Overall responsibility in the northern sector rested with Central Front’s Konstantin Rokossovsky. Polish born, he had spent three years in the Gulag during the Great Purge. Released in 1940, his lost teeth replaced by the best Soviet metal, he showed his own mettle from Moscow to Stalingrad. Facing off against Manstein, Voronezh Front’s N. F. Vatutin had demonstrated his capacity for high command since the start of the war. A leader from the front, respected by his subordinates and his soldiers, Vatutin was a risk-taker who appreciated staff work: an uncommon but welcome combination in the Red Army.
No less significant was the synergy between the geographic scale of Kursk and the Red Army’s command and control methods and capacities. Since Barbarossa, those had developed in contexts of top-down battle management, reflecting both the Soviet principle that war is a science and the fact that Soviet commanders at all levels were essentially the product of experience. At this stage of the war, and arguably much later, senior Soviet officers resembled their counterparts in the armies of Napoleon: both lost effectiveness when operating independently. Previous German offensives had found no difficulty in getting inside Soviet decision loops, generating increasingly random responses that frequently collapsed into chaos. Kursk’s small scale enabled timely response to German moves as the defense slowed the German pace. It also enabled a level of management absent in previous major battles, cresting in turn a confidence at all levels of headquarters that a culture of competence had replaced a culture of improvisation from desperation.
Those were significant force multipliers, in a situation arguably not needing them. It is a familiar axiom of modern war, expressed mathematically in something called the Lanchester equations, that an offensive requires three-to-one superiority. Soviet doctrine reduced that to 3:2, assuming superior planning, staff work, and fighting power. By the time the preparations for Kursk were complete, the Soviet defenders outnumbered the attackers in every category of men and equipment, in almost every sector. The average ratio was somewhere between 1:1.5 and 1:2.5. On paper the outcome seemed assured. But wars are won in the field, and the panzers had made a habit of defying odds.
Given the respective rates of buildup, it seems reasonable that an attack mounted by the forces available in April or May would have lacked the combat power to overcome the salient’s defenses even in their early stages. The Germans’ only chance was the steel-headed sledgehammer they eventually swung in July. And that highlights the essential paradox of Kursk. The factors that made the battle zone acceptable in operational terms also made it too small to allow for the application of the force multipliers the panzers had spent a decade cultivating. Geographically Kursk offered no opportunity for operational skill and little for tactical virtuosity. Militarily the strength of the defensive system meant the German offensive had to depend on momentum sustained by mass—which is another way to describe a battle of attrition, the one type of combat the German way of war was structured to avoid.
Hitler’s panzers thus faced a second paradox. Not only were they the tip of an inverted strategic pyramid, operationally and tactically they were required to match the Red Army’s strengths at the expense of their own. And once the fighting started, a third paradox developed. One of the tactical advantages initially considered in planning Kursk was that the limited geography would enable the infantry to remain close to the armor and assume responsibility for mopping up. But the Reich’s systemic and increasing shortages of replacements favored giving priority to the panzers—army and SS alike. The advantage was often marginal: Leibstandarte’s ranks were in part refilled by unceremoniously transferred Luftwaffe ground crews. But infantry divisions already chronically understaffed were in the process of being reduced to six battalions instead of the original nine.
The resulting formations were easier to handle. New weapons like the MG 42 enhanced their firepower. But they lacked staying power when pitted against defenses like those of Kursk. As a consequence the panzers were increasingly constrained to use their own resources—tanks as well as panzer grenadiers—to secure the ground they captured at the expense of sustaining offensive momentum.
On the right half of the German pincer, Army Group South deployed Hoth and 4th Panzer Army on its right. With six army panzer divisions and the SS Panzer Corps2, plus an independent regiment including all 200 available Panthers, this was the largest armored force ever previously put under a single commander. Its mission was correspondingly straightforward. Screened on his left by the three panzer divisions of Army Detachment Kempf ’s III Panzer Corps. Hoth was to break through and join forces with Army Group Center’s 9th Army attacking from the north. Model had another six panzer divisions, one of panzer grenadiers, and seven infantry divisions which he proposed to use to open the way for his mobile forces. Sixty miles separated Model and Hoth. It would be the longest distance in the history of Hitler’s panzers.
