1943 was the pivotal year in Germany’s ideological struggle against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the principal theatre in which the fate of Hitler’s supposed 1,000-year Reich was decided. This is the first of two articles exploring within a chronological framework the measures taken by the increasingly hard-pressed Ostheer (German Army in the East) in its attempts to contain the resurgent Red Army. The primary focus is the doctrinal and tactical changes, new equipment, and organisational modifications introduced during 1943 to augment the Ostheer’s declining combat power. This first piece examines the period from 1 January to 12 July, while the second continues this analysis through to the end of 1943.
This pivotal year commenced with the Germans facing strategic disaster along their southern sector. Through January, Soviet forces had relentlessly assaulted Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’s frozen and starving troops in Stalingrad, now also chronically short of fuel and munitions. The demoralised, abandoned Sixth Army could resist no longer, and so over three days from 1 February the remaining 92,000 troops, including Paulus himself, surrendered. Though this was the gravest setback the German Army had yet experienced in World War II, it did not constitute, as popular opinion has it, the decisive turning point in the East; this description best fits the July ‘Citadel’ offensive at Kursk, the strategic disaster from which the Ostheer was never to recover. Indeed, in the weeks immediately following Stalingrad, a greater calamity loomed over the 900,000 troops deployed along the Axis southern front. For during January Soviet armour had also pushed rapidly southwest toward Rostov to cut off Army Group A in the Caucasus. Worse, between 29 January and 2 February, Soviet forces had initiated further thrusts to the west, designed to swing south to the north shore of the Sea of Azov to encircle Army Group Don in the Voroshilov-Mius River area.
Predictably, on 11 February as Soviet spearheads began encircling Kharkov, Hitler ordered SS Colonel-General Paul Hausser’s recently formed SS Panzer Corps to hold the city at all costs. This Führer Order was a gross strategic error, since at that moment the beleaguered German forces in the Ukraine desperately needed to halt the Soviet armour racing beyond the River Donets, rather than simply exposing themselves at Kharkov to the fate that had befallen Paulus’ command at Stalingrad. If Hausser had obeyed Hitler, his powerful corps would have been destroyed, and unable to shore up the dire Axis strategic position in the south. Fortunately for the Ostheer, Hausser was determined to save his corps from such pointless destruction, even if this meant disobeying his Führer. Hence, during 15–16 February 1943, he successfully withdrew his all but encircled forces from the city to fight another day. Despite this local achievement, the position in the south deteriorated rapidly over the next 48 hours, largely because Stalin interpreted the abandonment of Kharkov by Hitler’s loyal SS as a sign that a desperate Führer had ordered a general German withdrawal behind the River Dnieper. Consequently, the emboldened Soviets drove their armour west, hoping then to reach the Sea of Azov to encircle the Axis forces on the Mius River line before they retreated. By 17 February 1943, the Germans faced a critical situation as Soviet armour cut the rail lines that supported the German Mius River front, and reached Krasnoarmeyskoye, just 156 km (97 miles) from the Azov coast. To many, it looked as if the entire Axis southern sector was about to collapse.
Manstein’s counteroffensive
But by then Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commander of Army Group Don, had concluded that the best chance to save the Axis southern flank was to unleash a daring counter-offensive against the over-extended Soviet spearheads. Such a riposte would utilise fully the German Army’s advantages in mobility, timely decision-making, flexibility, initiative at lower command levels and training. The army group commander wished to enact yet another ‘Cauldron Battle’ (double encirclement), this time with the elite SS Panzer Corps striking south toward Pavlograd from Krasnograd while XXXX Panzer Corps thrust north toward Zmiyev from Krasnoarmeyskoye. Initially, however, Hitler rejected this plan because he wished to use any available armoured reserves to recapture Kharkov, thus rectifying Hausser’s disobedient abandonment of this key city.
On 17 February, however, the Führer finally gave in to von Manstein’s repeated requests and granted permission for the counter-attack. During 18–20 February, therefore, XXXX Panzer Corps struck at the Soviets to dislodge them from the key communications node of Krasnoarmeyskoye. Next, on 21 February, von Manstein initiated a double envelopment to the west of Krasnoarmeyskoye with SS Panzer Corps striking south toward Pavlograd, while XXXXVIII Panzer Corps thrust north-east from Pavlograd to link up with the SS to destroy the Soviet Sixth Army and Mobile Group Popov. During 21–23 February, Hausser’s three elite divisions advanced rapidly behind the Soviet Sixth Army to link up with the northwest thrust of XXXXVIII Panzer Corps.
