CHAPTER 6
Breaking In
(Zitadelle Launched: 5 July)
Lieutenant Raimund Rüffer’s previous experience with 78th Assault Division had been in a series of hastily arranged attacks during the winter, which had achieved mixed results. But the 20-year-old found Zitadelle very different.
Ivan bullets zipped around us, I could hear them flying past my ears. I expected to be cut down any moment or blown to smithereens by the shells that slammed about. This was not my first action, but it felt like it. We had been waiting. Oh, what a tortuous wait! As the day arrived our nerves jangled although we tried not to show it. By dawn I was cold, tired and – I don’t mind admitting it – very frightened. We had not seen the enemy since March and in the meantime our bodies and minds had acclimatised to a war of training and fatigue parties. I enjoyed it. The comradeship in our platoon was sublime and, enjoying plentiful rations in the sunshine, it was easy to forget the coming storm.
But as the weeks passed it became increasingly difficult to ignore the inevitable and my thoughts turned increasingly to my parents back in Köln. I was concerned for their safety as Allied raids had been devastating. I had witnessed the destruction during my last home leave and had sobbed as I walked through shattered streets that were barely recognisable. At dinner my mother had tried to engage me in conversation about family matters, but it was clear that she was worried sick about me. She had good reason to be concerned for there were just 10 ‘originals’ drawing breath in my 35 man platoon. She wanted to know about my war – which was understandable – but I grew angry at her questions which reminded me of the inquisitions that she had subjected me to after a day at school. I gave little away and altered the subject. She said that I had changed which made me furious, but my father calmed the situation saying that I was the same as ever, just tired. As a veteran of the trenches he recognised his son’s reticence to talk about his life at the front. I sloped off to the garden and sat smoking – distracted. After a couple of hours my father found me. We sat together for a while and although we did so in silence and without our eyes meeting, a fresh connection had been made. Rising after a few minutes he put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed gently and left me to my thoughts. He understood.
Now, nearly nine months later with 78th Assault Division, I struggled on to the platoon objective, my muscles screaming and uniform drenched with sweat. We worked together without words, a glance was enough, covering the ground as quickly as possible. I heard my old friend Ernest panting seconds before his right arm was torn from his body by an explosion that flung his rifle at my feet. He whimpered as I moved towards him, but was silent by the time that I was at his side. A movement to my right. I twisted to see a camouflaged cover being thrown off a trench.
I instinctively yelled a warning, dropped to one knee and squeezed the trigger of my rifle. The butt kicked and a round was sent hurtling towards a faceless Soviet soldier. In that same instant I was knocked off my feet as though hit by a heavyweight boxer. A Soviet round had struck me in the shoulder, shattering the bone and leaving me gasping for air.
By 0500 hours on the morning of 5 July, despite the Soviet attempt to disrupt the opening of Zitadelle, the Ninth Army was attacking in the north, and the Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf in the south. The offensive began with the Germans’ own preliminary bombardment, with the artillery and massed nebelwerfer batteries targeting the trenches and bunkers of the Soviet forward defences. The aim was not so much to destroy Soviet positions and kill the defenders – the 50 minute bombardment was far too short for that – but to dislocate and unbalance the enemy. Model and Manstein wanted to ensure that Soviet guns were neutralized, their command and control was disrupted and the infantry’s heads were tucked firmly below the parapet as their tanks and infantry began to attack. Nevertheless, by the time the bombardment lifted, the artillery had fired more shells than they had during the campaigns in France and Poland combined. ‘At last,’ says heavy gunner Johan Müller, ‘we were taking the initiative. After weeks and months of map work and firing tables, it was good to be in action again. We had plenty of shells to fire and got through them quickly. We were told that our work had been tremendously successful and its accuracy had been remarked upon by headquarters.’ The attacking formations eased themselves forward, covered at first by the ground-based artillery and then by the Luftwaffe in the form of He-111 and Ju-88 medium bombers. Despite the best efforts of the Soviet Air Force to destroy the German aircraft on the ground that morning, ground-support missions were being flown in support of the offensive with near impunity.
The Luftwaffe had been alerted to the Soviet threat by the enemy’s early preliminary bombardment, and then by seeing aircraft approaching their airfields on the radar. The 800 aircraft of Luftflotte 4 were spread over several airfields and in the process of being fuelled and loaded with bombs for their first sorties of the day when the sirens began to wail their warnings at 0330 hours. Many of the aircrews were in briefings or at breakfast but they immediately rushed to their machines and took off into the breaking dawn. Oberstleutnant Walter Lehwess-Litzmann, the commander of a German bomber group, recalls:
I had just gathered my commanders to assign them with their last instructions when I received an excited phone call which gave me revised orders. We were to take off immediately, although it was still dark, and attack the Soviet artillery positions.
The sky quickly filled with German aircraft. Over the radio, crews were told about the approach of a massive raid – it actually comprised 132 Il-2 Shturmovik ground-attack aircraft with a close escort of 285 La-5 and P-39 fighters. The German fighters were to intercept the Soviets, and the aircraft detailed to support the offensive were to start their missions immediately. So began the crucial battle for air superiority on 5 July. Within minutes, Miklós Keyneres, a Hungarian pilot of a Messerschmitt Bf-109, was locked in combat with Il-2s as German flak burst among the Soviet aircraft. He recalled:
In their great excitement, the flak gunners don’t pay any attention to the close proximity of our own aircraft. But we ignore their fire. We have our eyes only for the four red-starred aircraft . . . The machine [a twin-seat Il-2 with a rear gunner] on the left side peels off from the rest, with me in hot pursuit. The hunt begins. The Russian pushes close to the ground and escapes, hopping over trees. But we remain clung to his tail. On my right hand side, three Germans are pursuing too. One of the Germans dives on it, but fails to bring it down. Now my turn has come. I pull up slightly and, from the far side, I aim ahead of the engine but hold my fire for another moment. The distance is still too great. Then I squeeze both firing buttons. I pull up in an instant to avoid colliding. I skid out to the right. I get on its left side again and from above and behind I shoot at the cockpit. By now the Russian gunner does not return fire. From a close distance I open up with the cannon. The machine shudders and hits the ground with its right wing tip. It slides along a creek, violently burning.
German anti-aircraft defences caused the incoming Soviets considerable problems, as Nikolay Gapeyonok, the pilot of a Pe-2 dive bomber, remembers, when they attacked an airfield west of Belgorod: ‘We ran into a heavy AAA [anti-aircraft artillery] barrage, which disrupted our bombing. Two Pe-2s exploded in mid-air as a result of direct hits, and a third bomber was damaged.’ It was a similar situation in the north where Senior Lieutenant T. Simutenkov, flying an Il-2, ran into a curtain of fire:
As we approached our target I could see the anti-aircraft fire ripping through the sky. I held my course and could just make out some enemy aircraft taking off. This was a shock as we were convinced that we would achieve surprise and record a major success, but before I had a chance to make my attack my aircraft was hit in the fuselage and then the right wing. Smoke began to seep into the cockpit and I struggled to remain in control . . . I feared that the engine would burst into flames but it did not, but it stuttered and lost power. I instinctively swung the aircraft south and within seconds was making a forced landing somewhere within our lines . . . It was still dark and I hit the ground with a fearsome crash which ripped the undercarriage off. But the aircraft skidded to a halt in a field and I was able to push back the cockpit and walk away shaken, but unharmed.
The Soviets had hoped to catch the Luftwaffe cold but instead took considerable losses in an air battle that developed into one of the greatest of the war. The Germans gained air superiority that morning and destroyed 176 enemy aircraft for, perhaps, as few as just 26 machines of their own fleet. Rather than removing a crucial element of the Wehrmacht’s offensive ability, Stalin’s airforce had provided the Germans with the opportunity to weaken the Red Army’s defences. This meant that the Luftwaffe was able to fly nearly 4,500 sorties in support of the ground forces on 5 July, and despite flying 3,385 sorties of their own, the Soviets could not breach the German fighter screen in any numbers. A Moscow-sponsored report into the situation commented later in the year: ‘Our aviation fought air battles primarily against enemy fighters along the approaches to the battlefield, while enemy bombers were operating almost continually against our defending forces immediately over the battlefield along the main axis.’
