In making and implementing decisions for July 10, Manstein and Hoth had to take into consideration another set of statistics. The Fourth Panzer Army had received a maximum effort from VIII Air Corps. But that term meant something different after four intense days. The Luftwaffe flew over fifteen hundred sorties—twice the number managed by the Red Air Force on July 9. The Stukas, the Heinkels, and the Ju-88s hammered Russian defenses, but against a steadily improving air-ground defense. JG 52’s III Group lost an entire four-plane flight on an early-morning weather reconnaissance mission, bringing its total of shot-down and written-off aircraft to sixteen out of forty-two since July 5. An initial fuel shortage had expanded to tools and spare parts. A tank jury-rigged by exhausted mechanics could be abandoned if it broke down again. For aircraft, that option was too risky.
More serious was the loss of eleven of the group’s pilots. The German ability to maintain an edge in the air depended on the quality of their aircrew, and Luftwaffe kill ratios were declining with each sortie. Two or three Shturmoviks for one or two fighters was an unsustainable rate of exchange. The five planes lost by VIII Air Corps’s 2nd Stuka Wing was a reminder of the fate of these lumbering aircraft in other theaters, earlier in the war, when used en masse in daylight. The advantage enjoyed by any dive-bomber was its ability to convince everyone under the dive that he personally was the attack’s focal point. In fact, once committed to a dive, the Stuka and any of its relatives were hanging targets. The best chance an antiaircraft crew had was to stick to its guns; the best survival mechanism was to put out rounds. By July 9, the Russians had had enough experience to be convinced, and the Stukas were paying the price.
In the air as well, Russian fighter pilots described their opponents as less willing to take risks and more committed to close escort of the bombers than to the independent sweeps that had proved so costly in Citadel’s early days. In part that reflected increasing fatigue and orders to bring the bombers through. But it also reflected the effective, albeit expensive, crash course in aerial tactics the Luftwaffe had provided the Red Air Force since July 5. Lieutenant Ivan Kozhedub was as yet no match one-on-one for the German Experten. But he scored two victories on July 9 to add to his single kills on July 6 and 7. He would finish the war as the top-scoring Soviet ace with 64 victories. Not every fighter pilot was a Kozhedub-in-waiting. But the careless, the slow learners, and the plain unlucky were gone. The survivors were learning—in particular, how to escort the Shturmovik strikes that harassed and delayed German armor movements all across the southern sector. Air support, so vital to even the limited advances to date, was a diminishing (when not a wasting) asset. As early as July 7, almost half of VIII Air Corps’s combat planes had been assigned to Model’s sector. For July 10, all the medium bombers were also assigned to Model, and a large number of fighters were sent to conduct sweeps over the Soviet airfields supporting the Central Front. That meant that after five days, Manstein and Hoth could count on only a third of the air support originally available—and that was assuming Model’s situation did not suddenly become desperate.
On the ground, Hoth had originally expected XLVIII Panzer Corps to by now be across the Psel and III Panzer Corps to be closing on the right flank of the SS. Instead, both were still fighting their own battles. Pressure against the Fourth Panzer Army’s flanks had increased exponentially as the advance progressed. Hoth was optimistic enough to believe that XLVIII Panzer Corps could in a day or two clear its flank and get across the Psel. He believed Breith was capable of breaking free to support Hausser as intended. But both events were still “Citadel conditional.” Neither Knobelsdorff nor Breith seemed able in practice to get out of his own way. Hoth decided the time had come to throw the switch.
