Armor and Blood

by Dennis E. Showalter

  Rokossovsky noted that the Germans’ fighting power and tactical skill had forced him to commit reserves earlier than he intended and to hold sectors as opposed to mounting a general counterattack. He dismissed the supply situation as chaotic. What was nevertheless important was Rokossovsky’s confidence that the Central Front had won its battle. What was even more important was Zhukov’s agreement.

  Early on July 9, Stalin had phoned Zhukov to express his opinion that the offensive in the Orel sector was ripe for launching. Zhukov agreed. The Germans, he declared, no longer had the resources to achieve a breakthrough against the Central Front. That, however, would not stop them from continuing to try. Let the Germans bleed themselves for another day or two while the inevitable loose ends of what had been titled Operation Kutuzov were tightened. Timing was everything. If Kutuzov started too soon by even a day, the Ninth Army might still be able to pull one of the almost patented German rabbit-out-of-the-helmet shifts and hit the Russian left flank. It does no disrespect to Rokossovsky and his men to say that the Central Front would at best face extreme difficulty mounting an attack strong enough to hold the Germans in place.

  Stalin concurred. Not until the night of July 11 did normal patrolling in Kutuzov’s designated sectors give way to battalion-level probes and initiatives that provided information for a final readjusting of attack formations and artillery targets. Not until July 12 would the Red Army begin changing the parameters of Operation Citadel and the Russo-German War.

  Chapter V

  DECISIONS

  ERICH VON MANSTEIN’S FORTE was the maneuver battle: mass multiplied by impulsion. To date, Army Group South’s impulsion had been episodic. The mass had been provided by the Russians. On the night of July 8, Vatutin and Vasilevsky had one mission: Hold the Germans in place for the coming counteroffensives on either side of the Kursk salient. That meant hold the center, from Prokhorovka to the Oboyan road, and keep hitting Knobelsdorff and Breith as they attacked into the defenses on their front.

  I

  That in turn required shuffling. Vatutin took advantage of the night, and a diminishing German air effort, to order 5th Guards Tank Corps to move west to the Oboyan road and join the First Tank Army. The 10th Tank Corps would also shift to the Oboyan sector, while 2nd Tank Corps took over on the Prokhorovka road. The 31st Mechanized and 3rd Tank Corps would fall back to a new line from the Oboyan road to the Psel River. Reinforcements—rifle divisions; tank, artillery, and antitank regiments from Stavka reserve; and replacement tanks—were lavishly distributed as they arrived. The Soviet high command ordered Sixty-ninth Army to move between Sixth Guards and Seventh Guards Armies on Vatutin’s left, increasing the general pressure on the Germans. It also ordered Fifth Guards Army, seven first-class divisions, from the Steppe Front to the Oboyan-Prokhorovka sector.

  That reinforcement was no less welcome for requiring several days’ march. Fifth Guards Army had fought in Stalingrad as the Sixty-sixth Army, retaining four of the divisions tempered in that cauldron, and adding three new ones: two airborne and one rifle, all Guards, and fully equipped. It was a sign of the shifting balance of the Eastern Front that Stavka had this kind of an elite infantry force available for a near routine commitment, while the Germans were scrambling to man their “quiet” sectors with anyone able to sight a rifle and walk unassisted. Stavka’s major initiative, however, was to transfer Fifth Guards Tank Army from the Steppe Front to Vatutin’s command. Fifth Guards Tank was a high card. It had been formed on February 10, 1942, and its 5th Guards Mechanized and 18th and 29th Tank Corps were considered to be well trained, well equipped, and well officered. Its commander, Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov, was a colorful figure by the relatively anonymous standards of the post-purge Red Army. He had worn the Soviet uniform since 1919 and carried himself with somewhat the air of Tolstoy’s Vaska Denisov, or Denisov’s real-life counterpart, Denis Davydov. A combat-experienced tanker, he had done well commanding a brigade and a corps. It remained to be seen whether he could walk the walk as head of an army.

  On the other side of the line, Hoth too was testing the wind. Fourth Panzer Army was down to six hundred AFVs ready for action on the morning of July 9—a 40-percent loss. The army’s spearheads were still fifty miles from Kursk, almost a hundred from Model’s bogged-down front, and three days short of the initial objective of a two-corps bridgehead over the Psel.