As the fight for the sky unfolded, Hitler’s army began what was to become its own titanic attempt to crack the Red Army’s defences. In the south, XLVIII Panzer Corps and II SS Panzer Corps threw themselves at the 6th Guards Army at the junction of the 22nd and 23rd Rifle Corps. Hoth expected the first two lines of Soviet defences – held by the 67th and 52nd Guards Rifles Divisions – to be broken that day, and by the end of the next day to have broken through the third line and advanced half the distance to Kursk. The Grossdeutschland Panzer Grenadier Division was the main attacking force, supported on its flanks by the 3rd and 11th Panzer Divisions. The Grossdeutschland’s 384 tanks included the usual Panzer IIIs and IVs, but also a heavy company of 15 Tigers and 200 Panthers.
However, these new medium tanks had only just arrived at the front – Battalion 52 on 30 June and Battalion 51 on 1 July – and had had very little opportunity to orientate themselves and conduct the reconnaissance that they required. In line with Guderian’s warning that the tanks were mechanically unreliable, two Panthers were lost to engine fires at the railhead and another six before they crossed the front line. To make matters worse, the two battalions not only lacked combat experience but had conducted just platoon-level battle training and had received no instruction in battalion level radio procedure. The situation led driver Gerd Küster of Battalion 51 to recall:
We arrived for the battle with just hours to spare. We were extremely tired and had to spend all the time available to us arming and servicing our Panther. We had received our tank just a week before and were still learning about its quirks. We were impressed with what we had learned but nervous as we had spent so little time training in her . . . It is very important for any soldier, but particularly a tank crew, to have faith in their weapons. We knew about the reliability issues – and were very aware that the engine could burst into flames – but what worried us most was a lack of ‘feel’ for the tank. How it would manoeuvre, where it could and couldn’t go and the support that we would receive from the infantry and the air . . . In a sense, arriving at the front so late gave us little time to worry about such things. I spent the night [4–5 July] refuelling, lugging shells and trying to overcome a steering problem . . . We went into battle with weary eyes, splitting headaches and not the faintest clue what the battlefield had in store for us.
Backed by a heavy barrage from the artillery and led by 350 tanks supported by infantry, the Grossdeutschland Division advanced on a two-mile front towards the outpost villages of Gertsovka, Butovo and then Cherkasskoye in the first Soviet line. It was an awe-inspiring sight as the formation rumbled towards their enemy’s defences. A German war correspondent described these as typical of the salient:
The Guards Rifle Division [the 67th] dug in here believed that they were safe in their strong fortifications echeloned in depth. They were aware that swampy hollows and valleys, wide mine belts, wire entanglements, flamethrower barriers and tank ditches were in front of them. They also could see that they were deployed in a labyrinth of trenches and bunkers, anti-tank positions, rifle pits and mortar emplacements. Behind them a network of small strong points and defensive works were spread over the countryside.
Advancing into this web over open ground was the division’s Fusilier Regiment, the bulk of the Panthers and a battalion from the panzer regiment. After an initial burst, the attack faltered when 36 Panthers plunged into a minefield. A series of explosions broke a number of tracks, which immediately halted the beasts and rendered them vulnerable to a wall of Soviet anti-tank and artillery fire. What little momentum the division had gained was taken from it as the battlefield was deluged with exploding shells and shrouded in a dense haze. The scene was observed by an officer in the division’s artillery:
Everything is shrouded in dust and smoke. The enemy observation posts certainly can’t see anything. Our barrage is now over . . . it has wandered from the forward trenches farther to the rear. Are the infantry there? We can see some movement, but nothing specific . . . General depression! My high spirits are gone.
The mines needed to be removed and the tank tracks repaired before the advance could continue. Paul Carell, the pseudonym of SS Obersturmbannführer Paul Schmidt, wrote of the mine clearers in his vivid history, Scorched Earth:
The job needed a steady hand and calm nerves. Each anti-tank mine, when the earth had been cleared away around it, had to be lifted carefully just a little way because many of them were additionally secured against lifting by being anchored to a peg by a short length of wire. Yard by yard the parties crept forward – probing, clearing the mines with their hands, lifting them carefully, removing the detonators, and putting the death-traps aside. Down among the engineers crashed Soviet mortar shells. Over their heads screamed the deafening 8.8cm shells of their own Tigers.
The Germans had been trying to remove mines under cover of darkness throughout June. Henri Schnabel was section commander of a hastily trained team that had been specially formed for Zitadelle and sent to the southern salient at the end of May:
The task was time-consuming and without end. The Soviets had sown thousands upon thousands of mines and we could never remove all of them and those that we removed were replaced. We worked at night up to the day of the attack. It was dangerous work because the Soviet mines were unreliable. Many of the mines we found were duds, but some were so poorly made that the slightest movement set them off . . . My team was set to work under heavy fire on the morning of 5th July. We were working with detectors under shell and machine gun fire with the tanks covering us the best that they could. A colleague lifted a mine . . . and it exploded killing him, and sent dirty fragments into my left leg as I worked beside him. I was attended to by a daring medic and continued my work . . . It was understood that each man would continue in his task until he was physically incapable of doing so.
Such was the density of the minefield that clearing it took several hours. The infantry, meanwhile, tried to advance across it, keen to get to grips with the enemy who was delighting in causing the men of Grossdeutschland such distress. Their casualties were heavy and included the Fusiliers’ commander, Colonel Kassnitz, who was leading the attack on the division’s left. Those tanks and troops that could be pulled back to the start line were quickly withdrawn. For Lieutenant-General Walter Hoernlein, the Grossdeutschland’s frantic commander, the situation was intolerable and yet he was powerless to do anything but look on and allow his subordinates to do their jobs. As one of his staff officers, Hauptmann Gunar Francks, has testified:
We understood that this attack was going to be unlike our previous successes in France and Russia back in 1941 when we had moved far and fast. We had made many representations to Corps and Army that the defences were likely to sap our power, that for an armoured bludgeon to work it needs to be swung – it needs a run at the defences – but we were told that we had to make the best of the situation. I do not believe, however, that our superiors believed that the attack would be anything other than a bloody struggle.
Had the Red Air Force enjoyed air supremacy as expected, the carnage would very likely have been much worse. As it was, most Soviet aircraft seeking to target the German advance either failed to break through the Luftwaffe’s fighter cordon or were prevented from conducting sustained attacks. Thus, although XLVIII Panzer Corps reported that morning: ‘The entire corps sector is under heavy attack by Soviet Il-2 ground-attack planes and bombers’, this was only relative to what it was used to facing. Moreover, many more enemy aircraft were repelled than managed to break through and those that caused initial concerns were swiftly chased away by the arrival of Bf-109s.
Nevertheless, Grossdeutschland endured a difficult morning, and the Wehrmacht was forced to confront a reality that they had not expected. The formation’s official history – disparaging of the Zitadelle plan, although understandably fulsome in its praise for the troops – admits:
It was enough to make one sick. Soldiers and officers alike feared that the entire affair was going to pot. The tanks were stuck fast, some bogged down to the tops of their tracks, and to make matters worse the enemy was firing at them with antitank rifles, antitank guns, and artillery. Tremendous confusion breaks out. The Fusiliers advance without the tanks – what can they do? . . . [and] walked straight into ruin. Even the heavy company suffered 50 killed and wounded in a few hours. Pioneers were moved up immediately and they began clearing a path through the mine-infested terrain. Ten more hours had to pass before the first tanks and self-propelled guns got through.