In these high-tempo attacks, the well-trained SS troops found that their newest and most modern tanks, the Panzer III Model M and the late-type Panzer IV Model G, gave sterling offensive service. Both these variants carried Schürzen, novel skirting plates that protected their running gear and sides from the increasingly effective portable anti-tank weapons now more frequently used by enemy infantry. The Panzer IV mounted a longer and more formidable 7.5cm cannon.
On 23 February, von Manstein also skilfully integrated this successful double envelopment with the counter-strike at Krasnoarmeyskoye into a combined drive to push the enemy back behind the Donets River between Zmiyev and Lisichansk. During 24–28 February, XXXX Panzer Corps advanced from Krasnoarmeyskoye to seize the river crossings at Isyum and Andreyevka, thus cutting the last line of retreat for Popov’s Mobile Group and the remnants of Sixth Army. During the next 72 hours, XXXX, XXXXVIII, LVII, and SS Panzer Corps not only defeated the desperate attempts of the encircled Soviet forces to break out, but also halted a rescue thrust from the east, in addition to mopping up the last pockets of enemy resistance west of the Donets. In these hard-fought engagements, the German armoured troops found that the recently delivered Hummel had an immediate impact on the battlefield; the ‘Bumble Bee’ heavy self-propelled gun mounted the 15cm s.FH 18/1 howitzer in a lightly armoured superstructure on top of the hybrid Panzer III/IV chassis. From early 1943 six of these vehicles had been introduced to equip one battery within each panzer division’s armoured artillery. The mobility of the Hummel enabled it to keep pace with the rampaging panzers and half-track APCs far better than towed 15cm howitzers. In addition, its longer range and heavier shell made it a useful tactical addition to the 10.5cm SdKfz124 Wespe (Wasp) self-propelled gun, which had entered panzer division service in late 1942.
By 3 March, therefore, von Manstein’s daring and skillfully executed counter-offensive had halted the dangerous Soviet advance west of the Donets, and had accounted for 611 enemy tanks. The Germans now capitalised on this success with a thrust northwest toward Kharkov and Belgorod. At this time of the year in the eastern Ukraine, however, the spring thaw usually arrived to turn the frozen ground into a muddy morass so thick that it could reduce traffic to a standstill. Back in mid-February von Manstein had prayed that the thaw would come in time to halt the Soviet advance, but now he hoped that it would be late to give his panzers time to recapture Kharkov, insubordinately abandoned by Hausser just three weeks earlier. The weather favoured the Germans and enabled von Manstein’s armour to advance rapidly over the frozen ground toward the Ukrainian capital.
On 4 March 1943, von Manstein’s four panzer corps struck northeast toward Kharkov and Belgorod. Despite the deep snow and newly arrived Soviet reserves hampering progress, the Germans nevertheless managed to advance into the city’s suburbs to initiate the Fourth Battle of Kharkov. However, von Manstein, remembering the lessons learned at Warsaw and Stalingrad, considered that employing Hausser’s elite SS armour in street fighting would prove too costly. The panzer arm was too valuable to be worn down in tactical urban warfare; it was needed intact for devastating operational-level mobile actions. Therefore, on 9 March, von Manstein ordered Hausser to encircle Kharkov, and only then to launch probing attacks to test the Soviet defences and assess if he could seize the city in a surprise coup de main. Yet on 11 March, Hausser’s spearheads disobediently fought their way into the centre of Kharkov in costly street fighting with the aim of securing such a coup before the rest of his command had completed their encirclement. Now Hausser’s immediate superior, Colonel-General Hermann Hoth, commander of Fourth Panzer Army, demanded that he avoid heavy tank losses by obeying von Manstein’s orders. Reluctantly Hausser complied, and consequently the city centre only fell on 15 March, two days after the encirclement had been completed. Hausser’s SS fanatics, however, promptly tarnished this fine military achievement by committing many atrocities against helpless civilians and disarmed prisoners. While ideological fanaticism powerfully augmented the combat performance of these troops, it also encouraged them to lower standards of behaviour in an already savage war.
