Armor and Blood

by Dennis E. Showalter

  On July 5, the men of the lightning runes had approached what had been expected from Citadel from the beginning. Repair crews had reduced the long-term armor losses to around fifteen, bringing the panzer regiments back to near authorized strength. On July 6, Hausser deployed them on an even narrower front. Leibstandarte and Das Reich again went in side by side on a front of a little over six miles, with a shallow river and soft ground on both flanks. Their first objective was a network of fortified heights, the core of the second Russian line in the sector. Leibstandarte jumped off at around 7:30 and took fire and losses from elements of the First Tank Army, but by midmorning pushed through the remnants of the 51st Guards Rifle Division, bypassed the strongpoint village of Yakovolevo, and shouldered the Soviet defenders westward. While the panzer grenadiers kept the Russians in check, an armored battle group drove as far as eight miles into the Soviet defenses before encountering the next zone of minefields, bunkers, and antitank guns.

  The panzers had already refueled and rearmed in the forward zone once that afternoon. Now they were falling victim to mines scattered openly on the roads and trails—and occasionally delivered by specially trained dogs. The air support coordinator’s radio vehicle was destroyed: no small loss to a spearhead now beyond its own artillery’s effective range. The approaching darkness amply justified closing down and closing up.

  Das Reich faced tougher going in the early stages. Its leading panzer grenadier regiment was halted in front of Hill 243 by knee-deep mud, minefields, dug-in tanks, and artillery and small-arms fire. The division’s Tigers stopped an armored counterattack, but not until Das Reich’s headquarters could coordinate a ninety-minute air and artillery strike on the hill were the infantry able to storm and clear the bunker-trench complex. It was the kind of technologically based flexibility at which the Germans excelled, enabling Das Reich’s tanks to keep pace with Leibstandarte in the course of the afternoon.

  By the end of the day, the SS had breached the defense system’s second line. But the Soviet strongpoints on the flanks held on and held out. Around noon on July 5, Leibstandarte had reported a “general impression that the Russians were running.” By evening, its reports spoke of “tough and determined resistance” with “strong” air support. The corps reported a total of 552 prisoners for the first day. Only 15 were turned in by Leibstandarte. It was enough for interrogation purposes. The fresh-caught POWs said the rifle companies were well supplied with weapons and ammunition. Rations were good, thanks in part to Lend-Lease. Decades later, Red Army veterans remembered their surprise and amusement at cartons that contained packets of salt, factory-made cigarettes, and toilet paper sometimes used to write letters home. Morale was generally described as “good.” But that the SS already knew. For all the superheated postbattle narratives of participants and correspondents, the ground gained by Leibstandarte and Das Reich on July 5–6 was no more than a narrow salient, on a map resembling nothing so much as an upthrust middle finger.

  Whether more could be made of it remained an open question. Leibstandarte proposed to establish a bridgehead over the Psel on the next day, but its Tigers were still engaging T-34s at midnight. Corps headquarters, moreover, had other concerns. Totenkopf’s dual mission as offensive force and flank guard involved at best a dispersion of effort. With the Tiger company leading the way, armored battle groups made gains of up to twenty miles, crossing the Oboyan–Belgorod road and reaching the Belgorod–Kursk railway before halting. So far, so good. But the success of the division’s advance left its right flank—and that of the corps—increasingly exposed. By the panzer handbook, security was the task of the infantry, but the division assigned had already been committed elsewhere. Manstein had been aware of the potential problem and had stressed his need for at least two more infantry divisions, but he had been refused. Meantime, Totenkopf was ordered to find flank guards from its own resources—at the expense of being able to develop opportunities in the main sector.

  Smoke, mirrors, and shows of force worked well enough during the afternoon. But the Soviets continued first harassing, then counterattacking, the lengthening right flank of the SS panzers. Hoth’s orders for the next day praised the corps’s “unstoppable forward storming” and recognized the problem by ordering Totenkopf to attack east-northeast early and often the next day, thereby securing the corps flank and supporting III Panzer Corps’s advance.

