The scene was set for the largest tank battle in history- the Battle at Prokhorovka.
Thousands of miles away developments in the Mediterranean cast a dark shadow over the German offensive as British and American forces landed on the southern coast of Sicily. Despite this news Hitler ordered Zitadelle to continue even though he knew that Germany lacked the reserves to fight on two fronts. Glantz and Hose have commented that, ‘… the Sicilian invasion ultimately helped doom Operation Citadel.’
British and US forces land at Gela, Scicily
As the Battle of Kursk reached its climax around 400 German tanks would do battle with 1,250 Soviet tanks along the long eastern flank of the salient. Meanwhile, about 572 tanks met in combat in the fields of Prokhorovka. Glantz and House have argued that the tank battles around Prokhorovka, which have assumed legendary status as single titanic struggle, should be seen as a:
… confused and confusing series of meeting engagements and hasty attacks, with each side committing its forces piecemeal.
Totenkopf with 103 tanks and assault guns would attack the town from the north while LAH and Das Reich with 77 and 95 tanks and assault guns respectively would advance from the south towards Prokhorovka. Both approaches to the town were defended by the 5th Guards Tank Army whose forces also sought to stop the advance of the 111 Panzer Corps from the Belgograd region.
Just as important to the outcome of the overall battle was the struggle between XXXXV111 Panzer Corps on the left flank and the reinforced 1st Tank Army between 10-14 July. This almost forgotten struggle prevented XXXXV111 Panzer Corps from supporting the lunge towards Oboyan and the north-east strike towards Prokhorovka.
Advance on Prokhorovka
Rain and mud
Mud the common enemy - a perennial problem!
On 10 July much of the battlefield was turned to mud due to torrential rains which left many German armoured vehicles stuck and easy targets for Soviet bombers. The Red Air force also focused its attention on bombing Luftwaffe airfields such as the one at Belgorod.
Senior German commanders such as General Wisch of the LAH expected the 11 SS Panzer Corps to cover the nine miles to Prokhorovka and capture it within a day. However, many ordinary SS soldiers had more realistic views of the battle to come. Heinrich Huber later recalled;
We did not underestimate the defenders before Prokhorovka for they were as motivated as we were. I did not expect the battle to be anything other than frenzied – I was not disappointed.
Totenkopf opened the attack and reached the Psel river and engaged in a bout of hand to hand fighting with Soviet infantry. The Red Army put up a fierce resistance as men from the 290th Guards Rifle Regiment retreated across the river. Soviet infantryman Anatoli Abalakov noted the intensity of the fighting which cost Totenkopf hundreds of casualties:
The scene along the banks of the Psel was carnage, sheer carnage. We had been told to stop the Germans from crossing the river at all costs and we threw everything we had at them … The bastards just kept coming at us. Our artillery gave some support and we fought them between the falling shells. German artillery opened up and then Stukas arrived. It was grim remorseless stuff. The sort of fighting that a soldier hopes he will never be involved in because survival is very unlikely … When we were eventually overwhelmed, I swam to the north bank [of the river Psel] I was exhausted … I scrambled up the muddy bank and headed for a position that I knew existed … Shells, mortar rounds and rounds were striking the ground all around me as I ran. How I was not hit I do not know. I was relieved to reach the position where I was pulled over some sandbags. Then, having fought with my bare hands against the SS monsters, swum a river and run the gauntlet through fire, an officer admonished me for withdrawing without permission and losing my rifle!
This battle delayed Totenkopf’s crossing of the Psel river and gave the Red Army time to prepare its defences along the northern bank of the river. It also had the effect of delaying the attack of LAH until late morning.
By the end of the day Totenkopf had crossed the river after a ferocious bloody fight. As LAH and Das Reich advanced during the day they were subjected to numerous counter-attacks by Soviet tank forces.
German grenadiers from the SS division Totenkopf during the Battle of Kursk
By evening LAH had fallen short of its objective and was five miles away from Prokhorovka. Even worse for Manstein was the fact that the 111 Panzer Corps remained 22 miles away from Prokhorovka leaving the 11 SS Panzer Corps effectively alone in its attempts to take the town.
