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Before the Stalingrad
pocket was finally liquidated on 2 February 1943, the Red Army went to
the offensive operations in the whole front from Caucasus to Leningrad.
The Germans started withdrawal of their troops hazarded into Caucasian
Mountains yet on the New Year day. Under the growing pressure of the
Soviet troops only part of their forces managed to reach Rostov on Don.
The rest switched to Taman peninsula opposite to Crimea, and more
precisely opposite its satellite Kerch peninsula. On 12 February they
had to abandon Krasnodar. But they were firmly holding the approaches
to
Novorossiysk and eagerly stormed the bridgehead created in the south to
the city by the Soviet marines. The fights on those positions were to
last for several months. The German command wanted to hold positions in
Taman at any cost; they secured Crimea from the east and created a
basis
to plan a counter-attack against the rear of the Soviet troops
operating
on lower Don.
Meanwhile another large
offensive was launched in the upper stream of the river by the forces
of
the Voronezh Front and part of forces of the Bryansk Front. It began on
13 January 1943; it surrounded and annihilated the 8th Italian Army,
including its elite bersaglieri corps, and led to the
liberation
of Voronezh on 25 January. As it gained momentum it rolled further to
the west. On 8 February was liberated Kursk, and on 9 February -
Belgorod, located on the same meridian with Kharkov some hundred
kilometres north to it. The German Army Group B was falling
apart. On 16 February Soviet troops making their way through snowdrifts
reached Kharkov and destroyed the remnants of the German defence there.
Simultaneously the South-Western Front moved on 20 January and within
four
days liberated substantial part of the Donbass, and on 5 February the
troops of the Southern Front struck from Stalingrad, crossed lower Don,
liberated Rostov and reached Mius river. Nevertheless General Sergei
Shtemenko in his book Soviet General Staff at War critically
examines decisions made during first months of 1943:
The general behaviour of
the Germano-fascist forces in the south of Voronezh and down to the
Black Sea was viewed by many front commanders and the Stavka as a
forced
withdrawal beyond Dnieper, in order to consolidate their defence on the
west bank of this serious riverine barrier. It was assumed without
doubts that the strategic initiative we grasped in the battle of
Stalingrad had been held firmly and the enemy had no chance to retake
it. Moreover, it was assumed that it was hardly possible that the
hitlerite army would launch any significant strategic operations in the
left-bank Ukraine or in the centre of the strategic front.
From this assessment of the situation came out the cardinal operational
directive: attack without a pause, because any waste of time on our
side
would give the enemy a chance to strengthen its defence lines. [ 1]
It often happens that victory causes daze. Apparently in February 1943
it happened to some Soviet commanders. After all they had achieved a
brilliant victory; their offensive destroyed dozens of German and
satellite divisions. But many front and army commanders failed to
overview the general situation. The Soviet forces operating in the
400km
wide front had advanced some 300 - 360 kilometres away from their
supply
bases and started to suffer severely from the lack of ammunition and
fuel. Their combat value was also deteriorating, since reinforcements
could not reach them in time. On top of that the decreased efficiency
of
the air support, because old airfields were left in the deep rear,
while
newly seized ones were not operable yet. Meanwhile the Germans,
according to Shtemenko,
did not even consider any
retreat of their troops beyond Dnieper. While pulling out and defending
their advanced positions, they planned a counter-offensive. The debacle
by Kotelnikovskiy only temporarily deprived them of the ability to
conduct full-scale combat actions. The enemy did not abandon plans to
take revenge for Stalingrad and to regain strategic initiative. Quite a
contrary, the heavy defeat they suffered in the steppes of Don, the
collapse of the Army Group "B" by Voronezh, and its consequences made
the highest nazi leadership to undertake extraordinary measures.
As they had not enough forces in the immediate rear to carry out
full-scale offensive operations, they combined the assault grouping by
reinforcements from other sectors of the front, as well as from West
Europe. This however required time. To gain time, to hold Donbass and
to
secure good initial positions for the further counter-offensive,
Germans
decided to assume defence along river Severskiy Donets and downstream
Don. The main battleground, as the hitlerite generals called the focal
zone of defence efforts, was on river Mius. The troops deployed on that
position under the command of Manstein comprised the Army Group "Don".