  II

  Unlike Model and Rommel, Hermann Hoth did not make a practice of trying to command an army from the front. But since Citadel’s beginning, he had been visiting corps and division headquarters, seeing for himself and making recommendations. Hoth had expected a breakthrough of the Russian second line of defense on July 6. Muddy ground and Russian resistance had prevented that, but the Fourth Panzer Army’s commander felt comfortable describing the day as “a complete success.” Manstein, though, was sufficiently concerned at the general lack of progress that on July 6 he asked the Army high command to release XXIV Panzer Corps. When Zeitzler refused, Manstein responded by ordering Hoth to keep hammering forward. But both generals understood too well that Fourth Panzer Army’s further success depended on Kempf and III Panzer Corps securing Hoth’s increasingly exposed right flank.

  Like everything else about Citadel, that was easier stated than achieved. For July 6, Breith had ordered 19th Panzer Division to move north along the Donets, while 6th and 7th Panzer were to advance northeast in the dual role of flank guard and strike force. It took 6th Panzer the entire morning to concentrate and cross the heavy pontoon bridge in 7th Panzer’s sector. The other two divisions were in action before dawn. The 19th Panzer lost eighteen tanks to mines before successfully shifting its axis of advance, taking the 81st Guards Rifle Division in the flank and rear, and capturing the strongpoint village of Razumnoye and its environs. But casualties in the panzer grenadier regiments were high; the Russian defense was comprehensive and stubborn, and the fierce counterattacks shook the division’s many green replacements.

  The 7th Panzer, Erwin Rommel’s old Ghost Division, led with its 25th Panzer Regiment and an attached Tiger company and reached Krutoi Log before encountering a blocking position established the previous night by a division committed from the Seventh Guards Army’s reserve. The 73rd Guards Rifles answered the doubts about the Red Army’s ability to fight outside of prepared positions. “Step on it!” (“Mit Vollgas heran!”) was the order of one tank battalion commander. Instead, naturally broken ground utilized by antitank guns and rifles in the hands of determined men blocked the Germans through the heart of the day. Rarely had the experienced panzer grenadiers encountered such levels of firepower; even the Tigers were checked. Not until 6th Panzer, on the principle of better late than never, came up on 7th’s left was the division able to resume an advance that—as so often in so many sectors—was stopped at nightfall at the foot of a nameless hill, thickly wooded and ranged in by what seemed to be hundreds of Russian guns.

  Vatutin had spent almost as much time on July 6 arguing with his superiors as fighting the Germans. It was increasingly apparent that the armored counterattacks of Voronezh Front’s tank corps were too small to have a serious effect on the massed German armor. Vatutin responded by requesting the prompt commitment of four additional tank corps from Stavka reserve. This formidable force would enable a counterattack with enough weight to at least shift the balance in his sector.

  Vasilevsky concurred, recommending two tank corps as direct reinforcements and moving the Fifth Guards Tank Army closer to the combat zone. Stalin telephoned his reply. Vatutin would receive the two tank corps, hold his ground, and wear the Germans down. Steppe Front would move the Fifth Guards Tank Army toward Kursk. All these decisions were aimed at keeping the enemy fixed until the projected multifront offensive was ready.

  Vatutin’s response for July 7 was to reinforce his forward positions: pin the German center in place and wear it down. This would give the newly committed tank corps time to move up and turn stalemate to victory. The 2nd and 5th Tank Co
rps would hold the SS while the 31st Tank Corps moved against their right flank. The 6th Tank and 3rd Mechanized Corps would block Knobelsdorff’s advance toward Oboyan. Two air armies would provide all-out support. Local Soviet counterattacks continued across the front through the night of July 6–7 until mist forced a general breaking of contact. The mist prefigured a weather change: rain and clouds, which would slow the German tanks and hinder their Stukas. Manstein’s weathermen could also read charts. For July 7, Knobelsdorff’s corps was ordered to drive toward Oboyan and cover Hausser’s left flank as the SS drove into and through the Soviet defense system. The unspoken demand on both generals was “Pick up the pace!”

  The Luftwaffe promised Hoth the bulk of its assets as well, and when the Fourth Panzer Army crossed its start lines around 4:00 A.M., the Stukas were overhead, hammering Soviet positions. Sixty to eighty aircraft every five or ten minutes concentrated on anything resembling an artillery or antitank position. The 11th Panzer and Grossdeutschland, the center and right-flank formations, broke through around Dubrova in the early morning—only a few miles from the open country the panzers had sought for three brutal days.

