CHAPTER 9

Finale

(Zitadelle: 12 July and After)

While the rest of the 28th Guards Airborne Regiment were fighting on Hill 252.2 during the afternoon of 11 July, Pavel Krylov’s platoon were detailed to help bring ammunition forward from a dump five miles east of Prokhorovka. As they waited for the five 9th Guards Airborne Division trucks on to which they would load the boxes, Krylov and his comrades smoked, chatted and joshed. Although they knew that they would be in the front line the next morning, their talk was banal and centred more on the machine gunner’s dubious new haircut than their likely fate. They also used the time to devour their first hot meal in three days, supplied by a mobile field kitchen and slopped into their canteens by a soldier with a bad attitude. The ‘stew’ was made with unidentifiable ingredients that seemed to have little nutritional value, and Krylov wondered (out loud) how, on such rations, young Dimitri had got so fat. Their food finished, they continued to wait and amused themselves by trying to spot pretty girls among the stream of units that filed past the entrance to ‘Ordnance Depot 12 Prokhorovka’ – tanks, towed artillery, anti-aircraft guns, infantry, jeeps, trucks. The whole gamut of the Red Army’s fighting prowess seemed to be moving into position for the battle that even Krylov recognized as climactic.

The arrival of the trucks was greeted with sardonic cheering by the men, who then proceeded to bend their backs lifting the heavy cargo into the load space. They crammed the vehicles with as many boxes as they could, perched themselves precariously atop the freight and then wobbled out on to the Prokhorovka road. The journey forward in the gathering evening gloom was tortuously slow and it was not before 2300 hours that the convoy passed through a gun line and then into Prokhorovka itself. The small town was alive with vehicles. Krylov identified blurred shapes directing the traffic and trying to bring order to a situation that seemed desperately chaotic.

The trucks pulled up where the buildings gave way to open fields – just a mile, they were told, behind the front line. From here the platoon would have to walk, taking with them as many boxes as they could. The rest would be brought up through the lines during the night by others. Krylov grabbed the rope handle at one end of a box of anti-tank shells, Dimitri grasped the other, and the 30 men shuffled forward. The snake of soldiers followed a humourless guide who led them through masses of tanks, waiting in the unharvested wheat. The crews chatted in hushed tones or sprawled by their machines in a desperate attempt to snatch a few hours’ valuable sleep.

After what seemed like an age, the men, their hands and arms aching from the dead weight of their burdens, approached their company lines. Silence was ordered and moments later the quartermaster appeared out of the darkness to take charge of the precious consignment. He was followed by the platoon commander, who had spent most of the evening in a briefing to outline the plan for the next morning. Krylov and his colleagues learned that they were to provide infantry support for the T-34s that they had just passed, and were acquainted with their tactical objective. The young officer then led his men to a cramped trench where, he advised, they got some sleep. What seemed like minutes later, Krylov was shaken awake by a ghost-like form: ‘One hour before the attack,’ it said. ‘Eat something.’ ‘It was,’ Krylov recalls, ‘the worst early morning call that a man could ever receive.’

As dawn broke, both the Soviets and the Germans were undertaking their final preparations before their attacks across the southern salient. Low cloud ensured there was some residual heat from the previous day, visibility was good but the outlook was stormy. The combatants took up their field glasses and scrutinized the battlefield. SS-Rottenführer Johannes Bräuer, the driver of an armoured troops carrier in 11th (Armoured) Company, recalls: ‘It wasn’t until dawn on 12 July that one could properly see the surrounding area and the mass of vehicles and troops being drawn up around us. One could only guess that something big was in the offing.’ Had he taken up a pair of field glasses, he would easily have discerned the major features of the battlefield. Looking three miles northwest, he would have been able to see Hill 226.6 standing on the north bank of the Psel along which Totenkopf was to advance. A similar distance to the south, Bräuer would have been able to pick out Das Reich’s positions before Vinogradovka and the more undulating and complicated ground stretching northeast across which that division had to push. To his front right, the officer would have taken in the gently undulating ground before him – good tank country – and would have noted the front line incorporating Hill 252.2. This high ground stood as a sentinel adjacent to the embanked railway line and road, which ran parallel to the Psel and led into Prokhorovka just three and a half miles distant. It was between the Psel and the railway line that the Germans were about to launch their schwerpunkt, as were the Soviets.

Rotmistrov drove through Prokhorovka just before dawn and took up a position at 29th Tanks Corps’ command post on orchard-covered high ground just to the south of the town. He swung his field glasses across his Army’s positions, from the Psel through an arc taking in the land in front of Prokhorovka and down to Belenikhino over seven miles away. His formations had completed the move to their new jumping-off positions in the early hours of the morning and, having been told that all was well, he made ready to give the command to begin the attack.

In front of him were 294 fighting machines of II SS Panzer Corps and 616 of his own tanks. On that day, just over half of Rotmistrov’s tanks were T-34s and most of the remainder were T-70s. Experienced commanders took on board as much ammunition as they could – particularly armour-piercing shells and high explosive – and all ensured that they were replete with fuel. Many took the risk of strapping extra fuel barrels on to their rear decks. As one T-34 commander explained to his crew: ‘In a tank battle against the panzers, a stopped T-34 will shortly become a destroyed T-34. We cannot afford to run out of ammunition but, more importantly, we cannot afford to run out of fuel.’

The Soviet tanks were strongly supported by additional artillery and Katyusha regiments. Indeed, infantryman Mansur Abdulin noted: ‘Neither before nor since had I seen so much artillery. The commanders of artillery units, with their guns of different calibres, had a hard time finding firing positions from which they could fire without disturbing their neighbours. There was not enough space for the gunners on the battlefield!’

The additional firepower was particularly focused in the centre of the battlefield behind 18th and 29th Tank Corps, which faced LAH. The tank crews were becoming increasingly impatient to get moving. ‘We waited with dry mouths and wrenching stomachs,’ says T-34 driver Yuri Ruslanova, ‘and found it difficult to concentrate on anything.’ Bräuer concurs, explaining that the final hours before combat were a blur: ‘[W]e enlisted men had no idea of what was soon to be happening to us. I had taken part in everything since the beginning of the eastern campaign . . . but I had never experienced such a surprise attack and inferno. Everything happened in such a surprisingly short time that one didn’t know what to do.’

At 0545, Wisch was informed at LAH headquarters that troops were reporting the dull throb of T-34 engines emanating from the enemy’s lines along with clouds of blue-grey exhaust fumes. Rotmistrov was on the verge of unleashing his tanks, but Hausser struck first. At 0600 hours, a swarm of Bf-109s arrived over the battlefield heralding the arrival of Stukas and He-111s, which targeted Soviet positions. As they began to soften the enemy’s defences, LAH’s panzer regiment advanced from positions around Oktiabrskii State Farm and Hill 252.2. Warned to expect enemy tanks moving towards them, the commanders stood in their cupolas, keeping a watchful eye on the terrain before them as the artillery laid down a sharp barrage along the 9th Guards Airborne Division’s front. Pavel Krylov found his world turned upside down:

I do not know what our trench was hit by, but just as we were about to attack we noticed Stukas preparing to attack. I did not see an aircraft dive towards us but moments after a warning was yelled, the ground in front of us levitated. It was like a giant had grabbed the battlefield and shaken it. I was knocked to the ground, but was dragged to my feet and the platoon was told to look to its front and stand firm . . . Shells continued to drop all around us and then I saw, to my absolute horror, a dense line of enemy tanks approaching like a tidal wave about to break on top of us.

Krylov was far from the only soldier to be surprised at that moment. Back at 29th Tank Corps’ headquarters, Rotmistrov watched in disbelief. His plan to seize the initiative was disintegrating before his eyes. However, as the German armour rolled forward, it ran straight into what the 5th Guards Tank Army commander described in his memoirs as ‘a cyclone of fire unleashed by our artillery, and rocket launchers that swept the entire front of the German defences’. It was the preliminary bombardment timed for 0600 hours that was to precede the Soviet attack. The panzers, led by the Tigers, fanned out, the dust thrown up by their tracks mingling with the smoke of the exploding shells, which tore up the ground and set fire to the crops. As the last shells were sent spinning towards the enemy, Rotmistrov gave the code words ‘Stal! Stal! Stal!’ (Steel! Steel! Steel!). The tank commanders pulled down their hatches, the drivers engaged gear and the Soviet armour staggered forward and slowly gained speed.

