CHAPTER 8
Anticipation
(Zitadelle: 9–11 July)
The partisans struck suddenly and with shattering effect. The light had already begun to fade when the commander of the convoy, Hauptmann Reinke, made his concerns known to his careworn superior but, having been told to ‘get on with it’, the 35 vehicles had rumbled out of the depot and towards the front. An hour later, the lead vehicle exploded, throwing a shower of sparks and debris into the gloom. An ambush had been sprung.
From the left side of the ragged dirt road, and making good use of the cover provided by a copse and shallow ditch, the irregulars poured a vicious barrage into the German flank from a range of 100 yards. Light mortar rounds burst among the stalled soft-skinned vehicles and immediately set them on fire. Machine gunners riddled the column with short, well-aimed bursts and automatic carbines joined the mêlée to target the forlorn crews. Reinke, travelling in the second vehicle, was killed by a round that entered his skull before he had an opportunity to open his door. Driver Johannes Erwin was at the wheel of the fifth truck, and he and his co-driver, Frederik Dexler, managed to extract themselves from the cab and take cover behind a wheel without being hit. Erwin drew and cocked his pistol as rounds clattered into the vehicle’s thin metal bonnet and zipped through the canvas covering of its wagon. A tyre burst as small-arms ammunition popped and cracked in a blazing wreck nearby. Erwin shuffled to his right and took up a firing position by his dented front wing. He loosed off four unaimed rounds towards the trees and tried to comprehend the chaotic scene. Half a platoon of infantry was receiving orders from a gesticulating commander beside an adjacent truck. The man’s voice was drowned out by the crump of explosions and the ripping of an MG-42, which had just begun to lay down suppressive fire.
Erwin watched as the two sections attacked, but by the time they reached the tree line, the partisans had long since melted away into the night. They left behind a battlefield. Cries for medics were carried on a gusting wind, which fanned the fires and sent smoke swirling across the road. Erwin ran a filthy hand across his sweaty brow as he walked over to Dexler, who was still lying prone, his head clasped tightly in his hands. He told his friend that it was safe to stand up, but Dexler had his eyes tightly shut and sobbed loudly into the Russian dirt. The stress and strain associated with two years’ service on the Eastern Front was flooding out of him. Raising Dexler to his feet, Erwin led him past two corpses and inhaled the familiar aroma of fresh blood, charred flesh and burning rubber. The incident had lasted less than 10 minutes but had caused 35 casualties, destroyed nine trucks and left 21 more requiring recovery. It confirmed to Erwin what he already knew – survival was a lottery and reaching one’s destination could never be guaranteed in the Kursk salient.
Such attacks by partisans complemented the Soviet aim of stretching the German forces and wearing them down wherever and whenever possible. ‘They were a constant menace,’ recalled infantryman Felix Dresener. ‘They slowed our ability to supply the front line and forced us into clearing operations, which took troops away from the front line . . . Our platoon provided protection for several convoys, which kept us from the real battle for over a week. During that time we lost eight men and goodness only knows how many trucks. It was a simple Russian tactic, but effective.’ The partisans and Red Air Force targeted the Wehrmacht’s lines of communication with extensive and methodical attacks. Railway lines leading towards Kursk were systematically bombed and disrupted, as were roads from railheads and various depots. The Luftwaffe would ordinarily have offered protection, but its resources continued to decrease as calls on its support grew. By the fifth day of the battle, Zitadelle was being ground down from the outskirts of Kiev to the front line at Kursk. The whole operation was absorbing precious resources at an alarming rate as Model and Manstein continued to be confronted by complex defences, a tenacious enemy and some trying weather. On 7 July, for example, Model called on Zeitzler to supply 100,000 more rounds of tank ammunition ‘immediately’. On the following day, the Fourth Panzer Army lost another 125 tanks, taking Hoth’s total of inoperable machines to 405 since 5 July.
Even so, the Wehrmacht continued to batter away at the Red Army in the salient, because it was still not clear who would emerge the victor. Nevertheless, Operation Zitadelle was rapidly moving towards its final act. Although Model’s offensive in the north had been contained, rendering the Ninth Army capable of little more than maintaining pressure on the Olkhovatka heights, Manstein’s attack in the south remained strong, and still had great potential. If the Fourth Panzer Army could overcome Major-General A.L. Getman’s 6th Tank Corps south of Oboyan, it could then focus its attention on facing the massive Soviet forces that were beginning to assemble around Prokhorovka. Here, the 5th Tank Army and the 5th Guards Army – also released from the Steppe Front – were intent on stopping II SS Panzer Corps’ advance, but if they were defeated, Hoth’s armour could yet surge the 50 miles to Kursk. Thus, despite Zitadelle having fallen far behind its timetable and being weakened by days of heavy fighting, its threat remained alive. Manstein, therefore, was going to apply unrelenting pressure to Vatutin’s formations, and on the morning of 9 July he attacked with 500 tanks across a 10 mile front. Keils of between 60 and 100 panzers, with Tigers at the point and panzer grenadiers following, moved against the 1st Tank Army and 6th Guards Army once more.
The day dawned grey and heavy rain showers drenched the combatants. ‘If it was not bad enough to await the arrival of a monstrous armoured attack,’ explains mortar man Igor Panesenko, ‘but we did so with befuddled, tired minds and empty stomachs in the pouring rain. I had a fever and, in all honesty, did not care at that moment whether I lived or died. Many of us felt the same and it made us fearless and bold.’ He listened for the sound of approaching tanks, which was a warning that an artillery and Stuka attack was about to begin. The first shells began to land at 0600 hours, and within the hour the front was alive with fighting. Verkhopenye did not succumb easily. Having been bombed by Stukas flying in appalling conditions, blasted by the division’s artillery and probed by Mark IVs, Panthers and Tigers supported by infantry and assault guns, the defenders had to be cleared from every last building. Rushed into the line the previous evening, a soaked Igor Panesenko fought with his section in a ruined house:
The forward positions eventually began to crack and were destroyed by tanks and infantry. We fought from house to house and room to room . . . As anti-tank guns were quickly destroyed by the armours’ guns, the tanks were assailed by teams which used magnetic mines and Molotov cocktails. The supporting German infantry kept most away . . . [and we] took up a position in an upstairs room with half a floor and no roof. I was a good shot and managed to cause some trouble for the enemy as they stopped to check their position . . . I linked up with another couple of men and tried to stop the enemy from climbing the stairs up to us. There was some hand-to-hand fighting and I grappled with a chap who grabbed my rifle. His teeth were clenched and I could smell his breath as he shouted at me. Then he let go and ran around a corner. A grenade! There was an explosion which threw me to the floor. I came to seconds later with a large German standing over me.
For all the barbarity of the Eastern Front and the ferocity of the fighting that morning in Verkhopenye, Panesenko was helped to his feet by the man whom he had been fighting just seconds before: ‘It reminded me of a football match before the war,’ he continues, ‘where an opponent helps you up after a hard tackle! . . . It was extraordinary, because we had seen what the Germans were capable of. Here I was being led out into the street by a man who had been trying to kill me moments before. He took me to a line of other prisoners. As he left – I’ll never forget this – he looked at me, nodded and smiled. There was recognition in that brief gesture that we were part of something bigger than both of us and that we needed to retain our humanity.’
