‘Anyone who speaks to me of peace without victory will lose his head, no matter who he is.’
ADOLF HITLER
Just a week after the surrender of Stalingrad, Soviet armoured forces thundered across the open steppe south of Kharkov and headed for Zaporezhe, a key crossing point across the Dnepr. It was also the site of a gigantic hydro-electric plant, recently repaired by AEG to provide power to neighbouring factories and coal mines. The Russians were racing against time: the spring thaw would soon impose a halt to mobile operations. As the snow fields melted, the roads would become swamps, as would the surrounding fields, making soldiers’ lives even more miserable than usual – supplies could not come in, nor wounded men be taken out, as fighting continued in a sea of mud.
In fact, the weather was not the only menace looming over the Red Army’s Voronezh and South-Western Fronts. In Zaporezhe, Field Marshal von Manstein had taken charge and was planning a counter-stroke that would confirm his reputation as one of the greatest commanders of the Second World War. But first he had to confront the Führer.
Hitler had already dispatched his Praetorians to rescue the Eastern Front. The SS Panzergrenadier divisions ‘Leibstandarte’ (92 tanks), ‘Das Reich’ (131 tanks), and ‘Totenkopf’ (121 tanks) formed the SS Panzer Corps – and ‘Wiking’ Division was already in action south of Kharkov. The SS were ordered to hold Kharkov, which would have suited the Russians who were preparing to bypass the city and snap up any garrison at their leisure. On 14 February, the SS abandoned Kharkov, local resistance fighters sniping at their rearguards as they departed.
Kharkov was the first major Soviet city to be recaptured from the Germans. Predominantly Ukranian, with a population of 900,000 in 1940, its heavy industry – tank and tractor factories – had been evacuated in 1941. Occupied for 18 months by the Germans, its fate provided chilling evidence of what German rule meant for ordinary Russian and Ukranian people, let alone for Jews. The Red Army estimated that only 350,000 people remained in Kharkov in early 1943. Many people had managed to flee the city when the Germans took over, but the whereabouts of the rest were uncertain at first. It was soon established that more than 100,000 young men and women had been deported to Germany as slaves. Almost as many, the old and the very young especially, had died of malnutrition, hypothermia and related conditions. Most deaths occurred during the winter of 1941–42, but the enduring food shortage had contributed to another sharp rise in mortality in the four months before liberation. About 30,000 individuals were spared the horrors of the starvation winter. The Germans killed 15,000 Jews and another 15,000 Communist Party members, Soviet officials, intellectuals – most of the teachers at the university – and prisoners-of-war shortly after they took over.
The German occupying authorities created a desperately transparent ‘Ukranian’ regime in Kharkov, seeking to divide the Ukranians from the Russians. A local Ukranian police force was established: the usual band of looters, racists and psychopaths who graced many a German-occupied city in eastern Europe during the Second World War. The Burgomeister himself was a Ukranian collaborator, who fled Kharkov with his fellow Quislings, mistresses and booty as the Red Army approached. As in the Reich itself, Nazi rule did not just bring the worst elements in society to the surface, it empowered them. Men who belonged behind bars were instead given uniforms and guns. In Kharkov the schools were shut down, but the black market flourished. Luxurious restaurants catered for the Germans, who helped themselves liberally to everything from watches to women.
The brief return of Soviet administration to Kharkov was marked by several characteristic features that would appear on a distressingly greater scale in 1944 as more Soviet territory was recaptured. With sinister congruence, the NKVD occupied the former Gestapo headquarters and used the basement torture chambers for the same purpose. Letter boxes were added to the outside of the building so the citizens of Kharkov could denounce collaborators – or settle old scores that might have little to do with the occupation. Again, the war and the Nazi/Soviet political systems had a deeply corrosive effect on humanity. British correspondent Alexander Werth saw former prisoners-of-war from a camp outside the city among the beggars seen near the market. Most of their fellow prisoners had died of starvation before the camp was ‘liberated’, but neither the Red Army nor the people of Kharkov would feed them. They were regarded with callous indifference, except by the NKVD, which treated them as spies or traitors.
Their tragedy anticipated a greater manifestation of Stalinist evil that would follow the final victory. In May 1945 Stalin ordered 100 prison camps to be built by his armies in Germany and Poland, into which were driven hundreds of thousands of bewildered Soviet soldiers who had survived capture by the Germans.1 Most were catapulted from German prison camps to Soviet ones, and thence to the gulag. Only about one man in five ever returned home. Former prisoners-of-war and their families remained second-class citizens after the war, discriminated against in their employment and housing and subject to endless petty humiliations. They were not formally rehabilitated until 1994.
Hitler was so furious at the continuing success of the Soviet offensive that he flew to Zaporezhe himself, where the conference was held to the accompaniment of the distant rumbling of Russian guns. According to Goebbels’ diary, he intended to dismiss Von Manstein, but in the event he listened to his general’s cogent explanation of the situation and his proposals for a counter-stroke. The stage was set for one of the most famous counter-offensives of the war, Von Manstein’s ‘backhand blow’, a master-class in armoured warfare that would be taught in NATO staff colleges for years to come.
