The Battle of Kursk begins

On 5 July 1943, just after dawn, German divisions struck from two sides at the great Soviet salient around Kursk. From the north, near Oryol, Colonel General Walter Model’s Ninth Army of Army Group Centre attacked. From the south, near Belgorod, Colonel General Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group South moved off. The two strike groups were to meet east of Kursk, cut off five Soviet armies and destroy them in a pocket. The operation bore the code name Citadel (German Zitadelle).

It was the last great German strategic offensive on the Eastern Front. For it the Wehrmacht assembled some 780,000 men in four armies and more than 2,300 tanks and assault guns in the attacking armies, including the new Panthers, Tigers and Ferdinand tank destroyers. This time, however, the enemy knew where and roughly when the blow would fall, and had spent three months preparing to receive it. 5 July itself opens the Battle of Kursk, which Soviet and Russian historiography counts as lasting until 23 August: it takes in the German Citadel and the Soviet counter-offensives near Oryol and Belgorod that followed.

The Kursk salient

The salient took shape at the turn of winter and spring 1943. After the defeat at Stalingrad the Red Army had pushed far to the west, but in March Manstein’s counter-offensive shattered its forward armies, and an SS panzer corps recaptured Kharkiv and Belgorod. North of Belgorod, however, the Soviet positions did not give way. When the spring thaw halted the fighting, the front formed a bulge around Kursk some 200 kilometres wide and 150 kilometres deep. To the north it bordered the German Oryol salient, and to the south the Belgorod–Kharkiv salient, both left over from the Third Battle of Kharkov.

On the map the salient looked like an invitation to a pincer movement. The idea of striking at its base came from Manstein, who at first wanted to attack immediately after the thaw, before the Russians could dig in. Had it been up to him alone, he would in fact have preferred a mobile defence: giving up ground, letting the Red Army attack and then smashing it with counter-attacks into its flank, as in March. Hitler, however, wanted a victory that would show Germany’s allies – Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland – that Germany could still attack. He was also counting on hundreds of thousands of prisoners for forced labour in the armaments industry. On 15 April 1943 he signed Operations Order No. 6, in which he wrote that victory at Kursk must act on the world “like a beacon” (wie ein Fanal).

Two and a half months of delay

Citadel was originally to begin in early May. Nothing came of that date. Model, who was to break through the northern face of the salient, reported that his army would not be ready to deploy in time, and aerial photographs showed ever deeper Soviet fortifications. At a conference in Munich at the beginning of May, Model argued that a breakthrough could not succeed with the forces available, and that the Panzer IV tanks would not stand up to new Soviet anti-tank weapons. Manstein and Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Centre, wanted to attack as soon as possible, while Heinz Guderian, Inspector General of Armoured Troops since March, and the Armaments Minister, Albert Speer, advised against any offensive that would use up the panzer divisions being so laboriously rebuilt. Guderian recalled that on 10 May he asked Hitler why attack in the east at all, and was told that whenever the Führer thought of the operation his stomach turned over.

Hitler did not call the operation off; he only postponed it – first to mid-June, then further. He was waiting for new weapons, above all the Panther medium tank, but also for more heavy Tigers and for 90 Ferdinands, heavy tank destroyers designed by Ferdinand Porsche. The Panthers had engine and transmission problems, and the factories delivered them late; two battalions with almost 200 Panthers reached the front only on 30 June and 1 July, with no time to reconnoitre the ground or train the crews together. On 18 June the OKW operations staff proposed abandoning Citadel and holding the reserves back in case of an Allied invasion of Italy or the Balkans. Hitler rejected the proposal, and on 1 July, at a commanders’ conference at the Wolf’s Lair, he fixed the final date: 5 July.

Every week of delay worked in the enemy’s favour. When the offensive finally began, the Red Army had three months of digging behind it, and fresh tank armies stood in its reserve.

The Russians knew

For the first time in the war the Soviet side had a good grasp of the enemy’s intentions long before the attack. The direction of the blow was obvious from the map itself, but intelligence sources confirmed it too. Information about the planned offensive was passed on from Switzerland by Rudolf Roessler’s “Lucy” ring, whose sources in Germany have never been identified. According to intelligence historians, German signals decrypted at Bletchley Park were also important: the British officially passed warnings to Moscow in disguised form, while John Cairncross, a Soviet agent working at Bletchley Park, handed over raw decrypts, including data on German airfields. Historians differ on how much each of these sources contributed.

On 8 April Georgy Zhukov, the Deputy Supreme Commander, wrote to Stalin that a pre-emptive strike would be a mistake: it would be better to meet the German attack in prepared defences, bleed the panzer divisions white and then go over to the counter-offensive with fresh reserves. The Chief of the General Staff, Aleksandr Vasilevsky, took a similar view. Stalin, who was himself inclined to attack and was encouraged in this by the commander of the Voronezh Front, General of the Army Nikolai Vatutin, finally accepted the defensive plan – although throughout May and June, while the Germans delayed, he wavered over whether to strike first.