Soviet tactics continued to emphasize the need to close with the enemy’s armour as quickly as possible for fear of the Germans’ powerful 88mm guns smashing them at long range. Rotmistrov was adamant that ‘successful struggle with [Tigers and Ferdinands] is possible only in circumstances of close-in combat’, and by exploiting ‘the T-34’s greater manoeuvrability and by flanking fire against the [weaker] side armour of the German machines’. Tigers were capable of disabling a T-34 at a range of over 4000 yards, but the Soviets seem to have massively overestimated the number that were available to Hausser. The reality was that II SS Panzer Corps had 15 – Totenkopf had 10, LAH had four and Das Reich just one. There were no Ferdinands or Panthers on the Prokhorovka battlefield.

Nevertheless, the 5th Guards Tank Army sought to charge the panzers in an early attack in order to catch the Germans unawares and allow the Soviet tank commanders to get their 76mm guns close enough to do damage before the enemy realized what was happening. But Hausser’s pre-emption had delivered Rotmistrov’s plans a fatal blow. Instead of a surprise attack, the T-34s found themselves racing forward, rapidly losing their shape and firing speculatively on the move against a vigilant enemy. There is little doubt that, in the circumstances, Rotmistrov’s attacking tank corps would have been far better served by a slower, stealthier and better coordinated advance. As it was, the panzer commanders spotted a great cloud of dust rising between the ridges, and the appearance of Il-2 ground-attack aircraft confirmed the imminent arrival of a large enemy offensive. Panzer IV company commander Rudolf von Ribbentrop, son of the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, describes the scene:

A purple wall of smoke rose into the air, produced by smoke shells. It meant: ‘Tank warning!’ The same signals were to be seen all along the crest of the slope. The threatening violet danger signals also appeared farther to the right at the railroad embankment.

Everything immediately became clear: beyond the hill, still out of sight of those in the valley, a major Soviet armoured attack was under way . . . On reaching the crest of the slope we saw another low rise about 200 metres away on the other side of a small valley, on which our infantry positions were obviously located . . . The small valley extended to our left, and as we drove down the forward slope we spotted the first T-34s, which were apparently attempting to outflank from the left.

The panzers went into a well-practised routine – they stopped, the commander identified a target, the gunner lined it up in his sights and a shell was sent scudding towards the victim. The whole clinical process took just a few seconds and was as efficient as it was effective. Ribbentrop continues:

We halted on the slope and opened fire, hitting several of the enemy. A number of Russian tanks were left burning. For a good gunner 800 metres was the ideal range.

As we waited to see if further enemy tanks were going to appear, I looked around, as was my habit. What I saw left me speechless. From beyond the shallow rise about 150–200 metres in front of me appeared fifteen, then thirty, then forty tanks. Finally there were too many to count. The T-34s were rolling forward toward us at high speed, carrying mounted infantry [standing on the engine compartment and clinging on to handles welded onto the hull] . . . Soon the first round was on its way and, with its impact, the T-34 began to burn. It was only fifty to seventy metres from us. At the same instant the tank next to me took a direct hit and went up in flames . . . His neighbour to the right was also hit and soon it was also in flames.

The avalanche of enemy tanks rolled straight towards us: Tank after tank! Wave after wave! It was a simply unimaginable assembly, and it was moving at very high speed.

On the receiving end of the German armour-piercing shells was Vasili Bryukhov, a T-34 commander in the 29th Tank Corps’ 31st Tank Brigade.

The distance between the tanks was below 100 metres – it was impossible to manoeuvre a tank, one could just jerk it back and forth a bit. It wasn’t a battle, it was a slaughterhouse of tanks. We crawled back and forth and fired. Everything was burning. An indescribable stench hung in the air over the battlefield. Everything was enveloped in smoke, dust and fire, so it looked as if it was twilight . . . Tanks were burning, trucks were burning.

Dr Olga Borisenko, attached to the 5th Guards Tank Army, saw the horrifying results of blazing armour and has testified: ‘You wouldn’t have thought that the metal could burn so fiercely. We had a dreadful time helping the wounded crews at the battlefield. Many of the men would come in covered in dirt. They’d tried to put out the flames by rolling on the ground. As a result their wounds got dirty and became infected.’ Many, however, did not have a chance to escape their ‘tracked coffins’ as their armour was ripped open and, on occasion, their turrets were wrenched off. Ribbentrop has written:

We halted ten metres behind the stationary T-34 and turned. My gunner scored a direct hit on the Russian’s turret. The T-34 exploded, and its turret flew about three metres through the air almost striking my tank’s gun . . . Burning T-34s ran into and over one another. It was a total inferno of smoke and fire, and impacting shells and explosions. T-34s blazed, while the wounded tried to crawl away to the sides.

Bryukhov’s tank eventually took a German round, but the result was not catastrophic:

My tank was hit. A round flew in from nowhere and hit the driving sprocket and the first road wheel. The tank stopped, turned to the side a bit. We immediately bailed out and sneaked into a shell crater. The situation didn’t favour repair of the tank. That was Prokhorovka! . . . I got into another tank, but that was destroyed after a while. The round hit the engine, the tank caught fire, and we all bailed out. We hid in a shell crater and fired at German infantry and the crews of their knocked out tanks.

Probing forward on Ribbentrop’s left, towards the 18th Tank Corps, was the panzer regiment’s heavy company, with its four remaining Tigers. These were now being commanded by SS-Untersturmführer Michael Wittmann. The 170th and 181st Tank Brigades were attempting to smash through LAH between Oktiabrskii State Farm and the Psel. They were to continue to the village of Andreevka where they were to destroy Totenkopf’s bridges over the river. However, Wittmann’s Tigers were just waiting for the 100 Soviet tanks bobbing towards them to come into range, when they proceeded to pick them off with aplomb. Engines whined as the Tigers found new firing positions and their guns erupted once more. It is interesting to note that Rotmistrov’s view was rather different and his account has the Germans suffering badly at the hands of the advancing Soviet armour. Describing the contact, the general later wrote:

The tanks were moving across the steppe in small packs, under cover of patches of woodland and hedges. The bursts of gunfire merged into one continuous mighty roar. The Soviet tanks thrust into the German advanced formation at full speed and penetrated the German tank screen. The T-34s were knocking out Tigers at extremely close range, since their powerful guns and massive armour no longer gave them an advantage in close combat. The tanks of both sides were in the closest possible contact. There was neither the time nor room to disengage from the enemy and re-form in battle order or operation information. The shells fired at close range pierced not only the side armour but also the frontal armour of the fighting vehicles. At such range, there was no protection in armour and the length of the gun barrels was no longer decisive. Frequently when a tank was hit, its ammunition and fuel blew up and the torn off turrets were flung through the air over dozens of yards. On the black, scorched earth the gutted tanks burnt like torches. It was difficult to establish which side was attacking and which was defending.

The battlefield descended into confusion. Hundreds of small confrontations took place across a broad front, and there was no respite for the tank crews, who fought for their lives on a field of battle more congested with armour than they had ever experienced before. T-34 driver Anatoly Volkov recalls:

The noise, heat, smoke and dust of battle were extremely trying. Despite wearing protectors, my ears were extremely painful from the constant firing of the gun . . . The atmosphere was choking. I was gasping for breath with perspiration running in streams down my face. It was a physically and mentally difficult business being in a tank battle. We expected to be killed at any second and so were surprised after a couple of hours of battle that we were still fighting – still breathing!

Chasing down the Soviet tanks were LAH assault guns. Their crews required little encouragement to dispatch enemy machines, as a German newspaper reporter, riding in a StuG III, has described:

We roll on again. Here we sight another T-34. Too short! Too far! Missed to the right. Clouds of smoke keep hiding him, yet he is barely 1,000 metres away; we knocked out the first enemy tanks at more than 2,000 metres! The next shot nearly hits the Bolshevist. ‘Jammed,’ yells the gunner. The very next second a terrible blow shakes us. Fragments flying about. Then another blow and a crash. ‘Out!’ screams the commander. ‘Out, get out!’ Like lightning we are up and tumbling into the cool grass, pressed flat, breathing in gasps.

