Back in Germany , Goebbels declared over state radio a three-day period of mourning, with the closure of all places of entertainment during that time because of the Stalingrad disaster. The Soviet government urged partisan operations to be stepped up, saying that the war was not yet won. On February 8, Kursk , an industrial city and a centre of communications in the occupied USSR , fell into Soviet hands . Operations were becoming increasingly hard, as rivers were neither frozen nor fluid. Meanwhile, the disasters on the Eastern Front were followed by catastrophes in the Far East . All Japanese resistance on the important island of Guadalcanal had ended, and 9000 Japanese troops lost for the cost of around 2000 Americans.
As the front line settled in late March, an ominous silence broke over the eastern front. All operations stopped and both Hitler and Stalin began to consolidate their positions on the front. The Germans attempted to liberate Kursk with a pincer movement, but this too was stopped by the thaw, resulting in a bulge pointing toward the German lines.
The Germans had the opportunity to launch another offensive. Like the chess players they were, the Russians seemed to be playing a match against the Germans—during the winter it was Stalin's turn to move, and during summer time it was Hitler's turn. Hitler wanted a limited offensive this year to straighten the bulge around Kursk . This move would have several effects. Firstly, it would lower the distance of the curvy front line. Secondly, it would show the Soviets and Britain that Germany , despite its losses in the winter of 1942, could still launch an offensive.
Hitler planned his offensive for May. This time, unlike the previous years, Stalin knew about Hitler's plans from Churchill (and trusted him). Through regular readings of the German code, Britain 's Intelligence could read almost every German plan without delay.
During the silence, Germany reinforced her troops and tanks, now at the lowest strength since the start of Barbarossa. Soviet forces meanwhile turned Kursk and its surrounding areas into a fortress. There were no less than five—seven if the minor ones are counted— defence lines designed to meet with the offensive. German designers also came up with the answer to the Russian T-34, the new Panther tank designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. [14]
The attack date, set for May, was pushed back and forth due to unexpected delays and Hitler's own temperament. Regular scares from British and Soviet Intelligence led the Red Army and Air Force to be brought up to alert many times.
Finally on the first of July, t he date was finally set to four days after on July 5, at 0430 hours , just after daybreak.
At 2 a.m. in that morning, Soviet artillery fired into the German positions for about an hour and then stopped , catching them entirely by surprise. During that time, bewildered German officers wondered, if during the wildest of coincidences, that Stalin had ordered an offensive at the same time as the German Army. When they contacted their superiors, they were ordered after some discussion to start the offensive, codenamed Operation Citadel (German Zitadelle) promptly.
As the German soldiers waited for the bombardment to stop, a message came direct from Hitler:
Soldiers of the Reich! This day you are to take part in an offensive of such importance that the whole future of the war may depend on its outcome. More than anything else, your victory will show the world that resistance to the power of the German Army is hopeless. |
On both sides of the bulge lay 40% of the armies of both sides. It was more than obvious that both Hitler and Stalin regarded the offensive as vital for both morale and the survival of their armies. It was the largest clash the world had ever known.
The offensive in the north.
In the south, the Germans, led by Manstein, quickly took a hill called 228.6. A Russian counterattack on the hill failed, losing 120 aircraft and giving the Germans temporary control of the air . The air battle came at a high cost for both sides.
On land, the new Panther tank had its first experience of combat with the 48 th Panzer Corps, with around 150 such tanks under the Grossdeutschland Division. Although this new innovation had strong firepower, it was plagued by mechanical difficulties such as engine overheating. What might have worsened losses for the Germans was Manstein 's strict orders that no tank was to assist any damaged tank because it was the responsibility of the engineers, adding that all immobile tanks would continue to fire from their static positions. The result was that after getting stuck in minefields, many German tanks could not advance. The Panther was quickly eliminated from the battle scene – on July 10, Guderian reported to Hitler that there were only 38 operational tanks left.
