After the large-scale offensives launched in 1941 and 1942, German ambitions for 1943 were much more modest. The losses suffered in the struggle for Stalingrad and the long retreat afterwards had been debilitating. In January 1943 only 495 of the tanks along the whole length of the eastern front were serviceable. Even with extensive repairs and reinforcements, by May the German army could raise a force of only 2,500 tanks, the lowest figure for two years.52 Manpower was also hit. By the summer of 1943 the field army totalled only 4.4 million men, against the 62 million available for the campaign in 1942. German army leaders were almost all agreed that the best that could be hoped for was to hold the line in the east, and to frustrate the Soviet offensive by undertaking limited but powerful counter-blows. For once Hitler accepted advice. After Stalingrad his interest in the eastern front perceptibly declined. The initiative was left to von Manstein, who proposed pinching out the Kursk salient before moving further south to regain some of the lost territory. Hitler accepted the plan, which was given the codename ‘Citadel’; but he insisted that there should be no more defeats after the humiliation at Stalingrad. Although Manstein wanted to attack in April or early May, before the enemy had time to regroup and dig in around Kursk, Hitler postponed the offensive until mid-June, and then again until July, in order to build up German tank forces to a level that he felt would reduce risk of failure.53
During March and April Stalin and the Soviet General Staff tried to assess what their enemy would do next. After two years of disastrous miscalculation, Stalin was more receptive to advice. He recognised that he had been the main barrier to interpreting German intentions correctly. This time opinion was sought from staff officers and front commanders as well as his immediate circle. There emerged a consensus among them all that the Kursk salient was the only place on the front where German forces were in a position to launch an attack with any prospect of success. This view was based for the first time on solid intelligence. From aerial reconnaissance, partisan activity and radio interception Soviet commanders pieced together a much clearer picture of German dispositions. From the concentrations of Panzer forces and infantry divisions around Orel and Kharkov it was clear from where the main thrust would come. From two years’ experience of German operational planning, Soviet commanders predicted with remarkable accuracy how German forces would begin the attack. It was assumed that two heavy armoured thrusts, north and south of the neck of the salient, would converge to encircle Soviet forces in the bulge. But after that German intentions could only be guessed at.54
The next step was to decide how to respond. Stalin instinctively sought an offensive solution: an attack launched pre-emptively against German positions, followed by hot pursuit. Zhukov and the General Staff rejected this, and it says much for Stalin’s judgement that he bowed again to his deputy. On 8 April Zhukov suggested the plan which a few weeks later was adopted as Soviet strategy for 1943. First, Soviet forces would absorb the German punch at Kursk on deep defensive lines, to wear down enemy tank numbers, and then respond with a counter-punch of annihilating power that would leave the enemy sprawled on the canvas. It was a bold plan, for the Red Army had previously failed to defeat German forces in summer time, when ground and climate suited the invaders more. But it was a plan based on solid experience. The lessons learned in the long Stalingrad campaign had been absorbed. Zhukov insisted that the Kursk battle should be placed under the control of the Supreme Headquarters, with special attention to the central planning and coordinating of all aspects of the campaign. There was an operational and logistical depth to the preparations for Kursk that previous Soviet plans had lacked. After a string of glaring intelligence errors in the past, the Soviet High Command also insisted on the topmost priority for intelligence gathering of all kinds. Some was provided from Britain, but the most detailed information was culled from the Ultra decrypts and forwarded by the Soviet spy John Cairncross (later revealed as the ‘Fifth Man’ of the Cambridge spy ring), who had found himself a job at the Bletchley Park intelligence centre in 1942. But most of the intelligence on German troop concentrations came as a result of great improvements in Soviet intelligence gathering, particularly in reading low-level German radio traffic, and in using small storm detachments to capture Germans from the front-lines for interrogation.55 Though Soviet commanders never guessed the exact striking point for the German attack, they had a much clearer idea of what they were up against than in previous campaigns.
