Fire at the Bulge: the Battle of Kursk

Official Soviet historiography regards the Battle of Kursk as one of the most important battles of World War II. Without a doubt, this conflict played a role in turning the situation in favor of the Allied powers.

Soviet propaganda always attached the utmost importance to the Soviet-German front line, which is generally correct. But this does not mean that one can decry the importance of the contribution our allies made to the common cause. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the Nazis and their Italian allies suffered a serious defeat in North Africa. In November 1942 the Allies mounted a powerful offensive in Egypt and Tunisia, as a result of which the enemy was routed and over 250,000 soldiers and officers were taken prisoner. In the final stage of the Germans’ Stalingrad operation, five divisions of the Don grouping, which was supposed to help the 6th Army of Field Marshal Paulus escape its encirclement, were relocated on Hitler’s orders to Italy and the Balkans, thereby weakening the grouping’s offensive drive. In the heat of the Battle of Kursk, the considerable forces of the Center army group were sent to northern Italy to help the German army repel the attack of the Anglo-American troops and prevent them from entering Austria and southern Germany.

PLANS AND REALITY

The military, strategic, and political crisis of 1943 forced the German command to make a more careful and sober assessment of its preparedness for the planned summer campaign. Although the German troops had achieved a tactical success in the battle for Kharkiv in the winter-spring campaign of 1943, the overall situation did not bode well. Their expectations that Japan would prevent the US from taking active part in the hostilities in Europe and Africa were not realized. Both the Soviet and the German commands faced a crucial dilemma: launch a defense or offense?

As Field Marshal Erich Manstein later reminisced, Hitler hesitated for a long time. His generals were trying to persuade him to put up a mobile defense by shortening the front line and tightening their ranks. General Heinz Guderian recalled that during the May 10 briefing he tried to persuade Hitler to cancel the Kursk offensive. Hitler replied that whenever he reflected on this offensive he felt a sharp pain in his stomach.

The Soviet command had a no less difficult problem to solve. In principle, the Red Army had an advantage at this segment of the Soviet-German front line in practically all aspects: 2.1 to 1 in terms of personnel, 3.1 to 1 in ar­til­lery, 1.9 to 1 in tanks and self-propelled guns, and 1.5 to 1 in warplanes. However, the Germans had higher-quality armaments. In July the Wehrmacht received new Tigers and Pan­thers, which outperformed the Soviet tanks. The new German VW-190A and He-129 aircraft also provided effective air superiority.

When the German command’s plans became clear, the Soviet front commanders began to make their proposals. General Nikolai Vatutin, who had commanded the Voronezh Front in 1943, favored a preventive Soviet offensive. The idea was to focus efforts on an area south of Kursk in the direction of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, and then Kremenchuk and Kherson. Under favorable conditions, the troops could have reached the Cherkasy-Mykolaiv line. This would have helped complete the two most important strategic tasks: splitting the Germans’ Army Group South and surrounding the German troops in Taman Peninsula and the Crimea.

This would have also posed a threat to Germany’s Balkan client states and made the Ploesti oil fields accessible to Soviet planes. Vatutin suggested launching the offensive in May, when the German troops were still being relocated and on the march, which would have made it difficult for them to counter the Soviet offensive. Vatutin’s opinion was shared by Marshal Ivan Konev, commander of the Steppe (Reserve) Front, and Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, commander of the Central Front.

These proposals were turned down. The Soviet political and military leaders feared a large-scale offensive after they had taken a vicious beating near Kharkiv in February and March. It was thus decided to launch a deliberate defense in order to exhaust the enemy and then mount an offensive. In contrast to Vatutin’s suggestion, as General Semen Shtemenko noted in his memoirs, the Soviet leadership chose Kharkiv-Poltava-Kyiv as the main direction of the offensive. The plan for the offensive, which was approved by Joseph Stalin, enabled the Soviet troops to draw closer to the German and Polish borders.

Stalin preferred an offensive in the center rather than in the south because of the political importance of Kyiv, which, for considerations of prestige, he tried to hold back until the very last minute in 1941, even at the cost of the entire front. In foreign-policy terms, the greatest importance was attached to Polish problems, which was the first dividing line between the Allies. Approaching the Polish border became an extremely important goal. In pursuit of this, it was worthwhile even delaying the liberation of the occupied territory and the curtailment of the war. As a result, the enemy’s Taman grouping was routed in October-November 1943 and the Crimea was liberated in May 1944. According to Vatutin’s plan, this would have occurred in September, immediately after the Battle of Kursk. The two months that we lost in the spring of 1943 cost us another eight months of extremely difficult warfare.

