The Road to Berlin (17 page)

As April drew to a close, the Central and Voronezh Fronts completed their basic deployment for a defensive battle, following their first
Stavka
instructions. Stalin, however, remained at heart unconvinced and even gloomy about the outcome of a major defensive battle. Stalin sent out the strictest orders, embodied in the
Stavka
directive of 8 May, to Central, Voronezh and South-Western Front commands to maintain a state of full readiness to meet a German attack, but he toyed with the idea of a Soviet spoiling attack. General Vatutin, while still insisting on the need for more defensive effort, suggested in a report to Stalin that the Voronezh Front might stage a spoiling attack on German concentrations in the Belgorod–Kharkov area: Marshal Zhukov, Marshal Vasilevskii and General Antonov promptly squashed this idea in the joint opinion they submitted to Stalin. But for all this no one succeeded in stilling Stalin’s doubts, whose mind apparently dwelt on the disastrous defensive operations of 1941 and 1942.

Meanwhile, as Stalin wavered, Soviet troops dug in. On the Central Front, Rokossovskii submitted that the greatest danger would come on his right wing with the German attack unfolding along the Orel–Kursk axis, running south or south-east. An attack on any other sector would not present any particular threat since enough troops were available to counter it and to hold the ground in sufficient strength; the worst that might happen would be that some forces would be cut off, but they would not be destroyed. Since the main threat must come from the right, from the direction of Ponyr–Zolotukhino–Kursk, Rokossovskii proposed to deploy his main strength here along a fifty-mile front, with three armies—48th, 13th and 70th—in the first echelon. Pukhov’s 13th Army (with
48th on its right and 70th on its left) held a sixteen-mile front, with two rifle corps (29th and 15th) in its first echelon and four rifle divisions (15th, 81st, 148th and 8th) advanced as the first echelon of the corps, and with two divisions (307th and 74th) in the second. Second echelon of 13th Army consisted of two Guards rifle corps (17th and 18th), six rifle divisions and a tank regiment. The neighbouring armies, 48th and 70th, were similarly deployed in two echelons, while Rokossovskii held Rodin’s 2nd Tank Army at Fatezh as reserve echelon. For the 100 miles of the remainder of the Central Front (on the front bulge of the salient) there were two armies, 65th and 60th: the Front reserve consisted of 18th Guards Rifle Corps, two tank corps (9th and 19th), and anti-tank artillery regiments. For air support the
Stavka
had supplied 16th Air Army.

Vatutin on the Voronezh Front reported three sectors as being those most likely to be attacked: from the area west of Belgorod to Oboyan, or to Korocha or yet again from the area west of Volchansk to Novy Oskol. For this reason, the main strength of the Front was deployed at the centre and on the left, a sixty-mile stretch of front occupied by two Guards armies, 6th and 7th. Chistyakov’s 6th Guards Army (the old 21st of the Don Front) covered Oboyan, its front running some thirty miles, with four rifle divisions in the first echelon (71st, 67th, 52nd Guards and 375th Rifle Division) reinforced with a tank brigade and two tank regiments; the second echelon had three Guards Rifle Divisions (90th, 51st and 89th) with a tank brigade. To the left was another Stalingrad army, Shumilov’s 7th Guards (formerly 64th), on a 25-mile front with four Guards divisions (81st, 78th, 72nd and 36th) with a tank regiment in the first echelon and three rifle divisions in the second (73rd, 15th Guards, 213th Rifle Division) with two tank brigades and two tank regiments. Drawn up behind 6th and 7th Guards was Katukov’s 1st Tank Army (31st, 6th Tank Corps, 3rd Mechanized Corps) covering the Oboyan–Kursk approach, with 69th Army covering the Belgorod–Korocha and the Volchansk–Novy Oskol reaches. The remaining two armies, 40th and 38th, held the Front face and the right wing. Both Katukov’s 1st Tank (with three corps) and 69th Army (five divisions) formed the second echelon: the Front reserve consisted of three corps, 35th Guards Rifle (with three divisions), and 5th Guards Tank Corps. Of the thirty-five divisions finally available to Vatutin, eighteen were assigned to the Front second echelon or to army and Front reserve. And behind the Central and Voronezh Fronts, on the lines of Rokossovskii’s suggestion, a powerful strategic reserve was assembled; the Steppe Military District, which already existed on 15 April, was to be converted in some six weeks to the Steppe Front, whose first commander was Popov, the ‘mobile group’ commander of the south-west. Col.-Gen. Koniev subsequently took over this Front command, at a time when its power was enormous and still growing, to comprise finally five rifle armies including 4th Guards and 5th Guards, one tank army (Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards), one air army (5th) and six reserve corps—4th Guards and 10th Tank Corps, 1st Guards Mechanized Corps, 5th Guards and 7th, 3rd Cavalry Corps. This was the most
powerful strategic reserve assembled by the
Stavka
at any time during the war.