In the south…
As the German Ninth Army, led by Model, advanced near Orel , it signalled the start of Citadel in the north at 0330 hours exactly, one hour after dawn. The ground was still muddy because of the previous day's rain . Aided by tanks and bombers, they let loose a barrage of bullets. As German troops fought through the Soviet trenches, the Russians would resist ferociously. Suddenly, despite the bravery of two Soviet divisions in resisting the 9th Army, they quickly collapsed and Rokossovsky ordered a massive artillery and air bombardment.
The Germans had advanced 6km in the north and 12 km in the south. At this rate, they would take at least two weeks to finish this pincer movement, let alone achieve their objective. Excellent Soviet defensive preparations and the lack of concentration of force on the side of the Germans were two causes of this slow progress.
The press on both sides acknowledged the intensity of the fighting. The next day, German press announced that “A successful local assault by German infantry in the Belgorod sector led to strong Soviet counterattacks which yesterday developed into heavy fighting on the ground and in the air. The fighting has spread into the area north of Kursk and, as of this hour, is steadily increasing in violence…” [15] Soviet press meanwhile reported that the Germans had only advanced very slowly with extremely heavy casualties in both tanks and aircraft.
The wills of two men, Hitler and Stalin, were in conflict again. This time, it was more violent and bloody than had been imagined. Hitler wanted the ‘ugly' bulge to be straightened. Stalin wanted that bulge to be retained at all costs. It was now clear that many were to die in the Bulge. Possibly more than in the Cauldron.
The pincer continues.
Hoth and Model's armies continued to advance. On July 7, 24,000 Soviet soldiers had been taken for substantially less German casualties.
On July 1 2 , a great tank battle in the village of Prokhorovka raged between Hoth's crack panzer grenadier division and the 5 th Guards Tank Army, comprising around 800 tanks, mainly Russian T-34. For the Hoth , the battle meant everything. If they won, they would be able to cross the Psel River and breakthrough into open territory.
The battlefield was one confused territory. The Russians had the advantage of being more manoeuvrable but they were also outranged. It was essentially a showdown between the two models of tanks, the German Tiger and the Russian T-34. An order from a German armoured unit, that was later demolished, illustrates this:
You are now waging an offensive with tanks far superior to the Russian T-34s. Until now the T-34 has been the best tank in the world, better even than our own. But now you have our new Tiger tanks. There is no equal to them. With such a weapon you warriors of the German army cannot fail to crush the enemy. |
Most tanks fought individual battles, and when knocked out, they would carry out the battle on foot. Remaining in their tanks was certain death—Russian anti-tank guns were now the best in the world, and special squads trained to blow up crippled tanks forced them to do so.
As with many battles of the Eastern Front, figures of losses are controversial here. Early estimates that were influenced by a number of factors including propaganda put German losses at 370 tanks ( and 10 000 men ) at sunset, though it is currently believed that somewhere German losses were around 100. Russian losses were substantially higher , at around 300 tanks. However, the threatened breakthrough was blocked temporarily. However, while Prokhorovka was a great tactical victory for the Germans, it was at best an operational draw, as they had not managed to break through the Psel River .
The German withdrawal
On July 13, Hitler called off Citadel. Due to the Allied landings in Sicily , Mussolini's leadership was being undermined. Also, whilst German successes so far had been extremely limited, the threat of a Soviet pincer movement encircl ing Orel and the whole northern side loomed, with a possible attack on Belgorod and Kharkov . Despite Manstein's numerous retorts that he was winning in the south, Hitler refused to budge. However, Hitler agreed to ‘limited offensives' to cover the withdrawal of the armies. A defence line stretching from Estonia to the mouth of the Dnieper was set up.
The Germans were in retreat again. But this time, it was summer time . Khrushchev would later remark in his memoirs ( Khrushchev Remembers) :
Our detractors used to say that the only reason we were able to defeat Paulus' s [sic] colossal army at Stalingrad was that we had the Russian winter on our side. They had said the same thing about our defeat of the Germans outside Moscow in 1941… people claimed that winter was our main ally. However, the Germans couldn't use this excuse to explain their defeat at the Battle of the Kursk Salient in 1943. They fired the first shot; they chose the time, place, and form of the battle. All the cards were in the hands of Hitler and his cut-throats. It was high summer. If you like fancy phrases, you could say that the countryside was in full bloom, dripping with fragrant juices. |
Disaster happens in Italy.
