Hausser’s intention on July 11 was to move forward at daylight. But the rain in Totenkopf’s sector, combined with vehicle traffic, had turned the Psel’s banks into a five-hundred-yard mudflat, virtually impassable even for tanks. At 3:00 A.M., Totenkopf radioed that the bridges would be ready by 7:00. From 3:20 A.M., the division also reported at frequent intervals of increasingly heavy Soviet attacks, growing shortages of artillery ammunition, and worsening road conditions. Then came news that the heavy bridging equipment, under artillery fire, had taken cover in a deep gully, become stuck, and would be delayed indefinitely. The pioneers were improvising a corduroy road out of whatever timber they could scrounge. The tanks, instead of preparing for battle, were straining their transmissions hauling bridging equipment through the morass. Totenkopf, in short, was going nowhere in a hurry.
Once again, Leibstandarte was on its own. Its forward elements moved out in the aftermath of overnight heavy rains in a south Russian summer. Mud made cross-country movement almost impossible; fog and mist did the same for air support; and muggy humidity wore down men doing stressful physical work. The road Leibstandarte expected to take into Prokhorovka was the central feature of a terrain corridor bordered on the north by the Psel River and on the south by a railroad embankment, built unusually high because of the frequent floods. Small satellite villages along the Psel offered concealment to tanks and antitank guns. The focal points of the Russian position, however, were the unusually large October State Farm and the neighboring hill 252.6. Both had been transformed into formidable strongpoints featuring minefields, antitank barriers, and barbed-wire entanglements. Prokhorovka was unlikely to prove a walk in the sun—assuming the defenders matched their positions. The front line was initially held by remnants of the 52nd Guards Rifle and 183rd Rifle Divisions. Backing them up was the 2nd Tank Corps. This was an improvisation. A Russian tank corps was armor-heavy, tailored for breakthroughs and exploitiations, and 2nd Tank Corps had taken heavy losses in the past two days. It was able to issue detailed deployment orders to its component units only around midnight on July 10–11, and these emphasized establishing strongpoints for defense rather than preparing for counterattacks.
The Russian situation brightened around dawn. Since Citadel’s beginning, Voronezh Front had been focused on the situation in the Oboyan sector. Vatutin’s decision to shift two tank corps and supporting elements from Prokhorovka to Katukov’s front had been a gamble, contingent on the imminent arrival of reinforcements from Stavka reserve. On July 10, Vasilevsky informed the Fifth Guards Army commander that the Germans might seek to break through at Prokhorovka and he must move quickly. During the night, two of the army’s divisions began forming a second defense line in the Psel-Prokhorovka sector: 95th Guards Rifle on the left, and 9th Guards Airborne directly across Leibstandarte’s projected line of attack. Like their Luftwaffe counterparts, Russian airborne troops were by this stage of the war configured more for ground fighting than for jumping out of planes. But they saw themselves as an elite—doubly so since acquiring Guard status. If any division in the Red Army’s order of battle was likely to give the SS all the fighting they wanted, 9th Guards Airborne was top of the list.
Marshal Vasilevsky visited the headquarters of 2nd Tank Corps shortly after 4:00 A.M on July 11, asked for a situation report, then interrupted to deliver his real message. Hold on at all costs for twenty-four hours. Tomorrow things would improve. Fifth Guards Tank Army would attack in this sector. Hold on!
Leibstandarte’s main thrust was down its sector’s middle. The 2nd Panzer Grenadiers, backed by assault guns and the four Tigers that had done such good work on July 10, would follow the railroad to and over Hill 252.2. Simultaneously, the reconnaissance battalion was to clear the villages along the Psel and link up with Totenkopf’s vanguards. Once the panzer grenadiers had opened the way, the panzer group—fifty-two tanks and the half-track battalion—would go forward to Prokhorovka. This thin offensive gruel reflected and replicated Citadel’s fundamental dilemma. Neither the division north of the corps nor the Fourth Panzer Army had any reserves left. Hausser’s intention was to allow Das Reich to have as much of a down day for rest and refitting as the Russians might allow, in order to exploit Leibstandarte’s expected breakthrough. That meant Leibstandarte had to provide its own flank security. Instead of lending weight to the main attack, a full panzer grenadier regiment was responsible for clearing threatening Russian positions—likely to be a full day’s work in itself. To make matters worse, Leibstandarte had nowhere near enough artillery to neutralize the Soviet batteries. The Luftwaffe again reported the weather too bad to fly. But riflemen were still able to walk. Almost immediately, they were driven to ground by overwhelming fire from the front and both flanks. Adrenaline-fueled Soviet combatants described over two dozen German AFVs disabled or destroyed—including Tigers. Then the sun shone, the ground mist cleared, and the Stukas that had been ready for takeoff since before dawn intervened.
