The Road to Berlin (24 page)

On the southern face under Vatutin’s control the situation had begun to look dangerous. During the first day of the offensive, Hoth’s massive tank blows had driven into the defensive field covering Oboyan. By the evening Vatutin was drawing on his second echelon (Katukov’s 1st Tank Army) and Front reserves, ordering Katukov into 6th Guards Army area, reinforcing with two more tank corps (5th Guards and 2nd Guards), bringing a division of 35th Guards Rifle Corps to Prokhorovka and four divisions into the Korocha area covered by 7th Guards. The next day Hoth moved up two fresh
Panzer
divisions for his breakthrough attempt towards Oboyan: Vatutin had planned a large-scale counter-attack for dawn on 6 July, but Katukov managed to persuade the Front commander of the wisdom of putting the tank formations on the defensive. The counterattack was called off and, as on the Central Front, the tanks were dug in, the anti-tank guns deployed in camouflaged positions. Towards evening the
SS Panzer
troops had carved their way into Chistyakov’s main defensive field; further south, Shumilov’s 7th Guards Army was pushed back and on the right flank German assault units were in the second defensive field, where at 1700 hours up to 100 German tanks were pushing eastwards.

That night Vatutin reported to Stalin, who had already shifted 27th Army to the south of the salient. Underlining the intensity of the fighting, Vatutin submitted that ‘as a result of a day’s fierce engagement, 332 enemy tanks, 80 aircraft had been destroyed, large numbers of officers and men killed. In the sectors of 7th Guards Army alone twelve attacks were beaten off and more than 10,000 enemy troops killed.’ Stalin approved Vatutin’s request for further reinforcement, but repeated his orders that the front was to fight attrition battles and to hold the enemy on the prepared defence lines until ‘such time as our offensive operations begin on the Western, the Bryansk and other fronts’. Marshal
Vasilevskii, who with Marshal Zhukov was co-ordinating operations on the southern face, now proposed to move up two fresh tank corps, 2nd and 10th, to reinforce the Voronezh Front in the Prokhorovka area; at the same time, Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army (part of Koniev’s Steppe Front) was put under
Stavka
contol and ordered to begin moving from Ostrogorzhsk to Stary Oskol. This was utilization of the ‘strategic reserve’, taking it apart piece by piece, whereupon Koniev protested very forcefully to Stalin and the
Stavka
, suggesting that the entire Steppe Front should be committed as a unity in the defensive battle, a proposal which the
Stavka
turned down flat, though the Steppe Front was finally ‘turned’ on to the Belgorod–Kharkov axis forty-eight hours later.

On 7 July the summer heat suddenly faded. The night was cold and fighting went on in the mist. When daylight came the
SS Panzer
corps—
Adolf Hitler, Das Reich
divisions, the flank secured by
Totenkopf
—fought their way along the motor-road towards Oboyan. Shortly after 4 am 400 tanks, with motorized infantry and artillery support, fell on Katukov’s 1st Tank Army on the Syrtsevo–Yakovlevo sector and Katukov called up Soviet dive-bombers which came down on the massed German columns. To the north-west of Syrtsevo, Katukov and Chistyakov moved in tank units, a rifle division (67th Guards) and more artillery to block the German advance. 7 July was a grim day for the 1st Tank Army: the front held by 51st Guards Rifle Division was shattered at its centre, and the tanks lacked a firm front across the line of the motor-road. Fourth
Panzer
Army had begun to bite deeply into 6th Guards Army’s defensive field. Vatutin now issued orders for a Soviet counter-blow at the flanks of the German units striking on Oboyan, where the defences were also to be put at immediate readiness. Vatutin planned two blows, one north-west of Tomarovka, the other on the Kursk–Belgorod railway line, to the north of Shopino, where
Abteilung Kempf
was attacking. The orders, issued at 2300 hours on 7 July and going also to Moskalenko’s 40th Army, were to prepare an attack: a few hours later Moskalenko received revised instructions to transfer most of his tanks and artillery, with one entire division, to 6th Guards and 1st Tank. At 1000 hours on 8 July 40th Army made little more than a ‘demonstration attack’; on the Oboyan axis, Col.-Gen Hoth had won a few hours’ margin, and at 1100 hours 500 of his tanks, straddling a four-mile sector astride the motor-road, pressed their own attack towards Oboyan, three
Panzer
divisions in the lead with Tigers and Ferdinands to the fore. By noon a force of 100 tanks had smashed the junction between 3rd Mechanized and 31st Tank Corps and was moving on Sukho–Solotino. At this juncture Marshal Vasilevskii promised
Stavka
reinforcement and Katukov duly received 10th Tank Corps, plus five tank and artillery regiments.

