goal, as Goebbels noted, was to shorten the front and “strike a couple of blows on the Bolsheviks that will cost them a few armies, not to mention an army group.” Still, even this limited aim, as framed in Operational Order No. 5, issued on 13 March 1943, had much to offer. Planned as a pincer operation, a successful attack at the Kursk salient would shorten German lines appreciably, knock Soviet plans for an offensive off balance, and destroy large numbers of enemy forces. Victory at Kursk might even allow the Germans to focus on events in the west in 1943; after all, if the Battle of the Atlantic and the bomber war over Germany could at least be stalemated (and German failure in both would not be apparent for some months), then the threat of a second front might be greatly reduced. Aware of the obvious advantages of such an action, Manstein quickly dropped his alternative plans and pleaded for an immediate attack at Kursk. Having just bloodied the Russians at Kharkov, “Army Group Center could,” he believed, “now take Kursk without any great difficulty.” Worried about an enemy attack in the Donets area, however, Hitler rejected an immediate strike, instead ordering preparations for two smaller actions south of Kharkov as an alternative to Citadel. Thus began a period of interminable delay that, according to some, cost the Germans any possibility of even an operational success.61

  The reality, however, was considerably different, for, in truth, the Germans had no chance of launching an attack in late March or April, even if the other operations had not been considered. In order to triumph at Kursk, they needed to act quickly and to achieve surprise, neither of which was within their power. After the difficult winter battles, German forces were exhausted and desperately needed to be replenished and reinforced. Colonel-General Hoth, the commander of the Fourth Panzer Army within Army Group South, which would spearhead the southern pincer, was under no illusions. “The troops,” he warned on 21 March, “having been in battle day and night without rest for months, are used up. . . . Some are apathetic and have reached their goal—the Donets—only under strongest pressure from their officers. The truck situation was bad even at the beginning of the counteroffensive, while the equipment levels have sunken noticeably.” Without a significant pause for rest, resupply, rebuilding of stocks, and distribution of heavy weapons, any attack had little chance of success. Furthermore, any German prospect for a quick strike was dependent on the notoriously unpredictable rasputitsa; without a drying up of the roads, virtually all movement was impossible. The Soviet General Staff, in fact, assumed that any German offensive would be impossible until the second half of May. More optimistically, the OKW, in Operational Order No. 6, issued on 15 April, set 3 May as the earliest possible date for an attack at Kursk.62

  Even this proved impossibly early, given the dreadful transportation situation in the area of Army Group Center. Model’s Ninth Army needed some 300,000 soldiers and roughly 1,000 tanks brought in as quickly as possible and under the greatest secrecy, conditions that the Ostbahn could not possibly meet. Not only were rail transport and offloading facilities in the Orel area insufficient to meet the needs of a rapid buildup of troops and equipment, but also Soviet partisans had so disrupted the rail network that the Ninth Army was compelled to launch a series of large antipartisan operations to clear the area. For the biggest of these, “Gypsy Baron,” a panzer corps had even been dispatched to vanquish the partisans, with the consequence that additional time would be needed to collect and refit the relevant units for the Kursk operation. Moreover, German intelligence had detected large Soviet troop movements into the area, with the result that, even in mid-April, the enemy enjoyed a nearly two-to-one advantage in troop strength.63

  Clearly troubled by the growing problems confronting Citadel, Hitler on 18 April proposed an alternative. Instead of a pincer attack that looked likely to need a long preparatory period, he now suggested a frontal assault into the Kursk salient with the aim of splitting the assembled Soviet forces. Manstein, concerned by the uninspired nature of the proposed pincer attack, had developed a similar plan, one that sought to achieve surprise by striking at the Soviets’ positions in the center, where their fortifications were weakest, then, after a relatively easy breakthrough, wheeling to the left and right to drive Soviet troops into their own minefields. Although Zeitzler later claimed that he dissuaded Hitler from this “odd variant,” in reality it seemed to have been dropped out of concern that there was too little time to redeploy the units. A further proposal by Manstein to launch a deep envelopment movement that would include a strike at Soviet reserve forces was also rejected, for reasons that remain unclear. With his top generals riven by doubts and personal animosities as well as a growing lack of confidence in him, the Führer on 3 May convened a conference in Munich with Zeitzler, Kluge, Manstein, Jeschonnek, and Guderian at which he decided to postpone the offensive until early June. While Zeitzler and Kluge argued vehemently against any delay and Manstein waffled, Guderian expressed his utter skepticism about the entire operation, dependent as it was on new tank models that had not yet been battle tested, preferring instead to stand on the defensive in 1943 and build German tank strength.64