Its core was made of troops, which previously operated in the
Stalingrad
direction and partly of those pulled out from the North Caucasus. Most
notably there were deployed the 4th and 1st Tank Armies, which
constituted enemy's powerful assault fist. Manstein also had at his
disposal substantial air forces, wisely deployed on airfields and well
supplied with fuel.
On top of that the build-up of the Army Group "Don" went unnoticed. The
translocation of enemy columns was still seen as escape, as attempt to
avoid fights in Donbass and to get to the right-bank Ukraine as soon as
possible. The command of the South-Western Front had stubbornly stuck
to
that erroneous point of view and refused to consider facts, which had
already emerged and should have alerted them. [ 1]
The German command, having support of the forces withdrawn from
Caucasus, formed two strong armoured groups, which at the end of
February struck against the right wing of the South-Western Front. The
troops of the front could do little to stop them and had to retreat.
Simultaneously another hastily formed German group attacked the left
wing of the Voronezh Front, rolled it, and took Kharkov on 15 March and
Belgorod on 18 March. Those were the logical consequences of the
light-heartedness so rightfully criticized by Shtemenko. It was a grave
mistake to underestimate just beaten enemy and to neglect formation of
sufficient reserves beyond the thin, in this case too thin, line of own
troops.
During defence fights had
notably distinguished themselves in the battle of Sokolovo battalions
of
the Czechoslovak Corps under command of the future president of
Czechoslovakia General Ludvik Svoboda. The commander of a company from
one of the battalions, 2nd Lieutenant Otokar Jaroš, became the first
foreigner dignified with the title of the hero of the Soviet Union.
The German counter-attack
was eventually halted on Severskiy Donets. The enemy failed to achieve
its main goals - to destroy Soviet forces in Donbass and in the
vicinity
of Kursk. The Voronezh Front also managed to consolidate and hold its
right wing, which formed the southern part of so-called Kursk salient.
Very soon it would become the scene of the battle of tremendous
importance.
To reinforce troops
fighting in the south, the Soviet General Headquarters in February and
March shifted there substantial reserves, formed by pulling out some
divisions from the central sector. It had fatal consequences as the
Kalinin, West, Central and Bryansk Fronts failed to destroy the Army
Group Centre and to liberate Smolensk. The Soviet advance in
the
direction of Moscow reached on 1 April Dukhovshchina and
Spass-Demyansk,
long before Smolensk, and stalled there. Anyway it liberated Gzhatsk,
Rzhev and Vyazma and pushed the front some 300 kilometres westward. The
immediate menace of the capital was finally dismissed. Then the front
stabilized and the Russians started gradual preparations for the next
offensive in the west.
And while in the Russia's
south were waged battles of Stalingrad and Kharkov, while in the west
the Germans were gradually pushed back from positions menacing Moscow,
also in north Russia situation changed to their worse. On 12 January
1943 moved the 67th Army of the Leningrad Front. It had to meet the 2nd
Assault Army of the Volkhov Front and thus break the blockade of
Leningrad (Petersburg), the city being besieged and mercilessly
destroyed by air raids and artillery fire for sixteen months. Around
the
city were deployed 25 German and 5 Finnish divisions while in the city
civilians took part in the defence alongside the troops. After a week
of
bloody fights, the troops of both Soviet fronts met in the vicinity of
historic Schlusselburg (Oreshek). It was not yet the end of the siege,
but certainly a relief for the city. The success by Leningrad also
contributed to more successes in the north. The advance driven on 15
February by the divisions of the North-Western Front brought the quick
retaking of Demyansk, from where the Germans menaced Kalinin (Tver).
All
that allowed Shtemenko to estimate the outcome of the winter campaign
quite favourably:
The overall results of the
winter campaign 1943, despite some mistakes and vain hopes, were very
substantial to the Soviet armed forces. They completed the liquidation
of the 300,000-strong Paulus' army encircled by Stalingrad. They
annihilated the forces sent to the eastern front by Hitler's Italian
allies. Also other allies of the fascist Germany suffered severe
defeats.