II
That involved persuading Manstein, who still wanted Hoth’s corps to cross the Psel, even if on narrow fronts in separate sectors. That, Manstein asserted, would gain the favorable tank country north of the river and—probably—drive an exploitable wedge between the river line’s defenders and any oncoming reinforcements. Hoth proved persuasive. Sometime between noon and 1:30, Army Order No. 5 was composed and distributed. It described the enemy on the army’s front as making a fighting retreat northward while seeking to hold the line of the Pena River. Fresh motorized forces (the Fifth Guards Tank Army) were advancing west from the Oskol River. For July 10, the Fourth Panzer Army would expand its sector on one flank by driving northeast, on the other by encircling the Russian forces in the bend of the Pena: 3rd Panzer Division’s sector. Specifically, XLVIII Panzer Corps would (“finally!” was strongly implied) finish 6th Guards Tank Corps in the Pena sector while continuing reconnaissance to its north, toward the Psel. The SS mission took only one sentence: Drive the Russians southwest of Prokhorovka eastward, and take the high ground northwest of the town on both sides of the Psel. It did not refer specifically to any new threat from Soviet reserves, but Hausser was already moving in the direction Hoth intended.
An indication of how seriously Hoth took his approach came when at midnight he received an order from Army Group South to support Breith directly by sending a division across the northern Donets. Hoth replied that his orders had been given and it was too late to change them. This was no time to debate details with the commander on the spot, so Manstein let it stand.
It is with these orders that evaluations of German command decisions diverge beyond obvious reconciliation. Historians David Glantz and Jonathan House describe Hoth as “fatally” altering his plans because of the unexpected effectiveness of the Red Army’s defense of the Oboyan sector, compounded by the continuing pressure on Fourth Panzer Army’s flanks. Their supporting data goes back as far as Vatutin’s statement on July 10, making the same point. Soviet staff studies, official histories, and general accounts—not that there was much difference among them in conceptualization and construction—offer the same explanation. It was repeated uncritically in corresponding East German accounts. The interpretation is credible, and it is flattering—a solid combination for official and semiofficial military history in any culture. Its drama can be enhanced by suggesting or implying that the men holding the Oboyan line were at the last ditch, that one more push would have taken the panzers “through mud and blood to the green fields beyond” and put them into the salient’s rear and on the direct route to Kursk. Instead, Hoth and Manstein flinched from the decisive encounter and sought an easier way—which led them onto the killing ground of Prokhorovka and the final ruination of the Third Reich’s hopes.
Exactly what happened at Prokhorovka is the subject of a later chapter. The present importance of the conventional Russian thesis is that it presents the German decision as reactive rather than proactive. But the staff and field officers who discussed the subject in postwar analyses commissioned by the U.S. Army, or in later memoirs and histories, spoke with a common voice in insisting the “Prokhorovka variant” was not an on-the-fly improvisation, and certainly not a consequence of unexpected Soviet fighting power.
Documentary evidence supports the basic German position that the shift in the SS axis of advance manifested forethought. But was Hoth’s timing only a higher-level reaction to the growing mass of Soviet reserves concentrating to the northeast? Were there immediate advantages, any exploitation of “fog and friction,” to be gained by the decision? Neither Hoth nor Manstein discussed the subject in detail—which warrants careful speculation.
To this point, Hoth and Manstein had left the primary conduct of operations to their respective subordinates. But “mission tactics,” to the extent the concept actually existed in the German army, was not a euphemism for command passivity. Neither Fourth Panzer Army nor Army Group South had achieved anything like effective maneuvering room. On the material side, reports from Hoth’s subordinates combined optimism in principle with specific frustration at the effectiveness of the defense and the slow pace of the advance. Fourth Panzer Army’s loss/recovery/repair figures for armored fighting vehicles by July 11 were favorable on the surfa
ce. Over 450 remained operational. As of July 11, total losses amounted to only 116. The balance, another 450, were in varying stages of repair. But the cumulative statistics also indicated that a good number of tanks and assault guns had been damaged more than once—and this was only the initial stage of the battle.
In the matter of reinforcements, on July 9 Manstein again asked Zeitzler to inform Hitler that Citadel’s outcome depended on using XXIV Panzer Corps. Hitler agreed to the formation’s concentration near Kharkov, but it remained a high command reserve under the Führer’s direct control. By this time, the corps contained three divisions: SS Wiking, and 17th and 23rd Panzer. Its commander, Walther Nehring, was first-rate; the corps included almost two hundred AFVs and, no less important in Citadel’s context, thirteen battalions of panzer grenadiers.
