Armor and Blood

by Dennis E. Showalter

  Chapter II

  PREPARATIONS

  THE BATTLE OF KURSK developed in the wider contexts of a war that the Reich’s leadership, from Hitler downward, understood hung in the balance. In the aftermath of El Alamein, Hitler had heavily reinforced defeat in North Africa. The result was a few tactical victories, won against inexperienced troops, that proved operationally barren and strategically empty.

  I

  Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, was worn down mentally and physically. He halted one attack when the American artillerymen facing it had a fifteen-minute supply of ammunition remaining. He managed to concentrate three panzer divisions for an attack against the British Eighth Army advancing from the east, the largest armored attack the Germans made in the entire campaign. But radio intercepts gave Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery an outline of his enemy’s intentions, with the result that the Germans ran into a multilayered, prepared defense that tore the heart out of the panzers. “The Marshal has made a balls of it,” Montgomery pithily observed, and within a day Rommel called off a battle that by all odds ranks as his most embarrassing.

  Three weeks later, on March 26, 1943, the British Eighth Army enveloped the Mareth Line. On April 19, the British First Army and the U.S. II Corps attacked in the west. Despite Hitler’s continued reinforcing of failure, there could be no serious doubt of the final outcome.

  Hopes for the U-boat campaign, and faith in new weapons from nerve gas to super-long-range cannon to rocket bombs, were balanced against an Anglo-American round-the-clock aerial offensive absorbing increasing amounts of the Reich’s high-tech capacities. They were further dimmed by the prospects of a cross-Channel invasion sometime in 1943 by an alliance demonstrating in North Africa an uncomfortably high learning curve, albeit on a small scale. The domestic situation was no less disquieting. In 1942, the Eastern Front alone had cost the army an average of more than a hundred thousand dead each month. Not counting the completely unfit and the indispensable war workers, as of March 1943 the Reich was down to its last half million warm bodies not yet in uniform. In 1942, the Eastern Front had also cost fifty-five hundred tanks, eight thousand guns, and almost a quarter-million motor vehicles. Two-thirds of the twenty thousand written-off aircraft had been lost in Russia. These material losses were being successfully replaced—but for how long?

  Complicating the answer was Hitler’s fundamental distrust of both the German people and his own apparatus of repression and control. He believed firmly that Germany had been “stabbed in the back” by the collapse of its home front in 1918. “Total mobilization” as practiced in Russia and Great Britain—conscripting women for war work, shutting down civilian-oriented production, combing the economy ruthlessly for men—was highly risky and to a great extent beyond the capacities of the haphazard, inefficient Nazi system.

  Paradoxically, from Hitler’s perspective the strategic situation seemed most promising on the Russian front. Postwar historians in general have followed the generals’ memoirs in blaming the defeat at Kursk on the Führer. Hitler is indicted, tried, and convicted first for refusing to accept the professionals’ recommendations and shift to an operational defensive, replacing the losses of the winter campaign and temporarily trading space for time, while allowing the Red Army to extend itself in a renewed offensive, then for using the refitted mobile divisions in counterattacks such as Manstein’s post-Stalingrad “backhands.” Once having forced through the concept of an offensive, Hitler is described as first delaying it while the Russians reinforced the sector, then abandoning it when, against the odds, the generals and the Landser were on the point of once more pulling the Reich’s chestnuts from the fire.

  Reality, as might be expected, is a good deal more complex. As early as October 1941, Japan had offered to act as an intermediary in negotiating a Russo-German peace, in the interest of focusing the Axis against Great Britain and the United States. Even before the Soviet offensive at Stalingrad, Hitler had rejected Italian suggestions for either seeking terms with Russia or shutting down the Eastern Front and transferring resources to an increasingly threatened western theater.