That winter was also remarkable for the breakthrough in the Leningrad
blockade and establishment of communication between the hero-city and
the Big Land. The enemy was dislodged from the vicinity of Demyansk,
from Vyazma and Rzhev, and pushed far away on the southern wing. Soviet
troops liberated 480,000 square kilometres of native soil, and in some
sectors moved forward even 600 to 700 kilometres. As it was later
confirmed by the enemy itself, that winter only Germans lost in Russia
about 1,200,000 soldiers and officers, and together with satellite
armies even 1,700,000 men. Large numbers measure the enemy's material
losses as well: 24,000 pieces of artillery, 7400 tanks, and 4300
aircraft.
Our successes could have been probably bigger if the failures I
described above had not occurred. Where were the sources of those
failures? I think that having achieved great victories in the battles
of
Moscow and Stalingrad, some senior commanders, including members of the
Stavka and the General Staff, nursed well known tendency to
underestimate the enemy. It had negative influence on operational
planning. [ 1]
Anyway those final months of 1942 and especially the first months of
1943 brought the profound reversal of the situation in the whole huge
front from the Arctics to the Black Sea. The Germans were losing their
strategic initiative and coming months were about to bring them yet
another disastrous defeat.
In spring 1943, when the
winter campaign extinguished, the Russians held in the vicinity of
Kursk
a large, almost rectangular area of 22,000sq.km. This area, encircled
from the west by the large arch of the front positions, is nowadays
known as the Kursk Salient, Kursk Bulge or Kursk Arch (Kurskaya Duga).
On the opposite ends of the salient were concentrated German troops,
which also held two big cities located on the same meridian with Kursk
-
Orel in the north and Belgorod in the south. The distance between them
was about two hundred kilometres, while Soviet positions were
established within 100-150 km to the north, west and south of Kursk.
The
German command got the obvious idea to strike from both ends of the
Arch
towards Kursk and to destroy Soviet forces within the salient. However
the German initiatives were closely watched from the other side of the
hill, in witness whereof another excerpt from Gen. Shtemenko's memoirs:
In the beginning of May
enemy's counter-offensive was deemed quite realistic.
Intelligence reported that Hitler had been going to gather the
leadership cadres of his armed forces for the final decision on the
offensive in the Soviet-German front. This summit indeed took place on
3
and 4 May in Munich. (...) Within those two days the draft of the
operation "Zitadelle" was finally completed and accepted. Now it was
time to watch up. A surprising enemy attack, with all the tanks and air
forces it amassed on our Kursk Arch, could bear unpredictable
consequences.
Since the beginning of May the General Staff used to take advantage of
every possible chance to remind fronts' staffs about the necessity to
stay vigilant. On behalf of the Stavka it particularly recommended them
to restrain from complicated troops' regrouping, which could even
temporarily affect their combat readiness.
By May 8th various sources reported to the General Staff, that a major
enemy advance in Orel - Kursk and Belgorod - Kursk directions was
expected around May 10th - 12th. I promptly reported it to
A.M.Vasilevskiy, who at that time was in Moscow. He already had got
directives from Stalin - alarm the troops as necessary. [ 1]
The attack however did not take place on 10 or 12 May. Neither did it
take place later that month, about 19 - 26 May. The reason being that,
according to one of Hitler's staff members, General Kurt von
Tippelskirch, Hitler planned to use in this action a large number
of
new tanks of "Panther" type, which had been already produced in big
quantities, and to which he attached big hopes. [ 2]
Indeed, to the Kursk front were sent not only new, powerful medium
tanks Pz.Kpfw.T-V
Panther, but also mighty heavy tanks Pz.Kpfw.T-VI Tiger and
new 88mm self-propelled gun-carriers Sd.Kfz.184 Elefant mounted
on Tigers' carriers. Hitler wanted to form the strongest
assault
grouping possible, but due to partisan activities on transport routes
between the Reich and eastern front, shipments of equipment were
substantially disorganized. So he procrastinated. It was not until 1
July that he summoned the commanders of the operation Citadel
and
ordered to launch it on 5 July. The attack had to be a surprise of
course. The German leadership could not even think that the Soviet
command had been closely watching German preparations and had even
established the exact date of the offensive. On 2 July at 2:15 General
Alexei Antonov issued, and Joseph Stalin signed, the third directive to
the troops amassed in the south. The directive was brief and read:
According to information
received, the Germans may take the offensive on our Front between July
3
and 6. Supreme Command GHQ orders:
- Intensify reconnaissance and observation of the
enemy to make sure of detecting their intentions in good time.