“It’s time to write the last will and testament!” one SS trooper wrote in his diary while awaiting the order to advance. Across the line Soviet soldiers swapped their own grim jokes—like the one about the tanker who reported almost everyone in his unit had been killed that day. “I’m sorry,” he concluded, “I’ll make sure I burn tomorrow.”
On the evening of July 4 1943, the Germans sent their men the infallible signal: a special ration of schnapps. An Alsatian serving in the SS promptly deserted—and convinced a high-status interrogation team, including a forty-nine-year-old political advisor named Nikita Khrushchev, that the German offensive would be under way before dawn on July 5. Soviet false alarm would be risky. But giving the Germans the advantage of tactical surprise might be fatal. The Red Army acted. In Model’s sector a massive Soviet bombardment preempted the German barrage, which only opened an hour later. It was the start of a very long day for the German infantry, which took heavy losses against a nightmarish maze of trenches and strong points. The panzers made better local progress—up to five miles—thanks in good part to the Tigers. Ninth Army was nevertheless a long way from a breakthrough by nightfall.
Hoth and Kempf led with their tanks but had little better fortune. Hoth’s XLVIII Panzer Corps included the Panther regiment, of which great things were expected. Instead it ran into a minefield, losing almost half the tanks to mines and mud, breakdowns, and inexperienced crews. At day’s end the corps had done about a mile better than Model but remained a long way away from a breakthrough, much less a linkup.
When the Waffen SS crossed their start lines around 4 AM, they advanced in a modified version of the long-standard wedge. This time the Tigers were the point, with the AFVs on each side and the infantry, in half-tracks or on foot, in the middle: trucks were suicidal in these close quarters. The prewar idea of the wedge had been to throw antitank gunners off balance and off target. Here the Russians kept their heads and kept the Tigers under fire. As the mastodons shrugged off hit after hit, the panzer grenadiers, directly supported by tanks and assault guns, closed in under cover of waves of Stukas and ground-attack aircraft. The panzers took out machine-gun and antitank positions; the infantry cleared trenches with grenades and flamethrowers. In the close-quarters fighting, mercy was rarely asked or given. Leibstandarte counted only a little over a hundred prisoners for the day, most of those accidental.
By evening elements of the SS Panzers were as far as 15 miles into the Soviet defenses. They continued their drive the next day as a worried Soviet command shifted sector reserves, including an entire tank army, into their path. Here again the few available Tigers were decisive, picking off opposing T-34s at long range, shifting position to evade return fire, then finding new targets. By noon the panzer grenadiers had fought their way into the defenses sufficiently for tank and half-track battle groups to begin pushing forward against T-34s dug in to their turrets, pillbox fashion. This was Vatutin’s idea, and Zukhov flew into a rage at what he called a senseless waste of armor. But Vatutin understood that his main task was to tie up the Germans until the strategic reserve could intervene. Even a Tiger engagi
ng a dug-in tank from the front was vulnerable to others on its flanks, and the Red Army still had enough mobile tanks to mount counterattack after local counterattack.
Forty-eighth Panzer Corps and Kempf’s divisions slowly closed up on the SS flanks despite having to weaken their spearheads by detaching ever more armored units for flank security; Soviet tank losses correspondingly mounted. By July 13, Army Group South would account for the defeat of over 1,200 tanks at a cost of only a hundred of its own AFVs. The ratio was a tribute to the German tank gunners and to the panzer grenadiers who, especially in the SS sector, accounted for a good share of the kills. No less did it reflect the high quality of German frontline maintenance and the high morale of crews willing to take their field-repaired vehicles back into combat. “We no longer flinched when a steel hand knocked,” recorded one SS tanker. “Instead we wiped away paint flakes, loaded, aimed, fired.” Easily written, and not so easily done, as British and US crews in similar circumstances would later affirm.
Fourth Panzer Army continued its advance through July 8—no spectacular breakthroughs, but relentless and remorseless enough that the Soviets were giving ground steadily. The heavy armor and long-range guns of the Tigers and the constant hammering from the air were taking human toll as well. More and more prisoners were shuffling rearward under token guard. Tank crews were abandoning their vehicles under Tiger guns. An entire tank corps was smashed when caught in the open by a flight of Henschel 129s: fifty T-34s were destroyed in an hour. Stavka responded by summoning reinforcements. Pavel Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army was to move his whole force 120 miles and be ready for action by July 9—around the village of Prokhorovka.