In the evening of 10 July another conference of senior German commanders exposed deep pessimism amongst some as to the future of the offensive. General Kempf suggested that Zitadelle should be brought to an end. Even Field Marshall Manstein raised the question of how wise it was to continue the attack considering heavy German casualties and the movement of large Soviet tank formations towards Prokhorovka. Apparently Hoth, commander of 4th Panzer Army, argued that the offensive should continue with the objective of destroying the enemy south of the Psel river. In the absence of any order from Hitler to stop the offensive the assembled commanders had no option but to proceed.
According to Lloyd Clark it was clear to Manstein at this point that Zitadelle could not succeed and that his intention was to use his tank formations to defeat the 5th Guards Army thereby weakening the Red Army in the south.
On 11 July, despite the pessimism of General Kempf, his units, led by 6th Panzer Division, broke through Soviet defences north-east of Belgorod and were advancing full pelt towards Prokhorovka. On the same day on the left flank Grossdeustchland inflicted heavy casualties on the Soviet 1st Tank Army which was forced to retreat. This elite unit was then ordered to support the attack north towards Oboyan leaving the defence of the German left flank to the depleted 3rd Panzer Division.
Aware of the vulnerability of the German left flank Vatutin gathered the 10th Tank Corps and several other fresh units with the objective of striking into Hoth’s left flank. One T-34 loader Lev Drachevsky of the 178th Tank Brigade recalls being told by his commander that the upcoming strike into the German left flank was, “an attack which would bring an end to his offensive in this sector...”
During 11 July the 5th Guards Tank Army prepared its defensive positions around Prokhorovka as 11 SS Panzer Corps resumed its advance towards the town. As LAH advanced it encountered numerous counter-attacks from companies of T-34s. Its advance was further slowed when it came up against a very deep and wide anti-tank ditch which was defended by paratroopers from the elite 9th Guards Airborne Division with tanks from 5th Guards Army behind them.
By midday the anti-tank ditch had been bridged and LAH advanced towards the taking of Hill 252.2 after which it would only have two miles to reach Prokhorovka. By 1700 hours this hill and the Oktiabrskii State Farm had been taken. However, Das Reich and Totenkopf needed to move alongside the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division before the frontal assault on Prokhorovka could begin.
During the evening of 11 July General Hausser, commander of the 11 SS Panzer Corps, gave orders for the corps to take Prokhorovka the next day. The XLV111 Panzer Corps was also expected to resume its advance towards Oboyan. Field Marshall Manstein expected the Fourth Panzer Army to not only take Oboyan and Prokhorovka but also to inflict a resounding ‘defeat’ on Soviet armoured forces.
German commanders were unaware however that Vatutin had given orders for the 5th Guards Tank Army in cooperation with 5th Guards Army and 1st Tank Army to ‘destroy the enemy in the Kochetovka, Pokrovka and Greznoye regions’ and to not permit them ‘to withdraw in a southern direction’.
A Pivotal Moment
The scene was set for the decisive encounter between German and Soviet armour.
Hitler was becoming increasingly concerned by the Allied invasion of Sicily and the subsequent need to divert some panzer divisions west to contain this threat. Lloyd Clark has observed, ‘A pivotal moment in the Second World War had arrived.’
As dawn broke on 12 July soldiers on both sides were aware that a decisive moment in the battle was upon them. Johannes Brauer, driver of an SS armoured troop carrier, recalls;
It wasn’t until dawn on 12 July that one could properly see the surrounding area and the mass of vehicles and troops being drawn up around us. One could only guess that something big was in the offing.
The 294 tanks of 11 SS Panzer Corps were to advance into a Soviet counter-attack comprising the 616 Soviet tanks of the 5th Guards Tank Army. Soviet armoured units were vigorously supported by additional Katyusha and artillery regiments whose primary focus was on the centre of the battlefield where the 18th and 29th Tank Corps faced the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division. Soviet infantryman Mansur Abdulin later recalled the heavy concentration of Red Army artillery:
Neither before nor since had I seen so much artillery. The commanders of artillery units, with their guns of different calibres, had a hard time finding firing positions from which they could fire without disturbing their neighbours. There was not enough space for the gunners on the battlefield!
Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov left and Chief of Staff of the Army Major General Baskakov right
At dawn on 12 July General Rodmistrov, commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army, was on the verge of letting loose his tanks but his plan to seize the initiative was thwarted when the 11 SS Panzer Corps struck first. At 0600 hours German bombers attacked Red Army positions and the LAH tank regiment began its advance. Red Army infantryman Pavel Krylov, like so many others, was surprised by the intensity of the German attack:
I do not know what our trench was hit by, but just as we were about to attack we noticed Stukas preparing to attack. I did not see an aircraft dive towards us but moments after a warning was yelled, the ground in front of us levitated. It was like a giant had grabbed the battlefield and shaken it. I was knocked to the ground, but was dragged to my feet and the platoon was told to look to its front and stand firm...Shells continued to drop all around us and then I saw, to my absolute horror, a dense line of enemy tanks approaching like a tidal wave about to break on top of us.
Within hours of launching their attack all three SS divisions ran into a ‘cyclone of fire’ from Soviet artillery and then they ran into the Red Army’s counter-attack. Wary of the 88mm guns on German Tiger tanks Soviet armour had been given orders to engage in close combat with enemy tanks to catch the Germans unawares and allow their 76mm guns to do damage to enemy armour.
However, instead of a surprise attack German panzers spotted a great cloud of dust approaching them. Company tank commander of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment of the LAH division, Rudolf von Ribbentrop, son of Nazi Germany’s Foreign Minister Joachim Ribbentrop, later wrote of his encounter with the Soviet 29th Tank Corps:
A purple wall of smoke arose into the air, produced by smoke shells. It meant:’Tank warning!’ The same signals were to be seen all along the crest of the slope …Everything became immediately clear: beyond the hill, still out of sight of those in the valley, a major Soviet armoured attack was underway …The small valley extended to our left, and as we drove down the slope we spotted the first T-34s, which were apparently attempting to outflank from the left. We halted on the slope and opened fire, hitting several of the enemy. A number of Russian tanks were left burning. For a good gunner 800 metres was a good range. As we waited to see if further enemy tanks were going to appear, I looked around, as was my habit. What I saw left me speechless. From beyond the shallow rise about 150-200 metres in front of me appeared fifteen, then thirty, then forty tanks. Finally, there were too many to count. The T-34s were rolling towards us at high speed, carrying mounted infantry.
Vasili Bryukhov, a T-34 commander in the 29th Tank Corps describes the chaotic nature of this armoured clash:
The distance between the tanks was below 100 metres – it was impossible to manoeuvre a tank, one could just jerk it back and forth a bit. It wasn’t a battle it was a slaughterhouse. We crawled back and forth and fired. Everything was burning. An indescribable stench hung in the air over the battlefield. Everything was enveloped in smoke, dust and fire, so it looked as if it was twilight...Tanks were burning, trucks were burning.
Bryukhov’s tank was eventually hit but he survived the encounter:
My tank was hit. A round flew in from nowhere and hit the driving sprocket and the first road wheel. The tank stopped, turned to the side a bit. We immediately bailed out and sneaked into a shell crater. The situation didn’t favour the repair of the tank. That was Prokhorovka! … I got into another tank, but that was destroyed after a while. The round hit the engine, the tank caught fire, and we all bailed out. We hid in a shell crater and fired at German infantry and the crews of their knocked out tanks.
As this battle unfolded to the left of 1st SS Panzer Regiment its 13th company ran into sixty T-34s and a bloody three hour battle ensued. The divisional history of the LAH captures the savagery of the fighting:
They attacked us in the morning. They were around us, on top of us, and between us. We fought man to man, jumping out of our foxholes to lob our magnetic hollow charge grenades at the enemy tanks, leaping on our Schuetpanzerwagens to take on any enemy vehicle or man we spotted. It was hell! At 09.00 hours the battlefield was once again firmly in our hands. Our Panzers helped us mightily. My Kompanie alone had destroyed fifteen Russian tanks.