On the release of his division from the minefield’s clutches, and desperate to regain impetus, Hoernlein ordered the Fusiliers and tanks forward to restart the attack on eastern Gertsovka. This time his force was halted below the village by the marshy ground surrounding the swollen Berezovyy stream. Sensing another opportunity, the Soviet airforce endeavoured to put pressure on XLVIII Panzer Corps, leading its commander, Otto von Knobelsdorff, to report to Manstein:
Soviet air forces repeatedly attack the large concentrations of tanks and infantry near the crossings at Berezovyy. There are heavy losses, especially among the officers. Grossdeutschland’s Command Post received a direct hit, killing the adjutant of the grenadier regiment and two other officers.
As the stricken armour awaited rescue by recovery vehicles, the Grenadier Regiment on the division’s right advanced more successfully towards Butovo. Leading the way were Tigers, which were employed in a classic arrow formation (Keil ), with lighter Panzer IIIs, IVs and assault guns fanning out to the rear. They were followed by the infantry and engineers. These would support the armour by attacking anti-tank teams, destroying obstacles and clearing Soviet trenches. Near Cherkasskoe, Ukrainian machine-gunner Mykhailo Petrik waited in a bunker that he had constructed out of earth, wood and some metal sheeting:
Now was the moment that we had been waiting for. The Germans came. First, their shells and then their armour and infantry. Tanks and men across the front. With the noise of the shells exploding the sound of the attack was muffled. A fellow standing next to me looked over with a blank face, said something that I could not hear, and then looked back out over the parapet . . . We were nervous in our trench but readied ourselves. Ammunition and grenades at our elbow. We did not expect to survive and now we knew death was arriving and I could not catch my breath.
Striking the first blow and blazing a trail that others would follow placed a great deal of responsibility on the tank crews. Many panzer commanders preferred to use hand signals between themselves in battle to communicate, but on this occasion the dust and smoke obscured vision to such an extent that they had to rely on radios. Commanders listened to unit instructions and gave clipped orders to their own crews over the intercom. Each member of the team was addressed by his job title for clarity and was expected to remain silent unless he had something of importance to say. There was no time for distracting chit-chat in battle. The formation remained concentrated until the enemy was sighted, and then widened out but kept its shape. The commanders scanned the ground for threats. Dug-in armour was difficult to spot, and the low profile of anti-tank guns made them particularly tricky to pick up if covered by camouflage. Working in a minimum of pairs, and often in clutches of four or five, anti-tank guns could be devastating to most tanks at close range. The Tigers were well protected and had the critical role of winkling out and destroying these potentially destructive weapons. It was such a difficult job that, according to experienced tank commanders, the elimination of an antitank gun ‘counted twice as much’ as a tank kill.
Attacking ground troops would request an air strike while they were still a safe distance from the enemy. The request was radioed to a control centre by Luftwaffe liaison officers in the front line. It was an excellent system, for as Major-General Hans Seidemann, the commander of Fliegerkorps VIII, has testified:
Providing quick and effective ground support necessitated smoothly functioning communications between the attacking armies, corps, and divisions and the headquarters at Fliegerkorps VIII. The Luftwaffe had maintained a corps of liaison officers since the beginning of the war, composed of men who had strong experience in ground support operations. As usual during this offensive, we attached these teams directly to Army Group South’s corps and division headquarters, and they accompanied their units directly onto the field of battle. There the Luftwaffe officers also acted as dive-bomber and fighter guides, using their radios to direct approaching formations to their targets indicated by the ground commanders, correct their fire, and provide updates on the current tactical air situation in the local area.
These arrangements were far better than the Soviet system, which depended on air-support signals being sent to an officer at a remote headquarters, where he had little understanding of the developing battle and could not assist the accuracy of any subsequent strikes. Thus while the Soviet airforce maintained its reputation for launching attacks on its own troops, waves of Stukas were expertly rolled on to their targets. They circled for around 20 minutes as each aircraft individually dived at 370 miles per hour at an angle of between 60 and 90 degrees and released its 550lb fuselage bomb and two wing-mounted 110lb bombs at around 1,500 feet. As one wave finished its work, another would arrive to replace it, and so it continued until the enemy had been neutralized or destroyed. Such attacks aided the advance of the tanks and grenadiers on the right of Grossdeutschland, which swept through Butovo in cooperation with Major-General Mickl’s 11th Panzer Division and by the early afternoon was threatening Cherkasskoe. Chistyakov had reinforced the village that morning as soon as the Germans had shown their hand. His troops now engaged the approaching tanks and infantry with venom and the confrontation was brutal. Mykhailo Petrik fought for his life, his machine gun ripping through ammunition at an enormous rate, but his battle came to a sudden end:
We had the enemy pinned down, but there was little cover and they tried to attack. Every time they moved, we shot them. A small pile of casualties grew. But then we saw that they had a mortar and before I could open fire, we had been hit. That mortar round knocked me unconscious and, in so doing, saved my life. When I came to that evening my partner was dead and I was covered in blood from a bad head wound. I was a mess. Deaf, confused and unable to stand. Despite this I can still recall the mixture of damp earth, cordite and blood which filled my nostrils as I assessed my situation. Clearly the Germans had passed by thinking us both dead . . . That evening, having gathered myself, I headed north through the German lines and into the arms of comrades where I was patched up, given a rifle and sent to a trench. I did not last long. It was only hours later that I collapsed again. A shard of metal had, unknown to me, entered my neck from the mortar. My battle was over.
Cherkasskoe fell that afternoon. Swiftly redeployed Fusiliers and Panthers from Grossdeutschland’s stalled attack advanced along with a detachment of Flammpanzer IIIs (flame-thrower tanks). Their blazing fuel oil suppressed the Soviet defences to allow combat engineers and the infantry to break in and mop up. Under intense pressure, the defenders buckled and the survivors fell back to the second line under covering fire, a 15 man rearguard fighting from the village’s smoking ruins. The capture of Cherkasskoe, when added to the success of the 3rd Panzer Division on Hoernlein’s left flank, which had managed to seize both Gertsovka and Korovino, meant that a considerable hole had been torn in the Soviets’ first line of defence.
On XLVIII Panzer Corps’ right, linked by 167th Infantry Division, which was held around Trirechnoe, was the second part of Hoth’s main strike force – Paul Hausser’s II SS Panzer Corps. Up against the 52nd Guards Rifle Division were the three SS-Panzergrenadier divisions: Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler (LAH), Das Reich and Totenkopf. All three were strong, élite, highly motivated divisions with fearsome reputations. Indeed, Lieutenant-General I.M. Chistyakov, commander of the 6th Guards Army, had warned his men: ‘Be careful, comrades! Before you stands Hitler’s guard. We must expect one of the main efforts of the German offensive in this sector.’ Expecting Hoth’s main effort to be towards Pokrovka (not to be confused with Prokhorovka 25 miles to its northeast) the Soviets sent considerable reinforcements south of the town in June, to add ballast. One of them, gunner Michail Khodorovsky, recalls:
I was not afraid of going into battle, but I did fear the SS or, rather, I feared being captured by the SS. Days before the battle we had received a lecture from our political officer warning us that the SS tortured prisoners and were likely to treat anyone that fell to them very badly. We were advised to fight to the last man, defend our comrades from these fascists. It fell to us, we were told, to stop Nazism rampaging across Mother Russia. We believed it. Every word of it, and so we fought like we had never fought before.
Confident in their business and utilizing tactics that were reminiscent of German stormtroopers in 1918, the infiltrating SS grenadiers had secreted themselves in no-man’s-land during the night of 4–5 July. Having cleared lanes through the Soviet minefields, they sprang into action as their guns bombarded the Soviet front line at dawn, and they fell on the battered positions before the defenders had time to regain their poise. Led by a Keil of 42 Tigers, 494 tanks and assault guns attacked across a seven and a half mile front and slammed into the Soviet line. Totenkopf, the strongest of Hausser’s divisions, screened the right flank of the attack with an advance to Gremuchii; LAH on the left advanced towards Bykovka and Das Reich moved in between via Berezov. Martin Steiger, commander of a Totenkopf Mark III, recalled the advance of the Tigers in front of him:
It was 4:15 am. A rustle, a hiss, a whistle! Columns of smoke rose like gigantic organ pipes into the sky. Artillery and mortars open the battle. A few minutes later heavy veils of smoke from the artillery explosions darkened the early morning sun. Stukas came and came, twenty-seven . . . eighty-one . . . we lost count. Stukas, heavy bombers, fighters, long-range reconnaissance planes; it was as if the air itself had begun to sing and hum. Finally, the order came: ‘Panzers marsch!’ Our attack was under way!