The German nickname for an officer like Hermann Hoth is alter Hase—“old hare.” Unlike the English “old fox,” who outwits danger, the hare stays alive by anticipating it. Well aware of the strong Soviet reserves in rear of the salient, Hoth was convinced from the beginning that they posed too great a risk to his right flank to ignore, or to trust to Kempf. He proposed to respond by having the SS swing northeast and draw the Soviets onto their guns on the high ground around the village of Prokhorovka. Once the threat was suppressed, 4th Panzer Army would resume its original axis of advance. A series of map exercises developed the concept; a series of discussions with Manstein convinced the Field Marshal to accept it. On July 9 Hoth pulled the trigger and set the stage for a legendary clash of armor.
His decision reflected in part Model’s failure to match 4th Panzer Army’s progress. The Russians had expected the main German effort in Central Front’s sector. Rokossovsky had a two-to-one superiority over Model in artillery. He could call on an entire air army for support. And he was a battle captain. Part fireman, part chess player, he juggled and shifted his reserves to keep abreast of the attackers. German panzer wedges were blunted by the synergy of sophisticated defenses and T-34s employed in numbers too great for even the Tigers to suppress. On this front as well the Soviets had enough tanks to dig in large numbers of them as pillboxes. Panzers fell prey to everything from Sturmoviks to antitank rifles and Molotov cocktails. A dozen Tigers fell to antitank mines in a single day—repairable to be sure, but nevertheless out of action when badly needed.
Unable to develop a weak spot, Model decided to create one. He tried three times, first at the high ground around the village of Olkhovatka, then at the village of Ponyi on the Orel-Kursk railroad, then again at Olkhovatka. No one ever suggested Walther Model possessed more tactical sophistication than he needed. When a hammer failed, he sent for a bigger hammer. Olkhovatka earned the dubious sobriquets of “second Verdun” and “second Stalingrad.” Ponyi became a “second Douaumont.” As tank losses mounted 9th Army’s war diary spoke of a “rolling battle of material attrition.” Infantry casualties were no less massive. And the Olkhovatka ridge still held out.
On July 10 Model broke off the attack, but he by no means accepted defeat. Most of the armor losses were temporary, with only a total of 63 write-offs by the 11th. Army Group Center was sending him two more panzer divisions. Model now proposed a relatively indirect approach flanking Olkhovatka from the right. The new attack was set for July 11. The same day the Red Army swung its own hammer.
The plans of the Soviet high command balanced the defensive at Kursk with a series of offensives. One was against the Orel salient in Army Group Center’s sector: the other half of the monad formed by Kursk, and just as vulnerable geographically. It was authorized to begin when the German attack was stopped. On July 11 the first probes were launched. On the 12th large-scale attacks struck the salient’s north flank and apex. The Germans had been preparing defenses for months, but the force and timing of the onslaught came as a surprise—a tribute to Soviet deception operations and another failure on the part of the German intelligence service. The blow fell on the by now ironically named 2nd Panzer Army. It consisted of 14 infantry divisions, with a single panzer division in reserve. Within hours Model was ordered to send four of his panzer divisions north, effectively ending any serious prospects of a serious offensive in his sector.
The southern half of Citadel was still functional. What was intended as pincers might become a hammer-and-anvil operation—if 4th Panzer Army could clear its front. That burden rested squarely on the Waffen SS. Its orders established three missions: break the Soviets to their immediate front, draw along with them the army panzers on their left, and open an alternate route to Kursk. Any one was a tall order. Hoth was not likely to admit it, even to himself, but Hausser’s men were arguably better suited than the army formations—in terms of ideology, experience, and leadership—for the kind of head-down head-butting that lay ahead. And in another context they might well be considered expendable: party troops in what was at the sharp end still an army war.
Manstein underwrote Hoth by ordering Kempf’s III Panzer Corps to strike Prokhorovka on the right flank of the SS. He also released two panzer divisions from army reserve to develop any success. Hausser spent a day repairing damaged tanks and moving the Skulls from their assignment of covering the corps right flank to a key assault role on the left. That latter was an overlooked successful exercise in traffic control that said a lot about the high level of the corps’s staff work and administrative efficiency. Totenkopf responded by forcing two bridgeheads over the flooded Psel River on the tenth. By noon the next day the pioneers had finished a bridge strong enough to carry Tigers.