Defence in depth

The northern part of the salient was defended by General of the Army Konstantin Rokossovsky’s Central Front, the southern part by Vatutin’s Voronezh Front. Behind them, east of the salient, the Stavka placed a huge strategic reserve: Colonel General Ivan Konev’s Steppe Military District, renamed the Steppe Front on 9 July, with several combined-arms armies and the 5th Guards Tank Army. Zhukov, as Stavka representative, coordinated operations in the north, and Vasilevsky in the south.

In the spring and summer of 1943 soldiers and the mobilised local population turned the salient into a system of defensive belts more than 100 kilometres deep, or as much as 300 counting the reserve positions. The Central and Voronezh Fronts together dug more than 9,000 kilometres of fire and communication trenches. According to Soviet figures, sappers laid some 500,000 anti-tank and more than 400,000 anti-personnel mines, at a density several times greater than at Moscow in 1941. Anti-tank guns were grouped into strongpoints in which several batteries could fire at a single target simultaneously. The infantry were trained to let tanks pass over their trenches and to cut the German infantry off from them. Not counting the Steppe District’s reserves, some 1.3 million soldiers, about 3,600 tanks, 20,000 guns and mortars and more than 2,700 aircraft were concentrated in the salient itself.

It was a defence prepared precisely against what the Germans did best: a breakthrough with an armoured wedge followed by a rapid drive into the rear.

The night of 4–5 July

The fighting actually began a day earlier. On the afternoon of 4 July units of the Großdeutschland Panzergrenadier Division and the 3rd and 11th Panzer Divisions attacked Soviet outposts on the southern face of the salient to seize hills for artillery observation posts, and by midnight they had taken the villages of Butovo and Gertsovka. That same night SS engineers cleared lanes through the minefields in no man’s land. At about 10.30 p.m. the Voronezh Front’s artillery opened fire on the German assembly areas.

In the north, a German engineer captured during the night said under interrogation that the attack would begin at around three in the morning. At about 2 a.m. on 5 July, with Zhukov’s approval, the Central Front’s artillery began a so-called counter-preparation – a massive bombardment of the areas where German units and batteries were presumed to be. The results were smaller than hoped: much of the fire fell on empty fields, but it delayed the German attack by about two hours and warned the Germans that there would be no surprise. Just after dawn the Soviet air force tried to destroy the Luftwaffe on its airfields around Belgorod and Kharkiv. German radar detected the incoming aircraft and the fighters took off in time; according to the tallies of German and Western historians, the Soviet air force lost 176 aircraft that day and the Luftwaffe 26.

The north: Model at Ponyri and Olkhovatka

At 5.30 a.m., after an artillery preparation, the Ninth Army’s infantry moved off. Model, true to his caution, did not commit his panzer divisions at the outset: the first echelon consisted of nine infantry divisions and one panzer division, supported by assault guns, the Tigers of the 505th Heavy Tank Battalion and the Ferdinands. The tanks were to go in only once a gap had been opened. The main blow fell on Lieutenant General Nikolai Pukhov’s 13th Army, along the Oryol–Kursk railway.

The minefields proved deadly for the new equipment too. Of the 45 Ferdinands of one battalion, all but 12 had been immobilised on mines by evening, although most were later repaired. The Ferdinands had no machine gun for defence against infantry, and Soviet soldiers crept up to them with explosive charges and petrol bombs. On the first day the Germans drove 6–8 kilometres into the 13th Army’s defences and reached the second defensive belt at the settlement of Ponyri on the railway. According to Ninth Army reports, this cost them almost 1,300 killed and missing and more than 5,900 wounded.

On 6 July Rokossovsky threw the 2nd Tank Army and guards corps into a counter-attack, but the coordinated attack failed: it was chiefly the 16th Tank Corps that went into action, and it lost several dozen tanks to the Tigers. Rokossovsky therefore ordered tanks to be dug in as fixed firing points. From 7 to 10 July Model hammered at two points: at Ponyri, where the station, the school and the water tower changed hands again and again and the soldiers called the fighting a “little Stalingrad”, and at the hills near Olkhovatka, from which the whole approach as far as Kursk could be seen. The attack frontage narrowed day by day. By 10 July the Ninth Army had advanced 10–12 kilometres and had become stuck on the third belt. Model kept his last panzer divisions in reserve, because his rear in the Oryol salient was threatened by a Soviet offensive.