In LAH, SS-Untersturmführer Roger Hoch felt the tension in his platoon. After a busy evening in which he had little sleep, he was pleased to get into battle:
I could not stand another delay and was delighted when we were told that the attack was on . . . The men looked relieved when I told them and there were a few brutish comments about what they would do with the enemy when they caught up with them. Much of it was bravado, I could tell that they were nervous. I would use the word ‘frightened’, but that was a concept that the men liked to see attached only to the others – the non-SS troops. But we all felt fear, I am sure, and the only way to banish it was to face it and defeat it by going into battle . . . As soon as we crossed the line, nerves vanished, anxious thoughts were dissolved, our minds were on the task in hand.
Although some of the tanks found the going difficult initially due to areas of wet ground, the corps gained momentum quickly. The main road to Bykovka was bordered by flat ground, which was covered by lanky, wavering, silvery-grey grass along with wheat and rye crops – the colour of the armour’s recently prescribed yellow-olive-red-brown camouflage. The corps soon reached the cleared lanes of the minefield and as it advanced, the defenders’ artillery, anti-tank guns and machine guns opened fire. As with XLVIII Panzer Corps, the three divisions were supremely well supported by the Luftwaffe, which sent high explosives and fragmentation bombs cascading into the Soviet positions. The Soviets did not panic, despite the speed of the onslaught and the razor-sharp metal splinters jagging through the air. Several guns took direct hits and lay in twisted heaps beside their mangled crews. Those gun crews who remained active found that their rounds failed to penetrate the Tigers’ armour and, having given away their positions, they became victims of the tanks’ 88mm guns.
For the Germans, it was crucial that the infantry moved quickly to clear the area, for as Wilhelm Roes, a Tiger radio operator, argues: ‘The worst was the anti-tank hunting detachments which came in between T-34 attacks. You had to pay them particular attention – if they got through you were finished. An explosive charge and up you went.’ Mansur Abdulin was a member of one such team, armed with magnetic mines, sticky bombs and Molotov cocktails. He advised: ‘You should always act in pairs. The tank must ride over you, over your trench, then one soldier fires at the accompanying infantrymen, while the other throws the bottle or grenade.’ The tanks defended themselves from the threat posed by these teams by rolling up to trenches, turning on the spot and collapsing the earth walls on to their occupants. Combat engineers and grenadiers undertook the gruesome business of demolishing obstacles and emptying trenches. This phase of the battle had something of 1918 about it as well, for the SS men often eschewed their rifles in favour of hand-to-hand fighting with entrenching tools, bayonets, knives, pistols and grenades. Where available, flame-thrower teams led the way, as Hans Huber testifies:
[W]e worked our way forward into the trenches ahead of us. I fired a burst of flame as we approached every zig-zag in the trench and every enemy strong point. It was a strange feeling to serve this destructive weapon and it was terrifying to see the flames eat their way forward and envelop the Russian defenders. Soon I was coloured black from head to foot from the fuel oil and my face was burnt from the flames which bounced back off the trench walls or which were blown back at us by the strong wind. I could hardly see. The enemy could not fight against flame-throwers and so we made good progress, taking many prisoners.
When there were no flame-throwers available, the infantry jumped down into the traverses and cleared the trenches systematically, using well-rehearsed drills. SS-Mann Stefan Witte has said:
I left my heavier kit and advanced with a fighting knife and grenades . . . Dropping into a trench system, my section threw grenades around the corners and into dug-outs which were then cleared out by men with sub-machine guns . . . My knife was my only personal weapon and I used it once when I came across a Russian desperately trying to load his rifle. Without thinking I lunged forward and drove my knife into his stomach and twisted it, just as we had been trained. The man screamed, dropped to his knees and then fell onto his face. I moved on.
Slowly but surely, the SS divisions made their way through the first Soviet defensive line, but the defenders, recognizing that nothing was to be gained from surrendering, fought on. It was a violent tussle, as one observer describes:
The Tigers rumbled on. Anti-tank rifles cracked. Grenadiers jumped into trenches. Machine-guns ticked. Shells smashed sap trenches and dug-outs. The very first hours of fighting showed that Hausser’s divisions were encountering a well-prepared and well-functioning opposition.
Even so, by 0900 hours the II SS Panzer Corps had cracked the Soviets’ first line of defence. The final breakthrough occurred so quickly that Chistyakov, who was enjoying a ‘second breakfast’ of vodka and scrambled eggs in the open, was forced to flee to the relative safety of Lieutenant-General M.E. Katukov’s 1st Guards Tank Army. By 1100 hours, the three divisions were busy engaging the positions between the Soviets’ first and second main lines. It was a methodical advance – the artillery was brought forward, the tanks reorganized and the infantry sent forward to skirmish, identify Soviet positions and begin eliminating them. A war correspondent who was attached to the Tigers that were leading SS-Gruppenführer Walter Kruger’s Das Reich, wrote of the subsequent advance:
This is the hour of the tank. Unnoticed we assembled at the bottom of a balka, the Tigers flanked by medium and light companies. Our field glasses searched the horizon, groping in the smoke that covers the enemy bunkers like a curtain. The leader of the Tiger half company, an Obersturmführer from the Rhineland whose calmness ennobles us, gives the order to attack. The tank engines begin to howl as we load the guns. The heavy tanks slowly roll into the battle zone. At 200 metres, the first anti-tank fires at us. With a single round, we blow it up. All was quiet for a while as we rolled over the abandoned enemy trenches. We waved to our brave infantrymen from our open hatches as we passed them. They were taking a short rest after having just stormed the enemy heights. We then moved into the next valley.
As the tanks continued their surge, isolated Soviet infantrymen scattered. The correspondent’s report continued:
Our machine gunners fired on [the enemy] and forced them to take cover. As both of our machine guns rattled, approving shouts of the crew accompanied the aim of the fire. A heavy enemy truck was seen in the woods on our right attempting to escape. We fired upon it and it burst into flames.
In this way, the divisions moved forward, carefully, but maintaining momentum. The tank commanders, their heads swivelling slightly as they scrutinized the terrain through open hatches, eventually spied the approach of enemy tanks. At 1300 hours Das Reich’s armour came under fire from two T-34s, and although they were quickly despatched, 40 more appeared over the horizon, firing on the move. Several Tigers were hit but not damaged. Reacting quickly and taking up firing positions, the German armour selected targets and sent their armourpiercing rounds hurtling towards the enemy. Red Army tanks burst into flame as the panzers moved to new locations, stopped and repeated the process. After an hour of fighting, the field was covered in blazing hulks. Any survivors of the initial calamitous shell strike had just seconds to evacuate the tank before it was engulfed in flame, which threatened to ignite the fuel and ammunition. Nikolai Zheleznov was knocked to the turret floor when his T-34 was hit. The white-hot explosion had shattered his driver’s head, torn the loader’s arm from his body and sent scores of large metal shards into the gunner’s unprotected body. A fire sucked the oxygen out of the compartment and set light to Zheleznov’s uniform as he struggled to open the commander’s hatch. Eventually pushing it free as the flames leapt up around him, he fought to pull himself out of the void but his left leg had been broken at the knee. Passing comrades pulled him clear of the tank just before it exploded but he had sustained horrendous burns.