  Hitler rejected both possibilities repeatedly and emphatically. For the Führer, the Reich’s blood-bought living space was not a negotiable asset. Defeat and retreat, moreover, meant material losses were permanent, while in an offensive, damaged weapons and vehicles could often be repaired by a maintenance system whose efficiency had improved by necessity. Hitler’s specific insistence that south Russia’s resources were too significant for sustaining Germany’s war effort to be casually fought over, much less abandoned, could not be simply dismissed. Neither could his argument that the slightest hint of negotiations between Germany and the USSR would only encourage the Anglo-Americans to intensify their air offensive and step up their invasion plans.

  Instead, with the turn of the year Hitler increasingly focused his strategic thinking on the East. Italy and Hungary were withdrawing their forces from Russia. Romania was reducing its commitment. Finland had always fought a parallel war. A major victory was badly needed to impress these wavering allies. Russia offered the best immediate prospect of such a victory: a victory that might convince even Turkey to join the war. And prospects for negotiations with Stalin—which seemed more likely than discussing peace with Winston Churchill—was better undertaken from a position of strength than one of stalemate. Perhaps as early as the coming autumn, when weather again closed down the front, something might be undertaken in that quarter.

  By any rational calculation, the Reich’s short-term prospects of total victory were close to zero. Without Hitler’s iron determination, Germany would probably have been ready to conclude peace in 1943. But by that time, the National Socialist Führer state had so far eroded the principal institutions of government, party, Wehrmacht, and society that neither institutional nor personal forums for debating the issue in any consequent way existed. Not only was no one but Hitler responsible for the whole—no one (above all, no one in the military) was willing to risk looking beyond operational factors, considering the larger strategic issues, and concluding that the war might be unwinnable, much less acting on such a conclusion. Like many another Third Reich design, the Kursk offensive would take on a half-life of its own.

  In the spring of 1943, the Army High Command (the OKH, Oberkommando des Heeres), responsible for the war in Russia, was divided evenly on the specific issue of attack and defense on the Eastern Front. Heinz Guderian was one of the many generals supplanted during the Ablösungswinter (“relief winter”) of 1941–1942. In February 1943, he was restored to power and favor as the newly created inspector general of armored troops. From his first weeks in office, he argued against any major offensive during 1943 in favor of rebuilding a mechanized force that had been stretched to its limits by the fighting at the turn of the year. Wait until 1944, Guderian urged. Build a mobile reserve strong enough to hold any Western front the British and Americans could open. Then strike in the East with divisions built around a new generation of heavy tanks, with increased numbers of half-tracks, assault guns, and self-propelled artillery pieces.

  Manstein, by this time the doyen and guru of the Russian front, at least in his own mind, believed Guderian took too little account of the Red Army’s growing size and effectiveness. Manstein’s answer was elastic defense: giving ground before a Soviet offensive, then striking the flanks. This, he believed, would maximize German officers’ mastery of mobile warfare and German soldiers’ fighting power. However, the concept was Manstein’s personal brainchild: barely articulated, tested over no more than a few months, and for practical purposes unfamiliar even in the panzer force. Nor was elastic defense a panacea. Its success depended on an obliging enemy, making the right mistakes at the right time. The Red Army of 1943 was less and less obliging.

  Manstein made his case to the army’s chief of staff, Kurt Zeitzler, on March 7–8, 1943. Zeitzler had held the post since September 1942, replacing the dismissed Franz Halder. Although no lapdog, he had del
iberately sought closer contact with Hitler in order to improve the eroding relationships among policy, planning, and command. Also, like many interwar-trained staff officers, he was more in the model of a troop staff officer than a traditional general staffer. It is an overlooked irony that the often criticized Versailles Treaty, by abolishing the general staff in its historic form, may have contributed significantly to the tunnel vision so characteristic of the German high command. Certainly Zeitzler was more concerned with resting the mobile troops than with long-term strategic planning. Manstein responded by explaining that he could not defend a 450-mile front with twenty-five divisions. It was either sustain the initiative and attack or be forced back again, sacrificing any material and moral gains made since Stalingrad’s surrender.

