Armor and Blood

by Dennis E. Showalter

  Army Detachment Kempf had been informed that it could expect help from SS Wiking Division—eventually. Until then, Breith was on his own. The III Panzer Corps attacked north-northwest in the early morning of July 14 with 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions, and 19th Panzer to secure the left, or western, flank. Linking up with the SS was part of the corps’s objective, but the wider intention, as outlined in Operation Roland, was to create and seal a pocket, disrupting or trapping the Soviet forces south of Prokhorovka, then to relieve the SS so they could cooperate with XLVIII Panzer Corps in attacking toward Oboyan. The 6th Panzer Division, on the corps’s right, would block any Soviet advance around Alexandrovka, capture the town, then continue attacking northwest with an armor-heavy battle group. Depending on the circumstances, 7th Panzer, in the center, was to either support the 6th or drive for Prokhorovka independently while 6th Panzer covered its right. The 19th Panzer, badly worn from the previous days’ fighting, would hold the bridgehead and follow up any Russian retreat northward.

  A clear indication of Breith’s intended Schwerpunkt was his order that all of the corps’s effective Tigers would be assigned to 6th Panzer. That amounted to a single company from 503rd Panzer Battalion: eight Tigers, repeatedly battered, repeatedly repaired, shedding parts, but able to lead out one more time. The ubiquitous pioneers cleared minefields. The panzer grenadiers discovered paths the Russians had overlooked. And what remained of the division’s organic tanks, a composite battalion of twenty or so Mark IIIs and IVs, waited for a chance to break out.

  That opportunity was long in coming. Alexandrovka’s forward positions fell to the tanks’ cannon and machine guns as the Tigers crushed riflemen under their treads and T-34s exploded. But then the tank-to-tank fighting grew closer and the work grew harder. One Russian report described a German tank somehow opening radio contact across the battle line to lure the T-34 that responded into an ambush. As pioneers and riflemen improvised paths across the second defensive line’s antitank ditch, the panzers engaged the guns covering it. A Russian gunner described the consequences of a missed shot: “We … saw the turret traverse toward us. The next thing I remember was lying on my back—I went back to find … just scraps of uniform and a gory mess.”

  It was evening before Breith’s headquarters received definitive word of Alexandrovka’s capture. By then, losses in men and tanks had been so heavy that the best that could be done was to set up a defensive perimeter and regroup. Across its sector, 6th Panzer had gained ground and taken a locally impressive toll of tanks, antitank guns, and artillery pieces. But 6th Panzer was still a long way from Prokhorovka—or indeed any other operationally useful objective. The 19th Panzer, reinforced by a panzer grenadier battalion from the 6th and a battalion of 88s, had also had a good day checking Russian infantry assaults. But these successes as well were on the wrong side of Operation Roland’s ambitions and intentions.

  In its men’s perspective, III Panzer Corps might be advancing slowly, almost yard by yard and certainly a far cry from a blitz. The corps and division commanders facing it, however, had been fighting Germans long enough to be well aware of the tactical risks of one of their rapierlike breakthroughs. Vasilevsky’s report to Stalin that the Fifth Guards Tank Army’s units in the sector were “behaving splendidly” was less complimentary about the riflemen. Early on July 15, Vatutin responded to what seemed a destabilizing situation by making Rotmistrov and the Sixty-ninth Army’s commander personally responsible (Red Army code for execution as a possible price of failure) for counterattacking immediately. The order came a day too late. Sixty-ninth Army had already authorized withdrawal to a new defensive line. Trufanov, screening the operation by well-timed, small-scale counterattacks, managed one of the Red Army’s smoother retrograde movements. By dawn of July 15, most of the threatened troops had reached their own lines.

  Whether the Russians were ever actually surrounded remains debatable. But Zhukov too had given orders: In the context of the major offensive under way in the Orel sector and the one planned for the Donets and Mius Rivers in the south, local withdrawal in the face of encirclement was acceptable. Arguably of more consequence, and certainly suggestive in any case, was the failure of III Panzer Corps to comprehend that the Russians in front of them were retreating rather than shifting to new entrenchments and new ambush sites, as had been the case since Citadel began.