Lieutenant-General Popov’s ‘mobile group’ of four Soviet tank corps continued to attack, although it was at the extreme limit of its supply lines and very short of fuel and ammunition. Elements of the 25th Tank Corps were within 10 miles of Zaporezhe, but Popov’s tank corps had only 53 operational tanks between them.2 In the First World War it was accepted that no army could fight effectively more than 95 miles from its railheads, although this distance would be extended substantially by the Red Army in 1944, thanks to its huge fleet of American trucks. Popov risked everything to reach Zaporezhe before the spring thaw. It was worth risking his entire command, because if he succeeded he would cut off all German forces between the east bank of the Dnepr and the Black Sea.
Von Manstein was allowed to conduct a mobile battle instead of the sort of static defence the Führer tended to insist upon. The over-strength SS formations were backed by five Panzer divisions (3rd, 6th, 7th, 11th and 17th), as well as the ‘Großdeutschland’ Division (95 tanks). Popov’s communications were being monitored by Luftflotte 4, which learned of his logistic problems and concentrated its efforts against the Soviet spearheads. As the weather improved, the Luftwaffe supported Von Manstein’s counter-attack with up to 1,000 sorties per day. Popov’s units were pounded by Junkers Ju-88s with little interference from the Soviet Air Force. On 19 February the 2nd SS Panzer Corps struck the flank of the Soviet 6th Army from Krasnograd; SS ‘Das Reich’ exploited through the gap and overran the 4th Guards Rifle Corps. On 22 February, the 48th and 57th Panzer Corps cut through towards Pavlovgrad to create a double envelopment. The SS Panzer Corps led the advance back to Kharkov, which it recaptured with a frontal attack in mid-March. Soviet losses were estimated at 23,000 men, 615 tanks and 354 guns, although many soldiers abandoned their vehicles and equipment to escape back to Russian lines. Only 9,000 prisoners were taken. Von Manstein noted that the extreme cold led to troops congregating in the villages rather than maintaining any real cordon, so troops determined to break out could. Given their likely fate in German hands, it is hardly surprising that they risked freezing to death as they hurried through the snow towards the Russian lines.
At the height of the Donets campaign, Army Group Centre was under attack too. Since the spring thaw spread from south to north, operations here went on for several weeks before the mud arrested progress. Air power was again vital in stabilizing the front, and although Veljkiye Luki could not be saved, the Soviets were prevented from breaking through to Orel: on 18 March the Luftwaffe destroyed 116 Russian tanks. The Soviet offensive was halted, but only after it had driven a deep wedge into the German front. This unsightly bulge – the Kursk salient – was immediately earmarked for destruction by the German High Command. Eliminating it would drastically shorten the frontage German forces had to defend, and would remove the obvious platform for the Soviets’ summer offensive.
The incredible recovery in the Wehrmacht’s fighting power, from the Stalingrad débâcle to the triumphant return of the SS to Kharkov, was a profound shock to Stalin. There is some evidence that the Soviet leader toyed with offering a compromise peace to Germany, using Swedish diplomats as neutral intermediaries.3 The deal apparently involved a return to the borders of 1914, not those of 1941. However, it is more likely that Stalin allowed such rumours to circulate as a means of applying pressure to the western Allies, to make them bring forward plans for the long-anticipated Second Front, the liberation of France. Stalin’s creation of the National Committee for Free Germany and the League of German Officers was an insurance policy intended to lay the ground for a military coup in Berlin. If Hitler was not prepared to negotiate, then perhaps his generals would be more open to reason. However, those senior German commanders contemplating action, like Field Marshal von Kluge, who gave his blessing to two attempted assassinations of Hitler in 1943, sought to make peace in the west in order to continue the War in the East. Ironically, this fantasy would later be shared by many senior Nazis as the Red Army approached the frontiers of the Reich.
Of course, Hitler had no thoughts of compromise. Resorting to increased doses of dubious medicines containing strychnine and atropine, prescribed by his sinister physician, Dr Morrell, the Führer spoke of destiny and final victory. The rock upon which German strategy rested – or foundered – was Hitler’s ‘unconquerable will’. Anything that might weaken this, such as the clinically accurate intelligence assessments of Colonel Gehlen’s Fremde Heere Ost, was simply ignored.
Strategies for 1943 were guided by the fact that the Soviets still enjoyed a 2:1 advantage in manpower, and an overwhelming superiority in artillery and tanks. In the spring of 1943 comparative strengths on the Eastern Front were as follows:
| German | Soviet | ||
| Men | 2.7 million | 6 million | |
| Tanks | 2,209 | 12–15,000 | |
| Field guns | 6,360 | 33,0004 |
Nearly half the German infantry divisions were reduced to six battalions, with their artillery batteries cut to three guns. Reinforced on the eve of the Kursk offensive, the Ostheer would have about 2,500 tanks, of which 90 per cent were operational. The Russians’ front-line tank strength hovered around 8–10,000, with large quantities of vehicles either in reserve formations or training. Since few Russian tank crew survived the loss of their vehicle, the Red Army had to provide new crews with replacement tanks. The daunting quantities of Soviet guns had now received American trucks to tow them, substantially improving their mobility.
The numerical odds against Germany were grim, but, despite the winter campaign of 1941–42 and the utter disaster of Stalingrad, the battle of attrition was by no means one-sided. The German Army in the east was stronger in the spring of 1943 than it had been a year earlier, despite the loss of large allied contingents. While the Soviet manpower reserves were double those of Germany, the casualty ratio had remained well above 2:1 in Germany’s favour; even during 1943 it averaged 4:1, so if the war were no more than an attritional slogging match, the Germans were actually set to win. Similarly, Soviet tank production was more than double that of Germany’s, but the loss ratio was more than 3:1 in the Germans’ favour. Other things being equal, the Russian steamroller would grind to a halt first. In this context, Stalin’s tentative peace proposals did not sound so unreasonable, and if the Germans had not committed such appalling atrocities from the instant they crossed the frontier, a compromise stemming from a military stalemate would not have been inconceivable.