Soviet tank man Vladimir Alexeev recalled that the panzers were very efficient: ‘move, pause and fire – a very lethal combination’. Powerful guns, mounted on fast-moving, motorized turrets, gave the Tigers a considerable advantage while the thickness of their armour provided excellent protection. This led Ivan Sagun to suggest that any contest between T-34s and Tigers was unequal:
I had an encounter with just such a tank. He fired at us from literally one kilometre away. His first shot blew a hole in the side of my tank, his second hit my axle. At a range of half a kilometre I fired at him with a special calibre shell, but it bounced off him like a candle; I mean it didn’t penetrate his armour. At literally 300 metres I fired my second shell – same result. Then he started looking for me, turning his turret to see where I was. I told my driver to reverse fast and we hid behind some trees.
The Soviets sought to negate the Tigers’ advantages by fighting at close quarters, but without radios, keeping overall control was extremely difficult. Tactics had to be simple. Vladimir Alexeev told his T-34 platoon, ‘Follow me – do as I do.’ Yet without intercom, crews found it difficult to carry out their commander’s orders – particularly in the heat of battle – and so they had to improvise a method of communication. Ivan Sagun developed a simple system: ‘I directed the driver by tapping him on the shoulder with my foot. On the right shoulder meant go right, on the left shoulder go left. A prod in the back meant stop.’ When battle was joined, he made signals to the gunner with his hands: ‘A thumb up meant an armour-penetrating shell, two fingers for a shrapnel shell. The index finger also meant I needed a shrapnel shell; if we were facing another tank, he often knew which shell to use.’
Das Reich’s battle with the T-34s lasted four hours. Although the 1st Guards Tank Army had failed to halt the division’s advance, this had not been its aim. The tanks had been tasked with slowing the enemy’s onslaught and, having achieved this, they withdrew. The ‘armoured speed bump’ had bought the time the second line of defence needed to prepare itself – the infantry was reinforced and more anti-tank guns were brought up – and plans were tweaked to take account of the challenge that now faced the 23rd Guards Rifle Corps. Das Reich, having had its sting drawn by the initial thrust, probed forward once more in the early evening, and was soon confronted by the minefield protecting the Soviets’ second line.
Meanwhile, SS-Gruppenführer Wisch’s LAH, operating on Das Reich’s left, had taken Bykovka at 1610 hours and pushed on towards the Psel and Oboyan. Among the LAH Tiger commanders was SS-Untersturmführer Michael Wittmann. The 29-year-old Bavarian’s skills had been honed during nine years in the army. He had seen action with LAH in Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and Russia. A recent graduate of officer and tank school in Germany, he had returned to the Eastern Front and by the launch of Zitadelle was commanding a platoon of five Tigers. In common with Das Reich’s armoured spearhead, LAH had been involved in intense tank combat throughout the day. Although Wittmann’s tank had been hit several times during a battle in the late morning, it had not been immobilized and he had charged several antitank guns and crushed them before registering his first tank kill: ‘The T-34’s turret was blown clear of the rest of the vehicle, and flames enveloped the wreck.’ Already drained by their efforts, Wittmann and his crew could not afford to rest and in the afternoon went to the aid of a fellow platoon, which had been cut off by several T-34s. One well-aimed shot smashed his Tiger’s track and wounded his driver, requiring the replacement of both. Wittmann surged on and by the end of the day he and his crew had notched up eight Soviet tank kills and destroyed seven anti-tank guns.
By that time, the leading elements of LAH had moved up to the second line at Yakovlevo, just south of Pokrovka, but attempts to break through and make a dash to the Psel were rebuffed. The day’s work had cost the division 97 dead, 522 wounded, 17 missing and around 30 tanks. But with Das Reich, the division had forced a wedge deep enough into Chistyakov’s defences that it could, with care and some good fortune, be used to split the front wide open.
The limited success of SS-Gruppenführer H. Priess’s Totenkopf on the right of II SS Panzer Corps, however, meant that Hausser’s position was not as useful as it might have been. After taking Gremuchii, the division needed to press on to dominate the ground north of Belgorod and protect the corps’ developing penetration. However, having detached the 155th Guards Regiment from the 52nd Guards Rifle Division, Totenkopf ’s attempt to drive it into the flank of the neighbouring 375th Rifle Division failed. Taking a stand on the Belgorod–Oboyan line, the regiment was reinforced by 96th Tank Brigade and held on. T-34 gunner Nicolai Andreev describes the scene:
We sped westwards to assist the right flank of the division [375th Guards Rifle Division] and fought a tough battle to stop the Nazis from enveloping them . . . The battlefield was already littered with burning wrecks by the time that we arrived but we held them. By targeting the tracks on the Tigers we could at least stop them and their lighter tanks did not prove so much of a problem to destroy . . . We worked closely with the infantry who seemed to be everywhere. That was our strength – numbers. Whenever the enemy thought that they were about to break through, we plugged the gap.
Its northern movement stifled by a tributary of the Lipovyi–Donets and movement farther east fiercely contested by the Soviets’ armoured reinforcements, Totenkopf ’s attainments on 5 July fell far short of what had been expected of it. Hausser called on III Panzer Corps on his right flank to lend some support but was told that this was unlikely because Army Detachment Kempf had significant problems of its own. This formation had to cross the Northern Donets before it could engage the 7th Guards Army’s defences. Although bridged overnight by engineers, the crossing points were targeted by the Soviet guns during Vatutin’s pre-emptive bombardment, which was particularly punishing in this area. At the Mikhailovka bridgehead just south of Belgorod, the one place where Kempf had already established a crossing, eight infantry battalions from III Panzer Corps’ 6th Panzer Division were subjected to a disconcertingly heavy bombardment. Then, when a company of Clemens Graf Kageneck’s 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion – split one company per panzer division – began to cross the 24 ton Mikhailovka bridge, it too was targeted by the Soviet artillery. Kageneck watched aghast as the front exploded before him:
[S]uddenly, a ‘red sunrise’ arose on the far side as hundreds of Stalin’s organs hurled their rockets exactly onto the crossing site. The bridge was totally demolished and the engineers, unfortunately, suffered heavy losses. Never have I hugged the dirt so tightly as when these terrible shells sprayed their thin fragments just above the ground.
It became clear immediately that Kempf’s plans had been compromised, and enjoying first-class observation from high ground on the east bank of the Northern Donets, the Soviets were in a strong position to unhinge his attack. The Tigers managed to cross and link up with the beleaguered battalions waiting for them on the east bank, but the remainder of 6th Panzer Division had to redeploy and try to use a bridge supporting the southern part of the bridgehead. The formation’s commander, Major General Walter von Hünersdorff, was already anxious that he was falling behind the agreed timings but he became incandescent with rage when he found the designated bridge was already clogged with traffic. The formation went in search of another crossing, but failing to find one suitable, remained on the west bank of the river on 5 July.
Meanwhile, at the original crossing point, the Tiger-led attack on Stary Gorod (east of Belgorod) ran into a poorly cleared minefield and strong resistance, and stalled. It was a similar story farther along the line where the 19th Panzer Division crossed the river and ran immediately into Soviet mines, which ensnared a dozen of the attached Tigers. Kageneck was furious at what he deemed to be the ‘widespread bungling’ that had placed his tanks in such great danger. He cited unmapped Soviet minefields, commanders using inadequately marked maps and poor staff work. The division did recover to advance to a depth of five miles on its left, but the 19th Panzer Division’s attack was not impressive and some aspects were indeed incompetent. The same charges could be levelled initially at 7th Panzer Division, whose bridges were strong enough to carry Mark IIIs and VIs but not the Tigers. Everywhere Kageneck looked, his assets seemed to be hamstrung by either enemy action or poor preparation. Attempts were made to drive the 60 ton monsters across the river to support the infantry and lighter tanks that were already taking a tremendous pounding on the opposite bank, but that plan was unsuccessful, as Tiger gunner Gerhard Niemann explains:
The Russian artillery opens fire. We drive through a village. We are to cross a river via a ford near Solomino . . . The leading tank has reached the ford. The others remain under cover. All around shells burst from enemy artillery. ‘Stalin’s Organ’ also join in. It’s a hellish concert. The lead Tiger, number 321, disappears to above its fenders. Slowly it pushes through the water. Then it becomes stuck on the far bank. Its attempts to get free fail. The marshy terrain is impassable for the sixty-ton tank. Widely spaced, the Tigers take up positions on the open plain before the Donets. The Russian artillery is concentrating on the crossing point . . . The first wounded infantry are coming back. They can’t comprehend that the Tigers are still here standing around inactive.