As Glantz and House have noted, similar scenes of ferocious fighting took place all along the front of the 11 SS Panzer Corps but particularly in the sector of the LAH. It was repeatedly hit by waves of Red Army tanks and mounted infantry from the 9th Guards Airborne Division.
As the battlefield descended into chaos and confusion there were hundreds of small conflicts between opposing groups of armour. T-34 driver Anatoly Volkov later recalled:
The noise, smoke and dust of battle were extremely trying. Despite wearing protectors my ears were extremely painful from the constant firing of the gun. … The atmosphere was choking. I was gasping for breath with perspiration running in streams down my face. It was a physically and mentally difficult business being in a tank battle. We expected to be killed at any second and so were surprised after a couple of hours of battle that we were still fighting – still breathing!
Panzer commander Ribbentrop has also described the difficult situation facing tank crews in such combat:
On the smoke and dust shrouded battlefield, looking into the sun, it would be impossible for our crews to distinguish us from a Russian tank. I repeatedly broadcast our code name, “All stations; This is Kunibert! We are in the middle of the Russian tanks! Don’t fire on us!”
German tanks crews had the huge advantage in that they were all fitted with radios enabling a more flexible command whereas Soviet tanks faced the bewildering situation where only the command tank had a radio. As Clark has observed this enabled panzer crews, ‘to out-think and out-fight their more numerous enemy.’
In several places overwhelming numbers enabled Soviet armour to break through German positions. One German observer of the battle later recalled:
We found ourselves taking on seemingly inexhaustible masses of enemy armour – never have I received such an overwhelming impression of Russian strength and numbers as on that day … Soon many of the T-34s had broken past our [panzer] screen and were streaming like rats all over the battlefield.
German anti-tank guns were expected to hold the line after Soviet armour broke through panzer positions. SS gunner Mutterlose has described his encounter with Soviet tanks:
We saw the turret of a very slow moving T-34 that was advancing out of a hollow. … I heard the bright clear command of our battery officer, SS-Untersturmfuhrer Protz: ‘Fire!’ The first round thundered from our gun and then we heard the report of the neighbouring piece. But it looked like we had missed … At that point it was all over for our two guns. Before the gunners could reload, the barrels of the leading T-34s turned towards us and without even making a firing halt, they poured high-explosive shells into our firing positions. It seemed like every foxhole was individually shelled...We saw horror struck, what had gone on around us. Death had reaped a rich harvest. Eight comrades lay there, all of them dead. Ghastly! Their bodies shredded! Two gunners were torn into unrecognizable fragments. All of those alive had been wounded.
Panzer grenadiers supported German guns as they fought off advancing waves of Soviet tanks. SS-Unterscharfuhrer Erhard Knofel reported later:
We were singled out by a T-34 which rammed [our half track}. We put our hollow charges to use, some of which failed in the tumult. SS-Unterstrumfuhrer Wolff knocked out a tank in the melee. He lay shoulder to shoulder with us but the day was long yet. Then we became involved with Soviet mounted infantry...self propelled guns began ‘reaping’ with direct fire from the anti-tank ditch. The Soviet attack began to falter. All hell broke loose; jets of flame and tank turrets flew through the air. But we took losses too…I was shot in the thigh while in the kneeling position tending to a wounded man. I removed my pistol belt and applied a dressing to the wound and then looked for cover. I found a hole nearby and was about to jump in, but what did I see? Two pairs of fear-filled eyes staring at me, the crew of a knocked out enemy tank, unarmed like me.
On 12 July in the fields west of Prokhorovka German and Red Amy infantry and tanks attacked and counter-attacked each other through ruinous anti-tank fire. Glantz and House have observed that although Soviet tank brigades failed to make any breakthroughs they could claim to have halted the German attack on Prokhorovka. This came at a calamitous price for certain formations such as the 29th Tank Corps which lost well over a hundred tanks during the day.