The whole crux of the Soviet plan was the carefully prepared battlefield. Troops began digging in even before the plan for Kursk had been finalised. Inside the salient seven armies were concentrated on the Central and Voronezh fronts, which defended the north and south of the salient. On either side of the bulge additional strong forces were placed, in the Bryansk front to the north and the South-western front to the south, ready to launch the counter-punch. Many miles to the rear of the salient was Zhukov’s trump card, a reserve force with two infantry armies, a tank army and the 5th air army, organised into the Steppe front. This massive reserve was to be thrown forward once the German attacks had been blunted on the defence lines. Inside the Kursk bulge the population stayed put, a decision taken partly to prevent demoralisation at the sight of yet another eflux of refugees, and partly because civilians of both sexes and all ages were needed to help the troops prepare the defensive ramparts.
The defensive system was one of considerable tactical sophistication. No fewer than six defensive zones were established in the salient, up to a depth of 50 miles, with two further defensive lines in front of the reserve Steppe front. The first three zones were the most crucial, for it was here that the Soviet armies’ main strength was concentrated. Each zone had continuous trenches and anti-tank obstacles, connected with a system of communication passages. On the Central front alone troops dug some 3,000 miles of trenches, and laid 400,000 mines. Each line was protected by barbed wire, some of it electrified. The main object was to hold up and destroy the enemy’s armour. Every kind of device was used – ditches fitted with ‘dragon’s teeth’ (wooden stakes slotted together like a giant set of jacks), small dams to flood the ground in front of advancing tanks, and abatises (trees piled one upon the other with branches pointing towards the enemy) in every wood. Great attention was paid to the field of fire for artillery and anti-tank weapons. A criss-cross system was devised of artillery strongpoints, from which all lines of advance could be covered, providing what one front commander called ‘an impenetrable curtain of fire’.56 And last, but not least, an intensive programme of training was undertaken for Soviet anti-tank and artillery forces.
Within a matter of weeks the Kursk area was turned into a vast fortress. Inside its walls massed more than a million Soviet troops. They were better armed than at any time since the beginning of the conflict. The infantry had improved automatic weapons and more effective communications equipment. The standard Soviet tank, the T-34, had undergone small but very significant improvements. Despite its strong armour and high speed the T-34 performed poorly in combat up to 1942. It carried a crew of only two (three was standard on German tanks), which meant that the tank commander also had to fire the gun. The turret was cramped and afforded poor visibility, and when the tank commander stuck his head out of the top hatch all he could see forwards was the hatch cover. Very few tanks carried radios, so that they were on their own once engaged with the enemy. During 1943 Soviet engineers slowly rectified these blunders. To allow another crew member, a larger turret was added, with a modified hatch allowing 360-degree visibility. A great many more tanks carried radios, and a battlefield communications system was set up allowing commanders to direct larger and more complex tank operations, and to call up aircraft assistance against stubborn pockets of resistance.57 Soviet tank forces knew that they faced a new enemy in 1943, the next generation of German heavy tanks, the 56-ton ‘Tiger’ and the smaller, 45-ton ‘Panther’. Both had large-calibre guns and good armour, more than a match for the T-34. To cope with the threat a new tactic was
devised. At close-range the large German guns could not be deployed so easily. Soviet tankmen were trained to drive in close and to fire point-blank at the vulnerable parts of the enemy tank, in the sides and rear. The anti-tank artillery were taught the same. In a head-on attack the Soviet 45-millimetre anti-tank gun was ineffective; but ambushing the Tigers or Panthers from the side or rear, as they rolled past, could destroy or disable them with a lucky strike.58
If mines, guns and ditches failed to stop enemy tanks, the Soviet high command added the famous Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik dive-bomber. The 1943 version was faster and better armed, with a 37-millimetre tank-busting cannon and the new ‘PTAB’ anti-tank bomb. There were almost a thousand of them assembled for the Battle of Kursk, along with over a thousand fighters and almost a thousand bombers. To support this array of largely modern equipment stood a huge reserve air force of another 2,750 aircraft, waiting, like the Steppe front, to deliver the knock-out blow. The number of radio communications stations, a facility which at last permitted air commanders to coordinate attacks, rose from 180 to 420, and they were equipped with effective radar for the first time. Over 150 airfields were built for Kursk, and fifty dummy fields to mask Soviet strengths and intentions.59 In the air and on the ground Soviet forces were both tactically and technically a more formidable barrier than German commanders realised.