The company eventually crossed the river in the afternoon, following some swift work by engineers who constructed a bridge strong enough to take their tanks’ weight. Engineer Rolf Schmidt ‘worked like the devil himself’ to ensure that the crossing was completed in ‘record time’:
The Tigers were extremely anxious to cross and put us under tremendous pressure saying things like ‘men are dying over there. Faster, faster!’ Some of the crews assisted us with some of the cables but on two occasions we were left waiting for sections that were held up in the rear. We later heard that enemy shelling had caused all sorts of delays . . . In the end we finished the bridge extremely quickly considering the conditions. We lost two men to Soviet shells that afternoon . . . When we gave the all clear to cross, the Tigers were all ready in a line, their engines running.
Once they had crossed the Northern Donets, the heavy tanks found the grenadiers pinned down by enemy fire and immediately set about destroying the Soviet bunkers. Niemann continues:
My foot presses forward on the pedal of the turret-traversing mechanism. The turret swings to the right. With my left hand I set the range on the telescopic sight; my right hand cranks the elevation handwheel. The target appears in my sight. Ready, release safety – fire. The target is shrouded in a cloud of smoke. ‘Driver advance!’ A slight jolt and already another picture presents itself. The first Red Army soldiers appear ahead of the tank. Masses of brown clad uniforms rise up. Standing and kneeling, they fire against the tank’s steel armour. The machine-gun opens fire. One after another, high explosive shells detonate among them. They throw their arms in the air and fall. Only a few find cover in a depression in the earth. They are overrun by the following infantry.
Despite a poor start, the 7th Panzer Division eventually broke through the first defensive line and pushed on between Razumnoe and Krutoi Log. At six miles the division’s advance was the best achieved by Army Detachment Kempf. On its right, the two infantry divisions of Corps Raus – spread over 20 miles and devoid of tanks – had little success. The advance began well with the river successfully crossed and the spearheads of the 106th and 320th Infantry Divisions deftly negotiating the cleared lanes in the minefield to fall hard and fast on the 72nd Guards Rifle Division. With the two front lines so close together at this point, the defenders had little time to ready themselves in the outposts, as Erhard Raus later wrote:
[T]he advancing infantry surprised them and had no difficulty ferreting them out. But when the infantry reached the two- to three-mile deep zone of battle positions prepared in the preceding months, they had to make extensive use of hand grenades in order to mop up the maze of densely dug-in trenches and bunkers, some of which were a dozen or more feet deep. At the same time, artillery and flak fired counter-battery missions against the enemy’s heavy weapons that had resumed fire from rear positions, on reserves infiltrating through the trench system, as well as against Russian medium artillery.
The first Soviet line and the village of Maslovo Pristani were taken after a fierce battle with some hand-to-hand fighting. The lodgement was nearly lost when a Soviet counterattack supported by 40 tanks clattered into the tired Germans, but it was eventually rebuffed with the assistance of divisional artillery and medium flak batteries. However, still facing considerable resistance and having suffered 2000 casualties during the day, the divisions could penetrate no farther and dug in for the night.
By the end of 5 July, Manstein’s attack against the Voronezh Front had not achieved anything like the success it needed for the Soviets to be psychologically damaged and their defences irretrievably dislocated. In some places the attacking formations had barely breached the first Soviet line, and although the two main attacking corps had blown gaps in the defences, they remained short of the Soviets’ second line, were not joined up and displayed vulnerable flanks. The Germans had significantly underestimated Vatutin’s defences and this immediately undermined Manstein’s timetable, despite Zhukov’s displeasure at the results of the pre-emptive bombardment.
Across the front, Army Group South’s thrust had been slowed, which allowed the Soviets time to react as soon as Manstein’s intentions had been confirmed. Vatutin and his commanders were able to prepare their second echelons to meet the expected renewed German onslaught on 6 July. Shumilov’s 7th Guards Army was reinforced with two rifle divisions from the reserve while the 15th Guards Rifle Division was moved into position behind the second-line defences opposite III Panzer Corps. The 6th Guards Army, meanwhile, moved two divisions in front of Pokrovka – the 51st Guards Rifle Division to the east, and the 90th Guards Rifle Division to the west – while 1000 tanks of the 1st Tank Army and the separate 2nd Guards and 5th Guards Tank Corps were brought forward to add an armoured backing to Chistyakov’s rifle divisions. Behind them, the 93rd Guards Rifle Division was positioned astride the Pokrovka–Prokhorovka road. These deployments made Vatutin’s priority extremely clear – the enemy would be denied the roads and communications hubs necessary to maintain his impetus, and reinforcements would be moved forward as needed to provide unremitting pressure on his main axes. Manstein’s offensive was to be robbed of all momentum, ground down and snuffed out.
Even as Army Group South was attempting to deliver a strong armoured punch to the Voronezh Front’s jaw, Model’s Ninth Army began its attack in the northern salient with a series of lighter jabs. Here, nine infantry divisions, strengthened with assault guns and two companies of Tigers, were joined by a single panzer division to break through the defences of the Central Front’s 70th and 13th Armies. Although this attack carried less armoured weight than Manstein’s, the format was the same – a preliminary bombardment was followed by an airstrike against the Soviet defences in support of the ground attack. Without the mailed fist of armour, the first two phases of the attack were essential if the Ninth Army was to fracture Rokossovsky’s defences. It was a gamble, as a junior officer on Model’s staff recalls:
We were not convinced that the choice of an ‘infantry first’ attack was wise. This was not just because the Soviet positions were known to be tough, but because – I was told – Model expected a breakthrough on the second day and possibly earlier. [The Corps commanders] thought this extremely unlikely and, even if it did occur, what was that success to be exploited with? The armour would take far too long to bring forward and charge through. The Soviets would fill the gap.
Major Max Torst, a company commander in the 6th Infantry Division, was unaware of the friction at headquarters concerning the plan, but in later life, as a student of the First World War, he noted distinct similarities between that plan and strategies employed in the battles of his father’s generation:
On the Western Front it was Germany that was defending and on the Somme [in 1916] we developed strong defences in depth to capture the British attack. This is what the Soviets had done to stifle our offensive [at Kursk]. We now played the part of the British and threw ourselves at those defences and bounced off . . . It does not take much imagination to transfer the scene from northern France to Russia. Put simply, defence was now stronger than the attack – and we were not used to that.
These astute observations are not at odds with the events that unfolded in the Ninth Army sector on 5 July, although German casualties were far lighter than those suffered by the British on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, due to their accomplished tactics and the success of their aerial artillery.
The primary attack was by the two central corps – General Joachim Lemelsen’s XLVII Panzer Corps and General Joseph Harpe’s XLI Panzer Corps. Their flanks were to be covered by General Hans Zorn’s XLVI Panzer Corps on the right and Johannes Freissner’s XXIII Corps on the left. Zorn’s 31st and 7th Infantry Divisions just managed to break the Soviets’ first line by the evening of 5 July, as did Freissner’s 78th Assault Division, but on the outer faces of the two corps, neither the 258th nor the 36th Infantry Division made any valuable penetrations. Despite the importance attached to these formations taking the Soviets’ second line on the first day – including the key local communications hub of Maloarkhangelsk – the two corps were held several miles from it. Thus the anchors provided by the two formations ultimately lacked the depth required for XLVII and XLI Panzer Corps to advance unhindered by the concern about creating an obvious salient. Lemelsen’s formation sought to crack the enemy’s first and second lines between the Teploye and Olkhovatka axis using Mortimer von Kessel’s 20th Panzer Division and Horst Grossmann’s 6th Infantry Division with two panzer divisions being brought forward to exploit their success at the appropriate time. However, defences here were as strong as anything in the south. Minefields protected a mixture of carefully placed infantry, artillery and tanks in deep, mutually supportive positions. Indeed, the 15th Rifle Division’s mines immediately slowed Lemelsen’s strike divisions and it was not until 0800 hours that lanes had been cleared and the attack could progress.