On 16 March 1943, therefore, the Soviets faced defeat on their Southwestern Front, reversing the situation of just four weeks earlier. During the next 48 hours, Hausser’s corps thrust north to seize Belgorod to threaten the southern flank of the Soviet Central Front ,then deployed around Kursk. On 19 March, however, the weather suddenly turned warmer, thawing the frozen ground to deep mud, stalling the German advance. Consequently, there was a lengthy pause in operations between the exhausted belligerents.
Planning the summer offensive
From late March, the Eastern Front stabilised as both sides sought to rebuild their shattered forces for the summer campaign season. Indeed, the Ostheer had become so weak during this period that at one point it could only field 820 operational tanks to halt the Soviet advance. Given this stark reality, and irrespective of any brilliant ripostes that skillful German commanders like von Manstein might launch, the High Command tardily recognised the desperate need to redress the army’s shortage of armour. Hitler’s first step was to appoint General Heinz Guderian as Inspector of Panzer Forces on 17 February. To compensate for the severe casualties the panzer divisions had sustained in the East during the winter, Guderian secured a partial allocation of assault gun production for the panzers at the expense of the artillery branch. Although by 1 May 1943 total German tank strength across all theatres had fallen to a record low of 3.655 vehicles, in the following weeks the increased rate of production ordered in late January, plus the new assault guns, began to reach the depleted mechanised divisions in the east. During May-June the Germans were able to rebuild the four panzer corps depleted during von Manstein’s counter-offensive in readiness for a new strategic initiative that summer.
During the spring the German High Command decided to mount their next offensive, code-named ‘Citadel’, against the obvious target of the Kursk salient, a large bulge of Soviet-held territory jutting west into the German frontline that had been created by von Manstein’s successful counter-attack. This salient presented the Ostheer with the opportunity once again to surround and destroy a large Soviet force by implementing its favoured double-pronged Cauldron Battle technique. Such a plan, moreover, could achieve this encirclement within a modest geographical area, thus avoiding the dispersion of force that had dogged the summer 1942 ‘Typhoon’ offensive. The selection of a restricted battlefield area for Citadel, also reflected the German Army’s recognition of its dwindling operational mobility. It permitted unprecedented German concentration of force at the decisive point, with 17 mechanised divisions fielding 2,970 AFVs attacking along two fronts each less than 90 km (56 miles) long.
Though it was sensible for the Ostheer to concentrate massive force in this way, it would be pointless if the offensive intent was obvious, since this would simply allow the Soviets to concentrate even greater forces to resist the attack. The German Army had accomplished its stunning 1940 blitzkrieg victory in the West by massing its strength against enemy weaknesses. But at Kursk in 1943, the Germans merely succeeded in massing their strength against more formidable Soviet strength, in part because Hitler repeatedly postponed the offensive during May-June in order to reinforce the assault forces with the latest modern weapons to roll off the German production lines. Consequently, by the start of Citadel on 4 July, the Germans could deploy 200 new Panthers, 132 potent Tigers, and 90 SdKfz Ferdinand heavy tank destroyers to the salient. With these 422 modern AFVs added to the strength, Hitler erroneously believed, ‘Citadel’ could break any Soviet resistance, however formidable.
The repeated postponements, however, both threw away the element of surprise and also afforded the Soviets ample time to strengthen their defences. By 4 July they had established seven defensive lines within the salient to create the most potent in-depth defences ever constructed during World War II. While local German commanders to some extent recognised the Soviet build-up, they failed to identify the massive forces that the Soviets had deployed in reserve behind the frontline. This failure of intelligence attested to the increasing skill with which the Soviets implemented Maskirovka, their doctrine of security and concealment. Even on the basis of the increased Soviet force levels that the Germans had detected, the only sensible option during June was to cancel Citadel. Yet the continuing German belief in their superior will and fighting ability, despite all the contrary evidence witnessed on the battlefield since June 1941, led many commanders to conclude that the increased Soviets forces facing them would simply increase the size of the bag once they had successfully enveloped the salient. While this belief in racial superiority increased German tactical resilience, it also blurred their vision at strategic and operational levels. With hindsight, instead of initiating Citadel, the Germans ought to have used the precious armoured resource husbanded by Guderian either for a surprise attack elsewhere or as a mobile reserve to crush the next Soviet offensive, just as von Manstein had done at Kharkov.