- Troops and aircraft must be raedy to repel a
possible enemy attack. [1]
Indeed, the battle started on 5 July. From Orel to Kursk, across the
positions of the Central Front, rushed seven armoured, two mechanized
and eleven infantry divisions; from Belgorod, against the lines of the
Voronezh Front - and of course farther to Kursk - struck ten armoured,
one mechanized and seven infantry divisions. Strong Luftwaffe
formations bombed the railway node in Kursk itself. Altogether half a
million men were engaged under the command of Field Marshal Günther von
Kluge. This day you are to take part in an offensive of such
importance, addressed Hitler to his soldiers, that the whole
future of the war may depend on its outcome. [ 3]
The meeting point of the German armoured wedges was assigned several
kilometres east to Kursk, in the town of Tim. But it never came to that
meeting.
Nowadays militarymen and
historians call the German operation trivial, banal and testifying to
the lack of imagination on the side of its authors. The strike was
carried out according to unfailing so far formulae of the lightning
war,
with massive armoured assault forces thrown against the opposite ends
of
the Soviet salient. But the times, when such strikes would literally
disembowel the defence, were gone. The Russians had learnt how to
neutralize such attacks and they had attached particular attention to
those vulnerable sectors. It is enough to say, that the Central and
Voronezh Fronts concentrated about 1,300,000 soldiers, about 20,000
guns
and mortars, 3600 tanks and self-propelled gun-carriers, and 2370
aircraft. Apart from the two fronts engaged in battle, also the forces
of the West, Bryansk and Steppe Fronts were kept in reserve. The
command
was carried out by generals, who had gained two years of experience in
the war with Germany. The General Headquarters assigned Marshals
Georgiy
Zhukov and Alexandr Vasilevskiy to co-ordinate operations in the Kursk
Salient.
On 5 July at dawn German
troops deployed against the Soviet positions were covered by the
artillery barrage so heavy, that the movements of armoured and
mechanized troops were delayed two hours. It was not until 5:30 that
the
Germans started their barrage, and at 6:00 the first tank units moved
towards the Soviet lines. The blow was forceful, but during the first
stage of the battle it brought only limited success: in the north they
advanced 12km into the Soviet defence positions, in the south - as far
as 35km. Considering the power of the German build-up, those were
rather
lousy effects and they cost them four days of bloody fights. On the
fifth day the advance of the German northern grouping stalled. The
southern grouping, where the 4th Armoured Army and the Operation Group Kempf
fought under command of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, achieved
better results. The command of the Voronezh Front miscalculated the
direction of the main German effort and dispersed front's forces. In
result Manstein overcame Soviet defence in several sectors. Therefore
the forces of four armoured armies were introduced to plug the breach
in
the front. It was there, that on 12 July in the vicinity of Prokhorovka
village it came to a great tank battle, in which both sides engaged up
to 1100 tanks and self-propelled gun-carriers. Both sides suffered
horrible casualties, but the German advance was ultimately halted.
And the same day, 12 July,
started the second stage of the battle. To the north of Orel the West
and Bryansk Fronts started an offensive with the bulk of their forces.