Whether the corps could have arrived in time or if it would have made a difference if it had remains debatable. On the one hand, its presence might have enabled resting exhausted units and supporting a final drive, whether from Oboyan or Prokhorovka. On the other hand, given the Red Army’s potential for reinforcing Vatutin, committing XXIV Panzer Corps might merely have shoveled coal on a fire. In either case, the question was moot on July 9—certainly as far as Hoth was concerned.
The Fourth Panzer Army’s commander had the maps on his side. And of the two possible solutions, his came closest to enabling a meaningful breakout. Geographically, Prokhorovka was in the middle of the land bridge between the Psel and the Donets Rivers. West and south of the town, relatively high ground overlooked open steppe. Control of that terrain was operationally and tactically a major element in Hoth’s projected economy-of-force defense against odds. That success, however, would be only stage one. Prokhorovka was also a major road and rail junction on the Belgorod–Kursk axis. By the time the SS had seen off the Russians from the northeast, Hoth expected that at least Grossdeutschland would have completed the secondary mission of securing its corps’s left flank and resumed its position on the Oboyan road. Along with 11th Panzer, and perhaps 3rd Panzer as well, it would then either support the SS directly or be part of a two-pronged drive toward Kursk from Prokhorovka and Oboyan. Either alternative was a chance to move Citadel from the level of minor tactics to at least the lower rung of operational art.
Both Hoth and Manstein were masters of maneuver warfare in the context of modern technology. Manstein had demonstrated as well his understanding of positional warfare during his 1941–42 conquest of the Crimea. That operation had been executed against fixed defenses in a limited geographic area, with forces far less formidable than those available for Citadel. Even in those circumstances, Manstein had sought with some success to avoid a simple battle of attrition, and Citadel was coming too close to that model for his comfort. Manstein was also an accomplished bridge and chess player. One of his gifts as planner and commander was an ability to think several moves ahead. Another, less often demonstrated because Manstein’s talent gave it fewer opportunities, was to recognize when a subordinate thought even a step further. Focusing on a frontal assault was to risk tunnel vision for limited results. Hoth had made the bid. Manstein said, “Make the contract.”
III
Fourth Panzer Army’s frustrations on July 10 began on its always troublesome left flank. From Citadel’s beginning and before, Grossdeutschland had been Hoth’s trump card, with more expected from it than from the SS. Even with the remaining Panthers of the attached 10th Panzer Brigade, the division counted fewer than ninety AFVs at 3:30 A.M., when its armored battle group went forward against the high ground across the road south to Berezovka and 3rd Panzer Division. That road—little more than a country track by Western standards—was also the main north-south artery in the sector and the defenders’ major link to the Soviet supply base at Kruglik. Cut it permanently and XLVIII Panzer Corps’s flank problems would take a long step toward resolution.
Grossdeutschland secured enough of a tactical surprise to overrun 6th Tank Corps’s 200th Tank Brigade and draw two more brigades into a swirling encounter battle in which the Germans had a combined-arms advantage. Grossdeutschland’s artillery and the attached rocket batteries were complemented, when the rain and thunderstorms permitted, by massive level-bomber and Stuka strikes. A battalion war diary commented on the “wonderful precision” of the dive-bomber attacks, which seemed able to target and destroy T-34s almost at will. In a model example of battle group tactics, Grossdeutschland’s reconnaissance battalion, its mechanized panzer grenadiers, and the assault guns seized Hill 247. After three hard hours, the panzer regiment led truck-riding panzer grenadiers onto neighboring Hill 243. The 6th Tank Corps fought desperately to reopen the route north, but desperation evoked improvisation—still not a Red Army strongpoint. Attacks ordered in brigade strength devolved to battalion- and companylevel strikes, further disrupted and misdirected by the woods, small forests, and ravines that dotted the fighting zone. Meanwhile, 3rd Panzer Division finished its bridge and crossed the Pena in a short left hook that flanked stubborn Russian rear guards and brought the division’s armored battle group into line with Grossdeutschland. During the afternoon, the two German divisions caught the Russians in a vise that by nightfall put the front line on the Berezovka heights and reduced 6th Tank Corps to fewer than fifty AFVs, and half of those were light T-70 tanks, little more than panzer fodder.