It did not matter on which side of the increasingly ramshackle line in front of Prokhorovka the combatants fought, the danger was real and constant. The battle provided a vintage case-study of uncertainty (and occasionally chaos) upon which commanders, at all levels, tried to impress themselves. At the tactical level Ribbentrop explains:

On the smoke and dust-shrouded battlefield, looking into the sun, it would be impossible for our crews to distinguish us from a Russian tank. I repeatedly broadcast our code-name. ‘All stations: This is Kunibert! We are in the middle of the Russian tanks! Don’t fire at us!’

For the Soviet armour, though, in which all but the command tank had only a radio receiver, the battle was bewildering. In such circumstances, the panzer crews could out-think and out-fight their more numerous enemy. As George Nipe Jnr has observed:

In warfare, numbers alone do not always mean superiority on any given battlefield. In spite of the mediocre armour and less than dominating main armament of the Panzer IIIs and IVs, the Germans remained tactically superior to the Russians due to flexible, aggressive command, better crew training, superior optics and a crucial advantage in communications capability . . . Russian tank units were run by officers who were trained to follow orders, not operate with personal initiative, because orders could not be easily transmitted to individual tanks or small units. As a result, time after time on the Eastern Front . . . Soviet armour losses were often catastrophic when confronted with the good quality German panzer units.

Yet despite the best efforts of the panzers to stop the Soviets from penetrating their line, some inevitably got through. Indeed, one observer later wrote:

We found ourselves taking on seemingly inexhaustible masses of enemy armour – never have I received such an overwhelming impression of Russian strength and numbers as on that day . . . Soon many of the T-34s had broken past our screen and were streaming like rats all over the battlefield.

It was at this point that the anti-tank guns opened fire and tried to give the German line greater rigidity. The gun on which SS-Unterschar - führer Mutterlose served was quickly in action, as he describes:

We saw the turret of a very slow moving T-34 that was advancing out of a hollow. As it emerged completely, we saw Red Army soldiers sitting on its rear deck. They were clearly outlined against the bright horizon. Not 20 metres away from it, a second T-34 appeared, and then yet a third and a fourth of those steel monsters. We stood behind our two 15cm field guns, ready to fire. Apparently, the Russians did not think that we could open fire on them. They continued to move on and appeared unperturbed. The soldiers who were riding on the tanks did not fire a round . . . I heard the bright, clear command voice of our battery officer, SS-Untersturmführer Protz: ‘Fire!’

The first round thundered from our gun and then we heard the report of our neighbouring piece. But it looked like we had missed the tanks, for they moved on, unscathed. Neither seemed to have been hit. The Red Army soldiers remained mounted in the rear decks, where they ducked low.

At that point, it was all over for our two guns. Before the gunners could reload, the barrels of the leading T-34s turned toward us and, without even making a firing halt, they poured high-explosive rounds into our firing positions. It seemed like every foxhole was individually shelled. Shrapnel shrieked away through the air . . . With a leap we were out of our foxhole. We saw, horror struck, what had gone on around us. Death had reaped a rich harvest. Eight comrades lay there, all of them dead. Ghastly! Their bodies shredded! Two gunners were torn into unrecognizable fragments. All those still alive had been wounded.

The guns worked in close cooperation with panzer grenadiers, who reacted to the Soviet onslaught with great élan. Untersturmführer Gührs of the Reconnaissance Battalion, for example, reacted by confronting the steel with his own flesh and bone. He wrote:

They were around us, on top of us, and between us. We fought man-to-man, jumping out of our foxholes to lob our magnetic hollow charge grenades at the enemy tanks . . . It was hell . . . Our panzers helped us mightily. My company alone had destroyed fifteen tanks. The Soviet armoured phalanx had been halted. The battlefield was saturated with burning and disabled tanks. Some of the stricken continued to fire on the Tigers, until they too were hit again and destroyed.

Joachim Peiper’s battalion was also in the thick of the action, and deployed four-man, tank-hunting teams. One grenadier stopped the tank – perhaps by throwing a Teller mine under its tracks – the second provided him with cover while the other two moved in from the sides and rear to destroy the vehicle with either explosive charges or a bag of hand grenades. Peiper’s adjutant, Werner Wolff, took command of a leaderless company that morning, and they went on to claim 30 tank kills during the day. SS-Unterscharführer Erhard Knöfel later reported:

We were singled out by a T-34 which rammed [our half-track]. We put our hollow charges to use, some of which failed in the tumult. SS-Untersturmführer Wolff knocked out a tank in the mêlée. He lay shoulder to shoulder with us but the day was long yet. Then we became involved with the Soviet mounted infantry . . . self-propelled guns began ‘reaping’ with direct fire from the anti-tank ditch. The Soviet attack began to falter. All hell broke loose; jets of flame and tank turrets flew through the air. But we took losses too . . . I was shot in the thigh while in the kneeling position tending to a wounded man. I removed my pistol belt and applied a dressing to the wound and then looked for cover. I found a hole nearby and was about to jump in, but what did I see? Two pairs of fear-filled eyes staring at me, the crew of a knocked-out enemy tank, unarmed like me.

Wolff’s boss later reported to Hausser that Wolff had ‘stood like a rock in the breakers in this fighting. With unfailing courage, he destroyed tanks himself, led his company against other tanks and also destroyed those tanks.’ Such was the ferocity of the fighting that Peiper also found himself immersed in the sharp end of the battle, as the following account written by one of his men reveals:

Smoke and fumes were so thick that they brought tears to the eyes. Hideous and malicious, that yellow cloud. Out of it, in grey, uncertain, blurred contours grew the mighty forms of the on-rolling Russian tanks that approached at high speed and seemed to stamp everything down into the ground.

A clear call rang out from the right. Our commander stood there, crouching slightly forward, the stock of his rifle pressed against his shoulder and the barrel, on which the bulge of the grenade launcher was attached, followed the gigantically growing outline of the T-34 that was fast approaching, belching out clouds of exhaust fumes.

At a distance of three metres, it rolled over the trench. At the same moment the commander’s grenade struck it on the side. It rolled another 20 to 30 metres before it came to a halt, shivering and shaking.

The support that the ground forces received from the air that morning was limited. Although Rotmistrov later wrote:

Soviet as well as German airmen tried to help their ground forces to win the battle. The bombers, close-support aircraft and fighters seemed to be permanently suspended in the sky over Prokhorovka. One aerial combat followed another. Soon the whole sky was shrouded by thick smoke of burning wrecks.

In reality, however, air operations were severely affected by the poor weather, and Soviet sorties were undermined by the decision to concentrate their air assets elsewhere that day. Eschewing a potentially unedifying battle over the German schwerpunkt around Prokhorovka, Vatutin, Vasilevsky and Rudenko decided to place the weight of the air power on the flanks. It was thought that by stopping XLVIII Panzer Corps on the left and (in particular) the forward momentum of III Panzer Corps coming up on the right, II SS Panzer Corps’ thrust would peter out. Those Red Air Force aircraft that conducted sorties against Hausser’s grouping, therefore, had a thorny task on their hands. Despite the Red Air Force’s 893 sorties that day across the southern Kursk salient outnumbering the Luftwaffe’s 654, reports from ground units suggest that the air was dominated by German aircraft, which harried, chased and shot down numerous enemy machines. Indeed, a report by the 31st Tank Brigade remarks: ‘Our own air cover was fully absent until 13.00 hours . . . After 13.00 hours, our fighter cover began to appear, but only in groups of two to ten aircraft.’ The 5th Guards Tank Army later noted: ‘[T]he enemy’s aircraft literally hung above our combat formations throughout the entire battle while our own aircraft, and particularly the fighter aviation, was totally insufficient.’

Without the protection that the Red Army formations had begun to enjoy, tanks, artillery batteries, troop concentration areas and other key operational targets were pounded all day long. Among the pilots doing the pounding was the vastly experienced Captain Hans-Ulrich Rudel in his Ju-87G Stuka, armed with twin 37mm cannon. Describing his actions on 12 July, Rudel – who was to amass a tally of 519 Soviet tank kills by the end of the war – later said:

With these gigantic offerings of enemy tanks, an attempt would be possible. The Soviet armour formations were provided with strong Flak defences, but I figured that if we flew at between 1,200 and 1,800 metres altitude, I would be able to nurse a damaged aircraft to our own territory unless, of course, one fell like a stone. Loaded with bombs the aircraft of the first Staffel flew behind me in single cannon planes. This is how we tried it! In my first attack, four tanks exploded through the fire from my cannons. By the evening, the total had risen to twelve.