  Das Reich’s panzer grenadiers had attacked at 4:00 A.M. on July 14, aiming first for the Pravorot road and then toward Prokhorovka and a junction with III Panzer Corps. Instead, they ran into elements of Trufanov’s battle group from Fifth Guards Tank Army. For the rest of the day, Germans and Russians slugged it out at gun-barrel range and from house to house. Stukas of VIII Air Corps again were crucial in preparing the grenadiers’ way to, through, and beyond the strongly defended village of Belenikhino. During the night, Das Reich’s workshops had restored the panzer regiment to about a hundred tanks. But even this relatively impressive armored force was stopped by massed antitank guns when it attempted a breakout. Only with the close support of their own artillery and rocket launchers, and at a much more measured pace, did the tanks reach the next village, Ivanovka. By then it was 5:15 P.M. Heavy clouds to the east had prefigured rain most of the afternoon, and the skies opened around 7:00 P.M. It was already growing dark. The torrential rain eroded visibility to the vanishing point. Roads and fields—it was increasingly difficult to perceive much difference—turned to thick mud that bogged tanks, half-tracks, and wheeled vehicles alike. The advance skidded to a halt well short of the Pravorot road and even farther from Breith’s divisions.

  The closest III Panzer Corps came to a linkup with the SS on July 14 was when elements of the 7th Panzer Division, in a reprise of the glory days of the French campaign in 1940, reached a dot on the map called Malo Jablonovo before they too bogged down for the night. Around 6:00 A.M. on July 15, they established radio contact with Das Reich. Das Reich’s efforts to strengthen the connection were frustrated by mud so formidable that around noon the division’s artillery reported that moving its guns forward was impossible. Fuel and ammunition supplies were mired even farther back. Luftwaffe assets had been shifted north to the Orel sector and diverted to strike Soviet forces building up a hundred miles eastward, across the Donets. During the day, Das Reich and 7th Panzer reinforced their contact. But the pocket that junction might once have sealed was now empty of anything but abandoned entrenchments, tanks, and guns, plus a few stragglers.

  The fragile, now pointless linkup bothered Manstein less than it might—and probably should—have. In the course of the day, the commander of Army Group South had further refined and reconceptualized his proposed battle. Totenkopf’s stand in the Psel bridgehead, plus the successful, albeit limited, advances of III Panzer Corps and Das Reich, combined to support Manstein’s growing belief that the massive counterattack that occasioned the initial eastward turn of the SS panzers had been defeated. That provided an opportunity, he later explained to Hoth, to strike and destroy the Soviet forces south and west of the Psel. Totenkopf would hold the bridgehead, no longer as a springboard for an advance farther eastward, but as a flank guard and pivot point. The combined strength of the Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf would roll the Soviets up from east to west across the front of XLVIII Panzer Corps and drive them into the rear areas of the Russians facing LII Corps on the army group’s far left. The XXIV Panzer Corps, which had begun assembling in the region of Kharkov on July 12, could be committed with two days’ notice. At the moment, its constantly fluctuating order of battle included only two divisions. But Wiking and 23rd Panzer had more than a hundred AFVs between them and ought to be able to provide any additional muscle needed to exploit the resulting confusion.

  On the evening of July 15, Manstein met with Hoth and Kempf at Kempf’s headquarters. He informed them of the orders he had received from Hitler and of his plans for implementing their intention, if not their letter. Translated into movement orders, essentially Das Reich was to take o
ver 11th Panzer’s northern-facing sector, while Leibstandarte redeployed behind XLVIII Panzer Corps’s line as a tactical reserve. The 7th Panzer would move from III Panzer Corps to Knobelsdorff’s corps as further reinforcement of the projected attack. Totenkopf would hold its position; Army Detachment Kempf, temporarily under Hoth’s command, would guide north on Totenkopf. And 11th Panzer Division would replace Leibstandarte on the eastern flank, essentially as a reserve for that sector.