  Hoth had not lost confidence in the prospects of an eventual breakthrough and a victory. But XLVIII Panzer Corps was still under such heavy pressure on its left flank that it could not deploy its full strength frontally. Breith’s panzers remained enmeshed in the Soviet defenses on the Donets’s east bank. Luftwaffe reconnaissance was reporting large and increasing Soviet armored forces moving west and south, toward the Psel.

  Official doctrine and common sense alike called for an all-out effort to interdict the movement. The Luftwaffe had been originally configured for just that type of mission. But the need for direct ground support had so intensified that no aircraft could be spared from the front lines. The counterattacks engaging the SS from the northeast thus could only be expected to increase in strength and fighting power—until they matched and overmatched the panzers. Hoth’s original concept for this contingency had been to draw the Soviets into a fight on ground of German choosing: open terrain, where their tank guns’ longer range and excellent optics would give them the kind of technical advantage denied in the earlier fighting at close quarters. The burden of the plan rested squarely on the Waffen SS. Hoth would not admit it willingly, but ideology, experience, and armament made the SS more suited than the army’s panzers to force a breakthrough in a frontal attack. As party troops in an army war, moreover, they were more readily expendable.

  Hoth had originally expected the army and the SS to keep pace and be in a position to act in tandem as they approached the Psel. Instead, XLVIII Panzer Corps was lagging behind: a function of the resistance to its front and the continuing threat to its left flank. Fourth Panzer Army’s Order No. 4 for July 9 was ambiguous. The XLVIII Panzer Corps would push a strong right flank up the Oboyan road, throw the Russians over the Psel, and simultaneously secure its left flank for good—all by attacking and enveloping the 6th Tank Corps. The II SS Panzer Corps would drive northeast with “all available force” while simultaneously maintaining a strong flank guard against any attacks from the direction of Prokhorovka. On July 10, Hausser was expected to be ready to shift its axis of advance toward Prokhorovka itself—should the movement become necessary as Soviet reinforcements arrived.

  Manstein backed Hoth’s play directly by giving Hausser priority for air support. More consequential was Manstein’s continued pressure on Kempf and Breith to get III Panzer Corps moving north, toward Prokhorovka, broadening and integrating his front, covering the SS by intercepting the Fifth Guards Tank Army. But first Breith had to clear his own sector. The 19th Panzer Division spent a long, hot, frustrating July 8 in a series of back-and-forth engagements with counterattacking Russians who nearly broke through the overextended lines of the 168th Infantry Division, making heavy weather of its advance up the Donets from Belgorod. It took the last four operable Mark VIs of a Tiger company, plus half a dozen flamethrowing tanks, before the 19th could even consider breaking out and moving forward on any scale. On the other flank of III Panzer Corps, the 7th Panzer Division remained committed to its flank guard role: “No changes planned for today … I had slept well,” in the words of one Tiger company commander. But an infantry division, the 106th, was being rushed into position to relieve the panzers, making the 7th available to support what seemed the first real tactical opportunity Breith’s corps had created since the fighting started.

  That was the work of 6th Panzer Division, whose day began when two of its tank companies were shot up while resupplying in a forward area and continued when a green and ambitious lieutenant took his tank platoon in a head-down charge to the top of a hill, only to find himself pinned down by the usual heavy Soviet defensive
fire. But matters improved as the division’s armored advance guards found enough exploitable points in the 92nd Guards Rifle’s defenses to reach and capture the high ground north of Melikhovo, a dozen miles northeast of Belgorod, before running into impassable belts of minefields, guns, and antitank ditches. As yet, it was just another salient, another extended middle finger. But if 19th and 7th Panzer could manage to close on the 6th, the result might be a paralyzing closed-finger karate strike.

  Might be—the mantra of Citadel on the German side. Knobelsdorff initially responded to Hoth’s revised orders by redeploying a battle group of Grossdeutschland; two panzer grenadier battalions, and more than fifty tanks and assault guns, including a Tiger company, turning them west to cooperate with 3rd Panzer and the 332nd Infantry in finishing off 6th Tank Corps. Knobelsdorff believed the diversion would be temporary. But despite “outstanding” Stuka support, the advance took ninety minutes to reach the last houses in the north part of Verkhopenye against the tank-supported 67th Guards Rifle Division. That, moreover, was nowhere near the same thing as having the village cleared and secured. The battle group was also coming under heavy artillery and Katyusha fire from the west: a clear indication that 3rd Panzer Division was still not out of the woods.