  Manstein had a chance to make his case in person when Hitler visited his headquarters on March 10. On one level it was propaganda theater, with sixteen senior generals present as a chorus line to celebrate the latest achievements of “the greatest warlord of all time.” The Führer was in a correspondingly mellow mood and listened when Manstein reiterated the importance of resuming mobile operations. Another “backhand,” frustrating and then rolling back a Soviet attack, was a possibility. A better option was a “forehand stroke” to eliminate what Manstein called the Kursk “balcony.”

  Elastic defense was for Manstein a temporary expedient, to wear down Soviet forces and prepare for a grander design. The backhand solution promised the greatest results. But what if the Soviets did not cooperate by attacking? Or if the Red Army chose a different sector, not graced with Manstein’s presence? What if the British and Americans were somehow inspired to seize the operational initiative in the West and deplete the reserves Manstein considered necessary for an effective backhand stroke? Manstein’s compromise concept was a combined general offensive by his Army Group South and Army Group Center against the Kursk salient. A large-scale double penetration would not only cut off Soviet forces in the salient, but draw Soviet reserves in the entire region onto a German anvil in the fashion of 1941. With the Russians significantly weakened, and with the front shortened by 150 miles, German reserves could more readily be deployed for further operations against the Soviet flanks and rear.

  The long-range prospects of such operations were above the field marshal’s pay grade—or perhaps his professional horizons. What he did insist on was that something must be done quickly, before Soviet material power grew overwhelming and while the Germans could take advantage of the dry season. And before the Western Allies could establish themselves on the continent.

  Hitler’s distrust of his generals had in no way lessened. He made no secret of his belief that they deceived him at every opportunity. But on March 13, he issued Operations Order No. 5. It called for a spring offensive to regain the initiative, but its objectives remained vague. Manstein repeatedly informed Zeitzler that Kursk was within the Germans’ immediate grasp. Clearing the salient, however, would require the participation of Army Group Center. It was correspondingly disconcerting when Günther von Kluge’s Army Group Center replied that it lacked the strength to participate in the kind of assault Manstein projected. That refusal made Manstein’s commitment to the Kursk operation even firmer. It was a high-risk window of opportunity that must be seized even with limited resources.

  Adolf Hitler once described his field marshals’ horizons as “the size of a toilet seat.” Manstein’s version of that plumbing item, however, seems to have been too large for the Führer’s comfort. On March 21, Hitler took Kursk off the table. Was he concerned for the still-continuing muddy season, the rasputitsa, which bogged down tanks and trucks? Was he anxious about the steadily mounting, as yet unreplaced losses of men and equipment? Did he worry about securing the gains of Manstein’s previous offensives? Perhaps he feared nurturing an overmighty subject by sustaining his freedom to act. Guderian noted at the time Hitler’s inability “to tolerate the presence of so capable and soldierly a person as Manstein in his environment.”

  The question became temporarily moot when Manstein’s eye problems compelled his return to Germany for treatment on March 30. He kept in touch with his headquarters, but recovery absorbed his energy. The fifty-seven-year-old Manstein had pushed himself hard since 1940, and minor surgery—in this case sick leave for treatment of a developing cataract—kept him away. Manstein’s absence cleared Zeitzler’s field. He was also attracted by the prospects of eliminating the Kursk salient, albeit for less ambitious reasons than those of his subordinate. He considered weakening the Russians in the southern sector and shortening the front quite enough to be going on with—particularly given the increasing Russian concentration in and on the salient. On April 11, he submitted a recommendation to Hitler. It called for a pincer attack, utilizing a reinforced army from the north and Manstein’s army group from the south. They would meet at Kursk.

  The hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners would be sent to Germany as slave labor in the overextended war industry. With the shortened Eastern Front line, Germany could reinforce the western theater against the inevitable invasion and free reserves for further operations in Russia. A dozen or so panzer divisions, the chief of staff suggested, should be enough to complete the job.

