Armor and Blood

by Dennis E. Showalter

  IV

  Nikolai Vatutin did not survive the war. He was mortally wounded in February 1944—ironically by a band of anti-Soviet Ukrainian partisans. He left no systematic reflections on his handling of the Voronezh Front during Citadel. But on the evening of July 9, he did some serious thinking. The German spearheads were still a good distance from Oboyan and Prokhorovka. In the past two days, however, they had advanced at a much faster and steadier pace than at Citadel’s beginning. Logic—and the Red Army approached war making as a scientific, rational exercise—suggested that losses should have been slowing them down. Vatutin had been committing his own reserves by corps, divisions, regiments, and battalions, for five days. Ten of his antitank regiments had lost all their guns; twenty more were at less than half strength. Logic suggested either that the Germans were bringing in reserves—or that their shock power and fighting prowess were proving a match and more for Vatutin’s men. Front intelligence, moreover, had been asserting the arrival and commitment of fresh German forces since the night of July 5.

  Vatutin considered his front’s tactics. In Citadel’s early stages, they had featured an active defense. Short, sharp, tank-heavy counterattacks had bloodied German noses and retarded their progress. On July 8 and 9, casualties and material losses combined with fog and friction to impose a passive approach. What were the prospects of shifting back to an aggressive mode?

  Reevaluating the intelligence, Vatutin and his staff noticed reports overlooked in the previous days’ intensive fighting. As early as 7:00 A.M. on July 8, the Germans were described as constructing trenches on their steadily lengthening left flank. By July 9, trenches were emerging on both flanks of the salient, supplemented by mines and barbed wire, suggesting long-term occupation. A disgruntled German prisoner said he was one of thirty men from a veterinary company condignly transferred to a flank-guard infantry regiment: a sign the Germans were scraping the manpower barrel.

  Were these straws in the wind? Perhaps. For Vatutin, they were sufficient to conclude that the recent German progress had been achieved by concentrating their mechanized forces at the expense of their flanks. That in turn meant the panzers were thrusting their own heads into a noose: a salient within a salient. How best to take advantage of the developing situation? In a map exercise, the answer was clear—strike the overextensions. But Voronezh Front’s realities made that option a nonstarter. The Germans had Vatutin’s main forces no less pinned in place than they were themselves. A counterattack in force would require the just released Stavka reserves. And Fifth Guards and Fifth Guards Tank Armies were concentrating at the salient’s tip: around Prokhorovka. Even had Vatutin considered redeploying them, there was no time. He and his front were the balance point for the entire sequence of strategic offensives from Leningrad to the Ukraine, projected to end the Russo-German War by the turn of the year. The first—or next—phase, Operation Kutuzov, was planned to begin against Army Group Center on July 12.

  Operation Kutuzov is best described as Citadel in reverse. Its genesis becomes obvious by even a casual look at the monadic shape of the post-Stalingrad, post-Kharkov front in south Russia, with its two salients matching each other. Preliminary planning began in April. By mid-May, the operation was on the board. By early June, forces had been allocated and details established. Directly, Kutuzov was a counterpoint to the plans for a defensive battle around Kursk. Indirectly, it was part of another in Stavka’s war-long series of coordinated strategic offensives. Once the Orel blow had taken effect, Voronezh and Steppe Fronts would finish off Manstein’s army group. Stavka expected that this task would be easier because the II SS Panzer Corps would have been sent north to stem the tide in the Orel sector. Even before Stalingrad, this had become an almost automatic German reaction: seeking to restore a breakthrough with minimum force promptly applied. This time it would be too little and too late. Once the Germans were stopped and pinned at Kursk and Orel, Southwestern and Southern Fronts would begin diversionary, sector-level offensives, to fix German forces in that area and deprive Manstein of reinforcements. The final stage was expected when Soviet forces around Leningrad and the two southern fronts launched full-scale offensives against anything remaining in their sectors.