  Grossdeutschland’s other panzer grenadier regiment and the reconnaissance battalion, with the rest of the division’s armor, resumed the advance on Oboyan around 6:00 A.M. The grenadiers ran into an antitank screen; the reconnaissance battalion sidestepped it and kept moving under Stuka cover. So far, so good—good enough that Grossdeutschland’s commander moved the tanks at Verkhopenye to reinforce what he considered the Schwerpunkt of his attack. The panzers passed through the half-tracks and assault guns of the reconnaissance battle group and engaged the fresh 86th Tank Brigade at ranges long enough to allow the Panthers and Tigers to keep the advance moving up the Oboyan road until higher orders brought it to a halt during the afternoon around the village of Novoselovka.

  The 3rd Panzer Division was another warrior for the working day. It had no claim on Tigers or Panthers. Half the eighty-odd tanks the division took into the battle were Mark IIIs with 50 mm guns. But thus far its losses in men and tanks had not been particularly crippling, especially compared with other sectors of Citadel. From Major General Franz Westhoven down to the battalions and companies, its commanders were solid. The division made a dozen tactically successful attacks during the day. The problem was that antitank guns and dug-in T-34s, supported by the mobile armor of 6th Tank Corps, kept 3rd Panzer from forming a functioning Schwerpunkt. Instead, a sequence of opportunistic advances brought its forward elements to the Pena River but produced and confirmed a westward shift of the division’s overall front—almost a right angle to XLVIII Panzer Corps’s intended route toward Oboyan. The 332nd Infantry Division on 3rd Panzer’s left forced a crossing of the Pena against the 71st Guards Rifle Division and elements of the 6th Tank Corps. In terms of facilitating a breakthrough by the 3rd Panzer Division, however, the 332nd was a knife in a gunfight. In their own sector, the panzers reached the Pena and began constructing a bridge strong enough to carry Mark IIIs and IVs, although Soviet artillery, rockets, and mortars made it an overnight job.

  Grossdeutschland responded to 3rd Panzer’s situation by leaving most of its panzer grenadiers to hold the Oboyan sector and turning its tanks and the reconnaissance battalion west again, to clear 3rd Panzer’s front. It may not have been too little, but it was definitely too late—at least too late in the day. Not until 10:00 P.M. did Grossdeutschland’s spearheads make contact with Soviet tanks around Verkhopenye. After fifteen hours of combat and maneuver, only one order made sense: Hold in place for the night; refuel, rearm, repair, and rest. The 11th Panzer Division, on Grossdeutschland’s right, initially either achieved a degree of tactical surprise or was drawn along in its partner’s wake, depending on the reports and narratives. Whatever the reason, it made good progress astride the Oboyan road early in the day—only to create another small salient, its forward elements ahead of Grossdeutschland on one flank and the SS on the other.

  As previously stated, Hoth’s orders gave II SS Panzer Corps as many as four potential missions: Break through the Soviets in their immediate front; disrupt the looming counterattacks by the Red Army’s reserves; draw along with them the army panzers on their left; and open an alternate route to Kursk. Any one was a major assignment. Hausser’s orders, issued at 11:00 P.M. on July 8, were correspondingly ambitious. The general intention was for the corps to establish contact with the 11th Panzer Division, destroy Soviet forces south of the Psel, and throw bridgeheads across the river in preparation for a further advance on a broad front, direction northeast. Das Reich would develop its present position as a main battle line (Hauptkampflinie). Totenkopf would advance west-northwest, contact 11th Panzer, and force a crossing of the Psel. Leibstandarte would clear its front, then begin shifting position, moving between Totenkopf and Das Reich to become the center division of the corps. As soon and as far as possible, the tank regiments of Leibstandarte and Das Reich were to be taken out of the line for maintenance and to rest the exhausted crews.

  Leibstandarte advanced around 10:00 A.M. on July 9, its four remaining Tigers leading the way. The division had taken fifteen hundred casualties in four days, most of them in the combat regiments, but morale was high—and it improved when a company of Mark IVs scattered the counterattack of a regiment of T-34s. By noon, the SS had crossed the Solotinka River and made contact with the 11th Panzer Division’s vanguard. Elements of both divisions made it to the village of Kochetovka, Sixth Guards Army’s headquarters, before being stopped by a reorganized 10th Tank Corps that proved to have a good deal of fight left, and by heavy rocket and artillery fire.