Citadel commences
On 4 July von Manstein’s Army Group South, with the 20 divisions and 1,400 AFVs of Colonel-General Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army and General Werner Kempf’s Army Detachment, commenced its preliminary attacks from the salient’s southern shoulder. The following morning General Walter Model’s Ninth Army, part of Army Group Centre, began its attack from the salient’s northern shoulder with six mechanised and 14 infantry divisions. These two German pincers intended to link up at Kursk to cut off 850,000 Soviet troops in what would have been the largest Cauldron Battle of the war. At dawn on 5 July, Ninth Army’s spearheads struck at a 61 km (38 mile) sector of the first Soviet defence line. Sensibly, Model held back his mechanised divisions, ready to commit them once his infantry had broken into the Soviet defences. The Soviets, however, had correctly guessed the timing of the attack and so unleashed an artillery bombardment to disrupt the thrust. Despite a day of intense assaults Model’s forces had only managed to advance 11 km (seven miles) by evening.
The Germans commenced their main attack along the salient’s southern shoulder on 5 July. The panzer divisions each adopted a wedge formation with Tigers forming the point of the wedge, Panthers following them where available, Panzer IIIs and IVs covering the flanks, and APC-mounted panzergrenadiers bringing up the rear. Yet by evening Hoth’s forces had only advanced 10 km (six miles) despite repeated attacks. Worse still,
to the east, Kempf’s armour failed even to break through the first Soviet defensive line in the face of bitter resistance.
What modest success the German southern attack did achieve owed much to the effective close air support flown by German ground-attack squadrons, which flew 2,100 sorties. At Kursk, these squadrons employed recently developed tank-busting aircraft such as the Henschel HS-129B2 and the Stuka G. The former mounted the 3 cm MK101 cannon under its fuselage, the latter two under-wing 3.7 cm BK cannon. With these heavily armed aircraft, during that day and those that followed, elite German tank-busting squadrons, like that led by air ace Hans Rudel, devastated Soviet armoured formations. Approaching Soviet T-34s from behind at low altitude, Rudel’s Stukas targeted the tanks’ vulnerable engine compartments. Simultaneously Focke Wulf 190 A-4 fighter-bombers provided support by attacking Soviet infantry and artillery positions with SD-1 and -2 anti-personnel fragmentation bombs.
During 6–9 July, Model’s Ninth Army repeatedly struck at the enemy’s second defensive line to seize the hamlet of Ponyri and the vital Olkhovtka Ridge. These repeated German attacks, frequently backed by intense aerial and rocket-launcher support, made some progress, but vigorous Soviet armoured counter-strokes prevented Model’s forces from capturing Ponyri. Then, during 10–11 July, yet more powerful Soviet counterstrikes halted the progress of Model’s now exhausted and depleted forces. Despite seven days of repeated assaults, Model had managed to advance just 16 kilometres (10 miles). Even worse, on 12 July, powerful counter-attacks began to force him back towards his original starting positions. The attack of Ninth Army had been a costly strategic failure.
At the same time, along the southern shoulder the German armour gradually drove the Red Army back toward Prokhorovka and Oboyan, although repeated Soviet ripostes often slowed the German advance to a crawl. Indeed, in the face of such counterthrusts, it took all of the Germans’ tactical skill to prevent themselves being driven back. During one such riposte, on 7 July, it took the combination of accurate long-range fire from SS Tiger tanks, repeated Stuka and Henschel tank-busting sorties, and the courage of SS engineers employing anti-tank Teller mines, to halt 50 Soviet T-34s backed by infantry. Despite these successes, Kempf’s armour, deployed on the eastern sector, could not keep up with the advances made by Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps, exposing the latter’s flanks to further determined Soviet counterblows.
On 10 July, XXXXVIII Panzer Corps thrust toward Oboyan, while II SS and III Panzer Corps jointly struck north toward Prokhorovka. On that day, to overcome the powerful Soviet anti-tank screen that faced them, some German formations experimented with new armoured tactics. The elite Grossdeutschland Division, for example, altered the standard armoured wedge into a bell-shaped formation, the outer curves permitting the division to concentrate greater firepower on any suspected concentration of Soviet anti-tank guns. During the next day, the Germans accomplished a threatening penetration of the third Soviet defensive line south-east of Prokhorovka, a threat that prompted General Vatutin, commander of the Voronezh Front, to redeploy Lieutenant-General Rotmistrov’s elite Fifth Guards Tank Army to the area.