From Citadel’s beginning to its end, successful German attacks depended heavily on the pinpoint-accurate close support delivered in particular by the obsolescent Ju-87s. Absent German air cover gave the ubiquitous Soviet antitank guns increased opportunities for close-range kill shots. Now, as dive-bombers struck and silenced artillery positions, panzer grenadiers pushed toward Hill 252.2, the few Tigers leading as their turret and frontal armor defied nearly continuous shell hits. By 10:00 A.M., the preliminaries were finished: the SS and the Guards Airborne met and grappled.
Vasilevsky’s speech at 2nd Tank Corps headquarters reached the rifle companies in blunter form: “Remember Order 227! Not a step back!” By 10:30, the minefields had been sufficiently cleared for Leibstandarte to commit its panzer group. This was as much a response to desperate Soviet resistance as an attempt to develop a breakthrough. The Luftwaffe cooperated with an eighty-plane strike, but the key defensive positions remained functional, if not entirely intact. It required the commitment of Leibstandarte’s half-track battalion to secure the crest of 252.2 around 1:30 P.M. About the same time, the reconnaissance battalion broke through in the 95th Guards Rifle sector. As the hasty initial deployment of the two Russian divisions began to show strain, the Germans pressed toward the October State Farm. The defenders, a mixed bag of riflemen low on ammunition and gunners firing over open sights, held out for more than two hours as the Germans probed for weak spots. Russian accounts speak of an absence of centralized command, handicapping the direction of supporting artillery fire and the allocation of reinforcements. The Sixty-ninth Army, nominally in charge of the sector, was fighting an even more desperate battle against Breith and spared no time for Prokhorovka. Three things, however, can be discerned. Russian units did erode under pressure; officers were stopping fleeing men at pistol point. Russian casualties nonetheless indicated they fought with grim determination; 2nd Tank Corps’s motorized brigade alone reported six hundred dead, wounded, and missing. And the SS overwhelmingly spoke respectfully of their opponents as soldiers and tankers.
Apart from a few occasional fighters, thus far the Red Air Force had been conspicuous by its absence—particularly in the ground troops’ judgment. Most of Voronezh Front’s available air assets had been sent south against III Panzer Corps, and much of the rest were deployed covering, to good effect, the vulnerable rear zones against German medium bombers. Those dispositions, however, had subtexts. Increasing losses to German fighters combined with the high number of sorties were generating stress-based caution. Voronezh Front’s Second Air Army had replaced some of its hardest-hit formations, including an entire fighter division, and the newcomers needed adjustment time. Voronezh Front also ordered the temporary grounding of its Shturmoviks as a preliminary to Vatutin’s intended offensive. In late afternoon, an emergency Shturmovik strike temporarily held back the Germans around the October State Farm. Around 5:00 P.M., the panzers came again, only to be caught in a series of counterattacks mounted by what remained of the 95th Rifle Division and 2nd Tank Corps. Frontline unit
s spoke of heavy casualties, die-hard resistance from cutoff Russians, and daylong stifling humidity. Prokhorovka remained just out of German reach—about five hundred yards from its outskirts was the best the panzers could manage before securing for the night.
In its daily report, Leibstandarte blamed what it called limited success primarily on Totenkopf and Das Reich. Their failure to keep pace had created a salient badly exposed on both flanks and a strongly defended tactical objective, Prokhorovka, unlikely to be carried by an armored rush. The division command recommended suspending operations in their sector and concentrating all corps assets on bringing Totenkopf forward next morning. That task completed, Leibstandarte and Das Reich could finish off the Russians around Prokhorovka. Hausser phoned Leibstandarte, consulted his own staff, then agreed.