On the Verkhopene–Sukho/Solotino–Kochetovka sector, Fourth
Panzer
now concentrated five
Panzer
Divisions
(Gross Deutschland, Adolf Hitler, Totenkopf
, 3rd and 11th
Panzer)
with four infantry divisions covering the flanks: 11th
Panzer
would fight directly up the motor-road to Oboyan, the other armoured formations
to the east and west of it, in one final, flailing drive through the last Soviet defensive belt before Oboyan–Kursk. Tank fists of 60 machines and 200 machines, with assault infantry, dive-bombers and heavy artillery fire, battered their way forward on 9 July against Katukov’s tanks and Chistyakov’s riflemen. German tanks drew up to Kochetovka, Chistyakov’s
HQ
at 6th Guards; Chistyakov moved his main
HQ
to 1st Tank Army area, but his chief of staff Maj.-Gen. V.A. Penkovskii remained at Kochetovka with a forward battle headquarters to maintain contact with the rifle units of 6th Guards. By the evening Chistyakov had established a new defensive area for his army, but the
Waffen-SS
had crashed on—by Soviet reckoning, at the cost of 11,000 men, 230 tanks and assault guns—to within a dozen miles of the small town of Oboyan, no great prize in itself, but a foundation stone of the Soviet defence covering Kursk from the south. Deep though German tanks were into the defences of 6th Guards, the going had been agonizing and it now dragged to a halt. The axis of the German assault was about to be changed, from the frontal attack to the north-west along the motor-road to the north-east, towards the small town of Prokhorovka and its high ground which commanded the surrounding area. This would outflank Oboyan from the east and open another route for the German advance on Kursk.

Massing the main strength of Fourth
Panzer
Army on a narrow four-to-five-mile sector west of Prokhorovka would surely guarantee smashing in the Soviet defences; to the south,
Armee-Abteilung Kempf
would strike upwards to the north and north-west on Prokhorovka from the bulge pushed in the positions of 69th and 7th Guards Armies. To divert the attention of the Soviet command, the pressure on the motor-road to Oboyan would be renewed. Success would mean the encirclement and destruction of the two main groups of Soviet forces, and the route to Kursk would be open. To exploit any major success, XXIV
Panzer
Corps (with
SS Wiking
and 10th
Panzer
Division) would be used when available. On the evening of 10 July these fresh divisions were moving up to Kharkov from the Donbas, with orders to continue moving on to Belgorod and further north. At the northern face of the salient, opposite Rokossovskii, eight
Panzer
and motorized divisions, with eight infantry divisions, supported by Tigers and Ferdinands, would renew the attempt to crack these Soviet defences; six
Panzer
, two motorized and three infantry divisions would make the main effort, their flanks secured by five infantry divisions.

Between 10 and 11 July, as the Central and Voronezh Fronts submitted hourly situation reports to Stalin, the Germany Army Groups Centre and South were re-grouping. The climax was near. Great chunks of armour and infantry were being moved on the Soviet side into blocking positions on the Voronezh Front. Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army was now directly subordinated to Vatutin and had been ordered on the evening of 9 July to concentrate north-west of Prokhorovka. Col.-Gen. Zhadov’s infantry, 5th Guards Army, also one of the
components of the Steppe Front, received orders on 8 July placing it under Vatutin’s command. Moving by night, 5th Guards Army would advance itself some seventy miles up to the river Psel, take up positions on a twenty-mile sector running from Oboyan to Prokhorovka and be at full readiness on this line on the morning of 11 July. In addition to the two Guards armies, Trofimenko’s 27th Army with 4th Guards Tank Corps would move to Kursk and 53rd Army with 4th Mechanized Corps to the south-east of the city. Throughout Saturday, 10 July, though German attacks were pressed in the direction of Oboyan, Vatutin’s staff were aware that the German forces were re-grouping and reinforcing, with the likelihood of the attack swinging in the direction of Prokhorovka. During the night of 10–11 July Vatutin reported to Stalin on the imminence of the new German attacks on Prokhorovka; having failed to break through towards Oboyan (though the penetration was almost twenty miles deep), Army Group South would now apply the greatest pressure against Prokhorovka, attacking in this direction from the south and from the south-west. In six days of fighting, the enemy had suffered enormous losses and had expended his reserves. To mount this new attack, German units would have to be taken from the flank to feed the assault, which gave the Voronezh command opportunity to prepare an attack to encircle German forces operating against Oboyan and Prokhorovka. Within a short time, Stalin and the
Stavka
approved Vatutin’s plan to attack, a series of concentric blows from the east, north-east, north, north-west and west aimed at Yakovlevo and Bykovka. The two newly arrived Guards armies would be committed against the mass of the
SS
tank formations in the Prokhorovka area. Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army would attack southwards from Prokhorovka to the Pokrovka–Yakovlevo-Bykovka line, Zhadov’s 5th Guards Infantry Army (in co-operation with Rotmistrov’s tanks) also to the south and south-west, 6th Guards and 1st Tank Army from the west and north-west would drive south-eastwards for Yakovlevo, and Shumilov’s 7th Guards would attack due west. This would lop off the top of the German bulge driven into the Voronezh Front, and with their flanks so caved in, the German assault formations would be encircled. Rotmistrov’s tank army (18th, 29th Tank, 5th Guards Mechanized Corps) was filled out with two more armoured corps, 2nd Tank and 2nd Guards Tank Corps, making altogether 850 tanks, 500 of them in the first echelon (though half only light machines) and with only 35 heavy tanks or self-propelled guns in the entire army.