The battle for Verkhopenye lasted throughout the morning, but while that village was being beaten into submission, the 11th Panzer Division continued up the road to Oboyan, linked up with II SS Panzer Corps at Sukho-Solotino and advanced to the southern outskirts of Novosselovka. The Fusilier Regiment of Grossdeutschland also probed forward, heading to the west of Novosselovka, but was brought to a halt by strong anti-tank guns and tanks. Eventually, more German armour appeared as Verkhopenye was overcome, and the division’s history records:
Our tanks soon ran into the enemy tank concentrations, however, which were sighted from a distance of 2,500–3,000 metres. A major tank versus tank battle developed with Stukas providing continuous support. Hill 243.8 was reached after heavy fighting and the panzers halted there initially. On the horizon were burning and smoking enemy tanks. Unfortunately three of 6th Company’s tanks had been knocked out as well . . . In the further course of the engagement, Hauptmann von Wietersahm succeeded in carrying the attack as far as the anti-tank defences at the village of Novosselovka and reached [Hill 240.4].
However, Grossdeutschland found no way through the Soviet defences north of Novosselovka and it was at this stage that the schwerpunkt (focal point) of Knobelsdorff’s XLVIII Panzer Corps was shifted from between the Pena and the road to Oboyan farther west. While the 11th Panzer Division was to continue its advance northwards, Grossdeutschland was to meet the enemy’s armour on the formation’s west flank. The aim was to deal such a blow to the defenders that they could no longer restrain the progress of the 3rd Panzer (with no Panthers or Tigers) and 332nd Infantry Divisions, held up at Berezovka, Alekseevka and Mikhailovka. It was believed that by plunging west Grossdeutschland could fatally undermine the enemy’s defences, cutting the 6th Tank Corps’ lines of communication along the Berezovka–Ivina road. Once the Soviet armour had been mauled, although Knobelsdorff’s momentum would have been temporarily interrupted, Grossdeutschland could rejoin the 11th Panzer Division and restart its move on Oboyan – and then Kursk. Mark Healy argues that ‘in hindsight the diversion would come to be seen as one of the major turning points in the battle in the south of the salient’.
Turning through 90 degrees, Kampfgruppe von Strachwitz – which started the morning with 19 Mark IVs, 10 Tigers and 10 Panthers – pushed towards Hills 251.4 and 247.0 and into the rear of the 6th Tank Corps. They were followed by the Reconnaissance Battalion and attached assault guns. These troops had spent the morning progressing up the road to Oboyan, supported by Stuka attacks that dispatched the defenders to ‘commissar and Red Army heaven’. During the afternoon of the 9th, Grossdeutschland pushed west, but it was soon confronted by strong counterattacks, which denied Hoernlein his objectives that day. Thus, by nightfall, although XLVIII Panzer Corps was barely 12 miles from Oboyan, its chance of swiftly securing the town had suffered a blow due to the diversion of the élite Grossdeutschland Panzer Grenadier Division.
There is little doubt that where the Luftwaffe provided support, Knobelsdorff’s corps profited, but on the 9th there was a notable drop off in support for the formation. The battle for the skies above the Kursk salient had continued to rage during the first five days of Zitadelle, but declining German air assets and rising Soviet resources made life increasingly difficult for the Luftwaffe. As a result, commanders continued to eschew the attainment of general air superiority over the battlefield in favour of local dominance. In this way, the Stukas could assist Grossdeutschland’s attack towards Novosselovka, but that meant that the 3rd Panzer Division’s requests for support were denied. Even worse, it meant that the division had to fight off marauding Soviet ground-attack aircraft using its own resources. To He-111 engineer Ludwig Schein, the problem was simple:
We needed more aircraft, more fuel, more mechanics and more pilots. If we had as much and as many as the Russians, then we could have achieved air supremacy – not just air superiority – because our pilots were so much better than their Soviet counterparts. However, the sad fact was that we were under resourced and paid for it . . . Our airfield was targeted three times on 9th July and we hardly paused in our maintenance on the Heinkels to take cover. We were under pressure to get the aircraft into the skies as quickly as possible – even if it meant cutting corners.
Over the period 7–8 July, German sorties fell from 829 to 652 while the Soviets’ rose from 1,100 to 1,500. By the fifth day of battle, those inexperienced Red Air Force pilots who had survived their first brushes with the Luftwaffe found themselves far better prepared for aerial combat than they had been. Lieutenant Ivan Kozhedub, for example, had nearly been shot down in his La-5 fighter on the first day of the battle, but scored his first victory on the 6th and a second on the 7th. On the 9th he took to the air with four other aircraft and patrolled the front line on the Oboyan front. Kozhedub recalls:
[W]e found the same scene as yesterday – a raging tank battle on the ground. Usually your attention is drawn to the sector where enemy bombers might appear. But aware of the tactics used by the ‘hunters’ [pairs of enemy fighters], I scanned the airspace above our heads. Almost immediately I discovered two aircraft high above. I recognized the sleek silhouettes of Messerschmitt 109s. They approached us from our own territory. Clearly these were a pair of hunters! The opponents started to turn towards us, obviously with the intention of attacking us from the front.
Leading the group, Kozhedub became the enemy’s first target and prepared himself to kill:
I also got the leader in my gunsight when they were at an altitude of 4000 metres. I waited for the distance to reduce before I opened fire. I was the first to shoot. I held the firing button, squeezed and blasted away a long burst, and it was sufficient! The leader turned over from his steep dive and I saw him hit the ground.
Oberfeldwebel Edmund Rossmann, a Bf-109 veteran with 93 victories, was in the same sector that morning when low cloud fragmented his small formation. Taking their opportunity, Soviet fighters attacked and hit two of the Messerschmitts. Rossmann explains:
Suddenly I saw [Feldwebel] Lohberg’s aircraft pouring smoke, and it left towards the west. After a short while it belly-landed in a field about 20 kilometres to the west of Oboyan. When I saw Lohberg climb out of his aircraft and wave at me, I turned around and landed next to his belly-landed Messerschmitt with the intention of picking him up. He raced towards my aircraft, but just as he climbed onto the wing, he bent forward and fell to the ground. I unstrapped myself and jumped out to help him. In the next moment I received a terrible blow from a Russian rifle butt.
The Red Air Force’s presence was growing but the Germans continued to dominate critical parts of the battlefield, as a post-operational report reflects:
[Our aviation] did not have air superiority over the enemy’s main attack axis – along the Belgorod–Oboyan highway – until 10 July. Enemy aviation not only offered strong opposition to our assault aviation aircraft, it also gained air superiority over the battlefield relatively easily during the period necessary for his bomber operations.
Thus, it was not only XLVIII Panzer Corps that received Luftwaffe support where and when it was most needed on 9 July, but also II SS Panzer Corps.
Hausser’s corps was engaged in heavy fighting during the night of 8–9 July as the 2nd and 31st Tank Corps sought to deny the division any respite. The Soviets made numerous local counterattacks in the driving rain, which necessitated rapid reactions. Even so, under the cover of darkness, Totenkopf continued to replace LAH in the nose of the salient while Das Reich held the corps’ flank north of Smogodino and the 167th Infantry Division protected it to the south. Das Reich was destined to be fixed in place by counterattacks for another three days due to III Panzer Corps’ continued failure to come up alongside, but LAH and Totenkopf endeavoured to push on. There is little doubt that II SS Panzer Corps was fatigued, but it had retained its morale and motivation while suffering relatively light casualties. LAH, for example, reported just 283 dead, 1,282 wounded and approximately 30 missing since the opening of Zitadelle. Moreover, although Hausser had lost 202 armoured fighting vehicles since the 5th, he still had 249 on the morning of the 9th and expected more to be returned to service shortly, having undergone repair.