In January 1943 Hitler did at least accept there was no possibility the German Army could take Moscow. Field Marshal von Kluge presented plans for a phased withdrawal of Army Group Centre, shortening the front to a more rational and defensible length, and enabling him to create a proper mobile reserve. The operation lasted throughout March 1943, and by the time it was completed the frontage Von Kluge’s armies occupied had been reduced from 340 to 110 miles. Rzhev, epicentre of such fierce battles in 1941 and 1942, was finally abandoned. Nearly 200,000 Russian civilians were evacuated too, a minority who were now compromised by their collaboration with the Nazis, and the overwhelming majority who were seized as slaves and dispatched to German factories.
The last great German offensive in Russia took place that summer, around the small town of Kursk, which gave its name to the most famous tank battle in history. Plans for an attack on Kursk were first discussed in March 1943, as the spring mud imposed its annual pause on operations. After recapturing Kharkov, Von Manstein had launched the SS Panzer Corps onwards, retaking Belgorod on 18 March just as the rivers flooded and the roads liquefied. On 12 April the next operation was given the name Zitadelle and scheduled for mid-May, as soon as the ground dried out.
The attack on Kursk was to have been followed by a German offensive in the north, code-named Operation Parkplatz, which was intended to take Leningrad by storm. Given the extraordinary losses suffered by the 6th Army at Stalingrad in October 1942, it is astonishing that Hitler still had any appetite for warfare in built-up areas. Nine divisions were earmarked to join Army Group North for the assault, although Field Marshal von Küchler signalled that he had enough siege artillery in place and would not require more. In the event, the failure at Kursk and the Soviet breakthrough at Orel led to the cancellation of the attack. The siege of Leningrad, which had already cost the lives of more than a million people by 1943, would not be lifted completely until 1944.
The summers of 1940, 1941 and 1942 had belonged to the German Panzer forces, driving all before them in France, the Ukraine or to the foothills of the Caucasus. So the decision to cut off and overrun the Soviet forces in the Kursk salient did not appear unduly ambitious, given the scale of previous Blitzkriegs. Senior German officers were divided on the issue, but many had been uncomfortable with what they regarded as a foolhardy and overambitious plan to invade France in 1940. This time the voices urging caution included General Heinz Guderian, who thought it would be more prudent to remain on the strategic defensive, husbanding the armoured forces for the day the British and Americans landed in western Europe. With North Africa lost, it was only a matter of time before the western Allies came ashore, in Italy, southern France, the Balkans or – as the US Army still hankered to – in northern France. The British bomber attacks on Germany had suddenly increased in power, and the Americans were assembling another heavy bomber force in Britain, this one committed to daylight raids.
Was the traditional summer tank offensive the correct response to a fast-changing strategic situation? Again, Hitler’s limitations as a strategist are clearly revealed. Poring over maps of the Kursk salient while British and US troops prepared to land in Sicily, Italian generals plotted a coup d’état to take their country out of the war; the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’ ended in defeat with U-boat losses at an unsustainable level; and Allied strategic bombing grew from a noisy nuisance to a serious threat to the heart of the Reich. While Hitler did not ignore these issues, he remained focused on the tactical minutiae of army operations in Russia, perhaps because it was something he understood and could influence. Moving a tank battalion here or an infantry division there had immediate and tangible effects, and postponed facing up to an ever-bleaker strategic situation. Hitler refused to be drawn on his long-term aims when, as happened from time to time, a senior officer tried to get some sense of the overall plan. The army groups in Russia fought in surprising isolation from each other; Hitler’s behaviour was more calculated to divide and rule than to coordinate operations across the whole theatre of operations.
The first operational order for Zitadelle called for Army Group Centre, commanded by Field Marshal von Kluge (‘Kluger Hans’ or ‘clever Hans’, as his staff nicknamed him) to attack the north flank of the salient. Von Kluge’s offensive would be undertaken by the German 9th Army, which included 12 infantry and four Panzer divisions; Kampfgruppe Esebeck (two Panzer divisions), with 5th and 8th Panzer Divisions in army group reserve. The 2nd Army would hold the face of the salient with just two corps of three infantry divisions each. Field Marshal von Manstein’s Army Group South would assault the southern flank with the 4th Panzer Army, comprising ten infantry, four Panzer and five Panzergrenadier divisions; plus the re-constituted 6th Army, including one Panzergrenadier division, and the nine divisions of Armeeabteilung Kempf.
The attack was postponed several times to allow the new battalions of Tiger tanks and the first Panthers to take part. The idea that an offensive involving millions of men fighting across a battlefield half the size of England could be determined by a few hundred new tanks shows touching faith in technology. The 147 Tigers performed well, but the 200 Panthers were reduced to 50 by the end of the second day. Their engines had not been run in, and inevitable mechanical problems dogged 39th Panzer Regiment for the duration of the battle. It fell to those workhorses of the Wehrmacht, the Panzerkampfwagen III and IV, to provide the bulk of the German Army’s tanks at Kursk. The 16 Panzer and five Panzergrenadier divisions taking part in Kursk included a total of 115 Panzer IIs, 844 Panzer IIIs, 913 Panzer IVs and some 300 StuG III assault guns. SS ‘Das Reich’ even had 25 captured T-34s.