The one-sidedness of the air battle that day can be seen in one stark comparison: the Soviets lost 14 fighters over the Prokhorovka battlefield and the Germans just one. As Christer Bergström argues convincingly in his important work on the aerial confrontation over the Kursk salient: ‘It is not too much to say that the Luftwaffe’s decisive contribution to the famous battle of Prokhorovka has been underestimated in most published accounts.’

Yet despite the clear German dominance of the skies from the outset, the results of the opening armoured clash were not decisive. Although Rotmistrov had numerical advantage, by 0900 hours the men and machines of LAH had stood their ground and, using a mixture of firepower, obstinacy, guile and tactical prowess, resisted the initial onslaught. However, 15 minutes later, another wave of Soviet armour – the 5th Guards Tank Army’s second echelon – surged forward between the Psel and the railway line. On LAH’s right, groups of T-34s pushed forward with considerable artillery support. Once again they ran into ranks of German tanks at high speed and, at a range of just a couple of hundred yards, managed to dispatch four of them. The LAH history describes how the German machines fired at their enemy ‘from a distance of 10 to 30 metres’ and made ‘every shell a direct hit because the Russians could not see through the dust and smoke’. The result was a three-hour battle in which 62 T-70s and T-34s were engaged in what ‘could almost be termed hand-to-hand tank combat’.

On the left of the division, meanwhile, the relatively lightly armoured Reconnaissance Battalion failed to contain the 18th Tank Corps’ persistent attack and began to lose its shape at around 1100 hours. Observing the difficulties that the unit was facing from his command post on Hill 241.6, Wisch and his operations officer watched as four T-34s from 110th Tank Brigade managed to break loose from the Germans’ clutches and push through towards the artillery positions, where they destroyed two 150mm heavy guns. They were eventually stopped either by the artillery firing over open sights or panzer grenadiers.

The divisional commander also observed a minor breakthrough near Hill 252.2 at around 1130 hours. A modest force from the 32nd Tank Brigade made a small breach before being repulsed. This vital high ground was probably the most fiercely contested part of the battlefield and the 9th Guards Airborne Division retook it at around 1300 hours. Pavel Krylov was in the thick of the action:

The morning was a blur of action that did not stop. There were no breaks, no lulls, just constant fighting. We were initially pushed out of our positions by the Germans who attacked with panzers and their grenadiers. We were not expecting it, but luckily we had our wits about us as we were preparing for our own attack. Had the enemy attacked an hour earlier there would have been trouble . . . We held off the initial attacks, but the prospect of our position being overwhelmed led to the order to withdraw [around 500 yards]. The ground over which we moved was full of dead and wounded, but back we went, with small groups covering us and under heavy fire. The Germans were in firm command of the hill from which they co-ordinated their attacks on our positions. We had to attack. We had to regain the hill and so [during the late morning] launched a number of assaults on it and eventually, with the help of tanks and artillery, were successful.

By early afternoon, therefore, the Battle of Prokhorovka in the central sector with LAH had come to reflect the wider Battle of Kursk. It had become a slogging match but with a difference – rather than the Germans doing the attacking, it was the Soviets. Having moved forward to take Prokhorovka, on sighting Rotmistrov’s armoured waves, LAH quickly realigned themselves for defence and absorbed the 5th Guards Tank Army’s power with great success. But what of the other II SS Panzer Corps divisions? Although not fighting for territory as overtly critical as the battlefield between the Psel and the railway embankment, the confrontation on the flanks was important for the central sector. If Totenkopf and Das Reich could gain the upper hand, that would put pressure on the Soviet centre to withdraw towards Prokhorovka, while failure would leave any advance by LAH in an exposed salient.

Of the two flanking divisions, it was Priess’s men of the ‘Death’s Head’ Division who progressed most favourably. Tasked with seizing Hill 226.6 and then driving northeast, the formation was opposed by the 52nd Guards Rifle Division from the tired and depleted 6th Guards Army, and the 31st Tank Corps from the run down 1st Tank Army, along with the fresher 95th Guards Rifle Division from the 5th Guards Army. These formations had developed strong defences on and around Hill 226.6, but the Germans had managed to build a new 60 ton crossing that had allowed Totenkopf’s 10 remaining Tigers to pass over to the north bank of the Psel by dawn and join the medium tanks and panzer grenadiers by mid-morning. A detachment of assault guns had been left behind on the south bank to protect the bridges, but the majority of the 121 operational panzer and assault guns had moved into the two and a half mile wide, one and a half mile deep bridgehead. Thus, despite the Soviet intention to snuff out the German lodgement, destroy the crossing points and push Totenkopf into the Psel, the mixed Red Army force found themselves unable to withstand Preiss’s late-morning attack. Anatoli Abalakov of the 290th Guards Rifle Regiment says that ‘the fighting was unrelenting and bloody’. Recounting his part in the battle, the young infantryman has said:

The enemy advanced with great fervour, desperate to take the high ground which we defended. Our orders were ‘To The Last Man’, never words that we wanted to hear as we knew that we were in for a terrible time . . . We managed to hold the assault for a while, but eventually we were forced back. Heavy artillery fire and dive-bombing by Stukas made the position untenable – but we had caused the Nazis casualties and did not collapse . . . That afternoon the Panzers moved forward, but our guns hit the bridgehead hard and caused many problems for the Germans trying to organise themselves.

Hill 226.6 – the key to that sector – was lost by 1330 hours, which allowed Totenkopf to push on as Abalakov describes. This would have been a problem had LAH managed to make a significant move towards Prokhorovka that morning, but as the division had been engaged in defence against the bulk of the 5th Guards Tank Army’s armour, that had not been possible and so Totenkopf’s increasingly weak offensive had limited operational significance. Priess’s push, furthermore, was increasingly challenged by elements of the 5th Guards Army, which entered the battle straight from the march, and also the 24th Guards Tank and 10th Guards Mechanized Brigades, which had been sent to the area from the 5th Guards Tank Army’s reserve. These formations were to head off Totenkopf’s 3rd SS Panzer Regiment and then force them to withdraw. As Rotmistrov later wrote, without a hint of modesty: ‘The decisive movement of these brigades . . . and the decisiveness of their meeting blow against the penetrating Hitlerite tanks stabilized the situation.’ German armour was to reach the Karteschevka–Prokhorovka road, but their position was precarious and was likely to pose a threat only if Totenkopf could manage to broaden it, fill it with more units and withstand the inevitable Soviet counterattacks.

While their sister division was pushing its armour northeast on the left wing of Hausser’s corps, it was all that elements of LAH and Das Reich could do to hold their positions south of the railway line. The Soviets attacked II SS Panzer Corps’ flank from the embankment down to Belenikhino and closed quickly with the Germans behind a heavy artillery and Katyusha bombardment. Hubert Neuzert, an LAH gunner on a Marder III tank destroyer near the Storozhevoe collective farm, has produced a detailed account of his battle. With most of his division’s armour north of the railway line, the pressure was on his unit and the anti-tank guns to stop the 25th Tank Brigade breaking through:

Racing at full speed and firing from all barrels, T-34 after T-34 rolled over the hill, right into the middle of our infantry positions. We opened fire with our five guns as soon as we saw the first tank, and it was only seconds before the first T-34 stood shrouded in black smoke. Sometimes we had to take care of Russian infantry riding on top of the tanks in hand-to-hand fighting.

Then suddenly, there were forty to fifty T-34s coming at us from the right. We had to turn and open fire on them. All of a sudden, three bold giants among them raced off across the basin towards the collective farm. They captured the road leading to it. I did not have a chance to fire. The gun on the right wing had a jammed mechanism, and we could not seem to get it fixed. So we had to shift positions through the farm buildings. I had barely taken aim when I had to fire at my first T-34. My shell went past it, and the shell case got stuck in the gun. I ducked between the houses once again, and was in front of one when I got the mechanism un-jammed. A T-34 appeared right in front of me when my assistant gunner yelled so loud . . . ‘Last shell in the barrel!’ On top of everything else! I swivelled around to face the T-34 racing toward us. At a distance of about 150 metres the next tragedy struck. The rear support for the gun collapsed, and the barrel swung up to point to the sky. I used the force of swivelling the turret to bring the barrel of the 75mm gun down, managed to get the T-34’s turret in my sights, and fired. A hit! The hatch opened and two men jumped out. One stayed put while the other hopped across the road between the houses.