However, the 9th was a frustrating day for the corps because it achieved minimal northward momentum. LAH began the day with an attack on the village of Sukho-Solotino, which it captured just before noon, but was subsequently pummelled by Soviet artillery for the rest of the day. ‘The whole area was flattened by Russian gunners who had already ranged their guns,’ says 11th Panzer Division’s Arnold Brenner, who linked up with the SS troopers in the village that afternoon. ‘We were caught like rats in a trap and could not move anywhere. The guns were eventually silenced by our bombers, but not before the place had been reduced to brick dust.’
LAH could not press on any farther, but on its right Totenkopf took Kochetovka – home to the 6th Guards Army headquarters – and assaulted Hill 241.6, which overlooked the Psel just three miles to the north. In several hours of fighting, Mark IIIs and IVs were accompanied by the last three working Tigers and drove forward behind a heavy barrage. The Soviet artillery responded immediately and as the supporting panzer grenadiers began to fall behind the Keil, T-34s were sent to intercept the panzers. As night fell the high ground remained firmly in the Red Army’s hands, but Totenkopf readied itself for another attempt the following morning which SS-Brigadeführer Priess was confident would be successful.
During the 9th, Hoth’s eyes were not only on Oboyan but also Prokhorovka as the 5th Guards Tank Army closed in on its destination. The formation had undertaken a 240 mile journey to the salient and, in the words of T-34 commander Vladimir Alexeev, was expecting ‘a very severe battle’. Vatutin received regular updates on the formation’s progress, since he feared that the Fourth Panzer Army was on the verge of crossing the Psel and breaking into open country. With the 1st Tank Army and 6th Guards Army having suffered heavy losses, Rotmistrov’s 593 tanks, 37 self-propelled guns and thousands of artillery pieces offered substantial reinforcement. Although the formation would ordinarily have moved only during the hours of darkness to mask its advance on a 20 mile front, Vatutin’s situation demanded that it did not stop at dawn. Rotmistrov wrote in his memoirs:
Even now, writing several decades later, I can see those country roads and the faces of the tank men blackened by dust and grease. Wherever you looked, you saw tanks, self-propelled guns, trucks and motorcyclists . . . Along the roads motors roared, clouds of smoke hung in the air and everywhere hung the smell of diesel oil and burnt rubber.
Passing through towns, villages and forests and along dirt roads, throwing clouds of dust and grit into the faces of the commanders, the experience was an unpleasant one for the dog-tired crews. Alexeev explains: ‘The move to Prokhorovka was a nightmare. It was really hot beneath the huge clouds of dust from the three columns of tanks.’ Their situation would have been even worse had the columns been subjected to attack from the air, but although its movement had been picked up by reconnaissance planes, the Luftwaffe could not spare the aircraft to attack it. ‘What a great advantage it was to us not to have the Stukas fall on us,’ says driver Semen Berezhko. ‘We were expecting them every minute. We had our own protection, but we were vulnerable to an attack . . . As it was, we arrived at our positions untouched and in good order.’ Berezhko began to move into his assembly area in the early hours of 10 July and before long the 5th Guards Tank Army, having suffered very few breakdowns, was deploying in an arc around Prokhorovka to attack the Fourth Panzer Army.
With Rotmistrov’s men preparing themselves for battle, the 80,000 men and 185 armoured fighting vehicles of the 5th Guards Army expected to arrive at Prokhorovka by the morning of 12 July and a strike against the Orel salient imminent, Vatutin was reassured. But he could not afford to relax, as David Glantz has written: ‘A panoply of former military disasters and dashed expectations had bred an air of realism in Soviet command channels. As comforting as developments seemed to be, Vatutin grimly awaited the verdict of the fickle gods of war.’ That verdict, it seemed, would be reached after the launch of the counterattack planned for the 12th – the 5th Guards Tank Army and 5th Guards Army were to ‘encircle and defeat the main German grouping straining towards Oboyan and Prokhorovka’. Although Vatutin believed that the initiative had shifted towards him, he did not know that Manstein and Hoth had planned to maintain XLVIII Panzer Corps’ advance on Oboyan and shift II SS Panzer Corps’ weight towards Prokhorovka to confront the developing Soviet threat to their flank. Indeed, before Zitadelle began, the Fourth Panzer Army was directed to ‘anticipate an engagement with Soviet armoured forces near Prokhorovka prior to continuing the attack towards Kursk’. Thus, during the afternoon of the 9th, orders were promulgated for Hausser’s formation to redeploy so that its divisions faced Rotmistrov’s tanks to the northeast. II SS Panzer Corps was to attack Prokhorovka immediately and by seizing the town, unhinge the 5th Guards Tank Army’s preparations while it was still moving into position.
Soviet intelligence picked up on the German reorientation and, during the night 9–10 July, Vatutin called a conference in Oboyan to discuss the situation. Believing that the German shift was a reaction to the Voronezh Front’s tenacious defences, he declared to Vasilevsky and Rotmistrov: ‘Having failed to penetrate Kursk through Oboyan, clearly the Hitlerites have decided to shift the axis of their main blow farther to the east along the rail line to Prokhorovka.’ It was a false assumption based on a belief that the Fourth Panzer Army had so weakened itself on Soviet defences that it was seeking an alternative route to Kursk. In reality, Hoth’s staff described Soviet defences before the Psel as ‘hopeless’, and II SS Panzer Corps, having finally wriggled free of the Soviet second-line defences, was only redirected due to the imminent arrival of the 5th Guards Tank Army. Moreover, the Fourth Panzer Army was far from a spent force. It still had nearly 500 operational tanks, and II SS Panzer Corps accounted for 294 of them. However, despite their skilful prediction of where the Soviets’ reserve would enter the battlefield and their plans to stop it, Manstein and Hoth had not expected Army Detachment Kempf to have made such a stolid advance that II SS Panzer Corps would have to act alone. There was little that the commander of Army Group South could do but exhort III Panzer Corps, with its 116 serviceable panzers, to achieve a breakthrough and link up with Hausser’s corps by 11 July for a drive on Prokhorovka.
While senior commanders dealt with issues pertaining to the days and weeks ahead, on the morning of 10 July their formations carried out their orders and manoeuvred for advantageous positions. The weather continued to hamper their plans. The Fourth Panzer Army reported: ‘Under cloud covered skies and local thunderstorms, the roads were soft and in terrible condition for wheeled vehicles.’ Desperate to maintain their impetus, Hoth and his commanders were frustrated by reports that vehicles had ‘bogged’, routes were flooded and visibility was severely reduced. Ralph Faber, a gunner with 11th Panzer Division, noted in his journal:
At last I have a moment to reflect on the last few days as rain continues to fall. We are currently awaiting the recovery of our [towed] gun which has become stuck after the road gave way under a wheel . . . I am covered in mud as rivulets run free down the track. The thunderstorms are so heavy that the ground does not have a chance to absorb the water before the next. It remains warm and steamy . . . We are all very tired after our recent efforts. It has been a hard battle with the gun in constant action but for the moment, we are going nowhere.