Delaying the attack gave the Russians ample opportunity to fortify their positions in the salient, and they did so with typical thoroughness. Prodigious quantities of mines were laid – more than 1,800 per mile – and up to eight successive lines of defences bristling with anti-tank weapons awaited the German onslaught. This could not be disguised, even by an army famed for its camouflage abilities. By early May, many of those German generals initially in favour of a summer offensive were having second thoughts. Aerial photographs showed ominous lines of upturned earth, dug-in gun positions and evidence of increased troop levels. Von Manstein thought the moment had passed; an assault the moment the ground was suitable might have worked, but not now the enemy was so obviously prepared. Even the combative Model had cold feet. On the other hand, Von Kluge was so enthusiastic he challenged Guderian, whom he openly loathed, to a duel, after one particularly heated discussion about Zitadelle. Significantly, the Soviet High Command was already planning its own offensive against the Orel salient on the assumption that the German attack on Kursk would be defeated. The odds were certainly unfavourable to the Germans:
| German | Soviet | ||
| Men | 600,000 | 1.2 million | |
| Tanks and assault guns | 2,750 | 3,500 | |
| Guns and mortars | 10,000 | 25,000 | |
| Aircraft | 2,000 | 2,700 |
Estimates of the German ground forces range from 435,000 to the more usually quoted 900,000. The higher figure includes German forces which, strictly speaking, did not take part in the Kursk fighting, such as six divisions of the German 9th Army engaged in the fighting around Orel which began a week after Kursk, but which were not involved in the original German offensive. The commonly quoted figure of 1.3 million Soviet troops is the sum of the Central and Voronezh Fronts’ ration strength, as understood after the war, but recent Soviet sources put this at nearer to one million.5 However, this total does not include the 5th Guards and 5th Tank Armies of Konev’s Steppe Front, which were brought forward to block the southern thrust of 4th Panzer Army. Konev’s front had one airborne and nine infantry divisions, plus five mechanized corps and a tank brigade including 1,500 tanks and self-propelled guns. Its total strength was about 500,000 but only part of the Steppe Front counter-attacked at Kursk: the rest took part in the subsequent Soviet offensive. This suggests that about 600,000 German soldiers were attacking 1.2 million Soviets in the battle for the Kursk salient.
On the northern side of the salient the German 9th Army, commanded by Colonel-General Model, faced the bulk of the Soviet Central Front under General Konstantin Rokossovksy, a half-Polish former Tsarist officer who had been very fortunate to survive his arrest in 1938. Beria’s torturers broke several of his ribs, knocked out nine of his teeth, shattered his toes with a hammer and pulled out his fingernails. Still refusing to confess he was a Polish spy, he was subjected to mock executions then shipped to a Siberian gulag camp. On 22 March 1940 he was unexpectedly freed and rehabilitated. Whether it was the dismal Russian performance in Finland or the signs of renewed trouble with Japan that triggered his release no one knows, but Timoshenko had no hesitation in giving him back his old job as commander of a cavalry corps. Promoted to command the new 9th Mechanized Corps, Rokossovsky survived the Kiev encirclement in 1941, his candid account of that disaster proving too much for the Soviet regime as late as 1984.6 He led the 16th Army during the defence of Moscow with great skill and was promoted to command the Bryansk Front. In September 1942 he was transferred to command the Don Front, retitled the Central Front in February 1943 – and had been preparing to defend the Kursk salient for nearly four months. Rokossovsky was one of the very few men, and probably the only general, that Stalin referred to by his patronymic (Konstantin Konstantinovich); even Zhukov was addressed as ‘comrade’.
The Germans had so telegraphed their intentions that Rokossovsky was able to order a bombardment of Model’s start line two hours before the German offensive began. Nevertheless, the German artillery opened fire at 4.30am. It was a short but intense bombardment, planned for maximum shock effect, with the Luftwaffe joining in after 40 minutes with 730 aircraft from Luftflotte 6. The ground forces commenced their assault under cover of both air and artillery bombardment. Accounts of the battle of Kursk have often focused on the new heavy tanks employed by the Germans. Model’s assault was led by the most exotic combination: 89 Elefant assault guns of schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung 656, together with the 31 Tigers of schwere Panzer Abteilung 505 were used to spearhead the assault, supported by the 45 Brummbär assault guns of SturmPanzer-Abteilung 216.
The Elefant, also known as the Ferdinand, was an assault gun based on the chassis of the unsuccessful contender for the Tiger heavy tank project. When Henschel’s design was chosen for production, Porsche used the components of its prototypes to create a 65-ton tank destroyer with an 88mm PAK 43 in the fighting compartment. Capable of knocking out any enemy tank at up to 3,000 yards and protected by nearly 8 inches of frontal armour, impervious to enemy fire, it was a formidable vehicle. However, its engine was not powerful enough; its sluggish top speed of 18mph and poor acceleration made it better suited to defensive operations – in which the survivors would excel later in the year.
Designed in the wake of Stalingrad, the Brummbär (‘Grizzly Bear’) or SturmPanzer IV was intended to support combat in built-up areas. It combined a Panzer IV chassis with an armoured fighting compartment on top, fitted with a stubby 150mm howitzer in a limited traverse mounting. Its 83lb shell would demolish enemy-held buildings at point-blank range, while its stout frontal armour kept out enemy anti-tank rounds.