To the south, meanwhile, Das Reich fought to repel the combined attentions of the 2nd Tank and 2nd Guards Tank Corps. The chief of the latter formation, Major-General A.S. Burdeiny, was particularly aggressive and pushed hard between Vinogradovka and Belenikhino. The commander of the defending Panzer Grenadier Regiment Der Führer, Sylvester Stadler, was extremely frustrated by this turn of events and observed: ‘The Russian attacks on our flanks were pinning down half of our effectives and taking the steam out of our operation against the enemy at Prokhorovka.’

Kruger therefore placed what little hope he had of an advance in Panzer Grenadier Regiment Deutschland, operating on Stadler’s left flank, but Heinz Harmel’s offensive to help LAH take Storozhevoe was pre-empted by a furious assault by the 136th Guards Rifle Regiment and 26th Tank Brigade. Although the line held it was not until late morning that the assault on the well-prepared Storozhevoe could take place. Recognizing the tactical importance of the village, the Soviets had protected its approaches with a minefield, which was covered by mutually supportive positions employing fixed anti-tank guns as well as machine guns. The break-in battle was consequently gruesome. The mines were not properly cleared as the panzer grenadiers sought to move quickly through the obstacles and neutralize the strong points that were causing the regiment to stutter. Although Deutschland had penetrated the southern part of Storozhevoe by the early afternoon and completed a union with panzer grenadiers on the right of LAH, it was hardly the dramatic thrust that Kruger had hoped for. Had III Panzer Corps been lending support, however, the situation – and the wider battle for Prokhorovka – could have been very different.

The commander of III Panzer Corps had been exhorted to throw caution to the wind in order to bring the formation up to Hausser’s side. However, since 5 July, any movement northwards had been extremely difficult. A breakthrough was eventually made by Breith’s formation on the night of 11–12 July and, although the corps was days behind schedule, Manstein still hoped that it could make a decisive impact. In a remarkably audacious move, under the cover of darkness, a small armoured force from the 6th Panzer Division had seized a bridgehead over the Donets River. This column, consisting of tanks and panzer grenadiers in half-tracks but led by a captured T-34, fooled onlookers from the 107th and 81st Guards Rifle Divisions into thinking that they were a Soviet unit. A member of the coup de main force later explained the protocol for the advance:

Radio silence. No fire to be opened. No talking. But smoking permitted. In fact, the men were encouraged to ride on top of the tanks, relaxed and smoking, as if this was a normal movement by a unit. ‘But not a single word in German’, the company commanders had impressed on their men.

The tension was palpable as the vehicles gathered at their assembly point, despite the officers’ insistence that the men needed to look unperturbed. They remained understandably edgy when the time came to advance:

The ghost column moved on . . . There was only the rumble of engines and the clank of the chains. Enemy columns passed shoulder to shoulder. The silhouette of the T-34 at the head of the German unit deceived the Russians.

They moved past manned and well-established emplacements of anti-tank guns and multiple rockets. The moon shed a dim light. The Russians did not budge. Sleepily they were leaning on their positions along the road. They were used to such columns. All day long Soviet formations had been rumbling past them.

After six miles the T-34 broke down and blocked the road. It was a nervous time for all concerned – the infiltrators moved it off the road as the enemy looked on – but before long the column moved forward again and the first houses of Rzhavets were sighted through the gloom. It was at this point that more than 20 Soviet tanks rattled past them, and although showing no signs initially of having noticed that they were sharing the road with German vehicles, six T-34s swept back to take a closer look, surrounding the lead panzer – a command tank furnished with an imitation gun barrel made of wood. Its officer, Major Dr Franz Bäke, took the initiative and, with his orderly, attacked with sticky bombs.

Demolition charge attached to the first enemy tank. A few Soviet infantrymen were sitting on top of it and turned their heads in alarm. One of them raised his rifle, but Bäke snatched it from his hands. He leapt in the ditch for cover. He found himself chest-deep in water. There were two dull explosions. [The orderly] Lieutenant Zumpel, for his part, had attached his demolition charge to the other tank . . . But this time there was only one bang. The other charge did not go off.

One of the T-34s menacingly traversed its cannon. Bäke jumped up on one of his own tanks, which was coming up, ducked behind the turret and yelled: ‘Open fire!’ The German gun-aimer was quicker than his Russian opponent. One shot and the Soviet tank was knocked out. But now all hell was let loose. The ghost journey was over.

The German armour took its opportunity and raced into the village. The main bridge over the Donets was destroyed before the grenadiers could secure it, but mixed armed teams managed to get to the north bank by a footbridge and established a bridgehead there before the Soviets realized what was happening.

By the morning of the 12th, the salient leading into Rzhavets had been expanded and the bridgehead deepened, despite the close attention of the Red Air Force. The leading elements of III Panzer Corps were just 12 miles south of Prokhorovka, and by 1700 hours, Breith’s division had begun to cross the hastily repaired main bridge. Early the following morning, the 7th and 6th Panzer Divisions prepared to support the 19th Panzer Division – led by 20 Tigers – as it made a headlong dash to Prokhorovka. Having managed to contain II SS Panzer Corps, Vatutin and Rotmistrov were suddenly faced by the spectre of the imminent arrival of a further 100 German tanks and assault guns to support Hausser’s attack. Clearly, III Panzer Corps had to be stopped and part of the reserve – centred on 21 KV-1s – was sent to join the defences north of the Donets. That defence, organized by a 69th Army engorged by 10 additional anti-tank regiments, was all that stood between Breith, Hoth and Manstein achieving an improbable union between the two panzer corps.

The emergence of the threat south of Prokhorovka had not monopolized Vatutin’s concerns over recent days. On Hoth’s left flank, XLVIII Panzer Corps also remained a danger and the Soviet commander wanted the formation’s emasculation before it reached Oboyan. This objective became an important part of the Soviet counter attack plan as Grossdeutschland was preparing to position itself to cross the Psel. The initial strike was to be focused on Knobelsdorff’s left flank, which would dislocate the corps’ offensive operations, before targeting those divisions around the Oboyan road. On the morning of 12 July, therefore, the 5th Guards Tank Corps pinned down the 332nd Infantry Division while the 10th Tank Corps smashed into the 3rd Panzer Division and tore holes in its defences. By the evening, Soviet armour was approaching Verkhopenye and had taken Berezovka, which unhinged the entire corps by cutting across its lines of communication. As Knobelsdorff’s left flank caved in, the Soviet attacks spread to include Grossdeutschland and the 11th Panzer Division. Mansur Abdulin’s 66th Guards Rifle Division, freshly arrived with the 5th Guards Army, attacked towards Sukho-Solotino that day and his account illustrates Vatutin’s fervent desire to deny the Germans any more territory in the western sector:

The roar of guns continued all day without pause. We infantrymen – surrounded by thick black smoke and covered in soot – looked like stokers, endlessly throwing coal into a furnace. Only the whites of our eyes and teeth were shining. We moved at a furious pace, among burning tanks, exploding shells, and fire from every conceivable sort of weapon. Every soldier, covered in sweat, was systematically doing his job, as if toiling in a giant workshop; forgetting about fear and pinning his hope on chance: ‘Will I be killed or not?’ There’s nothing one can do to save oneself in this carnage, and the hands did what was necessary automatically.

It was here, rather than over the battlefield farther east, that the Red Air Force focused its operations on 12 July. From first light, fighters, bombers and ground-attack aircraft went about their business of degrading the enemy’s defences, attacking his logistics and hampering his movement. Surgeon Albert Thimm, making his only visit to the front line that day to attend a conference, was struck by the strength of Soviet air power:

I had served in Poland, France and in the East since 1941 and I had never seen enemy aircraft in such numbers. I spent the day approximately five kilometres behind 11th Panzer Division’s forward positions and our three vehicle convoy was attacked several times by fighters. We were trying to use the road to Oboyan for ease, but it was clogged with vehicles which the Soviet airmen took great delight in destroying. We were forced to move cross-country, but our movement sent up dust which was seen by pilots who attacked us. With so little cover, we were lucky not to be killed . . . I made my way back to the [hospital] during the night 12–13 July, covered in mud and a bundle of nerves. How those boys at the front took that sort of treatment day after day, I do not know.