The low cloud base did not provide ideal conditions for air operations but the Soviets, always willing to use their superior resources in bold actions, sought to exploit the opportunity to target mired German units and attack their airfields. Il-2 pilot Boris Vassilieva recalls, ‘We attacked a column south of Nechaevka which was reported as having become stuck between the Donets and a balka . . . I destroyed several vehicles and left the scene in flames just as another [squadron] arrived to finish the job.’ Ivan Kozhedub, meanwhile, tackled a German airfield near Belgorod:
When we approached the target area, we saw dark thunderclouds that were building to the south, some of them reaching down to the ground . . . Our bombers had to go down to 400–500 metres, and this alerted the enemy. Suddenly a fierce AAA fire set in from all sides. Tracer bullets climbed up against us, and the sky, which was black with cloud, was lit up by flashes. By that time we had reached the target and the Pe-2s dropped their bombs all at once. The air base below was covered by smoke from exploding bombs. A few Junkers tried to take off, but our bombers and fighters attacked them and destroyed them all. Next our fighters strafed the AAA positions and silenced them. None of our aircraft was shot down, but many had been damaged by ground fire. My own La-5 had received a considerable number of ‘extra holes’.
The Luftwaffe, meanwhile, focused its attentions on the front line and supported those formations that were encountering strong Soviet resistance. This included Grossdeutschland, which strove to ‘finish off 6th Tank Corps’ on Hoth’s left flank. Advancing towards Kruglik under skies buzzing with Stukas – ‘squadron after squadron of Stukas came over to drop their deadly eggs on the Russian armour’ – and behind strong artillery barrages, elements of the division ground their way forward. In doing so, they cut the Soviet lines of communication that reached down to Berezovka, which, in turn, allowed the 3rd Panzer Division to move forward once more. It was an important success, but even if Grossdeutschland had landed a painful blow on the 1st Tank Army’s weakening midriff, it did not provide XLVIII Panzer Corps with a free hand in the sector. The 6th Tank Corps was not destroyed and, having maintained its cohesion, the corps was destined to fight on and spite Knobelsdorff’s operations. Reflecting on the formation’s experiences, Getman later explained:
Many of our soldiers and commanders fell heroically [during the first] five days of ferocious battle. Hundreds of the corps’ soldiers were wounded and evacuated to the rear. We suffered especially heavy losses in equipment. By the end of 10 July, not more than fifty tanks, more than one half light, remained operational and three batteries of antitank guns . . . Nevertheless, the corps continued to resist the enemy. Having littered the field of battle with hundreds of his burned and destroyed tanks and guns and thousands of bodies, the enemy succeeded in pushing our lines back several kilometres . . . Meeting organized fire resistance, he ceased his attacks by nightfall. But, certainly, only so that he could renew the attacks in the morning with new force. Understanding this, we prepared for the new battle.
Major Peter Frantz experienced Soviet tenacity at first hand when, during the evening of 10 July, his assault guns came under Katyusha rocket attack:
I suddenly saw fiery arrows coming towards us from the outskirts of Kruglik. Before I would figure out what they were there were explosions directly in front of the mass of advancing assault guns. The vehicle next to me . . . began to stream smoke. Thank God it turned out to be one of the smoke candles that every assault gun carried. The vehicle had taken a direct hit in the bow plates but suffered no damage. The explosion and the effect of the projectile revealed that we were under direct fire from a Stalin Organ.
By the time that darkness fell, although the 3rd Panzer Division was moving forward once more, Soviet resistance before Kruglik was unyielding and the 6th Tank Corps fought on while the remainder of Grossdeutschland and the 11th Panzer Division were held on the road to Oboyan. XLVIII Panzer Corps took Hill 244.8 astride the road to Oboyan to the north of Novosselovka, but it would advance no further during Zitadelle. A German observer noted:
The highest point on the approaches to Oboyan had thereby been reached and, at the same time, the deepest penetration made into the Russian front. From the high ground one could see far into the valley of the Psel River, the last natural barrier this side of Kursk. With field-glasses the towers of Oboyan could be made out in the fine haze. Oboyan was the objective. It seemed within arm’s reach. Barely twelve miles away. No distance at all under normal circumstances for a fast formation.
However, the diversion of Hoernlein’s division had fatally undermined Knobelsdorff’s northerly progress.
Field Marshal Günther von Kluge (left) flanked by the man that he replaced as commander of Army Group Centre, General Fedor von Bock. Kluge was no Nazi and was appalled by the genocide carried out in Germany’s name. THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON
Erich von Manstein (left) in the Crimea at the time of his promotion to the rank of Field Marshal. Manstein was a bold commander who was not averse to pushing Hitler’s patience. One OKH officer said in February 1943 that Hitler was prone to ‘loud outbursts of rage’ whenever Manstein’s name was mentioned. IWM MH 2104
General Konstantin Rokossovsky was tortured by the NKVD and spent time in a Siberian Gulag before a rapid rise which saw him commanding the Central Front during the summer of 1943. IWM TR 2913
General Walter Model, commander of Kluge’s Ninth Army, who called for: ‘More tanks! More officers! More artillery! Better training for the attack troops,’ before the launch of Zitadelle. IMAGNO/GETTY IMAGES
A German officer scrutinises a map with a colleague during preparations for Operation Zitadelle in June 1943. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2916-13A, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF / ALTVATER
Loading ammunition into one of Fourth Panzer Army’s Tigers on the first day of Zitadelle. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2948-24, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF
One of the most iconic images of the Second World War: Junker Ju-87 Stukas support the ground attack on 5 July. These aircraft dived at 370 miles per hour at an angle of between 60 and 90 degrees, and released a 550lb fuselage bomb and two wing-mounted 110lb bombs at around 1,500 feet. THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON
A German soldier in action with a Flammenwerfer (flamethrower) 41, weighing 47lbs with a range of around 80 feet in eight shots. It used an ignition system which passed hydrogen over a heated element and produced a flame of around 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON
Panzer IIIs and IVs advance across terrain typical of the southern Kursk salient during the first days of Operation Zitadelle. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101III-MERZ-014-12A, FOTOGRAF: MERZ
The experienced 29-year-old SS-Untersturmführer Michael Wittmann commanded a platoon of five Tiger tanks. By the end of the first day alone, he and his crew had destroyed eight Soviet tanks and seven anti-tank guns. THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON
A German tank, incapacitated having suffered a broken track in a minefield, is left burning after being hit by a Soviet artillery shell during the night of 5–6 July. THE TANK MUSEUM, BOVINGTON
German infantry marching towards Pokrovka alongside a convoy of cars and motorcycles with sidecars. On warm days such as this, troops carrying heavy equipment suffered badly, with many becoming dehydrated. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-219-0553A-30, FOTOGRAF: KOCH
A 15cm Nebelwerfer 41 being loaded. This towed weapon fired six rockets to a maximum range of 7,600 yards. Due to the smoke trails that the rockets left, however, it was easy for the Soviets to locate their firing positions and bombard them. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2943-20, FOTOGRAF: HARSCHNECK
A column of Soviet prisoners are led away from the battlefield. Although spared the fury of the nightmarish clash that was taking place in the north and south of the Kursk salient, their ordeal was only just beginning. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2925-05, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF / ALTVATER