  Ironically, in part because of Guderian’s promise of stepped-up tank production, Hitler postponed the attack on numerous occasions in June as technical and production problems delayed the arrival of the much-anticipated new Panther and Tiger models. Still, it would be a mistake to make too much of the Führer’s alleged “technology mania” as the primary reason for putting off the operation. Hitler certainly had high hopes for these new weapons, but more important, in addition to tactical and logistic problems, were strategic considerations. Above all, developments in the Mediterranean area—the final defeat of German and Italian forces in North Africa, the fear that Italy might leave the war, and anxiety over a possible Allied landing in the Balkans—shook Hitler and convinced him of the need to keep sizable reserves available for any contingency. In early May, in fact, he had already speculated with Goebbels that it might be better “under the circumstances to wait to see whether the Bolsheviks want to beat us to it [an attack]. That might give us an even more favorable opportunity than if we seized the initiative.” Only when he was convinced that Italy would continue in the war and that sufficient defensive forces were available in the Mediterranean, according to Warlimont, did Hitler finally order that Citadel proceed. Significantly, however, as early as 15 May he had decided to transfer strong forces from the eastern front in the event of any danger in Italy, an action that would bring an immediate stop to Citadel. Strategic concerns and not an obsession with tank numbers played the key role in delaying the Kursk operation; more time to deliver additional Panther tanks to the front likely only influenced the last postponement, from the end of June to early July.65

  In any case, the largely enforced delay had little bearing on the other major difficulty—catching the enemy by surprise was out of the question since the Kursk salient offered such obvious rewards for an attack. Already in mid-April, the Soviet leadership knew the direction of the German offensive, and, moreover, the Germans knew that the Soviets knew. Not only had the Russians obtained information from their own spy rings and from British intelligence, which was decoding German radio transmissions, but more conventional intelligence methods (aerial reconnaissance, interrogation of prisoners, and agents in the occupied areas) had given the Red Army leadership a rather exact picture of German intentions. The Germans, in fact, seemingly made little effort to keep the target of the attack a secret, evidently hoping to entice the Soviets to concentrate more tro
ops into the salient, where they could then be destroyed. Such a tactic was highly risky, however, for it invited disaster if the enemy became too strong to defeat. This, in fact, was precisely what the Soviets intended, for they had decided on their own version of a backhand stroke: they would allow the enemy to strike first in order to destroy his exhausted and depleted forces in a savage counter-offensive. This was precisely what Gehlen feared since Foreign Armies East had established by mid-June that the Soviets had shoved so many troops, tanks, and artillery into the salient that the operation was rendered unfeasible. “The Russians have anticipated our attack,” he wrote in a memo the day before the assault began. “[The enemy] has built many positions . . . and has done everything he can to absorb our blow early on. It is therefore hardly likely that the German attack will break through. Given the sum total of ready reserves at the disposal of the Russians it is not to be expected that Citadel will lead to such a high level of losses for him that his intention to choose the proper moment [for an attack] will be unrealizable because of insufficient strength. . . . I hold the intended operation to be a totally decisive mistake.”66

  Although Hitler probably never saw Gehlen’s memo, its content was not likely to upset him any more than he already was—in mid-May, he admitted to Guderian, who had attempted to persuade him not to proceed with the operation, “Whenever I think of this attack my stomach turns over.” Despite their own misgivings, neither Manstein nor Kluge attempted to dissuade Hitler from going forward with Citadel, at a time when he clearly was uncertain as to how to proceed. For its part, the OKW expressed serious reservations about the attack, urging in mid-June that it be abandoned in favor of building reserves for the anticipated Allied invasion in the Mediterranean. Jodl bluntly told Hitler that it was dangerous to commit troops to an offensive that, at best, would achieve limited results while the chief danger lay elsewhere. These warnings, however, fell victim to the rivalry between the OKW and the OKH, with Zeitzler now intervening decisively in favor of the attack. Although Hitler informed the OKW on 18 June that he was definitely going ahead with Citadel, just a week later his ambivalence was again on display. On 25 June, he underscored to Goebbels the necessity, in view of a likely Anglo-American invasion, of “holding our reserves in hand” yet in the same conversation reiterated his belief that the east remained “the decisive front.” Not until 1 July did he finally decide to go ahead with the operation, telling Manstein, “We cannot wait until the enemy, perhaps in the winter or after the establishment of a second front, begins an attack.” The offensive, he informed German troops on the morning of 5 July, “must be of decisive significance and bring a turning-point in the war.” No one knew better than Hitler that this was not likely to happen, even under the most favorable circumstances, but, by this time, the Kursk operation seemed to have taken on a life of its own.67

