Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945 (Modern Wars) by Evan Mawdsley

Author:Evan Mawdsley [Mawdsley, Evan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-11-18T23:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLE OF KURSK

Operation CITADEL

The Battle of Kursk is among the best-known episodes of the Second World War, and is sometimes even treated as the turning point of the conflict. The battle had its origins in Operation CITADEL (ZITADELLE), which was a German attempt to encircle and destroy the big salient or ‘bulge’ created during the February 1943 Soviet offensive.30 This salient extended across the steppe some 115 miles from north to south, and 80 miles from east to west; it took in a large agricultural region, centred on the medium-sized Russian city of Kursk (120,000 inhabitants in 1939). The Germans eventually concentrated an unprecedented mass of mobile forces above and below the Kursk bulge, built up from divisions that had been cleared out of the Rzhev–Viaz’ma salient and the Kuban’. To the north was the 9th Army (General Model) from Field Marshal Kluge’s Army Group Centre. To the south, from Field Marshal Manstein’s Army Group South, were the 4th Panzer Army (General Hoth) and Army Detachment ‘Kempf’.

First conceived in mid-March 1943, Operation CITADEL began three and a half months later, on 5 July. The German advances ground to a halt within a week. The attacking panzers were stalled by the Red Army’s field defences, and then the thrust from the south was countered by massed Soviet armoured counter-attacks. Although Hitler called off CITADEL on 13 July, the second phase of the battle, a full-scale Soviet counter-offensive, ran on from mid-July until 23 August. Not only did the German Army fail to achieve the objective of its summer offensive – the destruction of the Kursk bulge – but it was driven from the flanking positions north and south of Kursk (the Orel and Belgorod–Khar’kov regions, respectively). By late August 1943 the Red Army was positioned on a line from which it could at last drive rapidly forward west to the Dnepr River.

The reasons for the German failure

Planning at Hitler’s headquarters for Operation CITADEL in 1943 had been much more hesitant than planning for the 1941 or 1942 German offensives. This was a result of the Wehrmacht’s fragile position after defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa. Zeitzler, the Chief of the Army General Staff, wanted an early offensive to catch the Red Army off balance and blunt any major attack it might attempt. Hitler was enthusiastic; he had been encouraged by the Soviet reverse at Khar’kov in March 1943. On the other hand, the professionals of the Wehrmacht High Command, especially Jodl, were reluctant to commit more forces to Russia. The OKW had to consider the disastrous situation in Tunisia and the imminent danger of a British–American landing somewhere on the north side of the Mediterranean. General Guderian, appointed Inspector of Armoured Troops in January 1943, evidently also opposed the attack. Guderian reported his Führer’s own doubts, from a conversation in mid-May: ‘Whenever I think of this attack’, Hitler said, ‘I also always feel sick to my stomach’. Possibly decisions were forced on Hitler by events. Tippelskirch, a senior German

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