  Two plausibilities lay behind Manstein’s immediate plan. The “optimistic” one is the judgment that the Russian reserves were sufficiently exhausted that one more hard blow might be just enough to start the Russians down defeat’s slippery slope. The “pessimistic” interpretation suggests Manstein was sufficiently worried about the situation on Model’s front, and sufficiently aware of the powerful Soviet forces massing to the east and southeast, that he perceived the necessity of creating space and force for the mobile, flexible defense that was his great talent as a commander. That in turn was best achieved by giving the Russians as bloody a nose as possible in the shortest possible time, then breaking contact and withdrawing southwest.

  The credibility of both, however, is called into question by the orders for redeployment presented above. The terrain across which Manstein’s divisions were expected to move, difficult to begin with, had been turned to an obstacle course by shell fire, tank treads, aerial bombs, and rain. The near exhaustion of the combat formations repeatedly highlighted above was replicated in the service echelons—and not least in the higher headquarters. Nothing in the behavior of Rotmistrov and Vatutin suggests either would have been indifferent to such large-scale troop shuffling. Finally, the Russian reserves in the Kursk sector, the tactical skill displayed by the Russian commanders, and the fighting power demonstrated by the Russian troops meant XXIV Panzer Corps was unlikely to revitalize Manstein’s offensive—even had Hitler allowed its commitment.

  As much to the point, Voronezh Front’s command was already leaning forward, thinking ahead to its role in Stavka’s planned offensive on the Belgorod–Kharkov axis. Operation Rumyantsev, named for a heroic commander in the eighteenth-century Russo-Turkish wars, was aimed at destroying not only the Fourth Panzer Army but the other main components of Manstein’s army group, the Sixth Army and First Panzer Army. Its final geographic objective was the Black Sea, more than 120 miles away. Even in the initial stages, an operation of that scope was unlikely to encourage a narrow focus.

  A final indication of the limited prospects for Manstein’s projected revision of Citadel came in the sector of XLVIII Panzer Corps. At 5:30 A.M. on July 15, 3rd Panzer Division went forward once more into the Tolstoye Forest. Rain, mud, and caution held it back as the Russians in its path slowly withdrew. Grossdeutschland in the center had a similar initial experience, then encountered resistance sufficient to hold it in place for most of the afternoon. The 11th Panzer was barely able to maintain its positions in the face of repeated Russian attacks. By day’s end, the Russians had been forced back to more or less their original start lines of July 12. But all three of Knobelsdorff’s divisions were worn dangerously thin by ten days of constant head-down combat. Russian fighting power, on the other hand, seemed undiminished. The mood at Knobelsdorff’s headquarters was somber, with overt recriminations showing up even in official documents. Far from further attack in any direction, the corps would be doing well to stay where it was.

  Manstein’s variant shifted definitively to Citadel’s file of might-have-beens on July 16. That day, Leibstandarte and Das Reich were ordered to establish “main battle lines” where they stood—in other words, shift to the defensive. This was in the context of Manstein’s plans for Operation Roland, and the corps staff was implementing detailed preparations for the next set of troop movements when word came through by teletype from Army Group South: “The Führer has ordered the immediate withdrawal of the SS Panzer Corps and its earliest possible concentration west of Belgorod.” At 7:30 P.M., the Fourth Panzer Army ordered the destruction of all war material remaining on the battlefield.

  Citadel’s last avatar was off the table. But Hitler’s decision to revoke his earlier authorization to Manstein to continue attacking was anything but spontaneous. Stalin and Stavka were anxious to begin the projected southern offensive as soon as possible. Zhukov did not exactly counsel caution, but he did insist both Voronezh and Steppe Fronts would require a few days of recovery and regrouping before they could play their assigned parts. That meant taking extra pains to attract German attention elsewhere. On July 17, the Southwestern Front struck the First Panzer Army and the Southern Front attacked the Sixth Army along the Mius River. Neither were feint attacks or diversions, in the sense the Germans understood the term. These were full-scale operations, spearheaded by Guards rifle armies and tank and mechanized corps, backed by air, armor, and artillery assets their overextended opponents could not come near countering.