Although there was a strong system of defense and the enemy did not have a triple advantage in personnel and equipment, the defensive period of the Battle of Kursk led to dramatic results. Contrary to established canons, the Soviet side suffered many more losses than the German attackers. The well-known Russian historian Boris Sokolov estimates that Soviet army casualties numbered approximately 1,677,000 men, who were killed, wounded, and captured, while the Germans’ toll was 360,000, i.e., 4.6 to 1 in the Wehrmacht’s favor.

There are many factors to explain the high Soviet losses. The Red Army — soldiers, generals, and marshals alike — still did not know how to fight by the summer of 1943. They had not learned how to correctly draft plans and carry them out. As a result, the Soviets would launch a defense when they were supposed to advance, and they began to advance only after the enemy had come to his senses and was freely maneuvering his reserves. Unlike in Stalingrad, there was no encirclement in Kursk: the enemy was simply shoved out, with resulting high losses for the Soviets. Tellingly, only 180 people were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union as a result of one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War. By contrast, this exalted title was conferred on 2,438 people during the crossing of the Dnipro River.

VICTORY NEAR PROKHORIVKA?

The southern rim of the Kursk Bulge was the arena of the most intensive tank battles. One of them was the subject of many stories, films, and books. This was a frontal clash between the 5th Guards Tank Army commanded by Lieutenant-General Pavel Rotmistrov and the 2nd SS Tank Corps led by Obergruppenfuerer Paul Hausser. Our historiography unambiguously interprets this battle as an undeniable victory of the Soviet troops. But this was later, after the battle, while what was happening during those blazing days and nights was entirely different.

In report No. 00219 to Stalin, signed at midnight on July 12, 1943, Commander Vatutin of the Voronezh Front, who had arrived at certain conclusions based on the situation, stated: “We should expect the enemy to continue vigorous actions in the Prokhorivka and Korochan directions on July 13.” If General Vatutin had expected, as before, that the Germans would continue attacking in the Prokhorivka direction on July 13, this meant that the recent counterattacks by Soviet troops on this segment of the front line can in no way be regarded as a major operational success.

Vatutin concludes his report to the Supreme Commander in Chief with a plan for July 13, 1943: “The units of the 5th Guards and the 69th Armies are to liquidate the enemy groups that have broken through in the vicinity of Vesely, Ryndinka, and Rzhavets, as the troops at the front’s center and left flank continue to advance in accordance with previous instructions.” But if the instructions were “previous,” this meant that they had not been carried out in a timely fashion.

On July 13, 1943, The Day after the “valiant frontal tank battle,” Colonel-General Ivan Konev, the commander of the Steppe Front, was so preoccupied with the state of affairs in the friendly units that he sent Stalin his proposals about defeating the enemy grouping that had broken through in the Oboiansk direction “in connection with the current situation on the Voronezh Front.” Konev in fact requested urgent help...for the victors. If a neighboring front was preoccupied with the situation in the battle area of General Vatutin’s forces, this was obviously an extremely serious situation rather than a great success.

German generals are very cautious in describing the battle near Prokhorivka. Nor was the famous battle duly reflected in the operational documents of the Germans’ Army Group South – in spite of their proverbial accuracy and precision. Field Marshal Manstein says very little about this battle in his memoirs, while General Mellentin does not mention it at all, although both generals give quite a complete description of other, much smaller-scale, battles, including those in which the Germans suffered defeat. Obviously, the enemy did not consider the battle of Prokhorivka as a defeat. The result of the Battle of Kursk was shaped by entirely different events and circumstances.

Stalin did not think much of the performance of Rotmistrov’s army. At a certain point he even wanted to have the general prosecuted for the heavy losses, but the shortage of officers saved the tank commander. The Day of July 12, 1943, was the same as any other day in that most formidable war. The myth of the Prokhorivka victory was created much later – not by the fighting soldiers but by those who sat comfortable behind their backs far away in the rear.

THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND

Before the Battle of Kursk the Soviet commanders failed to correctly guess the direction of the enemy’s main strike. They expected that the Germans would deliver the main blow against the troops of the Central Front. This is why its defenses were reinforced by all possible means. In reality, the main strike was made against the southern rim of the Kursk Bulge, which placed our troops and command in an unenviable situation. It was only the non-stop transfer of reserves and occasionally ill-considered and loss-making counterstrikes that made it possible to maintain the front line and prevent German armored units from breaking into our operational rear.

It was a difficult battle for both sides. The Germans also suffered what they considered heavy losses, and the battle reached a crisis point by July 10-11. The German command also had to take into account the overall deterioration of the military and strategic situation on other fronts. On the night of July 18 the SS armored corps, including 203 functional tanks, including 23 Tiger tanks and 75 self-propelled guns, was withdrawn from Prokhorivka and redeployed to Italy. Three motorized-infantry divisions of Field Marshal Kluegge’s group were also sent to the Apennine Peninsula.