The small details mattered a great deal in the final outcome of the confrontation, for there was not much to choose in size between the two opposing forces. Each had watched what the other was doing over the late spring. More and more soldiers and equipment were drafted in, until what Manstein had thought of as a local counter-offensive assumed anything but local proportions. Kursk became, almost by default, the largest pitched battle of the war. On the German side were massed fifty divisions of 900,000 men, 2,700 tanks and 10,000 guns, and 2,000 aircraft. On the two main defensive fronts, Central and Voronezh, there were 1,336,000 men, 3,444 tanks, 19,000 guns and 2,900 aircraft.60 The Soviet commanders allocated 40 per cent of Red Army manpower, and three-quarters of its armoured force, to the contest. Victory or defeat for either side became critical.
One piece of intelligence the Soviet high command was desperate to learn: when would German armies attack? This question was impossible to answer firmly, since Hitler, prey to anxieties of his own about the unpreparedness of German forces, kept postponing the date, first 3 May, then 12 June, finally early July. Soviet forces were kept in a state of semi-alertness for much of this period; regular intelligence scares brought them up to full alert more than once. The longer Stalin waited, the more impatient he became for action. But Zhukov knew that Soviet forces must be kept on a leash, or the whole carefully orchestrated operation would be spoiled. He hammered the point home again and again until Stalin treated the plan as his own. During June all Soviet intelligence sources confirmed that German forces were in place and ready to attack, but the waiting game went on. The Soviet side became restless, suspecting some unanticipated ruse. The mystery deepened when, on 23 June, a Soviet spy ring in Switzerland reported, through agent ‘Lucy’, that Hitler had changed his mind, and the attack was off. In a week of high tension Zhukov kept calm. All the indicators from the front-line showed that German forces were moving to battle stations and that an attack could be expected at any time between 3 July and 6 July. Troops were on full alert for every day from 2 July. Then, abruptly, on 4 July all activity on the German side ceased. A strange silence descended on the front-line, disconcerting and menacing.61
Soviet leaders knew it could only mean one thing. A prisoner seized on the Voronezh front told his captors that the German soldiers had all been issued with battle rations and a portion of schnapps. At ten o’clock in the evening another infantryman was seized by a Soviet scouting party. His interrogation revealed that the German assault would start with an artillery barrage in four hours’ time.62 Stalin and Zhukov waited anxiously at headquarters, unable to sleep. At 2 a.m. the order went out for Soviet guns to open fire with a spoiling barrage against German positions. The thud of bombs and shells, the whoosh of rocket salvos, the rumbling of aircraft engines, all merged into one, ‘like the strains’, Zhukov later recalled, ‘of a symphony from hell.’63 The waiting Germans were taken completely by surprise. For some time German commanders thought that by the wildest of coincidences the Red Army had begun an offensive at exactly the same time as them. Order was slowly restored, and the German offensive began at 4.30 on the morning of 5 July to the sound of ten thousand guns and the roar of two thousand aircraft.
* * *
The German assault was an awesome demonstration of modern military power. From the assembly points around Belgorod in the south and Orel in the north a heavily armed Panzer fist, strongly supported by aircraft, was hurled against the Soviet rampart. To the north Field Marshal Model’s 9th Panzer army led the charge. In his way stood the 13th army of General Rokossovsky’s Central front. Zhukov’s patient preparations paid off almost at once. The German forces, spearheaded by battle groups of Tiger tanks and the powerful new ‘Ferdinand’ self-propelled guns, and backed by smaller tanks and motorised infantry, found themselves subjected to a fearsome wall of fire. Anti-tank gunners followed instructions by attacking the new heavy tanks at suicidally close range. Mobile shock units, armed with petrol bombs and portable anti-tank obstacles hurried about the battlefield, immobilising enemy vehicles. At the end of the first day Model’s forces had moved forward only 4 miles and were pinned down under heavy and accurate fire. Each German thrust brought a rapid response from the enemy, who moved whole divisions to block German progress. The next day 2nd and 9th Panzer divisions mounted an attack with three thousand guns and a thousand tanks on a 6-mile front but made slow progress against the main defensive zone. The following day Model brought the full weight of his armies to bear on two small towns, Ponyri and Olkhovatka. Four Panzer divisions ground slowly forward against stiffening resistance, the area behind them littered with burning tanks and guns. Caught in the chief zone of defence, the tanks were bombarded by Soviet fighter-bomber aircraft, and picked off by carefully camouflaged anti-tank nests. After five days of bitter fighting the German drive into the north of the salient petered out. By 12 July the roles were reversed. Rokossovsky still had forces in reserve and now Soviet armies slowly prised open the tenuous grip of the depleted Panzer divisions, forcing them back across the grisly field of war.64