In Italy, a thousand miles away from the Eastern Front, popular support for the war was collapsing. On July 22, the Americans had already entered Palermo in Sicily. Organized resistance on the island was soon collapsing. The next day, Mussolini was sacked and arrested soon after by the Italian King. Hitler, knowing correctly that Italy was about to defect to the Allies, ordered for the immediate occupation of the country and Mussolini's rescue. Just as German troops were pouring into the north, the Americans and the British landed on the southern boot in September 3. Germany faced its second catastrophe that year—it had to fight a war on two fronts.
The retreat across the whole of the Ukraine
On August 22, Kharkov fell once again to the Soviets as the Germans withdrew. This time, it was permanently lost. On August 23, 224 guns each fired 20 salvoes in honour of the city.
Back behind the lines on September 2, in an effort to gear towards mass production, Albert Speer was made head of Germany's entire industrial production. This economist managed to raise German production despite bombing raids.
Himmler, on September 7, 1943 ordered the SS "to leave behind in Ukraine not a single person, no cattle, not a ton of grain, not a railroad track ... The enemy must find a country totally burned and destroyed." This was reminiscent of the Soviet scorched earth policy 1941. The German Army was ordered to leave complete destruction in its wake, so again 18,414 miles of railroads were ripped up, mines were flooded, industries that the Soviets took were dynamited, wells were poisoned, and over two million houses and buildings were burned and destroyed. [16] Most of the local population supported the move, fearful of Soviet revenge when they reoccupied the towns. (Most of the local population had fought alongside the Germans during 1941. Hundreds of Ukrainians had also volunteered to serve in Hitler's Army and SS .)
On September 9, Hitler discussed the situation in the Ukraine, and in particular the Donets coal basin with the commander of Army Group South, Field Marshal von Manstein. They agreed that the Army Group would retreat back to the Dnepr.
A week later, Donitz's Navy evacuated the last Germans in the Caucasus, stationed in the Taman Peninsula just east of the Crimea. The Red Air Force attacked some of the transports successfully. The number of ships sunk are contested by both Soviet and German historians. [Donitz claims that none of the ships were sunk]
On September 21, the Germans yielded Chernigov. This great industrial city was one of the largest in the Ukraine. Three days later, after weeks of heavy fighting, the Germans withdrew from Smolensk, pushing them even further away from the Soviet capital of Moscow. That day, the Russians crossed the Dnieper. The river offered a large degree of protection; yet German forces, battered and weary, could not hold the line.
On 25 October, the Russians entered Dnepropetrovsk, a large industrial city in the Ukraine. The Germans were losing this vast industrial area bit by bit. Field Marshal von Kleist ordered the evacuation of the Crimea but was overruled by Hitler even though the peninsula was now clearly threatened with encirclement—a second Stalingrad.
On November 6, 30 Soviet divisions, aided by over 1500 tanks, poured into Kiev. Stalin was overjoyed at the city's liberation.
The sole glimmer of success lay in Manstein's success in a counterattack. Attacking the clearly overextended Soviets across the Dnieper, the brilliant commander got within 40 km of the Ukrainian capital and reported to Hitler that 20,000 Soviets were dead and 650 tanks were desroyed, though few prisoners were taken. The thing, which aided the Germans in this counteroffensive, was the bad weather. The Luftwaffe was increasingly becoming endangered and soon becoming extinct on the Eastern Front as the Red Air Force grew in numbers. German fighters also had to be diverted to France and Germany to defend against ever-increasing Allied bombings.
As 1943 ended, the situation was still tenable but not good for the Germans. Though they still had the advantage of strategic depth (the borders of the Reich were still hundreds of kilometers away from the front), the Germans were outnumbered 2.5 to 1 in the south, 3 to 1 in the center, and 1.5 to one in the north. The Germans were also quickly losing the fertile Ukraine. But the main factor was the fact that the Russians possessed more material of only slight inferiority in terms of quality of the Germans. The main factor, unlike in 1941, was that the Soviets had improved the quality of the planes and the infantry.