The results of the Kursk battle’s first phase were so disappointing that the Supreme Commander in Chief formed a commission headed by Georgy Malenkov to investigate the heavy losses sustained by the 5th Guards Tank Army near Prokhorivka. The commission’s report, submitted to Stalin in August 1943, concluded that the Soviet troops’ combat actions near Prokhorivka on July 12 were an example of an unsuccessful operation.

So why was this ordinary and unsuccessful battle declared a victory and “an example of Soviet operational art?” Nikita Khrush­chev, who commissioned a multi-volume history of the war in the late 1950s, was a member of the Voronezh Front’s Military Council. Soviet historians were forced to look for facts that would confirm the Communist Party’s influence, including that of concrete personalities, on the course of the war. In July 1943 Nikolai Bulganin and Lev Mekhlis were Khrushchev’s counterparts on the Western and Briansk fronts, respectively, on the northern edge of the Kursk Bulge. On July 12, 1943, these fronts, commanded by Colonel-General Vasily Sokolovsky and Colonel-General Markian Popov, launched the strategic offensive called Operation Kutuzov by launching a strike against the German 2nd Tank Army. On the first day of the offensive, the German defenses were penetrated in three areas measuring 10 to 16 km wide and 4 to 9 km deep. Thus, July 12 may be legitimately considered the turning point in the Battle of Kursk.

On the same day, the German 9th Army stopped advancing toward Rokossovsky’s Central Front. Meanwhile, all actions on the northern rim of the Kursk Bulge were coordinated until July 13 by Georgy Zhukov, whom Khrushchev later stripped of his state and party positions in October 1957: defense minister and member of the Presidium of the CC CPSU. A little later, in March 1958, Bulganin was also dismissed as Chairman of the USSR’s Council of Ministers and member of the Presidium of the CC CPSU. As for Mekhlis, who died in 1953, he was one of the most odious figures in the period of Stalin’s cult of personality.

Perhaps for this reason, to please Khrushchev, the pivotal day of July 12 began to be associated not with the real successes on the northern rim of the Kursk Bulge but with the battle near Prokhorivka, which was proclaimed a crucial victory for the Red Army, even though the Germans continued to advance into this area even after July 12. However, Manstein’s offensive was of no strategic importance, its only goal being to inflict as many losses as possible on the Soviet troops on the southern rim in order to pull the forces into reliable defensive positions and make some troops available for other segments of the front line. This goal was largely achieved.

During the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet command used a narrow-minded approach. The strikes were delivered to the head, not the flank. The enemy was squeezed out, not surrounded. The German command successfully maneuvered its troops by internal operational routes. The Soviet command even failed to notice and turn to its advantage the reduction in the number of German troops after some divisions were redeployed to Italy, the Balkans, and France. It was not until Aug. 3, 1943, that the Soviets launched the strategic offensive Operation Rumiantsev on the southern edge of Kursk Bulge in the direction of Bilhorod and Kharkiv.

A real turning point in the scorching battle at the Kursk Bulge occurred only after the troops of the Western and Briansk Fronts mounted an offensive in the direction of Orel. At the same time, the Southern and South-Western Fronts launched offensives in the vicinity of Stalino (now Donetsk) and Kramatorsk. Unable to repel simultaneous strikes taking place in various far-flung areas separated by thousands of kilometers, the German forces began to retreat.

By the end of July the troops of the three fronts had encircled the Germans’ Orel grouping from the north, east, and south. To avert the threat of complete encirclement, the German command began to pull troops out of the Orel salient on July 30. The Soviet troops switched to pursuit. On the morning of Aug. 4 the troops of the Briansk Front’s left wing broke into Orel and liberated it by dawn on Aug. 5. On the same day the Steppe Front’s forces liberated Bilhorod. The liberation of these cities made it possible to surround the enemy forces in the direction of Bilhorod and Kharkiv. But this opportunity was not taken. The Germans offered stubborn resistance and thwarted all attempts to surround its troops. On the night of Aug. 23 units of the 69th and 7th Guards Armies seized Kharkiv. This date is considered the end of the Battle of Kursk.

In spite of heavy losses, the Red Army finally achieved a fundamental breakthrough in the Great Patriotic War by the autumn of 1943. Scattered over endless front lines, the German army was no longer able to launch and sustain a strategic offensive. From then on, the direction of a further advance was determined not so much by military as political considerations.

It was obvious that the Allied landing in Europe was simply a matter of time. But the German command still did not know where it would take place and therefore began to ferry some of its aircraft to Germany, France, and the Balkans. The Red Army’s autumn offensive helped liberate eastern Ukraine and much of the northern part of the country. The front line formed a long westward arc. The enemy’s Taman and Crimean groupings found themselves in the rear of the Soviet troops. The politically-motivated advance towards Kyiv enabled the Germans to evacuate their Taman grouping first to the Crimea and then to Romania and Hungary. These were the Red Army troops that would fight in the fierce battles for Budapest in February 1945.