Lloyd Clark has observed that on 12 July in the central sector the Battle of Prokhorovka had come to reflect the wider Battle of Kursk;
It has become a slogging match but with a difference – rather than the Germans doing the attacking, it was the Soviets.
The Luftwaffe on this day enjoyed air supremacy over the Prokhorovka battlefield inflicting heavy casualties on Soviet troop concentrations. Soviet air power was deployed in force on attacking the German flanks. Vatutin believed that by attacking the 111 Panzer Corps on the right and XVL111 Panzer Corps on the left then the 5th Guards Tank Army would be able to contain the direct assault of 11 SS Panzer Corps on Prokhorovka.
As SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler Division advanced on Prokhorovka its right flank was left exposed due to Soviet counter-attacks against SS Das Reich Division. The vigorous offensive of the Soviet 2nd Guards Tank Corps prevented Das Reich from joining the eastward thrust of LAH. A series of tank and infantry attacks caused great frustration for commanders in Das Reich which had to deploy forces from other sectors to fend off Red Army attacks on its right flank.
Das Reich was forced to deploy 50 T-34s, which had been captured from a tank factory in Kharkov, to fend off Red Army counter attacks. During the fighting German gunners focused on the command tank of Soviet tank formations as this was the only tank which had a radio receiver and transmitter. Once this command tank was knocked out it left the remaining tanks leaderless and vulnerable in battle.
Comments from several German commanders, illustrate this growing frustration with Soviet counter-attacks:
Heavy fighting developed on the right flank of Das Reich Division. There the Soviet 11 Guards Tank Corps repeatedly attacked from the gap between Hauser’s [11 SS Panzer Corps] and Breith’s divisions [111 Panzer Corps] which had not yet arrived. That accursed gap!’
Sylvester Stadler, who was a regimental commander in Das Reich, later recalled in exasperation;
The Russians attacks on our flanks are tying down our effectives and taking the steam out of our operation against the enemy at Prokhorovka.
The Soviet 11 Guards Tank Corps had to halt it counter-attacks later in the day due to the advance of 111 Panzer Crops along the Northern Donets. The tank corps was forced to despatch one of it brigades to contain this new German threat in the south.
During 12 July the 5th Guards Tank Army contained the direct thrust of the 11 SS Panzer Corps on Prokhorovka by LAH and Das Reich but to the north of these divisions the SS Totenkopf was advancing north-east of Prokhorovka. Totenkopf made progress against the 95th and 42nd Guards Rifle Divisions crossing the Psel river and forcing the 5th Guards Army onto the defensive when its mission was to destroy the advancing German division. Anatoli Abalakov of then 290th Guards Rifle Division described the fighting that day as ‘unrelenting and bloody’. He later recalled:
The enemy advanced with great fervour, desperate to take the high ground which we defended. Our orders were ‘To The Last Man’, never words that we wanted to hear as we knew that we were in for a terrible time…We managed to hold the assault for a while, but eventually we were forced back. Heavy artillery fire and dive-bombing by Stukas made the position untenable – but we had caused the Nazis casualties and did not collapse…That afternoon the Panzers moved forward, but our guns hit the bridgehead hard and caused many problems for the Germans trying to organise themselves.
The 24th Guards Tank and 10th Guards Mechanised Brigades of the 5th Guards Army were thrown into the attack and halted the advance of Totenkopf’s 3rd SS Panzer Regiment which was five and a half miles north east of Prokhorovka. General Rodmistrov of the 5th Guards Tank Army later wrote;
The decisive movement of these brigades … and the decisiveness of their meeting blow against the penetrating Hitlerite tanks stabilized the situation.
By the end of the July 12 Totenkopf has lost half of its tanks (it had roughly 50 panzers left) and was faced by two brigades from the 5th Guards Tank Army comprising 200 tanks who had been tasked with its destruction the next day. This Soviet force was supplemented by the 6th Guards Airborne Division which marched overnight to join the attack on the 13 July.