1944—Defending the ground that our army had won in past great offensives (Goebbels)
The New Year of 1944 began optimistically for the Germans as well as the Russians. In fact, unlike the previous year (Stalingrad), the Germans did not face any real threat. Goebbels opened with his traditional speech in the newspaper Das Reich on 2 nd January [17] :
1943 was a year of testing for us. The Reich had the task of defending the economic and military ground that our army had won in past great offensives, and which is the foundation of the coming final victory. ... The enemy camp seriously underestimated the moral and military strength of the Reich in the most fateful and gravest ways. They are still doing that in part today. We Germans in general hold only our own government responsible if it makes false promises, but it is worth remembering that the British Prime Minister called the Anglo-American campaign in Italy the beginning of an attack on the soft underbelly of Europe and promised the public that reaching the Brenner Pass was only a matter of weeks. By the time the leaves fell in the fall, amphibious operations would finally have destroyed the Wehrmacht's strength in all the European theaters of action. One needs only a cursory look at the map to realize that these were hasty prophecies not worth the paper they were printed on. |
Stalin, too, was hopeful. The Red Army was already at striking distance of the 1939 border. Soon it would march into Germany and the heart of Central Europe—to rid Europe of Nazism.
In terms of manpower, the Soviets had 6,500,000 soldiers against the Axis 4,350,000. They also had 5500 tanks against 2250 German. The Soviets also possessed superiority in the air, having over 8000 aircraft against the German 3500.
Leningrad free
The first operation conducted in 1944 was the Soviet relief of Leningrad from the Germans. The Soviets gathered 375 000 soldiers against the Eighteenth Army's 167 500. On the morning of January 14, 1944, the Soviets opened fire on the Germans, catching them by surprise. Furious fighting pushed back the Germans mile by mile. The sheer weight of Russian numbers caused the front to crumble and collapse just 3 days after the offensive started. That day, the Soviet troops attacked Novgorod. Attacked by seven times their number, the Germans quickly abandoned the city.
With the whole of Army Group North in disarray, Kuchler requested to withdraw to a safer line. For this Hitler sacked him, with Field Marshal Model replacing him.
On January 26, the Leningrad-Moscow railway line was cleared. The next day, Soviet press announced with great pomp that the siege of Leningrad had finally ended. At least 900 000 died, with some figures putting the death toll at 1,250,000. That brings an average of at least 1000 citizens dying each day during the 900-day encirclement.
Starved people danced throughout the streets of Leningrad. The iron grip on the city had finally been set loose. Soviet warships anchored in the Neva River fired a salvo of 324 rockets.
The retreat continues across the Baltic.
As the Red Army advanced into the Baltic States, many of its German settlers and citizens fled westward, fearing reprisals on the local population once the village or town had been recaptured.
In Poland, the population, and especially the Jews, were exuberant at hearing the success of the Soviet Union. They knew that liberation would arrive soon for their country, now approaching a fifth year of German occupation.
Meanwhile, in the Ukraine, the Germans anticipated 1944 to be a year of retreat. Zhitomir had fallen on the last day of 1943. On January 28, the Russians trapped 60,000 Germans in Korsun. Another rescue operation, led again by Manstein, managed to link up for a brief few hours. Half of the force escaped, the rest were hopelessly trapped.
However, the Germans were pushed back to both Romania and Poland late in March.
Romanian leaders increasingly became half-hearted about joining Germany, now that the Russians were at the doorstep. They engaged in secret talks with Moscow.
Early in April, the Russians attacked the Crimea. Hitler ordered Sevastopol to be held at all costs, promising reinforcements from the sea. ‘Defend to the last man', was his order. On May 9, as Sevastopol fell, the Germans lost their last foothold on the peninsula. Only 1000 were evacuated. Now that the Germans had lost this important foothold, the road to Warsaw was open.