Most of the German Army relied on horse-drawn transport columns throughout the Second World War. Although the Panzer divisions grabbed the headlines, the bulk of Hitler’s divisions moved no faster than their fathers in 1914, or Napoleon’s men in 1812.
German field police stage an arrest for the camera, somewhere behind the lines in the summer of 1941. Hundreds of thousands of Russian troops were cut off by the speed of the German advance. Some managed to evade capture and join the growing bands of partisans in the forests.
This machine-gun team was part of the Italian 8th Army, destroyed during the Russian offensive in November 1942. Italian prisoners-of-war suffered a disproportionately high mortality rate in captivity.
A Panzer III tows a Sturmgeschütz assault gun out of a snow drift in early 1942. From just a few batteries in 1941, assault guns went on to form a significant proportion of German armour on the Russian front.
Bodies lie on the pavement as the German bombardment of Leningrad continues. Modern estimates suggest that over 900,000 people died in the siege of the city, which continued from 1941 to 1944.
Russian volunteers (Hiwis) serving with the Germans during the battle of Kharkov, spring 1942. By 1943 German infantry divisions in Russia officially included 2,000 such men; 176 separate battalions of Osttruppen were also raised by 1944.
Russian ski troops on sledges towed by (left) a T-26 and (right) a T-60 light tank. On their own, ski troops lacked firepower because it was difficult to move mortars and machine-guns across the snow.
Both sides made use of captured tanks, the Germans painting outsized crosses on their T-34s to avoid a ‘blue-on-blue’. On the same principle, this Sturmgeschütz captured by the Russians is now smothered in red stars and patriotic slogans.
Ice encrusts the deck gun of a German U-boat operating out of Norway against the British convoys sailing to Murmansk. Despite Russian ingratitude at the time, lend-lease supplies were very important to the Red Army, especially for the supply of trucks and high explosive.
A T-34/76, arguably more of an assault gun than a genuine main battle tank, but a crucial weapon nonetheless. Russian factories built over 30,000 of them: more than the sum total of German tank production during the Second World War.
SS troops in Kharkov in their new winter combat gear, March 1943. Unlike the 6th Army at Stalingrad, cut off from its winter clothing, the troops involved in Von Manstein’s counterattack were properly equipped for cold weather operations.
Soldiers from one of the 20 Luftwaffe field divisions, small infantry divisions established by the German Air Force to the despair of the overstretched army. In 1942 Hermann Göring was still sufficiently powerful to insist on creating his equivalent of Himmler’s Waffen-SS rather than cede manpower to the army in Russia.
Two soldiers from the ill-fated 6th Army seen in Stalingrad before the fall of winter and the Russian counter-attack that surrounded them. Of the 100,000 or so men who survived the battle to surrender in February 1943, fewer than 6,000 were still alive when they were released 12 years later.
SS troops outside Kharkov in March 1943. Temperatures remained so low that it was difficult to survive overnight in the open. This made even the smallest village worth fighting for.
One of the 300 Churchill tanks supplied by Britain to Russia: this knocked-out example is serving as a table for SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Vincenz Kaiser’s command post. Commanding the 3rd Battalion of 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, ‘Der Führer’, he wears the Knight’s Cross, awarded to him on 4 June 1943.
A command post belonging to SS ‘Das Reich’ during the battle of Kursk. The Russians claimed to have destroyed 2,952 German tanks during the battle, but German records show the permanent loss of 537, and these were replaced within a month.
Tank-riding infantry were a common feature of the great Soviet offensives in 1944. The US supplied Russia with 375,883 trucks, but it remained an iron law that no army ever had enough of them.
This battering ram of new heavy tanks made the initial penetration. Only one of Model’s Panzer divisions, the 20th, took part in the first day’s fighting: the other five were ready to pour through once a gap had been blown in the Soviet defences. The Elefants suffered from a lack of defensive machine-guns, a problem the Sturmgeschütz battalions had already addressed, and lost some of their number to Soviet infantry anti-tank teams. Many of the Tigers were disabled by mines, and their commanders complained that they were asked to do too much. However, Model’s plan worked. The battalions of heavy tanks led the infantry through the first line of Soviet field works, and smashed the Soviet counter-attack into the bargain. On 5 July, Model’s 9th Army advanced about 4 miles against the Russian 13th Army. The Russian 2nd Tank Army, ordered to recapture the original front line, counter-attacked the next day, but it suffered such terrible losses that Rokossovsky sacked its commander, Lieutenant-General Rodin. Rokossovsky ordered the surviving Russian armour to be dug in among the defensive positions and not to attempt to fight a mobile battle.
Now the Panzer divisions poured into the gap, ready to slash through the remains of the defences and break into open country. Between the small towns of Ol’hovatka and Ponyri, ten infantry and four Panzer divisions battered their way forward, but although the Germans captured part of both towns, they could not wrest them completely from the defenders. Fighting from deep entrenchments practically impervious to artillery fire, the Russian infantry kept firing, reducing German infantry companies to mere handfuls of men. Although the German tanks were knocking out impressive numbers of Soviet vehicles, they were suffering steady attrition themselves, especially track damage caused by land mines. Soviet engineers laid another 6,000 mines on Rokossovsky’s Front during 6 July alone. They rarely knocked out German tanks, but often put them out of action for vital hours. Prodigious quantities of ammunition were expended, German veterans remembering the unceasing fire of the Soviet artillery. And although the Soviet Air Force was losing heavily in the battles overhead, Soviet fighter-bombers persisted in making low-level sorties against German artillery positions, coming in under the German radar coverage and attacking before they could be intercepted.