Lloyd Clark has commented that 12 July was the decisive day in the battle for Prokhorovka. The Red Army had used its superior resources in terms of men, artillery, planes and tanks in an attritional battle which negated the Germans greater tactical ability:
By the end of 12 July, Manstein’s offensive ambitions had been dealt a serious blow. As heavy rain turned the battlefields and rear areas into a quagmire, the German Field Marshall was left ruminating on a day when his left flank crumbled and 11 SS Panzer Corps had been fought to a standstill.
Concerned by the heavy losses of 5th Guards Tank Army Stalin despatched Zhukov to take charge of ‘coordinating the Steppe and Voronezh Fronts.’ These losses led to 5th Guards Tank Army being ordered to build new defensive positions west of Prokhorovka during the night of 12-13 July as sporadic fighting continued all evening.
On 13 July LAH resumed its attack and found the ground hard going after heavy rain the day before. It mounted a two pronged attack with its remaining armour which comprised 50 tanks and 20 assault guns. Rotmistrov used his massed artillery to destroy these German advances which lasted an hour before grinding to a halt. SS-Oberschutze Rudi Bauermann later recalled how deeply echeloned Soviet defences supported by devastating artillery fire repelled the attack:
There seemed to have been little change in the state of play since 5th July. The enemy were well dug in and our attempts to engage him were foiled by minefields and well positioned anti tank guns…We panzer grenadiers tried to infiltrate the line, but came under heavy machine gun fire which pinned us down. A tank must have seen what was happening and came over to lend some fire support. Half of the platoon moved in behind it as there was so little ground cover, but were soon flooding back to our position when the tank rolled over a mine and shed a track…The crew bailed out and joined us in a shell crater. “That’s the fourth time that I’ve been hit by a mine since the start of” [Zitadelle] the commander said to me, “but I’d rather be in a tank than out here with you lot!”
Totenkopf faced an even worse fate on 13 July as concerted counter-attacks by the Soviet 33rd Guards Rifle Corps, 10th Guards Mechanized Brigade and 24th Guards Tank Brigade forced it to retreat back to Hill 226.6 to avoid encirclement and destruction. Soviet success came at a high cost in numbers of T-34s destroyed but they succeeded in removing Totenkopf from the tactically important position north-east of Prokhorovka.
German misery on July 13 was completed by the failure of 111 Panzer Corps to link up with Das Reich. Heavy air raids by the Soviet air force together with artillery stopped the advance of the corps which proved to be a massive disappointment for Manstein and Hitler. By this point in the battle the German 9th Army had already begun withdrawing units from the Kursk salient to counter the Soviet offensive on the Orel salient. Oboyan and Prokhorovka were still in Soviet hands.
Worse still was the news that the western Allies had landed in Sicily on 12 July. Worried that Mussolini would be overthrown and that Italy would drop out of the war Hitler was forced to call off Zitadelle on 13 July and send German armour west to contain the expected invasion of the Italian mainland. At a meeting with Kluge and Manstein on 13 July Hitler said that he had to call off Zitadelle as he had not other forces with which to contain the Allied invasion of Italy. At the meeting Manstein forced a compromise on Hitler whereby Zitadelle would be closed down in the north while 11 SS Panzer Corps would continue until it had achieved ‘its aim of smashing the enemy’s armoured reserve’ in the form of the 5th Guards tank Army and the 1st Tank Army. Alongside this, a third of V111 Air Corps would be sent north to support the 2nd Panzer Army counter the Red Army attack on the German held Orel salient.
Following this meeting Manstein ordered 11 SS Panzer Corps and the 111 Panzer Corps to renew their assault on 14 July with the aim of encircling Soviet forces in the Northern Donets.
On 14 July Das Reich made impressive gains as its advance ended the day just four miles south of Prokhorovka. Unperturbed, Zhukov remained firm in his belief that the Germans would be forced to withdraw as a result of the widening Soviet offensives across several fronts. He strategy was to tempt German forces to ‘burn themselves out.’
On the same day 111 Panzer Corps broke out of its bridgehead and advanced in the face of very determined resistance by Soviet forces. It was impressed upon Red Army units that they ‘must stop the panzers at all cost.’ They fought a fighting retreat in the face of the advance of 111 Panzer Crops which finally linked up with Das Reich on 15 July. However, by this time 111 Panzer Crops was exhausted by ten days of intense fighting and merciless bombardment by the Soviet air force. It faced five Soviet armoured and infantry corps and was unable to progress further.