Final clash of armour
On 12 July at Prokhorovka the most significant engagement of the Citadel offensive occurred when 830 Soviet tanks engaged 510 panzers in a series of frenzied tactical actions. Early on during that overcast and periodically wet morning, Rotmistrov’s forces struck II SS and III Panzer Corps as they formed into armoured wedges for their imminent advance on Prokhorovka. Knowing that the German’s Panthers and Tigers possessed superior long-range firepower, the Soviets raced forward to close the range to as little as 60 metres (66 yds).
In a chaotic series of armoured clashes and infantry fighting that lasted for much of the day, the Soviets successfully checked the German advance north through Prokhorovka.
In tactical terms, the battle of Prokhorovka might be construed as a modest success for the Germans, since they lost 145 tanks while the Soviets sustained 440 AFV casualties. However, in reality Prokhorovka represented a serious defeat. The Ostheer could ill-afford such losses, and, most significantly, the battle wrested away what little operational initiative the Germans retained in Citadel. After Prokhorovka, the course of the battle turned decisively in favour of the Soviets. In part this led Hitler to call off the operation the next day, but it would also enable him to transfer forces to Sicily to repel the Western Allied landings. During the next 11 days, Hoth and Kempf’s forces had to carry out a stubborn fighting withdrawal back to their original positions in the face of fierce Soviet attacks.
Conclusion
An ill-advised assault against formidable Soviet defences, Citadel cost the Ostheer 890 AFVs and 53,200 troop casualties for a short-lived gain of just a few miles of strategically insignificant ground. It was this debacle rather than Stalingrad that represented the point at which German fortunes on the Eastern Front decisively changed. In both its conception and implementation, Citadel was seriously flawed. By attacking at the obvious geographical location for such an operation, the Germans threw away the benefit of surprise. Then Hitler’s repeated postponements provided the Soviets with time to strengthen their defences. On 4 July, therefore, the Ostheer unwittingly struck the most powerful defences it had yet encountered in the East.
Even if Hitler’s new ‘war-winning’ AFVs had dominated the Kursk battlefield, Citadel would have stood little chance of success. In reality, the operational debuts of the Panther and the Ferdinand were disastrous. The Panther proved fatally unreliable with more lost to engine fires and mechanical failure than to enemy action. The Ferdinand, while effective as a long-range tank killer and able to burst through defensive lines satisfactorily, was vulnerable to close-quarters attack through its lack of secondary armament and limited manoeuvrability. But above all, the failure at Prokhorovka and the Soviets’ undoubted defensive skills doomed the enterprise.
By 13 July 1943, the Germans had blunted their precious armoured reserves in futile attrition and thus allowed the strategic initiative, fiercely contested since Stalingrad, to pass irrevocably to the Soviets. By this point the 3.2 million Axis troops in the East faced a Red Army that could field 5.8 million. Yet even worse events were about to engulf the Ostheer, for the Soviets envisaged the halting of Citadel as but the first part of a co-ordinated strategic counter-offensive.
So, as the second article will explain, on 12 July, as the battle of Prokhorovka raged to the south, the Red Army initiated its own counter-offensive into the vulnerable northern flank of Model’s forces locked in combat along the salient’s northern shoulder.
Having impressively bounced back from the disasters it had encountered during the winter, the Ostheer threw away this recovery at Kursk. From 12 July, it would find its defensive skills severely tried by the repeated Soviet offensives that were to dominate the rest of 1943, the pivotal year of the ideological war in the East.
Read Part 2: Ostheer: July–December 1943, Holding back the Soviet onslaught
by Dr Stephen A Hart
Further reading
Agte, Patrick, Michael Wittman and the Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte (J. J. Fedorowicz, 1996)
Dunn, Walter S. Jnr, Kursk: Hitler’s Gamble (Praeger, 1997)
Erickson, John, The Road to Berlin (Westview Press, 1983)
Glantz, David M, The Battle of Kursk 1943 (University of Kansas Press, 1999)
Hastings, M., Jukes, G. & Hart, R., Essential Histories Specials 3: The Second World War: A world in flames (Osprey, 2004)
Healey, Mark, Campaign 16: Kursk 1943 (Osprey Publishing, 1993)
Sadarananda, Dana V, Beyond Stalingrad: Manstein and the Operations of Army Group Don (Praeger, 1990)
Weal, John, Aircraft of the Aces 6: Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Aces of the Russian Front (Osprey, 1995)
Zaloga, Steven J., New Vanguard 9: T-34/76 Medium Tank 1941-1945 (Osprey, 1994)
Ziemke, Earl F., Stalingrad to Berlin (GPO, 1968)