  Its purpose, however, seemed less than clear. Neither Hitler nor the OKH conceived of Kursk as a decisive battle of annihilation, let alone the prelude to a return to the Caucasus. They saw it primarily as a spoiling attack that would knock the anticipated Soviet summer offensive off balance. If successful, it would also allow the transfer of troops to the west to confront the expected Allied invasion. From the outset, however, the unfavorable ratio of forces made the attack in the Kursk salient highly risky even for a gambler like Hitler, with much to lose and little to gain. Although an old military rule of thumb has it that an attacker needs a 3-to-1 superiority in force, the Germans in early July confronted a staggering numerical inferiority. In the entire Kursk-Orel double salient, including reserves, the Germans had scraped together 625,271 combat troops, supported by 2,699 armored vehicles, 9,467 artillery pieces of all types, and 1,372 aircraft. These figures, however, were dwarfed by corresponding Soviet tallies: 1,987,463 combat troops, 8,200 armored vehicles, 47,416 barrels, and 5,965 aircraft. Across the board, the Germans faced disadvantages ranging from 3.2 to 1 to 5 to 1, ratios that remained largely unchanged even if comparing only those forces engaged directly at Kursk.68

  Nor, despite all the talk of the Tiger and Panther tanks, could the Germans counter quantitative inferiority with decisive qualitative superiority. Of the 2,465 combat vehicles the Germans threw into action at the Kursk salient on 5 July, only 328 were modern battle tanks: 128 Tigers and 200 Panthers. As an example of the semimodern condition of the Ostheer, the Ninth Army, which was to spearhead the attack in the north, had only 26 Tiger tanks but some 85,000 horses. This lack of mobility against an opponent whose forces had been substantially mechanized and motorized through Lend-Lease deliveries negated the Germans’ one remaining advantage—their skill at deep, mobile operations. Moreover, the interminable delays in launching the attack gave the Soviets precious time to construct the most formidable system of fortifications in the world, an elaborate labyrinth of eight separate defensive lines consisting of antitank ditches, tank traps, minefields, barbed-wire obstacles, antitank guns, flamethrowers, and machine-gun nests that stretched 180 miles to the rear.69

  In addition, relying on their accurate intelligence information, the Soviets had placed the deepest system of minefields precisely at the points of the German main effort. Instead of the fast, freewheeling, mobile operations in which the Wehrmacht specialized, then, the Germans now faced a static “biting-through” operation reminiscent of the trench struggles of World War I, a battle of attrition that they could not win. It was, as a German tank commander later admitted, “unbelievable”: “The Soviets had prepared a defensive system whose depth was inconceivable to us. Every time we broke though a position in bitter fighting, we found ourselves before another new one.” As at Stalingrad, the German leadership allowed itself to be drawn into a test of strength in a confined area against a numerically superior enemy, one that negated the Germans’ own strengths and accentuated Soviet advantages. Worse, even had the Germans managed a breakthrough, it likely would have been a Pyrrhic victory so costly that it would have been indistinguishable from defeat.70

  Paradoxically, the last German offensive in the east, planned for 3:30 A.M. on 5 July as a simultaneous strike from both sides of the Kursk salient, actually began with a preventive attack by Red artillery and air forces. Supplied with incorrect information by a German soldier captured while clearing minefields, Soviet commanders sought to catch the Germans off guard and inflict enormous losses on their assembled troops. At 2:00 that morning, therefore, Russian artillery opened a thunderous barrage in both north and south, while the Soviets hurled a fleet of bombers at German airfields crammed with aircraft. Luftwaffe radar, however, spotted the hundreds of attacking Soviet bombers, giving the Germans precious minutes to send their own fighter planes aloft. The element of surprise now worked against the Soviets; instead of catching the Germans off guard, Luftwaffe fighters dove into the unprotected enemy bombers with a vengeance. In the early morning hours of 5 July, one of the most lopsided aerial battles of World War II ended with a Soviet rout: 425 Russian planes were shot down with a loss of only thirty-six German machines. Nor had the artillery barrage had any impact, for German troops for the most part were still in their trenches or dugouts. It was, both literally and figuratively, a shot in the dark.71

  The German assault thus started on time, although the attackers immediately encountered fierce resistance. In the northern sector, under the operational control of Kluge’s Army Group Center, Model’s Ninth Army spearheaded the attack. Although Model, a particular favorite of Hitler’s, was regarded as a fighting general, his plan of attack was uncharacteristically cautious. Violating the key rule of Schwerpunkt, he chose to preserve his tank forces, keeping some in reserve, and having others follow the infantry rather than punch holes in the enemy defenses. Not only did this slow the advance, but, as the attacking infantry inevitably got hung up on the extensive Soviet defenses, Model was forced to throw tanks into the battle, where they were blown up by mines. The reasons for Model’s prudence were not hard to find. From the outset of planning, he had been unconvinced of any chance o
f success at Kursk and had tried to scuttle the operation by raising endless objections, which served only to delay it. In addition, he was ever mindful of the weak Second Panzer Army (a tank army in name only since, until the eve of the battle, it had no battle tanks), which was to protect his left flank. Given the double-S nature of the Kursk-Orel salient and the large Soviet reserves to his north, Model knew that any enemy counterstrike would not only easily slice through the German defenses but also immediately threaten his own army with encirclement and destruction. It was fear of just such an attack, which the Soviets had, in fact, prepared, that led him to keep mobile tank forces in deep reserve.72