At this point Manstein finally accepted that the German offensive in the south of the Kursk salient had failed. He was aware that the Red Army showed no signs of collapse, had many fresh divisions to call upon and had launched an offensive to the north against the German held Orel salient. By contrast German divisions were exhausted and had no reinforcements to call on.
After 15 July Army Group South was confined to making preparations for a withdrawal from the salient at the same time as having to hold off Soviet counter-attacks. On 17 July 11 SS Panzer Corps was ordered to withdraw to assembly areas around Belgorod as the forces of the Soviet South-western and Southern Fronts launched an offensive along the Northern Donets river and along the Mius river. These offensives in the south would be accompanied by offensives against Army Group Centre further north. Collectively, these offensives would drive Army Group South out of the Donbass region and back across the Dnieper river and lead to the liberation of major cities such as Smolensk, Briansk, Belgorod, Kharkov and Kiev.
German retreat accompanied by genocidal crimes
During its retreat Army Group South carried out a deliberate scorched earth policy overseen by Manstein. This genocidal policy, which involved putting numerous towns and cities to the torch and the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of civilians many of whom died from starvation, was declared in a Wehrmacht directive to German troops on 2 September 1943:
In all of the following activities it must be assumed that the entire Donetsk Basin east of the Cherepakha position must be evacuated and completely destroyed (...). In addition to the removal of machinery and valuables, attention should mainly be paid to the export of grain. The cattle must be herded to the west (...). Food, consumer goods (scarce commodities) and fuel may not be distributed to the local population. Anything that cannot be taken out is to be destroyed (...). Destruction should not be done at the last moment, when the troops are already fighting or retreating, but in time, so that the teams allocated for destruction can be fully used.
On 7 September Himmler sent the following genocidal message to SS security units in the Donbass and ordered their cooperation with German infantry units in the area. Himmler directed that in order for his directive to be carried out:
...not a human being, not a single head of cattle, not a hundredweight of cereals and not a railway line remain behind; that not a house remains standing, not a mine is available which is not destroyed for years to come, that there is not a well which is not poisoned. The enemy must really find completely burned and destroyed land.
In September 1943 as the Red Army advanced in southern Russia General Vatutin, commander of the Vornezh Front, urged his men forward with the exhortation, “They are burning the bread, we must attack.”
By October 1943 the Red Army had breached the Panther line defences of Army Group South leading to the isolation of the German 17th Army in Crimea.
Conclusion
The German defeat at Kursk was the last major German offensive in the Soviet Union and marked the beginning of the Wehrmacht’s head long retreat across Ukraine and later Belorussia.
In recent years a small group of revisionist historians in the West (Germans Karl-Heinz Frieser and Roman Toppel) have tried to rewrite the history of Kursk claiming that the Red Army did not win a victory at the Battle of Prokhorovka. Indeed they go further and argue that Prokhorovka was a ‘clear German victory’.
These incredible assertions fly in the face of the failure of the German offensive to reach its operational goals. All of the senior German commanders involved in Zitadelle later acknowledged the decisive nature of the defeat at Kursk.
General von Mellenthin, commander of the XXXXV111 Panzer Corps which fought at Kursk, later admitted that this battle was the “greatest armoured onslaught in the history of war” and that the German attack on the salient was a “veritable death ride for virtually the whole of the operational reserve was to be flung into this supreme offensive.”
General Gottfried Heinrici, commander of the German 4th Army later admitted:
The troops and their leaders had made extreme efforts to see that the attack had a chance of succeeding. However, the strength of the three Russian fronts…and their defensive readiness insured that the attack must fail unless the Russian troop leadership or the morale of the Russian troops had completely collapsed.
Field Marshall Manstein, commander of Army Group South, later lamented:
And so the last German offensive in the east ended in fiasco, even though the enemy opposite the two attacking armies of the Southern Army Group had suffered four times their losses in prisoners, dead and wounded.