The south: Hoth on the road to Oboyan

In the south the Germans were stronger, and it was here that Manstein hoped for a decision. At dawn on 5 July Hoth’s two panzer corps went into the attack: General Otto von Knobelsdorff’s XLVIII Panzer Corps with Großdeutschland and the 3rd and 11th Panzer Divisions, and SS-Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser’s II SS Panzer Corps with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, Das Reich and Totenkopf divisions. Facing them was Lieutenant General Ivan Chistyakov’s 6th Guards Army, which expected the main blow along the road from Belgorod to Oboyan and on to Kursk.

The Panther’s debut was a disaster. The Großdeutschland Fusilier Regiment, with Panthers attached, drove into an unreconnoitred minefield in front of the Berezovy stream and got stuck in marshy ground under artillery fire, and several dozen tanks were immobilised by mines, breakdowns and hits. The SS corps fared better. Its engineers had cleared lanes during the night, and by 9 a.m. Hausser’s divisions, led by wedges with Tigers at their head and supported without pause by dive bombers, had broken through the first defensive belt along the whole sector. The Leibstandarte took Bykovka and by evening had approached the second belt near Yakovlevo. Totenkopf, on the right flank, made less headway.

On the eastern flank General Werner Kempf’s Army Detachment Kempf forced the Donets near Belgorod under fire from Lieutenant General Mikhail Shumilov’s 7th Guards Army. The bridge for the 6th Panzer Division was destroyed, congestion at the crossings held most of the division on the west bank, and German aircraft mistakenly bombed their own bridgehead, wounding two commanders. Kempf’s delay had serious consequences: the exposed right flank of the SS corps tied down part of its strength for the following week.

The days that followed brought slow, costly progress. Vatutin committed Lieutenant General Mikhail Katukov’s 1st Tank Army (PL) and two independent guards tank corps. Katukov, with Stalin’s approval, dug in some of his tanks and waited for the Germans in prepared positions. By 8 July the SS corps was some 30 kilometres from its start line, beyond the second defensive belt, and the Stavka – over Konev’s protests – began handing armies from the strategic reserve over to Vatutin: the 5th Guards Army and Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army. On 9 July Hoth, in accordance with an earlier plan, turned the SS corps away from the Oboyan axis towards the north-east, towards the railway station at Prokhorovka, where he expected to meet the approaching Soviet reserves.

The first days in the air

Kursk was also one of the greatest air battles of the war. In the south the Luftwaffe held the upper hand for the first few days: on 5 July its aircraft flew more than 2,000 sorties there, and the new 30 mm cannon on Henschel Hs 129 ground-attack aircraft and the 37 mm guns on the Ju 87G proved dangerous to tanks. Over the northern part of the salient the fighting was evenly matched, and from 7 July the Soviet 16th Air Army and 2nd Air Army, with greater numbers of aircraft, gained an increasingly clear upper hand. The Luftwaffe could support only one sector at a time – each day it chose which corps to help, while the others attacked without air cover.

The balance of the first week

After five days the Citadel plan could no longer be carried out in its original form. The pincers were supposed to meet near Kursk after a few days; instead the Ninth Army in the north had come to a halt, and the Fourth Panzer Army in the south had advanced, at its best point, some 30 kilometres of the more than one hundred that separated it from Kursk. German tank losses counted as total write-offs were, it is true, far smaller than Soviet ones, and the tactical superiority of German crews over Soviet tankmen was evident in every engagement. But the Red Army could afford losses that the Wehrmacht could no longer bear, and its reserves were coming up – while the Germans had almost none of their own.

Place in the war

On 10 July the Allies landed in Sicily. On 12 July at Prokhorovka Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army struck the SS corps, suffering heavy losses but halting its advance, and that same day the Bryansk and Western Fronts launched Operation Kutuzov against the Oryol salient, in the rear of Model’s Ninth Army. On 13 July Hitler summoned Manstein and Kluge to the Wolf’s Lair and decided to call off Citadel, citing the need to transfer forces to Italy. In August the Red Army went over to the counter-offensive along the whole sector: on 5 August it liberated Oryol and Belgorod, which Moscow celebrated with the first artillery salute of the war, and on 23 August Kharkiv.

5 July 1943 was thus the last day on which the Wehrmacht opened an offensive with a strategic objective in the east. At Moscow in 1941 and at Stalingrad in 1942 German attacks had collapsed after months of advances, deep inside Soviet territory; at Kursk the offensive was halted within the tactical defence zone, after a few days. From then on the initiative on the Eastern Front belonged to the Red Army, and it did not return to the Germans before the end of the war. The battle also confirmed that the Soviet command, having learned the lessons of the defeats of 1941–1942, had mastered the conduct of war on a grand scale – knowing the enemy’s intentions, it was able to wait for them, absorb the blow and respond at a moment of its own choosing.