From the outset, Soviet artillery pounded the advancing units, but unlike in the south, the fight for control of the skies above the battlefield was more even. The 16th Air Army suffered lighter losses in their pre-emptive airstrike than their 2nd Air Army colleagues. Indeed, Koba Lomidze, a rear gunner in an Il-2, recalls:
We made several sorties against the German panzers that morning although our fighters continually struggled to give us the time and space that we required. We were given specific orders to target the spearheads, but more than once we found Stukas dive bombing our artillery batteries trying to do the same . . . The Stukas would mass above the target and our fighters would break them up. We did not have long before the German fighters arrived and so made our attack and left the area as quickly as we could. We were chased by Bf-109s on two occasions. The first winged us and the damage was not too bad, but on the second occasion, despite my best efforts, we were badly hit in the tail when he dived out of the sun. We limped home and made an ungainly landing. Overnight the damage was repaired and we were airborne again by dawn the following morning.
Meanwhile, on the ground, crossing through the minefield both divisions walked into what Max Torst has called a ‘storm of steel’:
I had not seen anything like it. It was a marvel that any of my company survived. Shells, bombs, mortars, machine gun fire and rifle fire fell on us like in a furious onslaught. Of my ninety men, six fell – two dead – but one of them was a young platoon commander. A softly spoken, gentle lad who hated the war and knew that he would not last the duration. It is perhaps because of that premonition that a senior NCO immediately stepped in to fill his shoes without a thought. He had been primed for the event . . . And so we struggled on, desperate to get into a position where we could engage the defenders and dislodge them.
The two companies of 505 Heavy Panzer Battalion attached to the 6th Infantry Division, and leading the way, formed the largest single group of Tigers committed to battle on 5 July. Working well with the infantry, they stormed through the outpost zone in cooperation with the 20th Panzer Division and then pushed towards the first line between Podolyan and Butyrki. Airstrikes were called down when a stubborn obstacle was identified by a unit commander or when compelling information was obtained from the enemy. One intelligence officer feeding reports to the 6th Infantry Division testifies:
We put an emphasis on taking prisoners, quickly interrogating them at battalion and passing important information up the chain as quickly as possible. This was critical [now] as it became clear that we knew far less about the Soviet defences than we thought we did . . . However, the skill was getting the information out of the prisoner and to where it was needed quickly. The material was time sensitive . . . Flooding headquarters with inappropriate material or providing it too slowly always led to lost opportunities.
One prisoner taken early that morning identified the boundary between the 15th and 81st Rifle Divisions as having suffered particularly badly during the preliminary bombardment. Within 40 minutes of the intelligence having left the man’s lips, Stukas were en route to strike the area with Tigers following up. The arrival of German tanks immediately provoked the Soviets to send 90 T-34s to plug the gap in the line and block the heavy panzers’ advance. During the resultant three-hour tank battle, the Soviets lost 42 tanks for two destroyed Tigers and five more with broken tracks. Even so, in common with events 100 miles to the south, the Red Army had successfully slowed the Wehrmacht’s momentum. Here it was at the cost of the Germans breaching the 13th Army’s first line of defence between Podolyan and Butyrki, which gave the Mark IIIs and IVs of the 20th Panzer Division the opportunity to push forward on the right while the 6th Infantry Division pushed forward on the left. But the Soviets did not disintegrate. They understood that each line was merely an obstacle and not a final defensive line. The aim was to wear the enemy out as they endeavoured to surmount each obstacle, and to stretch their lines of communication as exposed salients were created within their defences. Thus, almost as soon as Lemelsen’s corps had reorganized in preparation for their attack on Bobrik, Stepi and Saborovka on the Sevana, the 29th Rifle Corps engaged them from positions along a low ridge in front of the second line. The bloody confrontation that took place here was witnessed by a Soviet observer, who wrote:
The sky blackened from smoke and heat. The acrid gases from the exploding shells and mines blinded the eyes. The soldiers were deafened by the thunder of guns and mortars and the creaking of tracks . . . All of the weapons of the infantry, and the anti-tank strong points and artillery groups supporting the [15th and 81st Rifle Divisions] entered the battle to repel the enemy blows. Soviet soldiers heroically struggled with the attacking groups of enemy. The infantry skilfully destroyed his tanks with grenades and bottles filled with mixtures of fuel. Under a hurricane of fire they stole up to the enemy vehicles, struck them with anti-tank grenades, set them on fire with incendiary bottles, and laid mines under them.
Here, up to six miles into the Soviet defences, XLVII Panzer Corps was held.
The Ninth Army’s progress on 5 July was not limited to General Lemelsen’s corps, though. The impression it made in the Soviet line was simultaneously broadened by Harpe’s XLI Panzer Corps on Lemelsen’s left flank. The 292nd Infantry Division supported by a detachment of Ferdinands from 656 Anti-Tank Battalion, together with the 86th Infantry Division, strengthened by a panzer regiment from the 18th Panzer Division and two Ferdinand detachments, aimed to advance to a line extending either side of Ponyri in the enemy’s second line. The divisions breached the minefield in front of the 29th Rifle Corps’ trenches with the assistance of demolition vehicles of Funklenk Company 313, comprising three command StuG IIIs and 12 Borgward B.IVs. These teams could clear routes through the area quickly, ameliorating the time-consuming and dangerous business of mass human involvement, and so speed the Wehrmacht on its way.
When mines were located, the first small, light-tracked demolition vehicle was driven forward to the launch spot. Attracting considerable fire, its driver then left the vehicle and by means of radio control delivered it to the target. On its arrival, a 500kg charge was dropped, the vehicle was withdrawn and an explosion produced via a delayed detonation. The percussion caused by that explosion tripped the mines and so created the first section of cleared path through the obstruction, which was immediately extended by the next demolition vehicle.
The breach having been made, the Ferdinands proceeded to engage the Soviet first line. In common with all Soviet front-line formations in the salient, the defenders here had received psychological as well as technical training to deal with the armoured threat and overcome the ‘tank panic’ that had been in evidence ever since the Germans invaded. Fyodor Onton recalled his instruction when, in June, he was ordered into a trench and a captured German tank was driven towards him: ‘It was a frightening moment as the metal beasts came clanking and squeaking towards us but we were ordered to hold fast. A couple of my infantry colleagues looked grey and ready to flee but managed to keep a hold on their instincts. I heard later that the men had seen German tanks in action before and were the only survivors of one particularly desperate episode.’ Nikolai Litvin had a similar experience and wrote in his memoir:
The tanks continued to advance closer and closer. Some comrades became frightened, leaped out of the trenches, and began to run away. The commander saw who was running and quickly forced them back into the trenches, making it clear they had to stay put. The tanks reached the trench line and, with a terrible roar, passed overhead . . . it was possible to conceal oneself in a trench from a tank, let it pass right over you, and remain alive. Lie down and press yourself to the bottom of the trench, and shut your eyes.