  Although Vatutin was hardly a careerist, his prospects were unlikely to be improved were he to be viewed by Stalin as dancing with the Germans rather than hammering them. The Vozhd indeed was already commenting acidly on who would bear the responsibility if the Germans broke into Voronezh Front’s rear areas. Nor could Vatutin forget about the Germans. Even if they were unaware of the magnitude of the strategic campaign confronting them—which could not be assumed—the concentration and deployment of their forces indicated a final try to break Voronezh Front’s defensive system. Manstein had demonstrated in the Crimea that he feared neither frontal offensives nor heavy casualties. Add up intelligence reports of increasing concentrations of AFVs in the Psel region, connect them to Totenkopf’s determined attack in the river bend, and the deciding question became which adversary would be first off the mark.

  Almost by default, Vatutin’s decision was to make his main effort around Prokhorovka. Its preparation involved readjusting deployments, resupplying frontline formations, providing detailed orders, and supervising their implementation. That last point reflected less a doctrinally based Red Army mania for control than it did the very large number of independent, regiment- or battalion-sized formations that had been shuffled from armies to corps to divisions almost at random. Just determining their locations was a demanding task after the past week. Above all, it was necessary to inform Stavka and secure permission. On the night of July 10, Voronezh Front reported that the Germans had suffered heavy casualties, had exhausted their reserves, and were concentrating in the Prokhorovka sector. The front proposed to attack with all available force on the morning of July 12. The main thrust would be delivered by the Fifth Guards Tank Army: four tank and one mechanized corps, more than seven hundred tanks, reinforced by three additional rifle corps. In the front’s left sector, two tank corps and supporting elements of the First Tank Army, plus two rifle corps of the Sixth Guards Army, would hit XLVIII Panzer’s overextended flank. The intended result was encirclement and annihilation of a half dozen of the Wehrmacht’s best armored divisions: a perfect counterpoint to the simultaneous attack in the Orel salient.

  Rotmistrov’s Guardsmen were the key. On July 10, he met with Vatutin at front headquarters in Oboyan. Vatutin explained the situation and the mission and told Rotmistrov he would have two additional tank corps. Then Vasilevsky interjected. The Germans, he said, were deploying new heavy tanks, Tigers and Ferdinands, that had been very effective against Katukov. How did Rotmistrov feel about taking them on? Rotmistrov replied confidently. Steppe Front, he declared, had provided tactical and technical information on the new German tanks. Rotmistrov and his staff had considered ways to combat the German heavies. The Tigers’ thick frontal armor and long-range guns meant that T-34s could succeed only at close quarters, using their superior mobility to engage the weaker side armor. “In other words,” Vatutin observed, “engage in hand-to-hand combat and board them.”

  Perhaps the front commander was being sarcastic. Since he was aware that a large number of Rotmistrov’s tanks were the light T-70s, he may also have been indicating his awareness that the Fifth Guards Tank Army could expect heavy losses whatever its tactics. Further indication of his concern came later on July 10, when he and Khrushchev met with Rotmistrov’s corps commanders and their political officers. Khrushchev insisted on the importance of moral preparation. Get the men ready to fight, he said. Explain our goals. Remind them of the suffering of their countrymen under German occupation. Tell them that victory is near, and that it will begin here, in the Kursk salient. Vatutin emphasized that the Guardsmen should not expect easy success. Stubbornness, decisive action, and skillful maneuvering were essential. In conclusion, aware that the SS were likely to press their offensive the next day, he emphasized that the start lines must be
held. His facial expression reinforced the subtext: Hold, whatever the cost.

  Voronezh Front’s staff worked through the night and into the next morning on the attack’s details. Vatutin ordered all preliminary measures to be undertaken in a twenty-four-hour time frame: on July 11 and during the following morning. This was a nearly blitzkrieg-level standard, impossible to implement without mistakes, misunderstandings, and missed connections. Subordinate armies received their orders at varying times between 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. Not until midnight on July 11 did they percolate to some of the brigades and independent regiments.

  Simultaneously, Vatutin and Rotmistrov considered the launch point for the Fifth Guards Tank Army. Vatutin initially favored concentrating on the right, against the Psel sector. The combination of seriously inundated ground, few favorable crossing points, and going directly through even a weakened Totenkopf marginalized that option. Rotmistrov and his staff favorably considered going in on Fifth Guards Tank’s opposite, left flank. A breakthrough there would put the Russians directly in SS Panzer Corps’s rear and in good field position to turn toward Oboyan. The German front was held by an overextended infantry division: easier pickings than the Waffen SS. Here, however, broken terrain and the steep, heavily mined railroad embankment gave pause.