Abdulin also witnessed much air activity as the Luftwaffe tried to retain local superiority to help support their beleaguered ground forces:

All day long planes fired at each other in the sky. There was a hail of splinters and bullets. That was familiar enough: but watch out, you might get killed by a falling aircraft! Pilots parachuted here and there. One had to be careful not to confuse our men with the Germans. We could often see how the parachuting pilots continued their fight by firing pistols at each other. We wanted to help them, but how?

The staving in of Knobelsdorff’s flank and the disruption to his primary attacking formations south of Oboyan destroyed XLVIII Panzer Corps’ offensive prospects. As the Grossdeutschland history explains:

As a result of these heavy defensive battles, the division’s plans for a further advance to the north [on the 13th] were initially overtaken . . . The danger now lay on the left, west flank, especially since the 3rd Panzer Division was apparently too weak to win through there. The villages of Gertzovka and Berezovka were back in enemy hands and the danger that the Soviet forces were advancing into the rear of the German attack divisions was increasing.

Vatutin was determined to take advantage of the opportunity to end the threat to Oboyan, and over the next two days his formations proceeded to dominate the hapless XLVIII Panzer Corps. German plans to continue their offensive north were indefinitely shelved while they dealt with the developing crisis, which required active defence. Commenting on the health of Grossdeutschland, Mellenthin later wrote:

[The division] was dangerously weak after heavy fighting lasting ten days, while Russian striking power had not appreciably diminished. In fact, it seemed to have increased . . . The terrific Russian counterattacks, with masses of men and material ruthlessly thrown in, were . . . an unpleasant surprise. German casualties had not been light, while our tank losses were staggering. The same observations could have been made about XLVIII Panzer Corps. Although eventually avoiding a rout, the corps was forced to accept that its next movement was far more likely to be a withdrawal than an advance.

While attempts to neutralize the threat to Oboyan were getting under way, the battle for Prokhorovka continued to rage. By late afternoon on 12 July, Manstein was fully aware of the scope of the Soviet counterattacks and could do little more than look to Hausser to take Prokhorovka and provide some optimism. It was at this time that the LAH panzers, severely rattled by the earlier Soviet onslaught, moved from a defensive stance and began to attack once more. However, with the weather deteriorating from showers to low cloud and heavy rain, there was little chance of Luftwaffe support and the Soviets were resilient. Although both the 18th and 29th Tank Corps had suffered heavy losses, Wisch’s armour could not make an impression on the Soviet line, which even launched some local counterattacks. Indeed, one crunching assault consisting of 120 tanks moved off behind a curtain of artillery and Katyusha fire and forced the LAH armour not only to stop, but to make some withdrawals as the enemy swarmed among them. In such circumstances, despite its best efforts, the formation could not establish any forward momentum and as the light faded, its attack on Prokhorovka withered.

By this time, Totenkopf had managed to enlarge its bridgehead and take the village of Polyzhaev, and its Tigers had pushed on to reach the Karteschevka–Prokhorovka road. The arrival of the 24th Guards Tank and 10th Guards Mechanized Brigades from Rotmistrov’s reserve, however, suggested that further forward movement would be problematic. Although the German commanders did not know it at the time, Priess’s position five and a half miles northwest of Prokhorovka was to prove Manstein’s most northerly penetration in the southern Kursk salient. By the end of the 12th, Totenkopf had lost half of its armoured strength and was faced by fresh 5th Guards Tank Army formations that had been tasked with its destruction on the following day.

Das Reich, meanwhile, had been forced to take up a wholly defensive posture on the corps’ right flank. The commanders of the 2nd Guards Tank and 2nd Tank Corps were aware that III Panzer Corps was beginning to make progress towards Prokhorovka and did everything in their power to fix Kruger’s formation in place and degrade it. Throughout the afternoon of the 12th, the Soviets launched a series of counterattacks to test Das Reich’s resolve and wear down its fighting ability. South of Vinogradovka, for example, 40 T-34s launched a typical Soviet attempt to drive a wedge between the division’s two panzer grenadier regiments.

As they engaged, another assault was being mounted near Belenikhino where 26 T-34s captured at Kharkov, painted in German camouflage and bearing prominent German crosses, gave battle to 50 Soviet T-34s. Witnessing the unusual event, Sylvester Stadler later testified:

In a short period of time all 50 tanks, one after the other, were set ablaze by shells from the captured tanks with German crews. The Soviet tanks each had a barrel of fuel attached to its back. These could be set on fire by a well-aimed shot, and shortly after the whole tank exploded. Of the Soviet tanks, only the command tank at the point was equipped with a radio. For this reason, that tank was knocked out first. The other crews were perplexed; obviously they did not recognize the T-34s on the hill as their enemy.

Although these Soviet drives were repulsed, the feat was not achieved without casualties, the destruction of armoured fighting vehicles and depletion of ammunition stocks. In common with other parts of the Prokhorovka battlefield, the wider Soviet counterattack and, indeed, the entire Battle of Kursk, the Soviets were cleverly utilizing their greater resources to negate the Germans’ superior tactical ability, and grind them to a halt.

By the end of 12 July, Manstein’s offensive ambitions had been dealt a serious blow. As heavy rain turned the battlefields and rear areas into a quagmire, the German field marshal was left ruminating on a day when his left flank crumbled and II SS Panzer Corps had been fought to a standstill. Vatutin, however, could not afford to relax. The Soviets had suffered heavy losses in the successful attempt to defend Prokhorovka, and he still had to achieve his aim of forcing Hoth back and regaining lost territory. Stalin was particularly concerned at reports, subsequently proved erroneous, of the 5th Guards Tank Army losing around 650 tanks on that day for the total loss of a mere 17 German armoured fighting vehicles. ‘What have you done to your magnificent tank army?’ the Supreme Commander asked Rotmistrov with barely hidden menace that evening. Zhukov was immediately despatched from the Briansk Front, where he was overseeing the attack into the Orel salient against the Second Panzer Army, to take charge of ‘coordinating the Steppe and Voronezh Fronts’. From this it was clear that the Supreme Commander believed Vatutin and Rotmistrov either required assistance in developing their future operations, or had lost control. Vasilevsky was banished from the battlefield and sent to oversee operations on the Southwestern Front.

Thus, as thunder rumbled, lightning flashed and rain hammered down on the sapped combatants, Hausser and Rotmistrov ordered their formations to rearm, refuel, reorganize and ready themselves. II SS Panzer Corps was to continue its attack. The 5th Guards Tank Army had suffered such prohibitive losses that it had little option but to defend. Rotmistrov consequently ordered his formation to work hard on the development of defence west of Prokhorovka, including the laying of minefields, digging new trenches and establishing strong points that were integrated into new defensive lines using the surviving armour and infantry from the 18th and 29th Tank Corps. The battle, however, continued in a diluted from throughout the night as both sides sought to improve their tactical positions, undertake reconnaissance, recover damaged armour, and make their enemy’s preparations as difficult as possible. Reflecting on his experiences and the challenges of the night that followed, Pavel Krylov has said:

I was exhausted at the end of a very difficult day . . . The enemy continued to probe after dark, but it was nothing too serious and we could get some food and ready ourselves for the next morning. Our officer told us about the wider situation – although the details were extremely vague – and we were complimented on our day’s work. The Germans, we were told, had been held along the line and we should expect to attack soon – but not yet . . . It was always nice to be told that you were part of a success, but I knew that we had taken heavy casualties and the enemy was unlikely to back down without another major effort. The battle was not over yet.