On
Stavka
orders, the artillery poured into the salient. Within eight weeks, more than 20,000 guns and mortars were at the disposal of the Central and Voronezh Fronts and more than 6,000 anti-tank guns, with 920
Katyusha
M-13 rocket-batteries in position. The actual reinforcement amounted to just under 10,000 guns and mortars, as 92 High Command Artillery Reserve regiments moved up. Pukhov’s 13th Army, covering the Orel–Kursk railway line, received a massive addition of fire-power with the assignment to it of 4th Artillery Breakthrough Corps (700 guns) and half the artillery reserve regiments despatched to the Central Front. For
AA
defence, 9 Anti-Aircraft Artillery Divisions, 40 regiments, 17 battalions and 5 batteries were deployed throughout the salient, with heavy machine-guns distributed throughout the defensive zones for firing at aerial targets. On the ground, Red Army engineers set about laying 40,000 mines. In the air, the three Soviet Air Armies were able to deploy some 3,500 aircraft (2,000 fighters, 800 ground-attack planes and 700 bombers, some from ‘strategic aviation’); in Central Front area alone, 110 airfields were built, and by the beginning of May the reinforced squadrons of Rudenko’s 16th Air Army moved up at dusk to their forward deployment, while 40 dummy fields and bases worked all in the glare of enemy reconnaissance. The fighter squadrons moved forward in small groups, flying low at some 300 feet under cover of early darkness; only the day bombers were kept back on airfields dispersed in the rear.

The lull on the ground persisted, but the war in the air began to hot up very quickly and by mid-May German planes were making their massed flights over Kursk, Yelets, Shchigry, Kastornoe and other rail junctions. Penetrating much deeper eastwards, German bombers put the Moscow defences on the alert and induced the same tremors of attack at Gorkii. To counter German raids in the front-line areas, the Soviet air armies scrambled as many fighters as possible; 16th Air Army responsible for Kursk itself was kept at full stretch, though the Russians were both gratified and relieved to see heavy bombloads delivered on the dummy airfields scattered about the salient. The defensive and reconnaissance air operations of the salient, however, were only one part of Soviet Air Force activity during the early spring of 1943; on
Stavka
orders, the several Soviet air armies were to engage in a battle for air superiority, a struggle which was opened by the two air armies (4th and 5th) of the North Caucasus Front, where the Soviet command planned to wipe out the Kuban residue of German forces and to reduce the Taman bridgehead. For the preliminary aerial offensive the
Stavka
released Maj.-Gen. Ushakov’s 2nd Bomber corps; Maj.-Gen. Tupikov’s 6th Long-Range Bomber Corps
(ADD)
also added its strength to the coming air offensive, which opened towards the end of April. The Soviet squadrons had a certain number of American planes (Bostons and Airocobras) and a few Spitfires but the bulk of the strength was Soviet including the new
Yak-7b
and
La-5
fighters. The co-ordination of the operations covering several fronts was entrusted to Novikov
(Stavka
representative for air operations in the south and now a Marshal
of Aviation). On both sides, upwards of 1,000 aircraft were involved, and step by step the tempo of the air war was increased. Over the Kuban on 28 April, 300 Soviet fighters were in action against German bombers attacking Soviet ground troops and targets, and heavy air fighting continued until 10 May.

In the Kursk salient the civilian population was mobilized to build the mass of defence works that all commanders considered indispensable; in April, 105,000 workers were digging, a few weeks later, 300,000. At the end of March, Soviet troops had thrown up hurried field-works as the
Panzer
units drove into them, but in April the fortification of the salient was reorganized and developed in highly systematic fashion. The civilian population presented a major problem—should it be evacuated from what would obviously soon become a major battle area? The Kursk
oblast
party committee suggested to Rokossovskii that civilians should be evacuated and anything of value which was also movable should be shipped out; the Military Soviet of the Central Front decided against evacuation, if only because such a move might have a depressing effect on morale among the troops. The civilians stayed put, many to work on the trenches and gun-pits (though troops were used to build the main system of fortification). Each rifle army in the salient established three defensive zones, two of them (‘main’ and ‘second-line’) constituting the tactical defensive zone with a depth of up to ten miles, and a third being the ‘army defensive field’. The basis of this defensive system was trenching and communication passages. Each front in turn built up three defensive lines, ‘Front positions’, which gave the defences a depth of up to thirty miles and on selected axes up to fifty miles. In addition to the Central and Voronezh Front fortifications, Steppe Front troops, assisted by the local population, constructed two more rear lines. Altogether in the salient there were finally eight defence lines, echeloned in depth to a distance of 100 miles. The strongest fortification went on the main defence lines, which had a depth of some three miles, with two or three positions connected by a system of trenches in turn connected by communication passages also fitted out with firing points.