  As the day waned, Leibstandarte began turning over the corps left wing to Totenkopf. The relatively fresh Death’s-Head Division lost no time mounting a head-down frontal attack toward the Psel. Despite strong resistance from the rear guards and the survivors of the 3rd Mechanized and 31st Tank Corps and the 51st and 52nd Guards Rifle Divisions, the SS gained as much as ten miles. The division’s artillery and tank guns literally blew the Guards headquarters out of Kochetovka before the panzer grenadiers took the town by close assault. Totenkopf’s main attack then turned northwest, to high ground a mile or two outside Kochetovka that overlooked the approaches to the Psel. There for the first time Death’s-Head encountered the shield-and-sword tactics of dug-in tanks and fixed defenses fighting to the finish while mobile T-34s launched repeated counterattacks. Totenkopf was held in place; not until darkness did its pioneers and panzer grenadiers succeed in bridging the Psel and establishing a foothold on its far bank.

  Das Reich also spent the day in place, blocking with Citadel-relative ease a series of attacks along the Prokhorovka road by 2nd Tank and 5th Guards Tank Corps. But by evening, II SS Panzer Corps received ground and air reconnaissance confirming major armor movements to the northeast, against the corps’s right flank, along with heavy air activity. One column with 250 trucks and as many as 80 tanks had already passed through Prokhorovka. Soviet strength was such that German forces probing in the opposite direction had been pulled back. The further introduction of armor reserves from outside Citadel’s sector was probable.

  July 9 was a long day at the higher headquarters of Voronezh Front. By its end, Sixth Guards and First Tank Armies had sacrificed any but the most basic tactical maneuverability, their original formations ground down, the successive reinforcements in no better shape. Katukov could assemble a hundred AFVs, more or less, and rather less than more. Both commanders had spent much of the day requesting immediate support and asking when Fifth Guards Tank Army would arrive.

  Vatutin responded during the night of July 9–10 by sorting out his front. Katukov’s sector from right to left was now held by 6th Tank Corps along the Pena River; 3rd Mechanized Corps, or what remained of it, across the Oboyan road; and 31st Mechanized Corps extending the line to the Psel. Three fresh rifle divisions were ta
king position in the army’s rear. More significant, Vatutin placed 10th and 5th Tank Corps under Katukov’s direct command. Those were Voronezh Front’s last blue chips. Now it depended on Katukov’s ability to hold his sector and the ability of Fifth Guards and Fifth Guards Tank Armies to arrive in time to turn the battle around. It depended as well on the front’s ability to stop a developing shift of Fourth Panzer Army’s focus in the direction of Prokhorovka. The Soviet field communications system’s redundancy had proved its value repeatedly since Citadel’s beginning. By midafternoon, reports were coming in by radio, phone, and messenger that the SS was in effect replacing Leibstandarte with Totenkopf, thereby shoving the entire corps rightward, away from the Oboyan road. There was only one direction it could go: toward Prokhorovka.

  Thus far, Lieutenant General Vasily Kriuchenkin had been a virtual spectator. Now his Sixty-ninth Army was bolstered by the 2nd Tank Corps and the usual smorgasbord of independent brigades and regiments, and he had been ordered to hold Voronezh Front’s northeast shoulder and its artery, the road to Prokhorovka. Lest the point be missed, Vatutin personally phoned 2nd Tank Corps just before midnight and warned its commander to expect a major attack the next day.

  Vatutin would later describe July 9 as the turning point in his sector. The front commander may have been confident by day’s end, but too many things had gone too wrong too often since June 22, 1941, to allow any complacency. Apart from the Germans to his front, Vatutin and Vasilevsky were still a step behind the Rokossovsky-Zhukov team on the salient’s northern half. Model’s offensive had come to a dead stop. Manstein’s had reached the Psel, the last prepared defense system before the open steppe. The Prokhorovka sector was as yet defended by bits and pieces. Even if a German breakout was contained and defeated by Stavka’s reserves, Stalin would remember the general who buried tanks turret-deep and exhausted reserves in a vain defense. And should the Vozhd forget, Zhukov would be there to remind him.