They were supported by 10,000 guns and mortars, as well as the 1st Air
Army. Within two days the German front was broken through and Soviet
troops incurred as far as 25 kilometres westward. Exploiting the
success
of the neighbours, the Central Front went to counter-offensive on 15
July and within three days restored its initial positions. Positions
were restored also in the south where the Germans started their
withdrawal on 16 July. The Voronezh Front, with the Steppe Front
introduced to fights two days later, started pursuit. In face of a
serious failure Hitler launched a major purge of his command; among
others he fired the commander of the 2nd Armoured Army, General Rudolf
Schmidt. But no purges could prevent the failure from transformation
into a great disaster. By the night of 3 and 4 August Soviet troops got
to the suburbs of Orel and started street fights. Meanwhile troops of
the Steppe Front approached Belgorod. Both cities were liberated on the
same day, 5 August. By 18 August the Central, Bryansk and Western
Fronts
completed the liquidation of the left wing of German forces menacing
the
Kursk Salient from the north. The front stabilized in the vicinity of
Bryansk. Meanwhile in the south another important operation had been
prepared and the unusual planning procedure applied has been noted in
Gen. Shtemenko's memoirs:
After a great deal of
calculation and consideration of various proposals, the General Staff
reached its filan conclusion: the germans' Belgorod - Kharkov
concentration must first of all be cut off from its supply of reserves
from the west. This could be done with the two tank armies in readiness
north of Belgorod, which must smash and disorganise the whole enemy
defence system, slash it to pieces with deep thrusts. Only after that
could the enemy be disposed of piecemeal. This new operation was
code-named General Rumyantsev.
The fighting had never actually ceased. Our switch to the
counter-offensive was not preceded by a long pause, and so the
elaboration of the plan of this operation was somewhat unusual. Most of
it was done on the spot. (...)
I have no knowledge of any comprehensive written or diagrammatic record
connected with the General Rumiantsev operation. There were none. For
GHQ and the General Staff this code name signified not a document but
the coordinated actions of the Voronezh and Steppe Fronts and some of
the troops of the South-Western Front in August 1943, united by a
common
aim and single leadership.
The aim of the operation was to smash the enemy in the Belgorod -
Kharkov area, after which the way would lie open for Soviet troops to
reach the Dnieper, seize crossings there and prevent the enemy's
withdrawal from the Donbas to the west. The whole thing promised great
operational advantages. [ 1]
The main effort aimed at the town of Bogodukhov, north-west to Kharkov.
The troops designated for that operation began their operation yet on 3
August, before liberation of Belgorod. On 8 August they took Bogodukhov
and continued to advance. The whole Germans' Kharkov - Belgorod
grouping
got cut in halves. They started hectic regrouping of their forces
towards Bogodukhov, where they eventually concentrated seven armoured
and four infantry divisions, and launched a counter-attack on 11
August.
Despite heavy losses, the Voronezh Front held its positions around the
town while the Steppe Front, commanded by Gen. Ivan Konev, approached
to
Kharkov from the east and liberated it on 23 August.
According to Soviet historians, the battle on the Kursk Salient, which
led to the liberation of Kharkov and Orel, was the Red Army's third
strategic counter-offensive since the outbreak of the war. Its
intensity
and efficiency outshone both the battle of Moscow and the battle of
Stalingrad. The battle of Moscow engaged 700,000 Soviet soldiers; the
battle of Stalingrad saw already a million of them; in the battle of
Kursk took part over two million men. At Moscow the Russians were
outnumbered by the enemy; in Stalingrad both sides were more or less in
balance; on the Kursk Salient for the first time the Russians had
superiority over the enemy. The counter-offensive at Kursk,
concluded Marshal Zhukov, unlike those at Moscow and on the Volga,
was a predetermined and well backed up deep-thrusting action. [4]
The battle of Kursk was one of the greatest battles of the Second World
War. It lasted fifty days. It brought annihilation of 30 German
divisions, including seven armoured ones. The Germans lost over half a
million of soldiers, about 3000 tanks and over 3000 aircraft. Since
then
the Russians had seized superiority in the air. But above all they
completely grasped the strategic initiative.
- S. Shtemenko, The
Soviet General Staff at War
- K. von Tippelskirch, Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs
- M. Caidin, The Tigers Are Burning
- G. Zhukov, Reminiscences
and Reflections
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