On 7 July, Model committed the 2nd and 18th Panzer Divisions, feeding in the 4th Panzer Division the next day. Rokossovsky responded by bringing up 9th Tank Corps. Attack and counter-attack followed, hour after hour, in the baking heat of the steppe. The German 292nd Infantry Division, in action near Ponyri, identified 11 discrete Russian counter-attacks against it on 8 July alone. Each afternoon the atmosphere grew thick until the clouds finally burst and saturated the bloody field. Model halted his forces on the 9th, then resumed the offensive on the 10th, making the last minor gains, but his army never did break into the open. After a week of intensive fighting, day and night, his divisions had advanced only another couple of miles by 12 July when he suspended offensive operations because of the Soviet attack on the Orel salient, Operation Kutuzov, which forced Army Group Centre onto the defensive. The ground won at such bitter cost was abandoned as Model turned his forces to help 2nd Panzer Army face the new threat.
The southern arm of the German pincer at Kursk was provided by Army Group South, which had more armour than Army Group North: 13 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions, including the SS Panzer Corps, as well as the 200 Panther tanks of 39th Panzer Regiment. The ‘Großdeutschland’ Division and the SS divisions ‘Leibstandarte’, ‘Das Reich’ and ‘Totenkopf’ each had a company (13–15 tanks) of Tigers, while schwere Panzer Abteilung 503 had 45 Tigers. The army group was supported by 1,100 aircraft assigned to Fliegerkorps 8.
Field Marshal von Manstein, the planner of the Sedan breakthrough and recent victor at Kharkov, conducted his assault differently from Model, attacking with massed armour from the very first hour. The 4th Panzer Army under the veteran tank commander Colonel-General Hoth broke into the Soviet defences north-west of Belgorod under cover of an equally short but sharp artillery bombardment. The Soviet 6th Guards Army could not stop the onslaught, and the Germans advanced up to 6 miles through the Soviet defences. General Vatutin, commander of the Voronezh Front, brought forward the 1st Tank Army (6th and 31st Tank Corps) with both his reserve Tank Corps (2nd and 5th Guards), a total of more than 1,000 tanks to block the approaches to Obajan.
The city of Belgorod lies on the west bank of the Donets, and was just within German lines at the southern neck of the Kursk salient. The German Armeeabteilung Kempf (six infantry and three Panzer divisions plus three assault gun battalions) had succeeded in bridging the river and establishing a bridgehead, but the forewarned Soviet artillery battalions delivered an intensive barrage just as the Germans tried to break out. Nevertheless, German engineers laid two more bridges south of the city, and by noon on 5 July, the Panzer divisions were crossing the Donets, poised to sweep along the east bank, guarding the flank of Hoth’s Panzer Army as it headed for Kursk.
Whether Vatutin or his tank commanders were aware of the fate of the 2nd Tank Army’s counter-attack in the north, or were simply more cautious, the 1st Tank Army did not launch itself at Hoth’s Panzers. A counter-attack scheduled for 6 July was cancelled and the Soviet tanks took up defensive positions behind the infantry, the anti-tank guns, anti-tank ditches and minefields. The 1st Tank Army was on high ground overlooking the River Ps’ol, south-west of Obajan; the 2nd and 5th Tank Corps were behind the 69th Army to the south-east. In reserve 90 miles further east lay the 5th Guards Tank Army of Konev’s Steppe Front. If Hoth led 4th Panzer Army directly for Kursk, he would run into 1st Tank Army and leave his right flank exposed to the rest of Vatutin’s armour and the 5th Guards Tank Army. Instead, Hoth veered north-east, towards the small town of Prochorovka where the Belgorod–Voronezh road intersects the Kursk–Belgorod railroad. Advancing in this direction also avoided further bridging operations. Hoth would pass between the Ps’ol and the headwaters of the Donets. Given the German dependence on heavy tanks that were too large for standard army bridging equipment, this was no small consideration.
The 4th Panzer Army crashed through the Soviet defences with incredible skill and élan. Against the most formidable entrenchments, stubbornly defended, the 48th Panzer Corps and 2nd SS Panzer Corps advanced 19 miles in a week to reach a line running from Verhopen’e, along the high ground towards Prochorovka. At Verhopen’e, combat engineers repaired the bridge and the ‘Großdeutschland’ Division rolled up the defences, taking numerous prisoners from the 71st Guards Rifle Division. The 2nd SS Panzer Corps broke through to the west of Prochorovka. On its left, ‘Totenkopf’ established a bridgehead over the Ps’ol on 10 July. For seven days, Stalin, Zhukov and Vassilevski monitored the progress of the battle, demanding hourly reports on 10 and 11 July. They were determined to preserve as large an operational reserve as possible, ready for their own offensive. The German attack in the north had been stopped without recourse to massive reinforcements, but 4th Panzer Army was still smashing its way through one defensive line after another. The Soviet 69th Army, in danger of being cut off between Hoth’s Panzers and Armeeabteilung Kempf, was compelled to withdraw.