  Finally decisive for the next day’s Schwerpunkt was Rotmistrov’s conviction that the flat, open ground east of the Psel and opposite Fifth Guards Tank Army’s center offered the best opportunity for the kind of attack he had sketched to Vatutin on his arrival: a charge supported with every gun, Katyusha, and plane the front could muster. Made at full throttle, it would come to close quarters before the Germans had time to react. It might mean taking a week’s losses in a few hours if necessary, but superior numbers would enable Fifth Guards Tank to break in, break through, and break out.

  Vatutin approved; Rotmistrov’s preparations continued. With the time for reflection denied formations struggling to get into position while topping up fuel tanks and ammunition racks and maintaining camouflage discipline, one point becomes clear. The Fifth Guards Tank Army was expected to implement both the breakthrough and the immediate exploitation with its own resources, but a tank army lacked organic heavy artillery. The two tank corps Vatutin attached, when maintenance and straggling are calculated, gave the Fifth Guards Tank Army more than eight hundred AFVs available on the morning of July 12. This was almost a hundred tanks per mile of front, a concentration unprecedented in armored war. But forgetting the Germans, or underestimating them, could change any prognosis in a hurry.

  V

  It was 10:00 P.M. on July 9 before Hausser’s final orders for the next day were ready. Synthesized, they described a full-scale turn northeast, with security on both flanks left to isolated strongpoints unless a major threat emerged. Totenkopf, now on the corps’s left, would get its assault gun battalion back from the 167th Division, cross the Psel in force, turn right, and be ready to mount a division-strength attack by 10:00 A.M. in support of Leibstandarte. That division, led by a panzer grenadier regiment accompanied by Tigers and assault guns, would advance at 6:30, then capture and hold Prokhorovka. Das Reich would keep pace en echelon on Leibstandarte’s right and occupy the high ground southwest of the town.

  What that amounted to in distance was an average advance of around seven or eight miles. In the context of the previous two days, the expectation was not unreasonable. Leibstandarte’s commander, with the advantage of an actual paved road on his axis of advance, expected to be in Prokhorovka by nightfall. But the division’s armored battle group had only forty tanks, four of them Tigers. Its progress correspondingly depended on Totenkopf’s ability to throw bridgeheads across the Psel, then swing right to come in on Leibstandarte’s left flank. The high ground northeast of the Psel was stiff with guns, heavy mortars, and rocket launchers. The terrain on Leibstandarte’s front was open—good tank country, but providing very little cover and presenting a potential killing ground. The Stukas and fighter-bombers of VIII Air Corps were expected to compensate by bombing the attack forward. But at 8:45 A.M., Hausser was informed that visibility was too poor for the forward air controllers to direct close-support strikes. That same bad weather, plus heavy artillery fire, was delaying Totenkopf. Leibstandarte’s supporting rocket launchers were also stuck in the mud, and its artillery observers were no better off than their Luftwaffe counterparts.

  That placed the burden on the panzer grenadiers—nothing exactly new in Citadel. Jumping off at 10:45 A.M., they endured artillery fire, engaged tanks with hand grenades and explosive charges, and by 1:00 P.M. had fought their way into the Komsomolets State Farm on the Prokhorovka road. Russian resistance was no less determined. It was grenades and entrenching tools and pistols, and sometimes knives and bayonets, for the close work as the SS struggled up the slopes of their next objective: Hill 241.6. Then came the Tigers: four of them, moving slowly forward as bullets and shell fragments struck sparks on their armor. Leibstandarte’s attack struck the 183rd Rifle Division. This was one of the Red Army’s anonymous formations that histories of the Eastern Front usually consign to tables of organization and indexes. It put up a fierce fight despite the appearance in force of Stukas as the weather cleared. The dive-bombers and the tanks worked forward, taking out dug-in T-34s while accompanying pioneers cleared minefields. It took the Germans two hours to reach the crest of Hill 241.6 and two hours more to secure it.