  It was then, around 5:00 A.M., that 6th Tank and 3rd Mechanized Corps counterattacked: more than a hundred T-34s covered by Shturmoviks, with the usual massive gun and rocket support. Grossdeutschland was stopped in its tracks for three hours in front of the village of Syrzevo when its attached Panthers ran into an unmarked minefield. By late afternoon, only 40 of the 184 that began the battle were still operational. That did nothing for the morale of even an elite unit. Questions were arising about whether the Tigers were being wrongly employed as a spearhead, whether they were not more effective using their long guns at ranges the T-34s could not match rather than be caught at close quarters by superior numbers. But on this day, any idea of using the Mark IIIs and IVs as the land-warfare counterpart of destroyers screening the Tiger battleships was abandoned when the lighter AFVs regularly had to be withdrawn to reverse slopes to escape the plunging fire of the Russian heavy howitzers. In back-and-forth close-quarters fighting that took the rest of the day, Grossdeutschland managed about three miles, finally reaching Syrzevo, the last major strongpoint before Oboyan. The 11th Panzer matched that gain, but no more, against equally strong resistance.

  Every time it seemed the Russians were entering panic mode, they rallied and counterattacked. Vatutin shifted reinforcements from relatively quiet sectors and funneled them down the Oboyan road by brigades and battalions. The 6th Tank and 3rd Mechanized Corps stabilized the line around Syrzevo. Shturmoviks broke up advances Grossdeutschland’s history describes as “slow and laborious.” Grossdeutschland’s panzer grenadiers took heavy losses from artillery and mortar fire, and the last of the division’s Tigers was disabled during a Russian counterattack. The artillery duel continued even after dark, with guns and rocket launchers firing blindly or at previously located target sites now often abandoned.

  It was slow; it was expensive. But it was progress—from the Russian perspective, dangerously steady progress. The problem was that Hoth had set the corps’s objectives up to three times farther than the actual advance. One bright spot was the capture of Hill 230 east of Syrzevo in a surprise attack delivered by Grossdeutschland’s reconnaissance battalion supported by the division’s assault guns. It was Citadel’s first success won by finesse and maneuver. It was correspondingly featured in the reports and the histories as a valuable starting point for the next day’s operations. This was putting the best possible face on circumstances, and it was cold comfort to the pioneers who spent another night marking and clearing minefields around Syrzevo to enable the panzers’ morning advance.

  The Waffen SS did better—a good deal better. Hoth had reiterated to Hausser that the corps’s ultimate objective was Prokhorovka, and he “hoped” it could be achieved by day’s end. Leibstandarte and Das Reich moved out around 2:30 A.M. and crossed their start lines three hours later. Despite constant counterattacks, their forward armored elements, deployed in wedges with Tigers at the apex, pushed back what remained of the 5th Guards Tank Corps far enough during the morning to be into the Soviet third defensive line by the end of the day. The Luftwaffe controlled the air, keeping Soviet fighters off the backs of the Stukas and Henschels. Battle groups from Leibstandarte and Das Reich drove up the Prokhorovka road, leaving a trail of knocked-out vehicles, dazed prisoners, and dead men behind them. Leibstandarte claimed the destruction of 75 tanks and the capture of 123 more. The air crews responded that it was impossible to tell who was responsible for what in the growing tank graveyard.

  But the SS spearheads faced seemingly endless counterattacks by tank forces between thirty and sixty strong. Without the “excellent Luftwaffe support” Das Reich described and corps headquarters affirmed, prospects would have been dim. As it was, the tankers were punching holes as opposed to opening fronts, getting forward as best they might, and letting the flanks take care of themselves.

  A panzer division’s reconnaissance battalion was not configured to “sneak and peek.” Eighteen months in Russia had demonstrated that any information worth acquiring had to be fought for, and the panzer reconnaissance battalion had become a formidable instrument of war, with armored cars, light half-tracks, and a panoply of heavy weapons. Leibstandarte’s reconnaissance battalion joined a few still-operable tanks on a late-afternoon final drive to the Psel River, then ran into a minefield large enough and fire heavy enough to make discretion the best part of valor, at least for that night.