At dawn on Sunday (11 July), with the regrouping complete, Army Group South’s new attacks thudded into the Voronezh Front.
Abteilung Kempf
jumped off first, 6th, 7th, 19th
Panzer
divisions with three infantry divisions striking for Prokhorovka from the south; at 0900 hours, 3rd and 11th
Panzer
and
Gross Deutschland
divisions attacked towards Oboyan and thirty minutes later came the main, battering attack from the north-east,
SS Totenkopf, Adolf Hitler
and
Das Reich
on the march for Prokhorovka itself. The weather matched the stormy battle on the land, with high, driving winds and great bouts of rain, through
which German and Soviet planes fought each other or the ground troops. Shortly after noon, 100 German tanks were moving along the road to Prokhorovka; late in the afternoon a powerful tank force was on the outskirts and at Storozhevoe (to the south-west) more
SS
tanks had broken through to present a danger to the rear of the 5th Guards Tank Army, itself preparing to attack. Towards the end of this murderous day, the
SS
attacks were slowed and halted, with German armour jabbing all round Prokhorovka. There had been no breakthrough, but the triple German attacks had squeezed and boxed in almost all the Soviet armies—1st Tank, 6th and 7th Guards, 5th Guards Tank Armies—due to attack at dawn on 12 July. Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards would have to carry the brunt of this operation.

Map 4
Kursk, July–August 1943

At the hour when German troops had first jumped off on 11 July in their drive for Prokhorovka, many miles to the north—in the Orel bulge held by Second
Panzer
Army—reinforced reconnaissance battalions from the Western and Bryansk Fronts had begun their probing of the German defences covering Orel. During the night, Golovanov’s long-range bomber force had raided the German rear; before the Soviet battalions began their probing, Soviet dive-bombers laid down smoke-screens to cover their movement. This movement in strength from the north and north-east, the prelude to the offensive timed for the next day, had immediate repercussions on the struggle for the Kursk salient; Rokossovskii’s Central Front, well aware of German reinforcement for another smashing blow through the Olkhovatka defences, observed German columns in the course of the day turning northwards in the direction of Orel—tanks, engineer units, artillery and infantry moving out of Model’s assault groups, back on Bolkhov and Orel. The reconnaissance battalions from Bagramyan’s 11th Guards Army (Western Front) kept up their attacks throughout the entire day, remaining forward until 0300 hours on 12 July. At 0320 hours, 3,000 guns and mortars opened fire, hammering away for over two hours at the German defences while assault units of the first echelon of 11th Guards, crouching 100 yards from the forward German position, made their final preparations to attack under cover of the ‘fire zones’. The artillery of the Bryansk Front had also opened fire from the east to prepare the way for 61st, 3rd and 63rd Armies, attacking according to the plan devised in April, when the fixed focus of attention had been the Central and Voronezh Fronts. Bagramyan’s 11th Guards, an extremely powerful army, was due to attack from the north; rifle armies were attacking the nose of the German bulge from the east and north-east. The timing was critically important, for the operation was conceived wholly in relation to the Kursk battles. Striking too late would be useless and would bring Russian troops up against German armour both refitted and even rested, or at least not sufficiently blunted by fighting in the salient. The Western–Bryansk Front blow was certainly loosed off at a very sensitive moment, though possibly fractionally late; Bagramyan’s rate of advance, however, took the
Stavka
completely by surprise and there were no resources to exploit the successes of what was conceived initially as a localized relieving attack. The
Stavka
began rushing the 4th Tank Army to the Western Front, but it was already too late.