On one level Manstein was correct. Soviet losses were far greater than those of the Germans. Lloyd Clark estimates that the Red Army suffered 177,847 casualties, around 1,600 armoured vehicles and 460 aircraft damaged/destroyed. Meanwhile, German losses were around 56,827 casualties and losses of 252 tanks and 159 aircraft.
However, in the attritional war that was the Eastern Front, the ability to replace losses was more important than the losses suffered. The Soviet planned economy had greatly outstripped its German counterpart in terms of productive capacity. The German historian Friesner has observed:
It was not by tank duels that the Battle of Kursk – or even the Second World War – was won, but by the production battle in the factories…The German Reich had lost the production battle long before the first shot was fired at Kursk in July 1943.
Richard Overy in his book Russia’s War has also noted the importance of the Soviet economy, despite the shortages of food, labour and destruction caused by the German occupier, ‘to out-produce its seemingly more prosperous enemy’ as a vital factor in the defeat of the Wehrmacht.
German losses in manpower and materials during the Battle of Kursk rendered the Wehrmacht incapable of resisting the Soviet offensives which followed the battle. This impact on the German army was recognized by General Heinz Guderian, Inspector General of Armoured Troops for the Wehrmacht, who had helped create the armoured formations used in the German offensive. He later admitted that; “We had suffered a decisive defeat.”
It is important to see the Soviet victory at Kursk not just in terms of German failures of which there were many. These include over ambitious objectives for Zitadelle, failures of German intelligence to reveal the massive accumulation of Soviet reserves east of Prokhorovka, an under appreciation of the depth of Red Army defences, too great a reliance on untried ‘wonder weaponry’ such as Tigers and Panthers, a lack of any appreciable reserves and finally a grave underestimation of Soviet fighting abilities.
Anthony Beevor, author of the book Stalingrad, has noted that Kursk should be seen as a notable success for the Red Army;
The Red Army had proved once again the dramatic improvement in the professionalism, the morale of its soldiers and the effective application of force.
Glantz and House in their account of Kursk support Beevor’s analysis when they comment:
The elaborate, deeply echeloned defences around Kursk and artful Soviet deployment and commitment of mobile reserves had made the Soviets the first force to halt a blitzkrieg offensive. It is true that the Germans played into Soviet hands by attacking at such an obvious location, yet it still required remarkable self-confidence for Vatutin and Rokossovky, and the other Soviet commanders to wait calmly while the German juggernaut prepared to do its worst. When the worst came, Soviet numerical superiority, the stubborn tenacity of the Soviet soldier, the improved combat skill of his commanders and the Soviets ability to sustain staggering losses spelled doom for Citadel.
German Marder III tank destroyers of the Nazi Wehrmacht on the march during Operation “Citadel”
At Kursk the Red Army leadership displayed their skills at combined arms warfare where they out fought and out manoeuvred their enemy.
The consequences of the German defeat at Kursk were to have far reaching consequences for the outcome of World War Two. Marshall Zhukov in his memoirs reflected;
The defeat of the main grouping of German troops in the Kursk area paved the way for the subsequent wide-scale offensive operations by Soviet forces to expel the Germans from our soil completely...and ultimately to crush Nazi Germany.
Winston Churchill, an instigator of the Cold War who had a pathological dislike of the Soviet Union, wrote in his history of World War Two that:
These immense battles of Kursk, Orel and Kharkov, all within the space of two months, marked the ruin of Germany on the Eastern Front. Everywhere they had been outfought and overwhelmed…Stalingrad was the end of the beginning, but the Battle of Kursk was the beginning of the end.
Suggested Reading:
Lloyd Clark, Kursk The Greatest Battle
John Erickson, The Road To Berlin
David Glantz and Jonathan House, The Battle of Kursk
David Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How The Red Army Stopped Hitler
Vasily Grossman, A Writer At War with the Red Army 1941-1945
Richard Overy, Russia’s War
Valeriy Zamulin and Stuart Britton, The Battle of Kursk: Controversial and Neglected Aspects