  The drive to the Psel fit the SS self-image of brio and bravado. It was also a temporary option. Vatutin had ordered the 2nd Guards Tank Corps to strike the SS Corps’s right flank, and the attacks began around daybreak. Where Totenkopf’s guns were able to reach, they hit. The panzers’ maid of all work, the Mark IVs, proved almost as effective as the Tigers in taking out Russian tanks at long range from hull-down positions. By noon, enough T-34s were out of action to blunt the counterattack. But the farther the other two divisions advanced, the more exposed their forward units became. Confederate general James Longstreet once described new troops as being “as sensitive about the flanks as a virgin.” But neither could veterans ignore constant groping. Both Leibstandarte’s and Das Reich’s commanders were increasingly forced to detail their panzer grenadiers to expand a corridor the Russians were determined to shut.

  The mission was no bagatelle. The heavy fighting that continued into the night was epitomized by the experience of an SS rifle company pinned down in front of a railway embankment. The company commander was wounded; a young second lieutenant took over for six hours’ worth of close-quarters combat. Twice wounded, he appeared to be everywhere things seemed worst. When a T-34 hit the Germans from a flank, he attacked it single-handed. Then a stray bullet touched off a smoke grenade in his trousers pocket. Without hesitating, the lieutenant tore off trousers and underwear and continued to lead from the front, naked from shirttail to boots. The anecdote invites jokes about “risking all for the Führer,” but it also evokes the part of the Waffen SS ethos that appealed, and continues to appeal, to males brought up in societies equating the progress of civilization with the elimination of challenge. Lieutenant Joachim Krüger’s luck ran out a week later. Not until June 1944 did he receive a posthumous Knight’s Cross, the Reich’s highest award for courage and leadership in combat.

  Hausser submitted his report to Hoth at 10:40 P.M. It described a Russian “offensive defense” characterized by advances, flank attacks, and counterattacks, heavily supported by small-scale air strikes. The forward elements of Leibstandarte and Das Reich were still engaged too closely to provide details. Totenkopf, supported by an army infantry regiment, had made gains despite heavy air attack and artillery fire. But the weather was “sunny, dry, warm.” The roads were “passable for all vehicles.” And the corps was moving in the right direction.

  That was unwittingly affirmed by a German-intercepted radio message Vatutin sent his subordinates that evening, stati
ng that the Germans must on no account break through to Kursk. It was inspired by a pithy and unmistakable order to Vatutin from Stalin himself, eloquently reinforced by Khrushchev, that the Fourth Panzer Army must be stopped. It was plain that the USSR’s entire system of motivation and management stood behind the directive. The First Tank Army was still combat-capable, but Vatutin was deploying Stavka reinforcements behind its reorganizing forward units. Nikolai Popel, a battle-experienced armor officer as well as Katukov’s chief political officer, described July 7 as one of the hardest days in the Battle of Kursk, leaving First Tank Army with its strength substantially diminished. First Tank’s commander had previously called sober attention to the Germans’ “larger units” and “heavier tanks,” whose guns far outranged the 76 mm of his T-34s. And German ground-attack planes were inflicting heavy losses even before armored units reached the front.

  The Red Army of 1943 was not kind to senior officers who saw ghosts and shadows. Vatutin and his subordinates were seasoned combat veterans. To speak of shaken nerves is to overstate the case. Yet the question simmered: What would it take to stop these Hitlerites? Since June 1941, they had won their victories through finesse: smoke, mirrors, and maneuver. Stalingrad had suggested they were vulnerable to hard pounding. Now, army and SS alike, they were taking what the Soviet Union had to give and they kept coming, as inexorable, as pitiless, and as nonhuman as Russian weather—or, perhaps, the Soviet system.

  Such thoughts owed something to what seemed the Germans’ inexhaustible supply of Tigers. Soviet infantry, antitank crews, and tankers were reporting kills into the dozens—yet every day the Tigers led the attack. In part that reflected the effects of adrenaline, of fear, of distorted time frames, of smoke and dust, all of which tends to enhance a universal tendency to exaggerate the material number and the formidable nature of opponents. To aircrews in the Pacific, destroyers became battleships. The Allies on Normandy’s front lines reported every tank a Panther or a Tiger. In Kursk’s specific context, moreover, a Tiger and a Mark IV looked sufficiently alike at battle ranges that left no time for close verification.