  Hitler and the Army High Command, without fully comprehending the grand Soviet plan of a series of sequential offensives across the entire Eastern Front—another spectacular failure of German intelligence—finally recognized the obvious. The Orel offensive was not a local, one-off enterprise to disrupt Citadel. No structure and no plan could survive a continuous series of the kinds of emergencies the Red Army was now capable of creating. Citadel had been an attempt to regain the initiative. Now not only was Citadel im Eimer (“in the bucket”), but the whole southern sector was at risk. The first, obvious response was to commit XXIV Panzer Corps as a fire brigade. The second was to take a long, hard look at the Orel sector. Hitler had accompanied the original July 13 cancellation of Citadel with orders to Model to restore the original line. This command proved out of touch with reality as the Central Front began applying pressure on Model’s right flank and Bagramyan reinforced his attack on the left with a fresh tank corps. The already worn-down divisions Model committed against this drive melted away to a point where Model relieved a panzer division commander for refusing to make a counterattack he considered suicidal. All that remained in some sectors were elements of rear-echelon security divisions, better suited to executing Russian civilians than destroying Russian T-34s.

  That the German front in the Orel salient held more or less together reflected in good part Model’s disregard of Hitler’s order that no secondary defensive positions be established. Even before Kursk, Model had initiated the preparation of a series of phase lines that by the time of Kutuzov were more than map tracings. Model handled his sparse reserves with cold-blooded skill, committing them by batteries and battalions in just enough force to blunt and delay Soviet attacks. The decisive tool in his hand, however, was the Luftwaffe.

  The 1st Air Division mounted over eleven hundred sorties on July 18 alone, almost half by Stukas and ground-attack planes. The next day, Bagramyan’s lead tanks emerged from the forest and the Germans struck at dawn. The Stukas, Henschels, and Fw 190s bored in at altitudes so low that one Hs 129 pilot flew his plane into the tank he was attacking. By this time, experience and rumor had taught the Russian tankers all they wished to know about German attack planes. Some crews undertook random evasive maneuvers, scattering in all directions. Others simply abandoned their vehicles. The 1st Air Division claimed 135 kills on July 19 alone. Soviet records admit that by July 20, 1st Tank Corps had only thirty-three tanks left. The pilots credited themselves with preventing a “second Stalingrad.” Model, never an easy man to impress, wired congratulations for the first successful halting of a tank offensive from the air alone.

  On July 19, Bryansk Front threw the Third Guards Tank Army into the attack. Over seven hundred AFVs, supported by the full strength of the Fifteenth Air Army, advanced almost eight miles by nightfall and kept hammering. Despite Stalin’s direct “encouragement,” what was projected as a breakthrough became a battle of attrition. Model used his aircraft to compensate for steadily eroding ground strength. Luftwaffe medium bombers were flying as many as five sorties a day, and 88 mm flak guns pressed in
to antitank service claimed more than two hundred tank kills. Russian and German fighters grappled for control of the air, with one Soviet report describing a pilot landing near a downed Me-109 and capturing the pilot himself. What counted was that as 1st Air Division’s planes were ruthlessly shifted and ruthlessly committed, pilot judgment diminished and aircrew losses increased. A disproportionate number of them were among the veteran flight and squadron leaders, correspondingly irreplaceable at short notice.

  V

  As early as July 16, again strictly against orders, Model had begun work on a fallback position along the Desna River at the salient’s base. On July 20, Hitler forbade any further retreat by Army Group Center. Model requested Kluge to change the Führer’s mind. The current position was untenable. The storm emerging in Manstein’s sector meant the redeployment of the indispensable air assets sooner rather than later. Germany’s strategic and political position in the Mediterranean was steadily eroding. As the Allies advanced through Sicily, Mussolini’s hold on reality and power grew increasingly tenuous, and Hitler met with him on July 19 for a final, very one-sided discussion. On July 23, Mussolini was deposed and arrested. By then, there were sixteen German divisions in Italy. Were they there to defend the country, to occupy it, or both? What was certain was that in neither case would they be available for the Eastern Front. It is easy, moreover, for British and American scholars, with their deep roots in cultures of sea power, to overlook the influence on the Germans of Allied naval supremacy—no longer even superiority—and what seemed an accompanying, nearly mystical power to strike when and where they would at a time of their choosing. Operationally as well as strategically, the Reich seemed suddenly caught between enemies able to behave similarly: one on sea, the other on land.