  On April 15, Hitler responded. The opening paragraph of Operations Order No. 6 spoke of “decisive significance … a signal to all the world.” The attacking forces were to be concentrated on “the narrowest possible front” and “break through the enemy at one blow.” The earliest date for the attack was set at May 6. The code name was Operation Citadel.

  In sharp contrast with the far-reaching objectives set in 1941 and 1942, Citadel’s operational geography was so limited that it requires a small-scale regional map to follow. Order No. 6 insisted on the sovereign importance of maintaining surprise through “camouflage, deception, and disinformation.” Success depended even more on preventing reserve-siphoning Soviet breakthroughs elsewhere. Army Groups South and Center must prepare as well for defensive battles on the remainder of their respective fronts. “All means” must be used to make all sectors secure. But recognizing that the shining times of 1940–41 were past did not make Kursk a limited offensive. Success offered a chance to damage the Red Army sufficiently to at least stabilize the Eastern Front and perhaps even develop a temporary political solution to a militarily unwinnable war.

  In principle and in reality, the offensive was promising. Strategically, even a limited victory would remove a major threat to German flanks in the sector and limit prospects for a Red Army breakout toward the Dnieper. In Barbarossa and Blue, the Germans won their victories at the start of campaigns and ran down as they grew overextended. Citadel’s relatively modest objectives seemed insurance against that risk. This time, forward units would not be ranging far beyond the front in a race to nowhere in particular. There were no economic temptations like those the Ukraine offered in 1941 or the Caucasus in 1942. Kursk would be a straightforward soldiers’ battle. As for what would happen next, sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof. It was a line of thinking—perhaps a line of feeling—uncomfortably reminiscent of Erich Ludendorff’s approach to the great offensive of March 1918: Punch a hole and see what happens.

  In its immediate contexts, Kursk nevertheless seemed eminently plausible: the kind of prepared offensive that had frustrated the Soviets from divisional to theater levels for eighteen months. Geographically, the sector was small enough to enable concentrating overstretched Luftwaffe assets on scales unseen since 1941. Logistically, the objectives were well within reach. Operationally, the double envelopment of a salient was a textbook exercise. Tactically, from company to corps, the panzer commanders were skilled and confident. Materially, for the first time since Barbarossa they would have tanks to match Soviet quality.

  That last point calls for explanation, particularly since “Kursk” and “armor” are symbiotically linked in most accounts of World War II. German armor doctrine stressed avoiding tank-on-tank encounters; German tank designs empha
sized mobility and reliability as opposed to protection and firepower. From Poland to North Africa, the system worked. In Russia, it faltered—not least because of the growing presence of the Soviet T-34 tank, which could do anything its German counterparts could do, was better armored, and carried a powerful 76 mm gun. Prior to Barbarossa, German tank crews and tank officers had been a significant, albeit intangible, force multiplier. But the technological discrepancy between the Mark III and IV panzers and the T-34 diminished it. In human terms, the German armored divisions were about as good as they were likely to get given the limits of flesh, blood, intelligence, and character. In numerical terms, every calculation demonstrated inability to outproduce the Soviets. Technically, the Panzer III, backbone of the armored force through 1942, could be upgunned no further.

  That left three options. One involved taking advantage of the large turret ring and robust chassis of the Mark III’s stablemate, the Mark IV, and upgrading what had been designed as a support vehicle to a main battle tank. Technically, the reconfiguration was highly successful. However, it was achieved at the expense of production numbers and repair statistics. The second possibility was copying the T-34, either conceptually or by reverse engineering. In the latter case, the Russian vehicle’s cast turret and its aluminum engine would have challenged German capacities and resources. The two-man turret diminished the crew’s effectiveness—still a German strongpoint. In any case, the lead times involved were an almost certain guarantee that when German imitations reached the front, the Red Army would be another generation ahead.