Operation Citadel (July 1943)

[joespaniel]

Although weakened by the loss of General von Paulus' Army at Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht still had three million troops inside the USSR as the summer of 1943 began. After the retreat from the Caucasus, the German armies turned about and counter-attacked at the city of Kharkov, stopping the Red Army's advance. Both sides were exhausted and the spring rains turned the battlefield to mud once again.

Hitler, eager to avange his defeat at the Volga, desired to pinch out a salient centered around the town of Kursk and send a message to the world that the Wehrmacht was still in business. A great offensive that he said "will shine like a beacon around the world". If successful, more forces could be diverted to the Med to meet the Americans and British.

Kluge's Army Group Center and Manstein's Army Group South were tasked with the destruction of five Soviet Armies. The Supreme Commander East, General Guderian, argued against an offensive saying "Why do we want to attack in the East at all? How many Germans have ever even heard of Kursk?" but Hitler was, as usual, adamant. The great offensive was stalled until July when new Tiger and Panther tanks as well as Elephant assault guns could be brought to the front.

The Soviets around Kursk, led by the energetic Rokossovsky, were fairly certain the Germans would attack the salient. Resisting the urge to strike first, they opted to dig in multiple lines of fortifications supported by massive amounts of artillery. A large tank force was assembled in reserve to deal with a German penetration of the line. Then they waited.

On July 5th, the Wehrmacht unleashed it's attack against the Kursk salient. The effect was initially that of a tidal wave. For four days, the German armies advanced.

 

[joespaniel]

The Germans very quickly ran into trouble. The Soviets had alot of time to prepare the area that was obviously going to be the avenues of advance. Some 570,000 German soldiers faced nearly 1,000,000 Russians protected by more than 6,000 miles of trenches interspersed with an average of 2,400 antitank and 2,700 antipersonnel mines for each mile of front.

Even against such staggering odds, the Germans managed a breakthrough near the town of Prokorovka. The Soviets then unleashed their counter attack. Soon, the battlefield was so clouded with smoke and dust that visability was reduced to a few hundred yards, negating the technical and gunnery skill advantages of the Germans. The Soviets displayed their trademark brand of courage, closing to almost point blank range with the Germans, taking but also inflicting horrendous losses.

Suddenly, Hitler called off Citadel to divert troops to meet the Allied forces that had just landed in Sicily. The Germans lost their intial gains and the Soviets went over to a general offensive on August 2nd.

The German defeat at Kursk was catastrophic. The fight is well known for being the largest tank battle in history, a total of 6,000 tanks, and the German loss of approximately 3,000 was devastating, they could not manufacture new ones quickly enough to replace them. The air battle was equally bloody. Out of 4,000 aircraft involved the Germans lost nearly 1,400.

Thus the initative passed from Germany to the USSR. While the Wehrmacht managed to fight a great defensive campaign for the next two years, they never again launched a major offensive in the East.

Map of the battle

 

[joespaniel]

 

[joespaniel]

 

[joespaniel]

German soldiers get ready for the battle



The fearsome Tiger tank advancing at Kursk



Captured Soviet T-34 at Kursk

 

[joespaniel]

 

[dgfred]

this post joe . Great pics . It would have been
very interesting if Hitler would have listened to Guderian . I would
have stayed on the defensive and waited for a chance to counterattack .

 

[rilnator]

As soon as the Germans moved the Russians hit them with artillery. Aparently the Lucy spy ring in Berlin had given the Soviets the exact time of the offensive.

Hitler would have been better off fighting a defensive war in the east after Stalingrad. He still had the tanks and generals to pull it off too. But he made a good point, a big German victory at Kursk would show the world the Wehrmacht was still number 1.

Nice picture of the Stug III.

 

[CruddyLeper]

Great job JoeSpaniel! . Lovely pix as well.

... Aparently the Lucy spy ring in Berlin had given the Soviets the exact time of the offensive...

Strange, I always thought the Lucy ring was based in Switzerland... sure you don't mean Rote Cappella (? - English is Red Orchestra).

I could well be wrong on this though.

 

[rilnator]

Great job JoeSpaniel! . Lovely pix as well.



Strange, I always thought the Lucy ring was based in Switzerland... sure you don't mean Rote Cappella (? - English is Red Orchestra).

I could well be wrong on this though.

Dunno, they may have been based in Switzerland but I reckon they got their info from someone in the Williamstrasse in Berlin. I read a fiction book once claiming Bormann was the mole. A possibilty.

 

[joespaniel]

Bormann was a fanatic Nazi. I doubt he would play the fence like that.

I believe Rilnator is correct about the Lucy spy ring, they confirmed that Kursk was to be the place of attack. It was fairly obvious anyway, a huge salient sticking into the German lines and an important road-rail junction. However, the decision to remain on the defensive was correct and very likely influenced by Lucy.