  An area the Germans were never expected to reach did not have the elaborate defensive system of more exposed sectors. Elements of Leibstandarte, some of the riflemen riding tanks Red Army style, pushed along the railway leading to Prokhorovka Station until checked by a Guards heavy tank regiment equipped, of all possible anomalies, with British Lend-Lease Mark IV Churchills. Their six-pounder guns were no match for a Tiger, but their relatively thick armor helped enough to blunt the attack. Nevertheless, only one of the twelve Churchills remained operational at the finish as Leibstandarte buttoned up and dug in to resume its advance next morning.

  For most of the day, Leibstandarte had been slowed by heavy, albeit intermittent, artillery and antitank fire from the Psel sector. Totenkopf spent a long, difficult night moving its heavy equipment through the boggy ground on its side of the river. Its orders were to force a crossing, establish a bridgehead, and turn northeast to secure Leibstandarte’s flank by taking the high ground along the riverbank, especially Hill 226.6. Then the division’s tanks were to cut the Oboyan-Prokhorovka road, severing Soviet supply lines and communications, and setting the stage for a final attack on Prokhorovka itself.

  The weather and the Russians had something to say about all three objectives. The rain grew heavier before dawn—so heavy that the Luftwaffe was unable to support the river crossing. Soviet aircraft had no difficulty, however, harassing German deployments consistently and effectively. The core of the defense was Sixth Guards Army’s 52nd Guards Rifle Division. Well supported by artillery, it repelled initial German attempts to cross the Psel in rubber boats. A foothold established around 11:00 A.M. was more of a toehold as Russian fighters strafed the riverbank continuously, without Luftwaffe interference. Another temporary bridgehead had to be withdrawn under heavy fire. Then during the afternoon the skies cleared. German artillery and rocket launchers engaged their Soviet counterparts. Stukas made a welcome appearance. Russian guns fell silent; Russian infantry began falling back. More and more rubber boats reached the Psel’s far bank and made return trips. German pioneers had earlier seized a small, undamaged bridge. Now it became simultaneously a funnel and a choke point for a small, precarious bridgehead less than a thousand yards wide and foxhole-shallow in many places. Not until 4:00 P.M. was division headquarters sufficiently satisfied with the situation to report success after “bitter fighting.” And that success was highly contingent on the ability of specialist pioneers to throw stable bridges over the Psel during the night.

  Das Reich spent most of July 10 holding its positions as ordered. Initiative was limited by a tank bat
talion reduced to fifty-six effectives, including a single Tiger and seven captured and refurbished T-34s. Das Reich also reported constant tank and troop movements across the line, but its outposts were unable to determine whether they involved reinforcements or position shifts. The best response seemed to be to give the mechanics time to build up the division’s armor resources and await developments, especially since the Russians mounted numerous small-scale attacks on the division’s right flank, where the 167th Infantry Division was relieving a regiment of SS panzer grenadiers for the next day’s operations. More significant from the corps perspective were the similar spoiling attacks in Das Reich’s left sector. The battalion assigned to support Leibstandarte was unable to move forward until 1:45 p.M.—too late to do any good—and at nightfall remained over a mile behind its neighbor’s spearhead. Was the SS Panzer Corps in a state of high-risk overextension or in potential position to initiate the breakthrough of Citadel’s original vision?

  At 7:45 P.M., Hausser reported to Hoth that the weather was cloudy with occasional rain, the roads partly bad, but on the whole drivable. The enemy was resisting strongly to the north and northeast and seemed to be deploying tanks and motorized infantry on his corps’s right flank. He complained about the absence of air support and reported the successes of Leibstandarte and Totenkopf.

  The SS general stuck closely to the facts. Although his report was hardly spectacular, it seems to have encouraged Hoth. His comprehensive army report, issued at 8:30 P.M., mentioned without particular alarm that reserves from “areas distant from the front,” specifically the Fifth Guards Army, were deploying in the Psel sector. Nothing was said about the Fifth Guards Tank Army because neither air reconnaissance nor signal intelligence had as yet delivered word of its transfer, much less its arrival. What army group intelligence did report were high Soviet tank losses and corresponding evidence that Soviet armored and mechanized formations were either redeploying to shore up weak points or withdrawing altogether, ground down and burned out by the German attack. The XLVIII Panzer Corps and the SS were therefore to continue their advance: the former toward Oboyan, the latter to Prokhorovka.