SOVIET ADVANCES KURSK, THE

COUNTER-ATTACK AND THE UKRAINE

On the Eastern Front, the colossal build-up of Soviet armed might had continued following the defeat of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. In this chapter, we deal with the events of summer and autumn 1943, and the only major German offensive of that year, but as background to the story it is worth noting just how greatly the Soviet Union had succeeded in mobilising its manhood to war. Between mid-1941, when Germany launched its ill-fated invasion of Russia, and the end of 1943, Russia's total infantry forces had been increased from 175 divisions to 513 divisions; her armoured and mechanised brigades had risen in number from 78 to 290, and even her somewhat anachronistic cavalry forces (which were, despite their quaint appearance, magnificent in the mud) had been expanded from 30 to 41 divisions. Some differences in the way the Russians worked out their brigade and divisional strengths make the apparent superiority of these figures over the comparable German numbers exaggerated, but nothing can alter the fact that Russian military strength had tripled in the two-and-a-half-year period, despite the enormous Soviet losses of men and armaments during the first German advance to the perimeter of Moscow.

Similarly, German commanders on the Eastern Front were surprised not only by the apparently endless supply of human reinforcements that the Russians could conjure as if from nowhere, but also by the number and superiority of the new Russian weapons that were appearing. Perhaps the most significant of these was the latest version of the famed T-34 tank, the T-34/85, which mounted an 85mm gun capable of knocking out any German tank at any likely range, and which was so effective a weapon that it stayed in production until 1958. But the emergence of the Soviet SU-152 self-propelled gun also proved important, countering as it did the German "Ferdinand" self-propelled gun, which proved to have a major disadvantage in having no forward-firing machine gun.

Finally, the perseverance and suffering of the British and American sailors who operated the North Atlantic convoys despite the threat of the U-Boats was paying off in the form of a considerable arsenal of Western Allied weapons and aircraft in Soviet hands. Britain supplied Russia with over 4,000 tanks, more than 4,000 anti-aircraft guns and almost 6,000 aircraft under Lend Lease; the USA provided almost 4,000 tanks and over 6,000 aircraft; Canada supplied over 1,000 tanks. Nevertheless, Stalin's propaganda machine attempted to belittle the Allied contribution. However much it stressed victory over Nazism in the East as the totally Soviet creation that Russians still believe it to have been, the fact remains that the USSR would have found it impossible to have turned the tide against Germany without Allied support on a massive scale.

We have already seen in an earlier chapter how badly 1943 had begun for the Germans at Stalingrad and in the Caucasus. In the North, the Army Groups Centre and North had fared little better. In January, first the German defenders of Velikiye-Luki had been besieged for a fortnight before being defeated by the Russians under Marshal Voroshilov. Then the German 18th Army commanded by Colonel-General Lindemann had been defeated on the shores of Lake Ladoga, following which the 17 month siege of Leningrad had at last been lifted. Railway communications between the city of the Winter Palace and the world from which it had been cut off for so long were restored on February 6th.

In the face of these defeats, Hitler permitted at long last the withdrawals to more defensible positions for which his generals had been pressing, and 30 divisions of the 4th and 9th Armies were withdrawn approximately 100 miles over a period of some three weeks without undue losses of men or equipment. This strategic retreat straightened the line that the Germans held, reducing its length by half to 230 miles and releasing 14 divisions for other tasks.

In April, it became clear what "other tasks" Hitler had in mind. His Operational Order No. 16 set out his plan for "Operation Zitadelle ", an offensive designed to surround and annihilate the Soviet forces holding Kursk. The tone of the Operational Order makes it quite clear that Hitler saw this offensive as the means by which the world was to be jolted into realising that the force of German arms was not yet spent. His generals saw it in a somewhat different light, their opinions varying from the open and positive support for the plan on military grounds offered by Kluge, to the open opposition of Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, Inspector-General of Armoured Troops, who believed that the tanks that would be lost in the attack would certainly be needed during 1944 to repel an Allied invasion in Northern Europe.

In the event, Hitler's plan was acted upon, but not until July 1943, when the first units of the new PzKpfw V (Panther) tanks had arrived on active service. No less than 41 German divisions were thrown into the attack on July 5th, including 18 armoured Panzer and Panzer-grenadier Divisions with a total of about 1,000 tanks and 376 self-propelled guns. Air support was provided by Luftflotte IV . Against this German strength, the Soviet armies in the Kursk salient numbered about 75 divisions and 3,600 tanks, plus an amazing figure of 20,000 guns, howitzers and mortars, including 6,000 anti-tank guns and almost a thousand rocket launchers. The Russians had amassed, as a deliberate policy, sufficient artillery to form specific Artillery Divisions, something no other army had attempted, and the policy was to pay off handsomely during the advance on Germany.

Almost as important as the Russians' superiority of sheer firepower was her intelligence success in gathering up-to-date and accurate information on the German troop dispositions and strengths, and the sheer luck of having on July 4th, the day before the German offensive began, a Czech Wehrmacht deserter come over to the Soviet side and give exact details of the timing of the attack. As a result of this good fortune, the Red Army was able to deliver a formidable psychological stroke against the German 9th Army when, only twenty minutes before the attack was to begin, a massive Soviet artillery barrage hit the German positions with pinpoint accuracy, throwing the units keyed up for a surprise attack into considerable confusion. Although the German formations quickly recovered themselves, and launched their assault on time, the 9th Army advanced only six miles against the Soviet 13th during that hard-fought first day. In the next two days, the leading German units advanced only another six miles. On July 7th, the 9th Army's advance stopped, outgunned and outnumbered.