But again the Russians bent without breaking. Some encircled units made their way out across the same kind of terrain that had disrupted their attacks and that now obstructed the Germans. Others fought to the finish, using Katyushas against AFVs until the panzers found the range. But the corps commanding officer, Major General A. L. Getman, formed a new, shorter line around the village of Novoselovka. Katukov backed it with reinforcements, including the 10th Tank Corps. The panzer grenadier regiment that Grossdeutschland left facing the Psel came under repeated attacks from units that even by Eastern Front standards should have been considered ineffective. But Citadel was different. The Germans committed anything on tracks or with a high muzzle velocity. Thinly armored, open-topped, self-propelled antitank guns took the places of assault guns otherwise employed. The 88 mm antiaircraft guns anchored improvised ground positions, their crews grateful that the weather inhibited Soviet air strikes. And at nightfall, exhausted Germans stood in place—still a long way from where Hoth and Knobelsdorff had expected them to be.
The 11th Panzer Division reached high ground to its front but then stalled. From there it was literally downhill into the Psel valley and twelve or thirteen miles to Oboyan. The town’s buildings were visible through binoculars. But the Russians held Hill 244.8, on the Oboyan road itself, against anything 11th Panzer committed. The division commander called in vain for Stuka support. As a result, the 11th Panzer Division spent July 11 consolidating its positions and patrolling forward toward the Psel. It seemed military housekeeping. But the prospects of a single division attacking into even a disrupted Citadel-style defensive system were close to zero. Most of Grossdeutschland, along with 3rd Panzer, was still engaged in clearing XLVIII Panzer Corps’s left flank of Soviet fragments, probing the new defense lines in that sector, and regrouping.
As if Knobelsdorff did not have enough problems, at 11:30 A.M. on July 10, his headquarters welcomed a visitor. Heinz Guderian, in exile since Barbarossa’s failure, had been recalled as inspector general of armored troops on March 1, 1943. The Army High Command had tasked him with finding out why the Panthers seemed to be performing so badly.
The German army had a word for such visitors: Schlachtenbummler (battle bums). But Guderian was no voyeur. He concluded that a major problem was training. The Panther battalions committed to Citadel had been unable to get used to their new vehicles, which meant a high level of minor technical problems and an escalating pressure on field maintenance units. Even the radios had not been tested and set to the correct frequencies before the offensive began. Knobelsdorff and his staff could not be held responsible for decisions made far above their level of authority.
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That absolution did not solve Knobelsdorff’s tactical dilemma. To understand what may seem to be limited activity by XLVIII Panzer Corps on July 11, it is worth noting that clearing sectors, reorganizing units, and carrying out resupply and maintenance all took time. Moreover, the corps’s newly gained rear area had not even a developed network of trails, much less roads. As combat units and supporting echelons began shifting positions, traffic control was a major challenge. A week’s worth of combat of a kind that pushed endurance to its outer limits had human consequences as well, ranging from misunderstood orders to temper outbursts to simple physical mistakes made by men exhausted or traumatized. German personal memoirs and unit histories dealing with the Eastern Front encourage overlooking such factors. They are commonly infused with a kind of heroic vitalism implying that fear and fatigue were weaknesses to be acknowledged but overcome. Otto von Knobelsdorff was no Erwin Rommel or Erhard Raus when it came to inspiring—or compelling—supreme efforts. But he kept control of his sector and was confident that his system could stay far enough ahead of its Russian counterpart to give him the edge on July 12. There was material reason for optimism as well. The provisional Panther regiment, still attached to Grossdeutschland, had gone into action on July 10 with only ten runners. During July 11, twenty more were returned to service from workshops whose personnel were beginning to get abreast of the tank’s mechanical quirks. By day’s end, the regiment’s commander reported thirty-eight Panthers operational. Properly played, their long 75s might yet prove a trump card.
Armor and Blood Page 17