A Panzer III tank crew of SS-Panzergrenadier Division Das Reich take a break shortly after a rain storm has washed over the battlefield. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101IIIZSCHAECKEL- 208-25, FOTOGRAF: ZSCHäCKEL
The tank commander of a Tiger I attached to SS-Panzergrenadier Division Das Reich surveys the battlefield. A vehicle can be clearly seen traversing the ridge on the horizon, beginning to drop down into a shallow valley. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101III-ZSCHAECKEL-206-34, FOTOGRAF: ZSCHäCKEL
German infantry enter a village during clearing operations on 8 July. A German war correspondent wrote that the outer defences of each settlement consisted of ‘wide mine belts, wire entanglements, flame-thrower barriers and tank ditches’. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2924-31, FOTOGRAF: KIPPER
A Tiger I scores a direct hit on an advancing T-34 somewhere on the Southern Front during 10 July. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101III-GROENERT -019-23A, FOTOGRAF: GRöNERT
German convoys were increasingly targeted by the Soviet Air Force. This convoy was destroyed by an aerial attack on 10 July; little of its cargo of food and other essential supplies could be salvaged. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-219-0553A-23, FOTOGRAF: KOCH
The fighting outside Pokrovka was particularly intense due to its position on the route to the vital southern objective of Oboyan. The physical and mental toll that the battle took on the German infantry is captured in this photograph taken on 8 July. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-219-0553A-10, FOTOGRAF: KOCH
Vehicles of II SS Panzer Corps reorientate themselves towards Prokhorovka on 11 July in order to confront the growing threat to their right flank. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2924-14, FOTOGRAF: KIPPER
The mangled wreckage of another German convoy is by-passed by a vehicle towing a field gun. ‘The amount of battlefield debris was demoralising,’ recalls one German officer. ‘We frequently came across smoking wrecks caused by air strikes and artillery bombardments. Even in the rear areas we feared for our lives.’ BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2924-15, FOTOGRAF: KIPPER
A German Flakvierling 38 defending an armoured column from Soviet fighter bombers. The four 20cm anti-aircraft guns were mounted on a single carriage which could be towed behind a variety of vehicles. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2926-38, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF / ALTVATER
SS-Standartenführer Heinz Harmel, commander of Das Reich’s Panzer Grenadier Regiment Deutschland. He was a hard and uncompromising soldier who launched a series of furious attacks during the Battle of Prokhorovka. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101III-GROENERT -011-021A, FOTOGRAF: GRöNERT
The Tiger I became another iconic weapon of the Second World War. It had a superb 88mm gun capable of penetrating a T-34’s armour from a range of up to 1,800 yards. The Tiger also boasted armour that could defeat a Soviet 76mm gun at all but the closest range. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2935-10A, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF / ALTVATER
An incapacitated T-34 is inspected by a German soldier. Major-General F.W. Mellenthin, Chief of Staff of XLVIII Panzer Corps, admired the all round capabilities of the tank, and wrote: ‘We had nothing comparable.’ BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-219-0553A-36, FOTOGRAF: KOCH
The effectiveness of the Tiger I’s armour can be seen in this photograph taken after the battle of Prokhorovka. The Soviet shell hit but failed to penetrate the hull and the tank – and its crew – lived to fight another day. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2935-25A, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF / ALTVATER
The cost of war. A German soldier is laid to rest hundreds of miles away from home on the Kursk battlefield. His grave is bordered by smoke-blackened bricks taken from a nearby farm. BUNDESARCHIV, BILD 101I-022-2948-19, FOTOGRAF: WOLFF
II SS Panzer Corps’ advance towards Oboyan was also wrecked, but the cause of its distraction was the order to strike out towards Prokhorovka on 10 July. The primary offensive was to be conducted by LAH advancing down the Teterevino–Prokhorovka road, supported by Das Reich on its right flank and Totenkopf on its left. The LAH commander, Theodor Wisch, expected to cover the nine miles to the town and capture it by evening. His troops, however, were rather more realistic. SS-Sturmmann Heinrich Huber recalled: ‘After days of fighting we were feeling weak, although remained motivated by the important task before us. We did not underestimate the defenders before Prokhorovka for they were as motivated as we were. I did not expect the battle to be anything other than frenzied – I was not disappointed.’ The fighting was ferocious that morning and the three divisions failed to make the impact that Hausser had hoped. Unit lethargy and an obstinate enemy do help explain the formation’s sluggishness, but organizational turmoil caused by Totenkopf’s redeployment from the right flank and the subsequent rotation of the corps through 45 degrees to face Prokhorovka in heavy rain were also responsible. The corps found it difficult to build up momentum from the outset.
Totenkopf opened the attack to anchor Hausser’s northern flank and sought to cross the Psel and seize Hill 226.6 six miles west of Prokhorovka in order to cover LAH’s exposed flank. Using 11 Tigers at the point of a Keil, which pushed towards the Psel in the early hours of the 10th, the division immediately ran into units of the 95th Guards Rifle Division. By mid-morning the Panzer Grenadiers were engaged in some close-quarters fighting with the Soviet defenders, who had withdrawn to the southern bank of the Psel as German engineers moved forward with bridging equipment. An infantryman of the 290th Guards Rifle Regiment, Anatoli Abalakov, says of the day, during which Totenkopf took 430 casualties:
The scene along the banks of the Psel was carnage, sheer carnage. We had been told to stop the Germans from crossing the water at all costs and we threw everything we had at them . . . The bastards just kept coming at us. Our artillery gave some support and we fought with them between the falling shells. German artillery opened up, and then Stukas arrived. It was grim, remorseless stuff. The sort of fighting that a soldier hopes he will never be involved in because survival is very unlikely . . . When we were eventually overwhelmed, I swam to the north bank [of the Psel]. I was exhausted and still wore much of my equipment, but I was swimming for my life . . . I scrambled up the muddy bank and headed for a position that I knew existed in [a balka]. Shells, mortars and rounds were striking the ground all around me as I ran. How I was not hit I do not know. I was relieved to reach the position where I was pulled over some sandbags. Then, having fought with my bare hands against the SS monsters, swum a river and run the gauntlet through fire, an officer admonished me for withdrawing without permission and for losing my rifle!
This local battle had a considerable impact on II SS Panzer Corps’ operations that day for by delaying Totenkopf’s crossing of the Psel until noon, the Soviets not only gave themselves time to prepare their defences along the north bank of the river, but also delayed the start of the LAH attack until 1045 hours. Thus, by the time the corps was moving in the early afternoon, the Soviets were better set. Totenkopf was forced into a bloody struggle for Hill 226.6, and its southern slopes were taken by dusk, while LAH and Das Reich – which still had one of its panzer grenadier regiments holding the corps’ flank to the south – were subjected to strong and destabilizing armoured counterattacks by Popov’s 2nd Tank Corps. Das Reich’s daily report noted:
There was lively enemy vehicle traffic and tank and infantry advances in front of the entire division sector. The enemy was particularly active in the area south and north of Belenichino and frequently directed heavy artillery fire and fire from tanks, especially on the northern division sector. The enemy repeatedly probed the positions of SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment Der Führer with armoured attacks.