 

[nonconformist]

Dunno, they may have been based in Switzerland but I reckon they got their info from someone in the Williamstrasse in Berlin. I read a fiction book once claiming Bormann was the mole. A possibilty.

I heard about (though not read) about a book like that.

Also, Anthony Beevor recently published a book that examins the possibility of Hitler's favourite actress (I can't remember her name, but it was a Russian sunding name) who could have been a Soviet spy.

 

[Ace]

What about the British passing enigma intercepts to the Russians?? I have not read anything about this, but all the books about spys in Hitler's headquarters were written before the code breaking info was released in the late 90's.

 

[joespaniel]

Some info I found:

In WWII espionage, the Lucy spy ring was an anti-German operation which operated in Switzerland. It was run by Rudolf Roessler, a German refugee, who was ostensibly the proprieter of a small publishing firm, Vita Novi. Very little is publicly clear about the Lucy ring, about Roessler, or about its actual sources or motives.

After the war, Roessler offered a somewhat obscure account in interviews with journalists. According to that account, he left several (a small number, perhaps up to 10) anti-Nazi friends behind in Germany when he moved to Switzerland in the early 30s. Among them were several officers in the German military, who reached high staff positions during the War. Somehow -- and this is one of the most obscure parts of this account -- they were able to transmit information to him (sometimes by his specific request, relayed from Moscow) using major German military transmitters. The implication apparently intended is some sort of clandestine, never noticed by the Germans, piggybacking on German transmissions. This is technically rather more than unlikely and thus not very credible. But, however that may be, the information provided was frequent, accurate, and timely.

Roessler managed to make contact with Alexander Rado's Soviet espionage organization in Switzerland and used it to pass information to Moscow. His required conditions for working for Rado were very odd -- he was never to be forced to disclose his sources, and the Soviets were to make no attempt to discover them. Moscow Centre was initially quite suspicious, but eventually came to rely on his ring's information. The Swiss eventually tracked down the transmitters and put the Lucy ring out of business before the end of the War. Alexander Foote, later author of the controversial Handbook for Spies, was one of Rado's (and Roessler's) radio operators and was one of those arrested.

An additional controversial aspect of the Lucy ring story is the allegation that it was, at its heart, a British Secret service operation intended to get Ultra information to the Soviets in a convincing way untraceable to British codebreaking operations against the Germans. Stalin had shown considerable suspicion of any information from the Americans or British about German plans to invade Russia in 1941, so an Allied effort to find a way to get helpful information to the Soviets in a form that would not be dismissed is, at least, not unplausible. Various observations have suggested that Alexander Foote was more than a mere radio operator:

he was in a position to act as a radio interface between SIS and Roessler and between Roessler and Moscow

his return to the West in the 50s was a little peculiar

his book is troublesome in several ways, not one of Roessler's 'sources' in Germany has been identified (or come forward)

So, some suspicion has developed that, even for an espionage operation, the Lucy ring was not what it seemed.

 

[Zeekater]

Does anybody know of some really good maps about Kursk? Not just the ones you get with a little googling

 

[dgfred]

The book 'Barbarossa' is an excellent read with much good info

 

[Zeekater]

I have plenty of books about WW2, but none provide some good maps on Zitadelle
I was thinking about buying 'The BATTLE of KURSK' by D.M. Glantz and J. House, anybody by any chance read it already and have some opinions?

 

[Serutan]

I have plenty of books about WW2, but none provide some good maps on Zitadelle
I was thinking about buying 'The BATTLE of KURSK' by D.M. Glantz and J. House, anybody by any chance read it already and have some opinions?

Yes, I have read it, and recommend it.

Another Kursk book I liked was Walter Dunn's "Kursk : Hitler's Gamble 1943" (don't know if you could find it outside of a library...).

For a shorter version, John Erickson's book "The Road To Berlin" has
a good section on the battle.

Glantz argues that what really defeated Citadel in the south was
not the battle of Pokhorovka (which actually involved "only" about 1200
tanks), but the attacks that Vatutin (commander of the Voronezh Front,
responsible for the southern half of the bulge), made against the left
(western) flank of the German penetration every day during the battle.

Rokossovskii (Central Front) was only in command of the northern half
of the bulge. He (relatively speaking) stopped Model's forces in their
tracks.

 

[joespaniel]

I don't know if you missed this map, but here it is again:

http://www.bibl.u-szeged.hu/bibl/mil/ww2/map/kurszk_anim.gif

 

[rilnator]

Bormann was a fanatic Nazi. I doubt he would play the fence like that.

I read somewhere he dabbled with communism before joining the NSDAP. Its pretty far fetched I know, but maybe the commies had some dirt on him. Or maybe he was after the $$$.
Those 4 British double agents (whose names I won't mention) got interested in communism while at uni and managed to get high up in the service.