Leibstandarte still hedged its bet slightly, proclaiming its intention of continuing the attack next day—but only “with the strongest Stuka preparation” and only once Totenkopf secured Hill 226.6, thereby establishing solid contact. In mitigation, Totenkopf could have pleaded a long, hard day in the mud. One of its panzer grenadier battalions was holding defensive positions east of the crossing site on the Psel’s south bank. Its initial mission was to secure Totenkopf’s right flank and the bridges, and Totenkopf considered a good offense the best defense—especially since this was the closest unit to Leibstandarte’s open left flank, about two miles distant. Around noon, a battalion of the Totenkopf Theodor Eicke Regiment, whose “honor title” commemorated a former commandant of Dachau, started toward the village of Vasilyevka. By 2:00 P.M., it had most of the burning houses in hand but was driven back by a tank brigade counterattack, in its turn checked at short range by German rocket launchers. Totenkopf committed a tank battalion. Panzers and panzer grenadiers cleared the village of Soviet armor by 2:40 P.M., but Soviet riflemen held on in Vasilyevka’s eastern half: a desolation of mud, smoke, flames, and rubble.
Not until almost 3:00 P.M. did the engineers report the bridges over the Psel ready for use, forcing Totenkopf’s commander to apply his math skills. His tank losses had been light and his mechanics busy; Totenkopf could now muster almost a hundred tanks, ten of them Tigers, and twenty assault guns. Had the last two days gone as planned, they might be deploying on Leibstandarte’s left as muscle to carry the SS into Prokhorovka. As matters stood, the Russians were massing for another attack on Vasilyevka despite the best efforts of Totenkopf’s division artillery. Tanks and trucks were having more problems than ever getting through the mud; fuel and ammunition reserves were limited. Losses for July 11 totaled 450 dead and wounded—most of them in the battalion that had done most of the fighting and that would carry the burden of covering the tanks. True nightfall was about four hours away, and most of that time would be required to move into position for an attack in Leibstandarte’s direction. This meant going forward into the kind of broken terrain that, unless patrolled and cleared, was natural cover for antitank guns. Totenkopf resolved this particular round of scissors-paper-stone by informing Hausser that it would not be able to attack until next morning.
Das Reich spent most of July 11 handing over the southern part of its sector to the 167th Infantry Division, shifting its panzer grenadier regiments to the left to concentrate on the attack on Prokhorovka. One regiment did not begin arriving in its new sector until after noon. By that time, the other regiment had been caught up in a Soviet attack aimed at the Leibstandarte flank it was tasked with screening. The division and corps reports refer to “strong resistance” and heavy counterattacks, with woods and the high ground in front of the advance strongly occupied. All in all, July 11 was not one of Das Reich’s more spectacular days.
If the Germans had fallen short of expectations, the Russians were explaining defeat. The Fifth Guards Army’s commander admitted his people had been surprised. Vatutin, at 7:45 P.M., informed the commanders of the Sixty-ninth Army and 2nd Tank Corps that the German advance was the result of their carelessness and poor preparation, and ordered the lost ground to be retaken immediately. Fifteen minutes earlier Sixty-ninth Army had issued similar orders. At 11:00 P.M., it reported the situation stabilized despite continuous attacks by German air and armor. The unstated subtext was that more could not be expected at that late hour. Certainly the attacks made during the rest of the night by the frontline rifle divisions never came within small-arms range of October State Farm.
From Vatutin’s perspective, a variety of threats remained as the day turned. The Germans were reaching the limits of the front zone’s prepared defensive belts. If they got through Prokhorovka, the next field fortifications were twelve to fifteen miles away, deep in Voronezh Front’s rear. To be sure, the Fifth Guards Tank Army barred that way. But the Germans also had the option—which had concerned Vatutin for three days—of swinging left, across the Psel and toward Oboyan. Rotmistrov’s counterattack was intended to prevent that alternative. But a good share of Rotmistrov’s projected start lines were now in German hands—a fact calling for more improvisation on top of earlier improvisations almost German in their scale, and not calculated to improve the front commander’s peace of mind.