Since the flanking divisions were finding it impossible to make much headway, LAH’s own attack suffered. Although Wisch’s men took Komsomolets State Farm and then Hill 241.6, LAH remained five miles short of Prokhorovka by nightfall. Neither side got much sleep that night as they continued to fight for control of tactically important ground. Panzer grenadiers probed the Soviet line looking for weak points while Soviet teams replied with disruptive assaults and bombed German positions with skimming Po-2 bi-planes. Hausser, meanwhile, radioed orders to his divisional commanders, directing the attack to continue the next morning when Kruger’s Das Reich would return to full offensive strength. Its second panzer grenadier regiment was being replaced on the lower flank by a unit of the 167th Infantry Division.
Throughout the 10th that flank had been put under considerable pressure by the 2nd Tank and 2nd Guards Tank Corps as III Panzer Corps endeavoured to advance and remove the danger that they posed. On the 9th, Breith’s formation remained in the clutches of the Soviet second line, and that situation continued to cost its three panzer divisions energy and resources. The 6th Panzer Division’s panzer regiment, for example, had begun Zitadelle with 105 tanks but by the end of the fifth day of battle had just 22 machines operational. The Tigers of the 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion had also suffered, largely due to mine impact and mechanical breakdown, but the efficiency of the workshops meant that Breith could still call on 33 heavies by the 10th. On that day, the 6th Panzer Division and 503rd Heavy Tank Battalion sought to break free of the Soviet defences around Shiakhovo and Melikhovo, supported by the 7th and 19th Panzer Divisions, but continued to be held. Corps Raus, meanwhile, had been reinforced by the recently arrived 198th Infantry Division and continued to stand firm against Soviet counterattacks on the right flank. On the left flank, the 168th Infantry Division did manage to take advantage of the withdrawal of the 81st and 375th Rifle Divisions, but was in no position to do anything other than nudge forward. The net gain of Army Group Detachment Kempf’s efforts on the 10th, therefore, was territorially inconsequential and gave Hoth little hope that Breith’s corps would be pulling up alongside II SS Panzer Corps any time soon. Combat engineer Rolf Schmidt, who had been working tirelessly in support of the panzers, felt frustrated:
Each day we expected to break the enemy’s defences, but there was line after line of trenches and minefields. It was extremely irritating. The panzers were straining to speed forward – it was what they had been designed to do – but were held up. Rather than moving to support the attack of the SS divisions, we were being worn down by lengthy battles within the Soviet lines . . . We knew what the corps had to achieve and had been told that a great attack [at Prokhorovka] could not take place until our panzers arrived. Great pressure was put on us to get the armour north as quickly as possible – but the enemy did everything in its power to stop us.
Twenty-two miles still separated III Panzer Corps from Prokhorovka, and intelligence received by Army Group South identified not only the movement of Soviet formations towards Prokhorovka, but also a major reorganizing of Soviet assets – confirmation for Manstein that he was in a race to grab the initiative. Major Leo Spiegel, a staff officer with the 11th Panzer Division, has described ‘a tangible heaviness’ hanging over Hoth’s headquarters when he visited it on the evening of 10 July. Spiegel has testified:
I was sent to see the operations staff at Fourth Panzer Army and found the place to be a strange mixture of frenetic energy and resignation. It was clear that like [the staff at 11th Panzer Division] the team was extremely tired and tempers were frayed. I made my report – making sure that it was short and to the point – picked up some maps and was about to make my way out when I was invited by the Oberst to stay for a cup of coffee. We chatted about the unfolding operation and it became clear that whilst there was hope, there was also considerable concern that the enemy were bringing strong reserves into the sector. I was also informed, for the first time, that Model’s offensive ‘was dead in the water’ and that the operation depended wholly on Fourth Panzer Army’s ability to break through . . . I left the headquarters more concerned than I had been when I entered it an hour earlier. It was clear that Zitadelle was reaching its climax and that confidence was fragile.
The situation was discussed in detail at a conference conducted at Kempf’s headquarters in Dolbino on the morning of 11 July. Manstein reflected the lack of optimism that Spiegel had picked up on the previous evening, and explained to the assembled commanders that Zitadelle was ‘fragmenting’. According to General Busse, the Chief of Staff of Army Group South, Manstein posed the question: ‘Should the attack be continued, considering the condition of the troops, the ever-increasing strength of the Russians, and – particularly – the fact that Ninth Army’s assault had ground to a complete halt by 9 July?’ Of course, it was not in Manstein’s gift to bring the operation to an end, but by raising the question he made it clear that he did not expect to reach Kursk. The question remained, therefore, how best to proceed. What could be achieved in the time and with the resources still available to them?
Kempf was extremely negative and argued that his formation was exhausted and had suffered excessive casualties, and, even though Lieutenant-General Walter Nehring’s reserve XXIV Panzer Corps (three divisions with a total of 112 tanks) was on its way to support him, his concern was that it was too little and would arrive too late. Hoth, however, was more optimistic and must have been irritated by Kempf’s depressing summary. The Fourth Panzer Army’s chief gave it as his opinion that, while undoubtedly tired and weakened by a week of hard fighting, his corps were still capable of dealing the Soviets a heavy blow. He lambasted Kempf for suggesting that Zitadelle should be brought to an end, and advocated the continuance of operations to destroy the enemy south of the Psel.
With little option but to continue with the offensive until Hitler instructed otherwise, and realizing that he needed to weaken the 5th Guards Tank Army if he was going to conduct a successful withdrawal from the salient in the near future, Manstein agreed. The plan, therefore, was to use II SS and III Panzer Corps to defeat the Soviet armoured reserve and, in so doing, achieve an OKW aim of drawing the Red Army’s sting in the area. There was no doubt that by 11 July Zitadelle had failed but Manstein continued to make every effort to achieve what he could from a fatally flawed operation.
Despite Kempf’s lack of enthusiasm for the continuance of the offensive, Breith was more sanguine about operations. Indeed, by the time that Manstein spoke to him in the early afternoon of the 11th, his formation had escaped the clutches of the Soviet second line, and the 6th Panzer Division, led by the 503rd’s Tigers, had broken into open countryside. By the evening, after a titanic struggle northeast of Belgorod, the panzers were charging towards Prokhorovka. Rolf Schmidt’s diary entry for the day simply states: ‘Breakthrough.’ The Germans had perforated the line at the junction held by the 107th and 305th Rifle Divisions, and immediately strained Lieutenant-General V. Kruchenkin’s 69th Army’s defences south of Prokhorovka.
It was a delicate moment for Vatutin’s defences, but their task was clear – III Panzer Corps’ offensive had to be stopped or, at the very least, drawn away from II SS Panzer Corps. Right across the front, Vatutin juggled with his formations to create the time and space that he needed to assemble the troops for his counterattack and launch it before the march of the panzers became irrepressible.