Krylov was correct. Even if Zitadelle was dead, there was still fighting to be done. Manstein remained hopeful that the arrival of III Panzer Corps would change his fortunes, while Vatutin recognized that the Germans would retain their hope for as long as II SS Panzer Corps remained on the offensive. Vatutin’s key aims, therefore, were to hold Hausser and block Breith; Manstein demanded that II SS Panzer Corps capture Prokhorovka. The German aim was clear, but unachievable. The weather had taken its toll on the ability of both sides to resupply, but Hausser’s troops were most disadvantaged by the poor ground conditions as they resumed their attacks on the morning of the 13th. With Rotmistrov’s defences well set, the panzers and supporting panzer grenadiers found the going extremely difficult and made few inroads into the Soviet line. Despite his losses on the previous day, Rotmistrov drew strength from the old military dictum that ‘defence is stronger than attack’ in frontal assaults, and used his growing access to artillery to smash Hausser’s embryonic attacks. LAH attacked with its 50 panzers and 20 assault guns in a two-pronged advance, one along the south bank of the Psel, and the other towards Oktiabrskii. Once again taking up his position at the 29th Tank Corps’ command post, Rotmistrov looked on as LAH pushed forward, and later wrote:

More than fifty enemy tanks firing from the march or from short halts, followed by ranks of motorized infantry, advanced on our positions. Allowing the Germans to approach to a distance of 500 to 600 metres, our anti-tank artillery and tanks opened direct fire on them. Several enemy machines froze in place with broken tracks or began to rush about the fields engulfed in flames. Those which still moved forward exploded on mines. However, the Fascist motorized infantry still came forward . . . The fire of our Katyushas instilled terror in the Fascists. Suffering great losses, the enemy was forced to fall back, abandoning the burning tanks and the bodies of his dead soldiers and officers.

In his diary, SS-Sturmmann Warmbrunn recounts an incident that day when he was with Michael Wittmann, attacking positions held by the 32nd Tank Brigade near Oktiabrskii:

We were caught by a salvo from a Stalin Organ: it was as if the Red Army troops had been informed of our presence. We dropped to the ground and were showered by the remains of a wall. Wittmann said drily, ‘We should be praying now.’ Then I let out, ‘To whom?’ I don’t think anyone ever laughed so hard at such a ticklish situation as Wittmann did then.

Not that far away and returning to front-line action after receiving a shrapnel wound on the first day of the offensive, LAH’s SS-Oberschütze Rudi Bauermann recalls:

There seemed to have been little change in the state of play since 5th July. The enemy were well dug in and our attempts to engage him were foiled by minefields and well positioned anti-tank guns . . . We panzer grenadiers tried to infiltrate the line, but came under heavy machine gun fire which pinned us down. A tank must have seen what was happening and came over to lend some fire support. Half of the platoon moved in behind it as there was so little ground cover, but were soon flooding back to our position when the tank rolled over a mine and shed a track. It immediately came under artillery fire which eventually damaged its main armament and rendered it useless . . . The crew bailed out and joined us in a shell crater. ‘That’s the fourth time that I’ve hit a mine since the start of [Zitadelle],’ the commander said to me, ‘but I’d still rather be in a tank than out here with you lot!’

The two LAH attacks lasted little more than an hour before they impaled themselves on the Soviets’ defences and could advance no further.

It was as well that LAH did not manage to batter its way through to Prokhorovka on the afternoon of 13 July for Totenkopf would have been in no position to help with resistance on their left flank. Limited to just 54 operational panzers and 20 assault guns, Priess’s formation was still protecting its bridges on the south bank of the Psel. Not well placed to defend its current positions, it had little hope of breaking through Rotmistrov’s reserve. Although the front at Prokhorovka at this time was remarkably reminiscent of a fist with a raised thumb, just like the emperor’s signal for a beaten gladiator to be shown mercy in ancient Rome, an inverted thumb would have more accurately reflected Hausser’s situation. In the face of concerted counterattacks by the 33rd Guards Rifle Corps, 10th Guards Mechanized Brigade and 24th Guards Tank Brigade, the division’s overextended panzer regiment buckled. By noon, Priess informed Hausser that he needed to withdraw his armour back to Hill 226.6 if it was not to be encircled and destroyed piecemeal.

The ordered and professionally handled operation was successfully concluded by nightfall. The Soviets had tried to disrupt the movement by applying pressure across Totenkopf’s front, but the division remained well organized and countered all enemy attempts to drive into the base of their lodgement. Lieutenant Vladimir Alexeev of the 170th Tank Brigade was attacking the village of Andreevka when his T-34 was hit by an armour-piercing shell. Helping the wounded driver out of his seat with his gunner, Alexeev noticed that ‘parts of the leg were joined only by the sinews of the trousers . . . He got out as far as his waist and then lost consciousness.’ The loader, meanwhile, could not be retrieved and had to be left in the blazing tank.

T-34 losses that day were high. Both German and Soviet accounts remark how many hulks were left on the battlefield after Rotmistrov’s failure to break into Totenkopf’s salient, but his counterattacks had removed the division’s threat to the north of Prokhorovka. There is little doubt that Soviet casualties and tank losses were far higher than those suffered by Priess that day north of the Psel, but by throwing their resources at the taut division, the 5th Guards Tank Army had forced Hausser’s left flank to pull back from a hard-won and tactically important position.

The one remaining danger for Vatutin, therefore, was the potential for III Panzer Corps to link up with Das Reich and reignite Hausser’s offensive. Thus, as soon as Totenkopf began to pull back towards its bridgehead that afternoon, Rotmistrov detached one tank regiment of the 10th Mechanized Brigade from the battle north of the Psel and sent it to strengthen the defences on the southern approaches to Prokhorovka. On the 13th, the majority of Das Reich’s units successfully held their positions, but the division’s panzer regiment endeavoured to advance southeast from between Ivanovka and Vinogradovka to facilitate an early union with Breith’s corps, which started the day barely six miles from Belenikhino. It managed a mile before being brought to a halt, and left Breith’s divisions to cover the remaining distance. By the morning of the 13th – and under continuing Red Air Force raids – the 19th Panzer Division was ready to break out of III Panzer Corps’ bridgehead north of the Donets. Yet although German commanders had anticipated that the Soviets would not be able to cope with such a dense concentration of firepower, the corps’ narrow front served only to limit its ability to manoeuvre while presenting easy targets for the Soviet airforce and the artillery. By the end of the day, rather than having completed the union with Das Reich as expected, III Panzer Corps had been able to achieve little more than a slight broadening of its attacking front in the face of Trufanov’s stoical resistance.

The ninth day of Zitadelle was a massive disappointment to Manstein and to the German High Command. With Model’s command already withdrawing formations from the northern Kursk salient to tackle the rapidly developing threat to the Orel salient, and Oboyan and Prokhorovka still in Soviet hands in the south, it was decision time for the offensive. What is more, by 12 July the Allies had landed 160,000 troops and 600 tanks on Sicilian soil, which was not only likely to lead to the fall of the island, but to become the jumping-off point for an invasion of the Italian mainland. The stability of Mussolini’s regime was looking extremely fragile, and there was a distinct possibility that Italy would fall out of the war. This situation demanded that German formations be moved into the country as soon as possible to meet the expected Allied offensive. OKW believed that, in such circumstances, Hitler would direct that Zitadelle be rapidly concluded so that men and equipment – II SS Panzer Corps prime among them – could be transferred to the Mediterranean. Those at headquarters were not surprised, therefore, when on 13 July Kluge and Manstein were summoned to the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia for a meeting with Hitler. On their arrival, the two soldiers found that Hitler’s usually excellent manners had deserted him and after a cursory greeting the highly strung Führer launched into a diatribe against the situation in Italy. Bringing his rant around to issues that affected Kluge and Manstein, Hitler said:

The loss of Sicily is practically certain because of the miserable Italian leadership. Perhaps Eisenhower will land tomorrow night on the Italian mainland or in the Balkans. I have to prevent that. As I have nothing more to withdraw anywhere after re-locating the 1st Panzer Division from France to the Peloponnese, these reinforcements must be removed from the Kursk Front. Therefore, I am forced to discontinue Zitadelle!

Kluge was relieved at what he heard and replied that the decision would allow him to disengage the Ninth Army from the salient to deal with more pressing threats to the north. Manstein, however, felt the halting of the offensive would be precipitate for his force in the south. Although he had realized for some time that Zitadelle’s grand intention of destroying the salient and everything in it was no longer possible, he had been driven on by the aim of rendering the Soviet armoured forces unable to present a viable threat in southern Russia. He later wrote of his reaction to Hitler’s pronouncement:

Speaking for my own Army Group, I pointed out that the battle was now at its culminating point, and that to break it off at this moment would be tantamount to throwing a victory away. On no account should we let go of the enemy until the mobile reserve he had committed were completely beaten.