The 5th Guards Tank Army (18th and 29th Tank Corps plus 5th Mechanized Corps) was transferred to Vatutin’s operational control on 9 July and ordered, as Hoth had predicted, to Prochorovka. The 5th Guards Army was dispatched too, occupying the 28-mile front between Obajan and Prochorovka on 11 July. The 5th Guards Tank Army counter-attacked on 12 July, together with 2nd Tank Corps and 2nd Guards Tank Corps from Steppe Front’s reserve. A murderous, chaotic tank battle ensued to the dramatic background of a summer storm as 2nd SS Panzer Corps continued to attack as well. SS ‘Leibstandarte’ inflicted severe losses on the 18th and 29th Tank Corps of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army. ‘Totenkopf’, delayed by getting its tanks across the Ps’ol, bludgeoned its way into the defensive positions of the 33rd Guards Rifle Corps.
The same day Field Marshals von Kluge and von Manstein were summoned back to Hitler’s headquarters in Prussia. A tense meeting ensued on 13 July. The British and Americans had landed on Sicily and Italian forces were offering little resistance. Army Group South was ordered to dispatch 2nd SS Panzer Corps to Italy, in the expectation of an attack on the mainland. Operation Zitadelle was cancelled.
The battle of Kursk was hailed as a great victory in Russia, and Stalin ordered a triumphal salute to be fired in Moscow. The Red Army had received the most powerful blow the German Army could deliver, parried it, and commenced two major offensives of its own. In the chaos of a great tank battle – as in an aerial dogfight – exorbitant numbers of ‘kills’ tend to be claimed. At Kursk they were inflated out of all proportion: the Russians claimed to have destroyed 2,952 tanks and 195 assault guns, killed 70,000 men and shot down 1,392 aircraft at Kursk.7
These bogus figures have become part of the legend: the presentation of Kursk as a mortal blow to the German Army in general and the Panzer divisions in particular. Army Group Centre reported the loss of nearly half its tanks; a total of 304 written off, including 39 of the Elefants. Army Group South had 233 tanks destroyed during Operation Zitadelle, including 58 Panthers. One of the unforeseen problems with the Panther was that it took three SdKfz 18t half-tracks to tow one damaged Panther, hence the large number that had to be blown up and abandoned. By the end of July Army Group South had 500 operational tanks, roughly half as many as it began the battle with. Assuming losses among the Sturmgeschütz battalions were in proportion, Operation Zitadelle cost the Germans between 600 and 700 tanks and assault guns. Yet German tank strength on the Eastern Front was approximately 1,500 at the beginning of 1943 and remained level at about 2,000 through the whole year as replacement vehicles arrived from the factories.
The Panzer divisions were not wiped out at Kursk, and neither was the Luftwaffe. In the skies above Kursk the Luftwaffe once again shot down vast numbers of Soviet aircraft for little loss: 432 Russian aircraft were shot down on the first day to Germany’s 23. For the German fighter arm, flying on the Eastern Front was regarded as operational training. Although several famous German aces served there for years, amassing enormous scores in the process, the majority of fighter pilots committed to Russia were transferred to defence of the Reich as soon as they had gained enough combat experience. They were replaced by newly trained pilots straight from training establishments. However, the Luftwaffe discovered that its bombers could no longer beat off Soviet fighter attacks unaided. Even the Heinkel He-111s, which had hitherto relied on close formations and relatively good defensive firepower, had to be shielded by Me-109s. Soviet fighter operations continued to improve; thanks to the arrival of British radar sets, the aircraft could be directed by ground control across the whole front by 1944.
The exploits of the Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik have dominated coverage of the Eastern Front air war, but in 1943 it was the success of the fighters – the La-5s, Yak-7s and Yak-9s especially – that had greatest impact, substantially reducing the number of effective German bombing missions. The Sturmoviks made regular attacks against German ground forces, but suffered dreadful losses both to fighters and to flak, once the latter were issued with armour-piercing ammunition. The fact that the position of rear gunner in an Il-2 was a punishment posting, which flight crew were given for disciplinary offences including cowardice, says much about the Red Army’s confidence in its ground-attack aircraft. One useful contribution the Il-2 did make was to hinder Luftwaffe reconnaissance: it could overtake and shoot down the Fw 189s of the German recce flights, confident its frontal armour would protect it from the German rear gunner.
The Soviet drive on Orel saw roles reversed. The Western and Bryansk Fronts had to break through defences that the Germans had had plenty of time to prepare. If the Germans lacked massive tank reserves with which to restore the line, they nevertheless still had the Luftwaffe to provide an effective substitute for both artillery and anti-tank guns. The 9th Army and 2nd Panzer Army defending Orel were aided by 37,000 sorties, with many aircraft flying five or six missions per day. The 1st Air Division delivered some 20,000 tons of ordnance, claiming 1,100 Russian tanks and 1,300 other vehicles destroyed. The Russian Air Force was still inferior, losing 1,733 aircraft over the Orel Front to a total of only 64 German aircraft.8
Try as they might, the German forces were unable to stop the Soviet offensives. Although the Ostheer exacted a heavy and unceasing toll of casualties for every position it had to abandon, the front line was driven steadily westwards. The Soviet attacks were supported by intensive artillery barrages that demolished all but the most thoroughly constructed positions. Many of the Russian units engaged at Kursk were still full of fight and able to mount an offensive of their own. By 5 August the Soviet 3rd Guards Tank Army had captured Orel, and two weeks later the Bryansk salient had been overrun. Model withdrew to the ‘Hagen’ line of fortifications, built a few miles east of Bryansk roughly along the line of the highway running north–south of the city. So began what can be called the second battle of the Ukraine, the longest discrete campaign of the war and arguably more important than Kursk. The eight-month struggle in the Ukraine was as dramatic a defeat for Germany as the more famous destruction of Army Group Centre in June 1944; as five Soviet fronts defeated the Germans in a succession of battles and drove them first to the Dnepr and then all the way back to the Carpathians and the pre-war Polish border.9
A Russian attack south of Kursk smashed through the German defensive lines to take Belgorod on 5 August and fight another major tank action with the 2nd and 3rd SS Divisions on the outskirts of Kharkov. Von Manstein fought – and lost – the fourth and final battle for Kharkov in August 1943. He told Hitler that it was essential to retreat to a solid defensive line before winter. After a series of meetings with his senior commanders on the Eastern Front, Hitler was eventually persuaded to allow a withdrawal to the River Dnepr. Supported by the greater share of Luftwaffe resources, in the form of 750–1,000 sorties per day, half of them bomber missions, Army Group Centre gave ground slowly against repeated Soviet offensives. The Soviet Western and Kalinin Fronts eventually recaptured Smolensk in early September, but at a terrible cost. The South-Western and Southern Fronts drove back Army Group South to prepared defensive positions running from Zaporezhe to the Black Sea, and succeeded in isolating the Crimea, occupied by the German 17th Army.