Further South, the German 4th Army did better, but not well enough. Strong air support enabled them to make initial advances more or less to plan, and by July 11th two defensive lines had been broken and the advance units were in a position to breach Russian supply lines. The 2nd Waffen SS Panzer Corps had played a major part in Manstein's being able to report on July 13th that the 4th Panzerarmee had taken 24,000 prisoners. But trouble had by then been brewing for the Germans for days. Aware that the two German armies that were seeking to establish a pincer movement and cut off the Russian forces were still 75 miles apart, the Russian General Vatutin, in command of the Voronezh Front, decided to counterattack. From July 10th, he brought up the crack 5th Guards Tank Army (the "Guards" title was awarded for achievement in the Red Army) and the 1st Tank Army, and on the 12th launched the greatest tank battle of the Second World War against the Germans defending the over-extended positions of the Orel Salient. Well over 5,000 armoured vehicles took part in the Battle of Kursk, the might of the new Russian armour being pitched against German Panzer Divisions that were greatly weakened both by losses of men (20,000 during the previous week alone) and by mechanical wear and unreliability after months or years of compaigning in often appalling conditions with only rudimentary field maintenance to keep them going.

The main assault by the Russians on Orel, with 3,000 guns and 400 rocket launchers, made rapid progress, covering 15 miles in the first 48 hours. All along the complex front, other Russian formations breached the German defences and pushed infantry and artillery through the gaps to harry the Germans and break up their command structures. By July 15th, the German armies were clearly getting the worst of the situation around them; by the 20th the Germans had no alternative but to throw large numbers of precious aircraft into the desperate struggle to hold their positions against the mighty tank and artillery assault. On July 29th, the German evacuation of the Orel Salient, approved by Hitler, began.

Field-Marshal Kluge had been gloomy in his prognosis when he had, the previous week, reported events to Hitler. The Fuehrer was, in any event, already plunged into depression by the Allied successes in Sicily and the Italians' manifest failure to defend their territory. Faced with the need to withdraw resources from Russia to defend the Italian mainland against imminent invasion, Hitler did exactly what Roosevelt and the American Generals had said he would not do - he gave the order to withdraw and abandon Operation Zitadelle , and thereby demonstrated that the Allied invasion in the Mediterranean had succeeded after all in taking the pressure off the Eastern Front.

As the German armies retreated they destroyed everything in their path, leaving local populations without food and shelter. To the South of the retreating 9th and 4th Armies, Manstein's 42 German divisions faced some 120 Russian divisions, and even these numbers were being rapidly increased - by September, he was outnumbered eight to one. On August 3rd 1943, Colonel-General Vatutin and his colleague Colonel-General Konev advanced a wedge into Manstein's army, dividing the 4th Panzerarmee from theGruppe "Kempf" and thereby breaking the front. Now the Russians were swiftly able to liberate Belgorod and Bogodukhov, and, crashing on through the Ukraine, recaptured the city of Kharkov, which the Germans lost on August 22nd. By September 7th, Manstein's army was reduced to 257 tanks and 220 assault guns. Clearly, he had little alternative but to withdraw.

Hitler, realising at last that he was about to lose the great mineral resources of the Donets basin, and that the "divisions" he still moved on his map were no longer the full strength Blitzkrieg units of June 1941, decided to visit Manstein at Zaporozhye on the Dnieper. From September 9th to the 16th they argued about the situation that faced them, Manstein putting clearly the impossible position in which the German armies found themselves. Finally, Hitler agreed to the withdrawal. On the night of September 15/16th it began with the evacuation of the Taman peninsula, a huge amphibious operation under Vice-Admiral Schurlen bringing over 200,000 troops and 15,000 vehicles, to say nothing of over 54,000 horses and 1,200 guns, across the Kerch Strait on the Sea of Azov. Manstein's forces to the North of the Sea of Azov (the 1st and 4th Panzerarmee and the 8th Army) were brought back across the Dnieper between Zaporozhye to the South and Kiev to the North, destroying crops and villages as they went.

If the Germans believed that getting to the Western bank of the Dnieper would earn them a chance to regroup, they were disappointed. The Russians rapidly crossed the river and established bridgeheads to secure their support positions from artillery and tank attack. This time they were West of the Dnieper for good. By the beginning of November, the German 17th Army had been trapped in the Crimea by the headlong advance of the Russian armies, although, after taking Zaporozhye on October 14th, the Russians had been checked on most fronts for a week or two by determined German defensive fighting. At Krivoi Rog, particularly, the XL Panzer Corps, reinforced by the 24th Panzer Division, had on October 28th pushed General Rotmistrov's 5th Guards Tank Army back some 15 miles, with Russian losses of 10,000 dead and 5,000 taken prisoner. This check on the Russian advance gave Manstein the chance to retreat from the Dniepropetrovsk salient that had developed, but the comparative peace did not last long.

On November 3rd, Colonel-General Vatutin attacked the German VII Corps defending Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. With 30 infantry divisions and 1,500 tanks levelled against them, the German defenders could do little. On November 6th, the Russians were once more in possession of a city that had become a symbol of eventual German defeat on Russian soil. Manstein, however, did not take such humiliation lightly, and fought back vigorously, coming during December within 25 miles of recapturing Kiev. But to do so he had drawn on the resources of the German 8th Army, which, thus weakened, lost Cherkassy to Colonel-General Konev.

Thus 1943 ended with the Germans in full retreat all along the Eastern Front, with severely depleted formations, and with a massively reinforced Red Army flushed with success pursuing it relentlessly towards Berlin. The Russians had a long way to go. But their objective was never in doubt.