Nor did Stalin remain dormant. Around 7:00 P.M., Vasilevsky turned up at Rotmistrov’s headquarters, unannounced and unexpected. The army commander reported his plans and dispositions. Vasilevsky approved and informed Rotmistrov that the Vozhd had ordered him to coordinate and render all assistance to the Fifth Guards and Fifth Guards Tank Armies. As a start, Vasilevsky proposed taking advantage of the waning daylight to visit the positions that 29th and 18th Tank Corps would occupy for the morning’s attack. As the generals drove along, Rotmistrov indicated the positions into which his tanks would move during the night. Suddenly Vasilevsky ordered the driver to stop and turn off the road. The now clearly audible noise of tank engines gave way to the vehicles themselves. Vasilevsky turned to Rotmistrov and asked why exactly tanks intended to attack by surprise were moving about so close to the front in daylight, under German eyes. Rotmistrov looked through his binoculars and replied that they were German!
Vasilevsky responded that the enemy must have broken through somewhere and was aiming for Prokhorovka. Rotmistrov ordered two of his own tank brigades forward as a gesture, and the two generals returned to Fifth Guards Tank’s HQ. Rotmistrov and his staff promptly revised the details of their tactical plan: artillery support, formation sectors, routes of attack, and everything else. The unexpected, unperceived German gains required recalibration—most of it at the level of brigades and regiments, whose commands and staffs were likely to find improvisation difficult and who were by now fully absorbed in their own detailed preparations. The situation worsened as it became plain that 2nd Tank Corps was too enmeshed on the front line and had suffered too heavy casualties to be a major factor in the next day’s offensive.
With his strike force reduced by a fifth, and constrained to find new start lines by midnight, Rotmistrov was in no position to begin from scratch. The plan was to deploy 2nd Guards, 29th, and 18th Tank Corps in the first line, with 5th Guards Mechanized Corps following to exploit success and react to emergencies. The 2nd Tank Corps would contribute what it could. The attack would go in at 3:00 A.M.: 2nd Guards against Das Reich, the other two corps against Leibstandarte and any of Totenkopf’s units that came in range.
Rotmistrov put his expectations on the initial shock. Five hundred AFVs were going in. Vatutin had combed his rear echelons for a brigade of artillery, five independent rocket and mortar regiments, and a full division of antiaircraft guns. The leading brigades of 29th and 18th Tank Corps were front-loaded with an extra battalion of T-34s. Their light T-70s might be little more than moving targets, but they could at least draw fire and provide distraction. Against the Tigers and their excellent gun sights, against the Stukas and the rocket launchers, across the twelve miles of open ground west and southwest of Prokhorovka, the armor’s best chance was to get as close as possible as quickly as possible—five hundred yards was the generally accepted range for a T-3
4 facing a Tiger. Given the stress and fatigue levels in the tank companies, an advance straight ahead at full speed was probably the most promising in human terms as well. Sophisticated situational awareness would not be at a premium when the alternatives were stark: Kill or die.
Chapter VI
HARD POUNDING
HAUSSER WAS READY TO OBLIGE. His orders for July 12 were straightforward. No more fooling around. This time apply the panzers’ mantra: Klotzen, nicht kleckern (“Stomp, don’t tickle” is an approximate rendering of the German colloquialism). That, however, did not mean a massed frontal attack, three divisions abreast, into the teeth of Russian guns. Hausser intended a sequential operation. Totenkopf’s armored battle group would cross the Psel and push north, then turn east on reaching the Karteschevka–Prokhorovka road, which on the map offered a clear route into the rear of the main Russian position.
Leibstandarte’s 1st SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment with a panzer battalion attached would move out at 4:50 A.M. and establish a left-flank guard. The rest of the division was to capture Hill 252.4, the Stalinsk State Farm, then Prokhorovka—but only once Totenkopf’s attack had destabilized the Russians: no need to risk getting an extended finger broken. Das Reich would in turn drive straight east, take the high ground south of Prokhorovka, and establish positions for extending the attack on July 13. Das Reich’s orders also made it clear that the division was expected to accelerate its pace and keep in touch with its partners regardless of threats to its southern flank.
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