Totenkopf was in position to either swing left and support the army’s panzers or swing right to help its sister divisions. The latter were taking longer than necessary with their advances against opposition that by now included an airborne division. Between them, Leibstandarte and Das Reich, again benefiting from pinpoint support by Luftwaffe Stukas, were able to crack the final defenses in front of Prokhorovka in a series of massive frontal attacks. No less seriously from a Soviet perspective, most of the positions selected for Rotmistrov’s counterattack were lost. Planning had to begin again from scratch, and on-the-fly improvisation was never a Red Army strong point.
Rotmistrov’s attack was only part of a major offensive inside the salient, the whole intended to coordinate with the attack on Army Group Center. On July 12, 1st Tank Army, with another five armored and mechanized corps, was scheduled to envelop and break through XLVIII Panzer Corps into the German rear and join Rotmistrov’s spearheads around Prokhorovka in a Soviet Cannae, an armored version of Stalingrad.
Attacking into these preparations, XLVIII Panzer Corps made no significant progress. Its tank crews were tired enough to make expensive tactical mistakes. The panzer grenadiers had taken heavy casualties, especially among officers and NCOs. It was easier to repair tanks than replace men, and the past week had taught caution to the boldest.
Kempf’s III Panzer Corps, in contrast, finally eroded its opposition and broke out into open country. Lieutenant General Hermann Breith understood his craft, and two of his divisions, 6th and 7th Panzer, counted among the Wehrmacht’s best. By nightfall the corps was well on its way to
Prokhorovka. But the distance to be covered and the resistance to be expected were sufficient to make counting on its appearance the next day a risky proposition.
Hausser counted on no one but his own soldiers. Maintenance crews worked through the night to put over 300 tanks and assault guns on line, including 16 Tigers. Hausser’s orders were as sophisticated as a kick to the groin: Leibstandarte straight ahead into Prokhorovka, with Totenkopf and Das Reich running interference on its flanks. Rotmistrov responded by placing three tank corps in his first line and a mechanized corps in reserve: over 800 AFVs, around 500 of them T-34s. By now it was clear at all levels that engaging the Germans at long range was playing with the other man’s deck. “Close in” was the mantra. Get to within 1,500 feet at least, and then try to shorten the range further.
The German attack went in at 6:30 AM, July 12. The Soviets jumped off at about the same time. Rotmistrov left a colorful firsthand account of a close-quarters death grapple: tanks engaging at gun-barrel length, hulls exploding, turrets being flung randomly around the battlefield, and tanks burning like torches. He told of the difficulty of determining who was defending and who was attacking. His description set the tone for the reconstruction of a fight costing the Germans as many as 400 tanks, including dozens of Tigers, epitomizing the coming of age of Soviet armor and marking the beginning of the road to Berlin’s Reichstag. Prokhorovka is commonly described as the greatest armored battle in history, the most important victory of the war, the graveyard of Hitler’s panzers.
Prokhorovka’s reality was a good bit less spectacular. Rotmistrov’s attack went in as he described it, wave after wave at high speed. But initially it faced not a similar mass, but two companies, most of whose crews had been in an exhausted sleep as late as 5:30. It seemed a long-standing panzermann’s nightmare come true: a steel avalanche impossible to stop by courage or skill. The Tigers opened fire at 1,800 yards, their optical sights enhancing the skill of their gunners. As the range closed, the Panzer IVs joined in. A good crew could deliver four or five rounds a minute, and the SS were very good. More and more Soviet tanks slewed aside, burst into flame, and exploded, strewing chunks of armor plate and whole turrets across the killing zone. Then, unexpectedly, the leading T-34s drove headlong into one of their own well- camouflaged antitank ditches. Fifteen feet deep, it upended tanks like they were children’s toys. Across a three-mile sector the charge eroded into a maelstrom of small-scale combats. The Germans gave ground and counterattacked, and by the time the seesaw fighting ended in mutual exhaustion around mid-afternoon, who held the initiative in that sector was a matter of opinion and optimism.
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