Manstein sincerely believed that the Germans were on the verge of an important military success – of breaking the 1st Tank Army and 5th Guards Tank Army permanently – and that withdrawing at this point would be to offer the Soviets an opportunity to strike back. In the words of Mellenthin: ‘We were now in the position of a man who had seized a wolf by the ears and dare not let him go.’ With III Panzer Corps about to arrive on the battlefield of Prokhorovka and Nehring’s XXIV Panzer Corps en route, Manstein argued that his forces were in a strong position to complete the job, which would reduce pressure on the southern front.

It was a strong case and Hitler took a moment to think, before saying that he was willing to make a compromise: Zitadelle would be closed down in the north, but the southern offensive would continue with II SS Panzer Corps ‘until it had achieved its aim of smashing the enemy’s armoured reserve’. The Fourth Panzer Army was to hand over nearly one third of VIII Air Corps, however, as ground-attack formations were desperately needed to help counter Soviet operations against the Second Panzer Army in the Orel salient. Manstein was content that this was not an insurmountable problem and pinned his hopes on the early arrival of XXIV Panzer Corps to give his weary offensive a boost. It was only after Manstein returned to his headquarters on the 14th that he learned that Hitler had ordered Walter Nehring’s corps back south to the First Panzer Army in preparation to meet a likely Soviet offensive between Kursk and the Sea of Azov. Manstein was understandably furious – the decision, taken without any consultation with Army Group South, undermined everything that the field marshal had argued at the Wolfsschanze. Nevertheless, he had long since realized that a general’s lot was to appeal for the resources that he needed and to fight with less, and so he got on with the task in hand: the destruction of the Soviet armour south of the Psel.

His focus for Operation Roland was for II SS Panzer Corps to defeat the Soviets south and southwest of Prokhorovka. Totenkopf and LAH were to fix the Soviet defenders in position while Das Reich and III Panzer Corps were to reach out towards each other in an attempt to make that long anticipated but elusive union. If all went as Manstein’s staff expected, the attack would lead to the encirclement of the enemy between the Lipovyi–Donets and the Northern Donets, which would then be cleared by the 167th and 168th Infantry Divisions. Prokhorovka, it was believed, would not be able to withstand the combined energy of the newly united panzer corps and fall after a brief struggle.

Roland began at 0400 hours on 14 July, when Das Reich attempted to push southeast, led by its two panzer grenadier regiments. After a hurricane bombardment on the Soviet lines to disorientate and neutralize the defending forces, men of the 1st and 2nd Battalions of Der Führer advanced towards the defences held by the 4th and 25th Guards Tank Brigades. The division’s history states:

Solidly they accepted casualties from the extensive minefields across which they marched to gain the high ground south-west of Pravorot. The first houses in Belenikhino, a village at the foot of the high ground, were taken by midday, when the fighting was from house to house and hand-to-hand. Grenadiers used hollow charge grenades, while overhead Stukas dive-bombed the Russians, destroying their resistance inside and outside the village and destroying 12 of the Russian tanks that intervened in the battle. With Belenikhino at last in German hands, the grenadier battalions regrouped under the protection of the panzer regiment, then led the division’s attacks for what remained of the day and continued throughout.

Das Reich’s efforts on the 14th were considerable and were rewarded with some impressive territorial gains – including Belenikhino and Ivanovka – which left it just short of Pravorot (four miles south of Prokhorovka) at dusk. The fighting had been heavy and the 2nd Guards Tank Corps had lost more armour, which, considering Manstein’s aim, was critical to the success of what Hausser’s corps was being asked to achieve. The Germans would use their guile, professionalism and tactical nous to inflict significant losses on their less capable enemy. Yet still the Soviets held the line and remained willing to take the casualties in the expectation that the Germans would run out of time to achieve a strategic (or even operational) victory before they would be forced to withdraw as the result of the wider developing Soviet offensive action. This was Zhukov’s view when he arrived at the front on 13 July. Indeed, he continued with the attritional strategy and plans being followed in the southern salient and noted in his memoirs: ‘After examining the situation and the actions of our own and enemy troops I fully agreed with Vasilevsky’s measures and decisions.’

The Germans were being tempted to ‘burn themselves out’, and the Soviet commanders south of Prokhorovka did all in their power to ensure that their adversary was given the means with which to do it. If they resisted stubbornly, Manstein’s energy would inevitably be sapped and with every passing day his offensive would take a step nearer to being halted. The defence against III Panzer Corps, therefore, remained as resolute as ever. When at 0700 hours on 14 July Breith’s divisions finally broke out of the bridgehead after a massive build-up of forces across a very narrow front, Trufanov’s force did not collapse. ‘We fought with everything available,’ recalls gunner Stanislav Usov, who served with the 32nd Anti-Tank Artillery Brigade.

We were just one of scores of batteries that had been moved into position to block the German advance. I did not know where we were, but it was impressed upon us that we must stop the panzers at all costs. We were forced to withdraw several times that day, but we did what we could to slow the attack . . . Two comrades were killed during this time. Because of the close quarter nature of our work we were often vulnerable to the tanks. Miss a panzer and he will blast the position or crush you. We missed, and saw the turret traverse towards us. The next thing I remember was lying on my back around [20 yards] from the gun. The tank had moved on and I went back to find a horrible mess. My comrades had been pulverised by the blast. There were just scraps of bloody uniform and a gory mess where they had stood just seconds before.

To Trufanov, there was no mystery about what Breith was trying to do, and so he withdrew his forces away from the punch in order to avoid their encirclement. This meant, however, that the panzer divisions did make headway and the 7th Panzer Division finally made contact with Das Reich, but not until the afternoon of 15 July. However, III Panzer Corps was not well positioned to drive Hausser’s formation forward as Manstein had hoped and planned. Fatigued by 10 days of intense fighting, targeted mercilessly by the Red Air Force and immediately confronted by the 48th Rifle Corps, 2nd Guards Tank Corps, 5th Guards Mechanized Corps and 35th Guards Rifle Corps, Breith struggled to hold his ground. Although both Totenkopf and LAH fought off concerted Soviet attempts to dislodge them during the day, and a linkup between the two panzer corps had been successfully accomplished, Operation Roland had failed. The intended encirclement had not been achieved, nor had the destruction of critical Soviet formations, so the prospects for further exploitation were immediately squashed.

The German line was coming under increasing pressure from mounting Soviet counterattacks across the southern salient, and with broader offensive action being reported as actual or likely both north and south of the salient, Manstein knew that his offensive must soon come to an end. The Soviets did not show any signs of collapse. Vatutin’s command remained cohesive and well motivated. Pavel Krylov’s unit was kept up to date with general developments, which, he said, ‘served to enthuse and encourage us’. Many of those formations that had been in action since the first days of the battle were weary and stretched, but the Soviets did also have fresher divisions, brigades and corps that had been carefully husbanded and fed into battle only where and when needed. The Germans, by contrast, had no reserve to call upon and Manstein’s weary men could not fight on indefinitely. Rudi Bauermann, for example, recalls fighting while in a stupor:

Although I had been at the front for just a few days, I could hardly keep my eyes open. We were fighting 24 hours a day – hard, physical fighting – and were exhausted. Perhaps my healing wound had weakened me, but I found the pace too great. In battle the constant rushes of adrenaline, challenges to body and mind, finally take their toll. I watched as shattered soldiers made all sorts of basic errors because they could no longer keep their mind on the job. It did not help that we became short of basic fighting commodities: ammunition, water and medical supplies. We were told that they were held up in the rear. It was demoralizing, particularly when we knew that we were faced by an army of plenty in strong positions.

The declining fighting power of both II SS and III Panzer Corps over subsequent days allowed the Germans to do little more operationally than hold the Soviets. As their own attacks began to peter out, Army Group South was catapulted into the planning misery of making preparations for a withdrawal from the salient while in contact with the enemy. The headquarters staff pleaded with OKW for extra resources for its formations in the salient, but were told that their situation was mere detail in a deteriorating strategic picture that anticipated a general Soviet offensive against the Wehrmacht in central-southern Russia. Although it took until 23 July for Hitler finally to order that the offensive in the southern salient be halted, it had become increasingly apparent to Manstein that the stalemated front offered little to his formations but protracted misery. In the immediate wake of the battle, the field marshal contended that his extended offensive had managed to damage the Soviet armour around Prokhorovka to the extent that ‘the enemy no longer posed a threat in this sector in the medium term’. He later confessed that during this period he had severely misjudged Soviet resources and fighting capabilities. It was an admission that also held true for the entire German approach to the destruction of the Kursk salient.