Throughout the day, the Fourth Panzer Army continued to manoeuvre for position, and XLVIII Panzer Corps still hoped to make the leap to Oboyan. To facilitate this, units of Grossdeutschland continued to engage the 1st Tank Army in their thrust westwards. So successful were they on the morning of the 11th that by 1000 hours Hoernlein declared his day’s objectives taken. Thus, with reconnaissance aircraft reporting that the enemy’s infantry was withdrawing and intelligence from the front indicating that Katukov’s formation was broken – ‘Enemy infantry are retreating in long columns. They look to be in poor order and without heavy weapons’ – Hoth concluded that the armoured threat to his flank had been vanquished. The 3rd Panzer Division was ordered to replace Grossdeutschland on the flank, enabling Hoernlein’s men to attack northwards once more.
The attack was to be made in cooperation with 11th Panzer Division, which had spent the day trying to gain local tactical advantage. Arnold Brenner, a rifleman with the 111th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, recalls:
All day we fought for scraps of land. The entire division hardly seemed to move although by evening we may have advanced a further [mile]. It was demoralizing as our company lost 15 men that day with very little to show for it. Our advance seemed to have come to a grinding halt . . . That evening we were told to expect a rapid advance the following day [12 July] but we all wondered how this could be. All day we noticed that the enemy were reinforcing their positions and we found ourselves under heavy and long aerial bombardments. It seemed to us that we had reached as far as we could go.
Although there may have been optimism that, with Grossdeutschland rejoining the fray towards Oboyan, rapid progress could be achieved, as Brenner sensed, XLVIII Panzer Corps had reached its culminating point. Far from having soaked up all of the Soviet reserves, Vatutin was husbanding forward elements of the 5th Guards Army – including the 10th Tank Corps, which had moved south of Oboyan – and a collection of other units with the purpose of striking Hoth’s left flank. This force would target the fading 3rd Panzer Division, which had 23 remaining tanks, just as the 5th Guards Tank Army surged into Hoth’s right flank. Indeed, T-34 loader Lev Drachevsky of the 178th Tank Brigade recalls:
Having fought on the road to Prokhorovka on the 8th, by the 11th we were assembling to attack the opposite flank. Great efforts were made to keep the skies above us clear of snooping enemy aircraft – a job successfully done by our fighters and anti-aircraft guns – and we spent considerable time camouflaging our tanks. It was a great boost to our morale to be told that we were to strike the enemy in an attack which would bring an end to his offensive in the sector . . . We were still relatively fresh and knew that the Germans were tiring. I cannot speak for the others [in the crew] but I relished the opportunity to strike a blow for ‘Mother Russia’ and my family which had been wiped out by the German advance in 1941.
Throughout 11 July, the 5th Guards Tank Army was organizing itself in its new positions around Prokhorovka as II SS Panzer Corps continued its attack towards the town. Manstein put everything he had into the attack in the hope that he might catch the Soviets off-guard. Starting at 0500 hours, the 2nd Panzer Grenadier Regiment of LAH attacked along the axis of the road, heading into the settlement with armoured support. The defences were of the sort that all Wehrmacht troops knew so well by this stage in the battle, but it was the artillery fire from batteries ensconced in Petrovka and Prelestnoye in the Psel valley to the northeast that caused the majority of the division’s casualties early that morning. ‘From nowhere came a bombardment that shocked and stalled us,’ wrote SS-Untersturmführer Alexander Simm. ‘We threw ourselves to the ground as the shells landed among our ranks. We suffered a nasty few minutes before we got moving again.’
Meanwhile, exploiting the difficulties that Totenkopf and Das Reich were encountering on the flanks, companies of T-34s counterattacked the LAH column and ensured that the division’s focus was not purely frontal. Nevertheless, Wisch’s formation – nothing if not tenacious – managed to push within assaulting distance of Hill 252.2 by 0625 hours. Hausser sensed an opportunity to take the high ground and drive on to Prokhorovka, but his hopes were dashed when he received word that the armour had run up against a very deep and extremely wide anti-tank installation, covered by first-class defenders. Unbeknown to Hausser and Wisch, the Soviets had reinforced this critical area overnight with the vanguard of the 5th Guards Army – paratroopers from the élite 9th Guards Airborne Division – as armour from the 5th Guards Tank Army deployed rapidly behind them. After searching unsuccessfully for a way round, the panzer grenadiers called forward the pionere battalion to bridge the obstacle while the artillery and Luftwaffe did what they could to neutralize their opposition.
Throughout the day, high winds and heavy bursts of rain precluded the sort of air support that the three divisions needed, but from 0630 hours Stukas and medium bombers carried out attacks despite the low cloud base. However, such was the nature of the close-quarters fighting and terrible visibility that morning that the dive bombers found it extremely difficult to silence the enemy. One observer, SS-Oberschütze Paul Meuller, later recalled:
The Luftwaffe was not on form during [the 11th]. Not only were the aircraft slow in arriving at the pinch points, but their attacks were lame. We saw a number of Stukas pull out of their dives without releasing their bombs. I saw one fail to pull out of his dive and crash into the ground. Another two were shot out of the sky by enemy anti-aircraft fire. It was a bad day for the air arm, but conditions were vile and did not suit the flyers or their machines.
Another SS trooper watched in horror as an LAH unit was mistakenly attacked by its own aircraft:
We called in Stuka assistance, which was still possible to do at this time. But once again things went wrong! Some bombs hit [Sturmbannführer Joachim] Peiper’s III Panzer Grenadier Battalion and elements of [Obersturmbannführer] Rudolf von Ribbentrop’s 6 Panzer Company of 1.SS Panzer Regiment . . . which was held in reserve on this day. In spite of the fact that an air liaison officer from the Luftwaffe was stationed with his armoured radio vehicle next to the battalion’s staff vehicle, our Stukas again hit our own positions.
While a bridge was being constructed over the anti-tank ditch, the LAH Reconnaissance Battalion blocked Soviet movement between the Psel and the main road. On the right, the 1st Panzer Grenadier Regiment successfully cleared the woods north of Storozhevoe. In this way, Wisch’s division contained the attacks on its flanks, which neither Das Reich nor Totenkopf were in a position to fend off as they, too, were meeting fierce resistance. Kruger’s division was denied Vinogradovka by the 2nd Guards Tank Corps, and Priess’s men found it difficult to expand their small bridgehead against concerted counter-attacks. During the night of 10–11 July, with no armoured support because the bridge was not strong enough to take the weight of tanks, Totenkopf’s panzer grenadiers had no option but to fight the 31st Tank Corps with magnetic mines and fire bombs, and thwart the 33rd Guards Rifle Corps’ onslaught with hand-to-hand fighting. Artillery support helped, but it was not until a tank bridge was completed in late morning that the medium panzers could cross. Their weight and fire-power helped retrieve the desperate situation, but by the end of the day most of Hill 226.6 was still in Soviet hands.
LAH, meanwhile, battled on. With the anti-tank ditch bridged by noon, armour and panzer grenadiers pushed forward with the aim of taking Hill 252.2 and then bounding on the final two miles to seize Prokhorovka. The high ground was taken after a bloody but relatively brief confrontation, which was followed by an attack on the Oktiabrskii State Farm. The resistance offered by the airborne forces was powerful. Backed by heavy artillery along with the dug-in KV-1s and T-34s of the 29th Tank Corps, the defences initially repelled the onslaught. Describing the approach of LAH’s panzer grenadiers, a paratrooper later wrote that the front ‘shuddered from exploding bombs, shells, and mines’. He continues:
When only several hundred metres remained to the edge of the state farm, infantry poured out of the armoured transporters. Submachine gunners opened fire on the run, and concealing themselves behind the tanks, they began to assault. The distorted faces of the Fascists bore witness to the fact that their warlike ardour was roused by a fairly large dose of schnapps.
