Battle of Kursk

The Battle of Kursk was a World War II military encounter between the Wehrmacht and Soviet forces. It was intensely fought in the area near the city of Kursk, in southwestern Russia, from July 4 to July 20, 1943, on the Eastern Front. It is deemed as the largest tank battle in military history. The military operation that sparked this battle was Operation Citadel, or Unternehmen Zitadelle, which was the last major German offensive launched on the Eastern Front. Its main objective was to eliminate the Soviet-held Kursk salient in the front line.

The result of this military clash was a strategic victory for the Soviet forces. Since the Germans could not reduce the bulge, Hitler called off Operation Citadel, even though the Wehrmacht was gaining terrain and had done a lot of damage to the Red Army armored units.

Rationale for Launching Operation Citadel

After the German counter offensive mounted by Erich von Manstein and the victory over the Soviets in the Third Battle of Kharkov between February and March 1943, the front line ran from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south, leaving a 120-mile wide and 90-mile deep Soviet-held salient in the middle. This salient jutted out in the lines between German forward positions near Orel in the north, and Kharkov in the south. Thus, the Germans hoped to shorten their lines by eliminating the Kursk bulge. The German Generals envisioned pincers breaking through its northern and southern flanks to achieve a big encirclement of Soviet forces.

German Forces

To launch Operation Citadel, Germany had built up a massive concentration of men and tanks in the region; around 700,000 soldiers, 10,000 artillery pieces, 2,700 tanks and 2,000 aircraft. About one 3rd of all Germany's military strength was concentrated in the area as elite Luftwaffe units were also deployed there. However, the Germans were heavily outnumbered by the Red Army in a ratio of 5 to 1.

The German forces consisted of Army Group North's 2nd Panzer Army, the 9th Army, the 2nd Army, which were under the command of Gunther von Kluge; and 4th Panzer Army from Army Group Kempf, and Army Group Reserve of Army Group South, under the command of Erich von Manstein. These armies included 17 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions, among them were the elite Wehrmacht Grossdeutschland Division, the 1rst SS PzGrenDiv Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, 2nd SS PzGrenDiv Das Reich, and 3rd SS PzGrenDiv Totenkopf grouped into the II SS Panzer Corps.

Soviet Forces

The Soviet forces were composed of the Western Front (50th Army, 11th Guards Army, 1rst Air Army), the Bryansk Front (3rd Army, 61rst Army, 63rd Army, 15th Air Army), the Central Front (13th Army, 48th Army, 60th Army, 65th Army, 70th Army, 2nd Tank Army, 16th Air Army), Voronezh Front (6th Army, 7th Army, 38th Army, 40th Amry, 69th Army, 1rst Tank Army, 2nd Air Army), Steppe Front (5th Guards Army, 5th Guards Tank Army, 5th Air Army). All these Bolshevik military units put together had at their disposal 20,000 artillery pieces, 3,700 tanks, 2,500 aircraft. They were under the overall command of Soviet General Georgy Zhukov.

Summary

The Germans launched Operation Citadel at 04:30 hours of the morning of July 4, 1943, with an artillery barrage in the northern sector. The tank and infantry attack began at 05:30 hours when air cover had arrived. With heavy tanks as spearhead, the Germans pierced in the Russian lines, gaining a 7-mile deep piece of land during the first 24 hours of fighting, wreaking havoc on the Bolshevik forces. Nevertheless, penetration depth tended to drop as the attack proceeded due to the ability of dug-in Red Army units to delay the Germans, allowing their own reserves to be brought up into threatened sectors.

In the south, the II SS Panzer Corps launched an attack on two Red Army rifle regiments. The armored spearhead of Hoth's 4th Panzer Army forced its way forward, and by July 6, had pushed more than 10 miles past the lines. The threat of a German breakthrough in the south had to be reckoned with. However, the attacking German units had been squeezed into ever-narrowing fronts by the defenders. Elite Red Army Guards Airborne units were holding firm on the flanks of the very narrow German penetration. The Germans could not squeeze many units into this narrow front, nor did they have the military capacity to widen the penetration. Thus, as the attackers moved forward, they continually lost strength due to the need to hold their own flanks.

As the days went by, the Germans struggled to encircle and destroy more than seven Soviet armies. If the Wehrmacht had won the Battle of Kursk, the Soviets would have been forced to delay their operations, which in turn might have given the Wehrmacht desperately needed breathing room on the Eastern Front. Nevertheless, after the first week of ferocious battle, the German forces soon became deadlocked in a war of attrition that it could not win.

As the Western Allies had mounted an amphibious invasion of Sicily on July 10, Hitler summoned von Kluge and von Manstein to his Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia and told them that he had the intention of temporarily calling off Operation Citadel. Erich Von Manstein tried to convince him to continue with the military operations, arguing that Citadel was on the brink of victory. Hitler's decision to cancel the operation at the height of the Battle of Kursk were strongly criticized by German generals in their memoirs, and also by some historians. For example, it was pointed out that the SS Panzer Korps would have taken three months to be transferred to Sicily, and thus could not possibly have affected the outcome there, while its contribution to the Kursk operation was vital.

Map of the Kursk Salient

Below, German Tiger I tanks and armored vehicles from the 4th Panzer Army at Kursk

Below, Soviet T-34 and T70 tanks maneuvering as they prepare for the German onslaught

Below, Soviet infantry soldiers looking for a safe position from which to shoot their antitank rifles

Below, German Marder III self-propelled gun