In the south, where more German armour was concentrated, the attack made greater headway. The defences on Vatutin’s Voronezh front were more thinly spread, for it had been difficult to guess exactly where the German blow would fall. At five o’clock in the morning, 4th Panzer army, led by the same General Hoth who had failed to rescue Paulus in December, pushed forward on a narrow front with a spearhead of seven hundred tanks. His force consisted of nine Panzer divisions, the cream of the German army. In the van were three of the toughest divisions, SS Panzer divisions ‘Totenkopf’, ‘Das Reich’ and ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’. Like the forces in the north they faced a curtain of fire as they stormed the Soviet defensive lines, but such was the size and ferocity of the attacking force that it was able to make deep holes in the Soviet front. By 7 July SS Totenkopf division won a foothold on the road to Oboyan, a small town 20 miles inside the Soviet front, whose conquest would open the way to Kursk and the vulnerable rear of the salient. Confidence mounted among the SS soldiers. The possibility that they could repeat the great successes of 1941 and 1942 loomed nearer. But the following day the leading German divisions began to meet stiffer opposition as they entered the main army defence field and progress suddenly slowed. The Soviet 1st tank army and 6th Guards army, pitched against the terrifying Panzer force of five hundred tanks massed on a 4-mile-wide spearhead, held them up a dozen miles from Oboyan. The Soviet Supreme Command ordered up the first reserves to help combat the threat, and for two days a grim slugging match took place to deny German forces the vital road northwards. By 9 July SS Totenkopf crossed the Psel river, south of Oboy
an, and established a small bridgehead. This was the farthest point the attacking force reached.65
9 Battle of Kursk, July–August 1943
After five days of furious fighting in which little quarter was expected or given, both sides paused to regroup. The high cost of pushing towards Oboyan persuaded Hoth to swing his Panzer armies on to another axis, north-east towards the small town of Prokhorovka. Hoth hoped that the classic pincer movement would destroy and encircle the remaining Soviet forces in front of him and open the way to Kursk once and for all. Soviet commanders saw what was happening, and ordered in the reserves they had created for just such an eventuality. General Nikolai Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards tank army was ordered to move rapidly from its staging areas south of Voronezh to halt the Panzer advance. Units from the vast reserve Steppe front were also ordered up, against the advice of its commander, Ivan Konev, who wanted to commit the whole front later, as a single blow. Rotmistrov’s Guards faced a gruelling march. As they pressed forward on the dry steppe they were enveloped in clouds of hot dust, which settled in a thick layer on the tanks, lorries and soldiers. ‘It was intolerably hot,’ recalled Rotmistrov. ‘Soldiers were tortured by thirst and their shirts, wet with sweat, stuck to their bodies …’66 In 48 hours they marched over 150 miles. Maintenance crews rode with the tanks, keeping them on the move. Like the proverbial cavalry, 5th Guards arrived in the nick of time.
While Soviet reserves poured in to repair the breach made by 4th Panzer army, German forces prepared for their final push. On the morning of 11 July the three SS Panzer divisions marched towards Prokhorovka. The dry dusty heat gave way all at once to swirling winds and driving rain. German tanks plunged forward, to the west and south-east of the town, but could go no farther against determined anti-tank defence and in the face of heavy losses. Zhukov and the Chief of the General Staff, Vasilevsky, assumed control of the battle which approached its climax on 12 July. Zhukov organised ten regiments of artillery as tank-busting fists around the town, while 5th Guards tank army, now supported by Zhadov’s 5th Guards infantry, prepared to counter-attack the SS forces with a mass of 850 tanks and self-propelled guns, the largest tank force assembled for a single engagement since the beginning of the war.
Why the Allies Won Page 14