Forward of the main line were wire obstacles, mines, explosive charges and anti-tank ditches; on critical sectors 1,500 anti-tank and 1,700 anti-personnel mines were laid to each kilometre. Battalion fire and support positions were laid out in circular fashion, with special attention to securing junctions of units. The anit-tank defence, based on ‘anti-tank resistance points’
(protivotankovye opornye punkty: PTOP)
, was laid out chessboard-style over each half-mile or so of the salient; the
PTOPs
included up to five guns, up to five anti-tank rifles, a section of sappers and a squad of tommy-gunners, with tanks or
SP
guns in one or two places. ‘Anti-tank areas’ were in a few cases organized by consolidating
PTOPs
with regimental sectors. The whole anti-tank defence was supported by ‘mobile blocking squads’ formed from anything up to a battalion of Red Army engineers supported by tommy-gunners, the whole squad motorized and ready to be deployed along the axis of any tank movement. The thickening of defensive installations on certain sectors depended on the operational planning of the Front commands.
Rokossovskii had selected three ‘variants’ (assumptions about the areas of projected enemy attacks); Vatutin, four. The movement of troops, the deployment of artillery and the scope of air operations were all planned within the terms of the Front ‘variants’. (Rokossovskii fought the first stage of the Central Front defensive battle under ‘No. 2 Variant’—the main German blow along the axis Glazunovka–Ponyr–Kursk, well enough known to the rifle formation commanders, because Lt.-Gen. P.L. Romanenko, 48th Army, Lt.-Gen. N.P. Pukhov, 13th Army, and Lt.-Gen. I.V. Galanin, 70th Army, helped to work out the general defensive plan.)

While the field-works went up, the officers and men of the reinforced divisions were put through an extensive training programme, more than half of which was devoted to night operations; staffs at all levels went through their drills. Infantrymen and gunners were given some instruction on the characteristics of the new German Tiger tanks; each formation built a practice range to train gunners in firing at tanks. Units in the ‘main defence fields’ were pulled out by rota for training on identical terrain in the rear. Rifle divisions held command briefings to review the entire defensive deployment, briefings organized by the Front Military Soviets and usually attended by the army commander with his staff. While this training programme went on, more labour was expended on bringing the rear into good order. Both the Central and Voronezh Fronts depended to a high degree on the Voronezh–Kastornoe–Kursk and Kursk–Yelets railway lines, both of which had been extensively damaged during the German retreat; bridges, not least that over the Don, had been blown and repair installations wrecked. Since half a million railway trucks were used to bring up men and supplies to the salient, the lines were put back in working order but they had to be secured against further damage by air attack.
AA
batteries were deployed by the bridges, ‘duty brigades’ with spare rail and equipment stood by at likely spots, while ‘mobile
AA
ambushes’ were sprinkled along the line to discourage the bombers.

The wealth of new equipment was not, however, offset by any similar largesse with men. Much of the reinforcement coming into the salient consisted of men locally conscripted and therefore in urgent need of training; Rokossovskii’s divisions numbered on average between 5–6,000 men, and only one corps (17th Guards) had 7,000-man divisions. Troops fit for operations were now combed out of the Front and army hospitals in order to stiffen the divisions. The defence in the tactical zones was assigned to the rifle corps deployed in two echelons (two rifle divisions in the ‘main field’, one division in the ‘second field’), but through deficiencies in the war establishment of the corps they could not be fully deployed. In only a few cases was it possible to provide rifle armies with tank and anti-tank artillery reserves, though independent tank brigades and regiments of
SP
guns were split up among the rifle divisions to provide either support or a tactical reserve. This worked out at an average density of 5–7 tanks per kilometre of front. The main tank formations were themselves fitting out or training, absorbing
the new models of the T-34, the heavy KV 85 and the
SP
guns, SU-122s and SU-152s.