‘Fire!’ ordered the battery commander. A squall of 3rd Battalion fire met the Fascists. The long burst of . . . heavy machine guns struck the infantry in the flanks and were echoed by the guardsmen’s light machine guns and submachine guns. Divisional artillery and supporting artillery battalions [of the Reserve] laid down an immovable defensive fire in front of the state farm . . . The infantry were separated from the tanks, and facing a hurricane of fire from the state farm, they withdrew to the reverse slopes of Hill 215.4. The Fascists attacked the 3rd Battalion two more times before 1400 hours. However, these were only reconnaissances in force.
Although the Germans eventually prevailed and Oktiabrskii State Farm was taken at around 1700 hours, a move on Prokhorovka could not be undertaken for fear of producing an even more vulnerable salient. It was critical, therefore, that both Totenkopf and Das Reich moved up alongside LAH the following morning so that a corps effort could be made on the town. Hausser subsequently produced orders for 12 July that directed Totenkopf to seize Hill 226.6 and then advance along the north bank of the Psel to cut the Orel–Prokhorovka road, while Das Reich took Belenikhino and Vinogradovka before thrusting south of Prokhorovka. Once Hill 226.6 had been taken, LAH was to take Storozhevoe and Jamki and make a frontal assault on the town.
It was not just II SS Panzer Corps that was to attack on the morning of 12 July. Manstein was also expecting XLVIII Panzer Corps to cross the Psel River and begin its final approach on Oboyan. The aim, the field marshal said, was to ‘maintain Fourth Panzer Army’s momentum across the front. Oboyan and Prokhorovka are to be seized and the Soviet armoured reserve defeated.’
Meanwhile, Vatutin promulgated his own orders. At 0800 hours, the 5th Guards Tank Army was to:
Deliver a counterstroke in the direction of Komsomolets State Farm and Pokrovka and in co-operation with 5th Guards Army and 1st Tank Army destroy the enemy in the Kochetovka, Pokrovka and Greznoye regions and do not permit him to withdraw in a southern direction.
Rotmistrov made his final preparations for the counterattack during 11 July, but he did so apparently unaware of the advance that II SS Panzer Corps was making. Despite undoubtedly hearing the sounds of battle, seeing the smoke-filled sky above the battlefield and being presented with reports about the situation at the front, the commander of the 5th Guards Tank Army seemed to be remarkably ill-informed about unfolding events. Indeed, that evening he and Marshal Vasilevsky – who had been directed by Stalin to assist in the coordination of the Soviet counterattacks in the southern salient – sped off to inspect the jumping-off positions of the 18th and 29th Tank Corps. Rotmistrov later wrote of the episode in his memoirs:
Our route passed through Prokhorovka to Belenikhino, and the quick-moving [Jeep], bobbing up and down over the potholes, skirted round vehicles with ammunition and fuel, which were heading to the front. Transports with wounded slowly went past us. Here and there destroyed trucks and smashed transports stood by the roadside. The road passed through wide fields of yellowing wheat. Beyond them began a forest which adjoined the village of Storozhevoe. There, along the northern edge of the forest, were the jumping-off positions of the 29th Tank Corps. ‘The 18th Tank Corps would attack to the right,’ I explained to A.M. Vasilevsky. He intently peered into the distance and listened to the ever-growing rumble of battle. One could divine the front lines of our combined armies from the clouds of smoke and explosions of aerial bombs and shells. The agricultural installations of Komsomolets State Farm could be seen two kilometres distant on the right.
Suddenly, Vasilevsky ordered the driver to stop. The vehicle turned off the road and abruptly halted amid the dust-covered roadside brush. We opened the doors and went several steps to the side. The rumble of tank engines could be clearly heard. Then the very same tanks came into sight. Quickly turning to me, and with a touch of annoyance in his voice, Alexsandr Mikhailovich asked me, ‘General! What’s going on? Were you not forewarned that the enemy must not know about the arrival of our tanks? And they stroll about in the light of day under the Germans’ eyes.’ Instantly, I raised my binoculars. Indeed, tens of tanks in combat formation, firing from the march from their short-barrelled guns, were crossing the field and stirring up the ripened grain. ‘However, Comrade General, they are not our tanks. They are German.’ ‘So the enemy has penetrated somewhere. He wants to pre-empt us and seize Prokhorovka.’ ‘We cannot permit that,’ I said to A.M. Vasilevsky.
Ordering two tank brigades to plug the breach that Das Reich had made in his front, Rotmistrov was later shocked to learn of the true scope and strength of II SS Panzer Corps’ attack. Hausser had taken the initiative and moved far closer to Prokhorovka than the 5th Guards Tank Army had expected, and even overrun some of its jumping-off points. Headquarters staff had to work quickly to identify new jumping-off points, alter missions, revise artillery and air plans and, finally, work up and promulgate new orders. The plan for a deliberate offensive had to be turned into a scheme for a meeting engagement. Commenting on what that situation must have been like for Rotmistrov’s team, Wehrmacht staff officer Leo Spiegel has said:
Those men would have been up against a great time pressure. Although they had shown themselves to be capable enough in moving the Army so far so fast over the previous few days, to have one’s plans turned over at the last moment is awful – but it is also quite common. The staff would have had procedures worked out and, no doubt, various sub-plans available to them for just such a situation – we always did. But one can never accurately predict what the enemy might do and so there is always a last minute scrambling around to make sure that everything is in place . . . What I can say without any fear of contradiction is that few men on the 5th Guards Tank Army staff would have got much sleep [on the night of 11–12 July] and they would have been anxious that the alterations to the plan that they had made were relevant and practical.
The time of the attack was brought forward to 0630 hours when the 18th, 29th and 2nd Guards Tank Corps were to deliver the hard blow along the axis of the Prokhorovka–Pokrovka road, aided by the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps to the south. The small reserve – the 53rd Guards Tank Regiment together with some tanks and the self-propelled guns of the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps – was to wait in the rear for deployment where and when needed during the course of the battle.
After days of slog and grind there was, all of a sudden, a far greater sense of urgency across the front than there had been since 4–5 July. Even though Rokossovsky received reports that Model was disengaging in the north as the Briansk Front prepared to attack the Second Panzer Army in the Orel salient, it was on the south that German and Soviet eyes were so inextricably fixed. Here the destiny of Zitadelle would finally be decided. Would the two German spearheads converging on Prokhorovka cripple the 5th Guards Tank Army and breathe new life into Zitadelle, or would the Soviets use the opportunity to kill off the German offensive and destroy the Wehrmacht’s ability to launch offensive operations in the area? It was a question that consumed Manstein’s headquarters and had a particular poignancy after Anglo-American forces began their invasion of Sicily on 10 July. With the soft underbelly of Europe under Allied attack, it was only a matter of time before German armour would need to be removed from the East to confront this new threat to the overstretched Reich. The Eastern Front’s post-Zitadelle strength had taken on a new and more florid complexion. A pivotal moment in the Second World War had arrived.
Map 10: Soviet Advances, August–December 1943