This training seems to have worked. Paul Carell noted: ‘Everything had been done to inoculate the troops against the notorious tank panic [and] the result was unmistakeable.’ Both the 15th and 81st Rifle Divisions allowed the armour to clatter over their heads, popping up in the midst of the following infantry and separating the tanks from their support. With their thick armoured plate and large guns, the sluggish Ferdinands were most effective when supported by infantry who could protect them from close-quarter threats. As a battle erupted behind them, the armour was engaged by anti-tank guns and ‘tank killer teams’. Thoroughly isolated, the weaknesses of the Ferdinands became obvious. Heinz Guderian had always understood that the clumsy tracked guns lacked not only the finesse that he would have liked, but also some basic technical features, and so they were left:
[i]ncapable of close-range fighting since they lacked sufficient ammunition (armour-piercing and high-explosive) for their guns and this defect was aggravated by the fact that they had no machine-gun. Once [they] had broken into the enemy’s infantry zone, they literally had to go quail shooting with cannon. They did not manage to neutralize, let alone destroy, the enemy infantry and machine-guns, so that our infantry was unable to follow up behind them. By the time they reached the Russian artillery they were on their own.
Crews were consequently forced to fire their stored MG-42s down the barrel of their 88mm guns. Some brave commanders used pistols to stave off the defenders’ attacks. Trapped and exposed, the armour was picked off. The anti-tank guns scored some successes by penetrating the Ferdinands’ rear armour, but often they targeted the tracks and by disabling them allowed teams to attach their demolition charges or turn the guns into giant fireballs with their Molotov cocktails. Onton says that these crude weapons were very effective:
We could make Molotovs extremely quickly. Each unit was issued with hundreds of glass bottles, gasoline, wadding and paraffin. Bottles were filled to the neck with the gasoline and the screw caps replaced. When required the caps were removed and the paraffin-soaked wadding was inserted into the bottle openings and ignited . . . We had to be extremely careful how they were stored and where they were lit because these were very basic weapons and accidents were not uncommon . . . When a tank or assault gun was identified as a target, the Molotovs were simply thrown at them. Ideally they would land on the engine compartment and gravity would send burning fuel into the vehicle. But if all we could do was throw them at the front of the turret, that was what we would do . . . When the fuel’s vapour ignited there was a boom sending black smoke into the sky and the tanks quickly caught alight . . . It was amazing how those hunks of metal burned, but they did. The paint seemed to catch fire and, I assumed, the fuel entered the tank and set light to fabrics and ammunition. We knew that within a matter of seconds the crew would try to evacuate and we waited, picking them off as they appeared through the hatches. Sometimes our victim was finished off with grenades.
For much of the morning, tanks and infantry fought to regain the mutual cooperation on which the Wehrmacht depended. Although by noon the villages of Alexsandrovka and Butyrki had been taken and Harpe’s attack had broken the first line of defences across four miles, it lacked the energy to create a clean breakthrough. Thus both XLVII and XLI Panzer Corps were brought to a halt, resting on the outposts of the Soviets’ second-line defences. Their fatigued divisions now had to reorganize, resupply and update their plans after their recent exertions. It was at this point that Model’s armoured reserve might have been unleashed in order to exert pressure on the withdrawing enemy. Second-line defences could have been attacked before they were properly set. Indeed, Mortimer von Kessel believed that a fleeting opportunity was missed and later argued:
Far ahead of the [20th Panzer Division] lay a massif [the Olkhovatka heights] on which we could see movement by the Russians. If the tanks had rolled through then, we would perhaps have reached the objective of Kursk, because the enemy was completely surprised and weak. Valuable time was lost which the enemy used to rush in his reserves.
As many on the Ninth Army staff had feared, the four panzer and panzer grenadier divisions that might have been able to burst through the Soviets at this stage were assembled too far to the rear to be of any use. Model had clearly not planned on the critical moment occurring so early in the battle.
The day’s events left the Ninth Army with a broad but shallow lodgement in the Soviet defensive system, which did not cause Rokossovsky any undue concern. He had expected Model to make his main thrust towards Maloarkhangelsk, since its capture would have provided the Germans with access to the major roads in the sector, and his defences against the two strike corps sent to accomplish the task held firm. Moreover, the relatively weak showing of XXIII Corps allowed Rokossovsky to contain its threat comparatively easily, which enabled him to focus his attention on the stronger advance in the enemy’s centre. Like Vatutin, the Central Front’s commander had great faith in his second line of defences and did not believe that his plan had been endangered by the events of 5 July. He consequently ordered three armoured corps of General Rodin’s 600 tank, 50,000 man 2nd Tank Army north to screen the approaches to his second line from Teploye through Olkhovatka to Ponryi, and backed them with the 17th Guards Rifle Corps. The 18th Rifle Corps was sent to reinforce the defences of Maloarkhangelsk. Model’s offensive, in the same way as Manstein’s, was to be robbed of all momentum, ground down and snuffed out.
Operation Zitadelle was finely poised by nightfall on the first day. The main German strike groupings were leaning on the outposts of the Soviet second-line defences in both the north and south, but their advance had not been as devastating as either Model or Manstein had hoped. The two men had carefully massed and prepared their forces for the great offensive, and they must have been disturbed that, having largely exhausted the element of surprise, the enemy had not been more fundamentally dislocated. They would also have noted that both Soviet Fronts were well prepared to meet their offensive and seemed more resilient than they had in the past. As Raus has written: ‘Higher headquarters had been hoping the troops would encounter an enemy weakened in his power of resistance. This proved to be a delusion. The Russians appeared materially prepared . . . as well as morally inoculated against all symptoms of deterioration.’
The first day of Zitadelle had not resulted in the disastrous fragmentation of the Red Army, as had the opening of Barbarossa two years earlier, and Stalin must have been reassured by this, especially as he had handed the initiative to the Germans. Yet although the Supreme Commander was keen to learn about the progress of the ground battle, once he had been reassured about the steadfastness of the salient’s defences, he wanted to know about the situation in the air. The Soviet airforce had lost around 250 aircraft to the Germans’ 45, and he was anxious that the Luftwaffe had attained freedom of the sky. That evening, Lieutenant-General Sergey Rudenko, commander of the 16th Air Army, which was supporting the Central Front, explained to Rokossovsky that the air battle would be every bit as attritional as the Red Army’s battle. When Stalin telephoned the headquarters to quiz Rokossovsky about the situation, he pressed the Central Front’s commander for an unambiguous response, as Rudenko recalls:
‘Have we gained control of the air or not?’ That proved to be his main interest! Rokossovsky replied: ‘Comrade Stalin, it is impossible to tell. There have been very hard combats in the air and both sides have suffered heavy losses.’ But Stalin just retorted: ‘Tell me precisely, have we won in the air or not? Yes or no?’ Rokossovsky spoke again: ‘It is impossible to give a definitive answer to that question, but tomorrow we shall solve this positively.’
The attention Stalin was giving to the aerial battle was not misplaced. He understood that the Wehrmacht’s methods, and consequently their plans, were dependent on command of the skies. But no definitive pronouncement could be made on the air battle that evening, just as no definitive verdict on the ground battle had been reached – the Luftwaffe had the edge but the army was being held. The battle was still evenly balanced. Despite this, Stalin probably had more reason to sleep soundly that night than he’d had for many weeks.
At the Wolfsschanze, Hitler also had cause for optimism. Reports from the front confirmed that the Soviet defences had been pierced, and General Zeitzler said that the Führer was ‘cautiously optimistic’ – relieved, perhaps, that there was still hope after the first day. The German High Command expected its forces to deepen and widen their penetrations in the next few days, and to retain most of their cohesion and strength. Indeed, German losses had been relatively light for a break-in battle. The Ninth Army had suffered 7,295 casualties and lost around 150 tanks (although many were repairable) and the Fourth Panzer Army, its casualties unknown, had lost just 51 tanks. The Luftwaffe had been able to go about its business with confidence after the failure of the Soviets’ early morning strike against its airfields.
Yet the opening day of Zitadelle had more in common with the grand set-piece battles of the First World War than with the dynamic manoeuvres that had marked out the Wehrmacht’s greatest successes over the previous three years. In July 1943, the Germans had been forced to attack the enemy frontally, in a manner that demanded patient tenacity and plentiful resources – a style that crippled blitzkrieg and suited the waiting Soviets ensconced within their deep and complicated lair. The Wehrmacht needed a breakthrough and needed it fast.
Map 8: Prokhorovka, 10–11 July 1943