The German Army conducted an intensive ‘scorched earth’ policy as it fell back towards the Dnepr. In many villages every building was destroyed. This was nothing new; it had been standard operating procedure for the Ostheer, but it was carried out by soldiers who were increasingly suspicious that they would never be passing this way again. The savagery of the German Army in retreat had already been a feature of the War in the East. When the Wehrmacht had fallen back in winter 1941, it had destroyed what it could not take with it. Deportations and outright massacres of civilians had accompanied all subsequent withdrawals, a policy for which many senior army officers were brought to trial after the war.
While this does not excuse the actions of these units, the German Army had practically abandoned all judicial process by 1943. The court martial system was frequently bypassed and soldiers simply shot out of hand. Rule of law was replaced by rule of terror. More than 15,000 military executions were carried out by the German Army in the Second World War, almost all on the Russian front. With the Russians at hand, partisans itching for revenge, and their own officers increasingly ready to resort to the pistol, it is small wonder that some German soldiers employed excessive violence against those least able to defend themselves.
Even more grotesque activities began behind the front line. In August 1943 SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, former commander of Sonderkommando 4a, returned to Babi Yar (see Chapter Three) with his new unit Sonderkommando 1005. His task was to destroy the evidence of mass murders before the areas were overrun by the Soviets. Three hundred prisoners-of-war were used to disinter the bodies, pile them on improvised grates – the iron gates from the local cemetery – soak them in petrol and burn them. The bones were ground up with iron rollers, mixed with sand and scattered in the fields. When the job was done, the prisoners were ordered to fire up the grates once more, then the SS men shot them and disposed of their bodies the same way – except that one group of prisoners made a run for it when it became obvious what was about to happen.
The retreat was not only marked by German atrocities. The Luftwaffe methodically blew up airfield facilities, cratering runways and then sowing them with mines to prevent the Soviets using them. That practice was abandoned when it was discovered that the Russians were marching German prisoners-of-war across the runways to detonate the bombs.
Soviet mechanized forces reached the Dnepr either side of Kiev in late September. An attempt to use three airborne divisions to storm the river crossings at Kanev and Bukrin, 50 miles downstream, met with bloody defeat. One division was parachuted directly on to the positions of the 10th Panzergrenadier Division, which Soviet intelligence had not located. A bridgehead was established at Bukrin, but sealed off by the Germans. A month later, the 3rd Tank Army and 7th Artillery Breakthrough Corps abandoned the bridgehead, crossed back to the east side of the river and headed north. Some of their radio operators remained behind, still broadcasting, so their arrival in the tiny west-bank foothold at Lyutlezh, 12 miles upstream of Kiev, came as a very disagreeable surprise to the Germans. On 3 November, the German infantry divisions hemming Lyutlezh were struck by a hurricane bombardment from 2,000 guns, mortars and rocket launchers. The 3rd Tank Army overran the defences and surged towards Kiev, which the Germans evacuated three days later.
The Voronezh Front surged west another 60 miles to take Zhitomir and Korosten before Von Manstein counter-attacked with the 48th Panzer Corps in mid-November. The core of his force consisted of the 1st and 7th Panzer Divisions, SS Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ and the 68th Infantry Division, plus the weakened 19th and 25th Panzer Divisions and a Kampfgruppe made up of the survivors from 2nd SS Division ‘Das Reich’. The Germans recaptured both towns and re-established the direct railroad link with Army Group Centre. A more ambitious counter-stroke, aimed at attacking Kiev from the south-west and cutting off a large proportion of the Voronezh Front was abandoned in favour of an almost frontal attack, which failed. Major-General Mellenthin blamed Colonel-General Rauss, the commander of 4th Panzer Army, for excessive caution here.10 Konev’s Steppe Front stormed the German defences on the Dnepr further south and captured Cherkassy in early December. German forces still held the river line between the original Soviet bridgehead at Bukrin and the city of Kiev, but were becoming dangerously exposed to an encirclement. While vainly continuing his counter-attack towards Kiev, Von Manstein repeatedly requested permission to evacuate this dangerous salient. Hitler just wanted someone to blame for the continual advance of the Russians and sacked Colonel-General Hermann Hoth. This highly experienced Panzer general was placed on the retired list until April 1945, when he was briefly tasked with organizing the defence of the Harz mountains.