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Posted on 03/28/2005 9:45:36 PM PST by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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 The Battle of Kursk was a significant battle on the Eastern Front of World War II. It remains the largest armored engagement of all time, and included the most costly single day of aerial warfare in history. Though the Germans planned and initiated an offensive strike, the Soviet defense managed to stop their ambitions and launch a successful counteroffensive. The German Army relied on armored forces to push through enemy lines at high-speed (the famous Blitzkrieg tactic). This meant they could only assume the offensive during the summer when the Russian continental climate had dried out the ground enough to give tanks a high degree of mobility. The Eastern Front war in 1941 and 1942 had thus developed into a series of German advances in the summer, followed by Soviet counterattacks in the winter.  In the winter of 1942/1943 the Soviets conclusively won the Battle of Stalingrad. One complete army had been lost, along with about 500,000 Germans and allies, seriously depleting the Axis strength in the east. With an Allied invasion of Europe clearly looming, Hitler realized that an outright defeat of the Soviets before the western Allies arrived had become unlikely, and he decided to force the Soviets to a draw. In 1917 the Germans had built the famous Hindenburg line on the Western Front, shortening their lines and thereby increasing their defensive strength. They planned on repeating this strategy in Russia and started construction of a massive series of defensive works known as the Panther-Wotan line. They intended to retreat to the line late in 1943 and proceed to bleed the Soviets white against it while their own forces recuperated.  In February and March 1943 Erich von Manstein had completed an offensive during the Second Battle of Kharkov, leaving the front line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. In the middle lay a large 200 km wide and 150 km deep Soviet-held salient (bulge) in the lines between German forward positions near Orel in the north, and Manstein's recently captured Kharkov in the south. Von Manstein pressed for a new offensive based on the same successful lines he had just pursued at Kharkov, when he cut off an overextended Soviet offensive. He suggested tricking the Soviets into attacking in the south against the desperately re-forming 6th Army, leading them into the Donets Basin in the eastern Ukraine. He would then turn south from Kharkov on the eastern side of the Donets River towards Rostov and trap the entire southern wing of the Red Army against the Sea of Azov.  The OKW did not approve von Manstein's plan, and instead turned their attention to the obvious bulge in the lines between Orel and Kharkov. Three whole Soviet armies occupied the ground in and around the salient, and pinching it off would trap almost a fifth of the Red Army's manpower. It would also result in a much straighter and shorter line, and capture the strategically useful railway town of Kursk located on the main north-south railway line running from Rostov to Moscow. In March the plans crystallized. Walther Model's 9th Army would attack southwards from Orel while Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf under the overall command of Manstein would attack northwards from Kharkov. They planned to meet near Kursk, but if the offensive went well they would have permission to continue forward on their own initiative, with a general plan to create a new line on the Don River far to the east.  Contrary to his recent behavior, Hitler gave the General Staff considerable control over the planning of the battle. Over the next few weeks they continued to increase the scope of the forces attached to the front, stripping the entire German line of practically anything remotely useful for deployment in the upcoming battle. They first set the attack for May 4, but then delayed it until June 12, and finally until July 4 in order to allow more time for new weapons to arrive from Germany, especially the new Panther tanks. One could instructively contrast this plan with the traditional (and successful) blitzkrieg tactic used up to this point. Blitzkrieg depended on massing all available troops at a single point on the enemy line, breaking through, and then advancing as fast as possible to cut off enemy front-line troops from supply and information. Blitzkrieg involved avoiding direct combat at all costs: attacking a strongpoint makes no sense if an invader can achieve the same ends by instead attacking the trucks supplying the strongpoint. And Blitzkrieg worked best by attacking at the least expected location -- hence the Germans had attacked through the Ardennes in 1940, and towards Stalingrad in 1942.  The OKW's conception of the attack on the Kursk salient, Operation Citadel formed the antithesis of this concept. Anyone with a map could confidently predict the obvious point of attack: the German plan reflected World War I thinking more than the Blitzkrieg. A number of German commanders questioned the idea, notably Heinz Guderian who asked Hitler: Was it really necessary to attack Kursk, and indeed in the east that year at all? Do you think anyone even knows where Kursk is?. Perhaps more surprisingly Hitler replied: I know. The thought of it turns my stomach. Simply put, Operation Citadel embodied an uninspired plan. The Red Army had also begun planning for their own upcoming summer offensives, and had settled on a plan that mirrored that of the Germans. Attacks in front of Orel and Kharkov would flatten out the line, and potentially lead to a breakout near the Pripyat Marshes. However, Soviet commanders had considerable concerns over the German plans.  All previous German attacks had left the Soviets guessing where it would come from, and in this case Kursk seemed too obvious for the Germans to attack. However, Moscow received warning of the German plans through a spy ring in Switzerland. Stalin and a handful of the Red Army Stavka (General Staff) wanted to strike first. They felt that history had demonstrated the Soviet inability to stand up to German offensives, while action during the winter showed their own offensives now worked well. However the overwhelming majority of the Stavka, and notably Georgi Zhukov, advised waiting for the Germans to exhaust themselves in their attack first. Zhukov's opinion swayed the argument.  The German delay in launching their offensive gave the Soviets four months in which to prepare, and with every passing day they turned the salient into one of the most heavily defended points on earth. The Red Army laid over 400,000 landmines and dug about 5,000 kilometers of trenches, with positions as far back as 175km from the front line. In addition they massed a huge army of their own, including some 1,300,000 men, 3,600 tanks, 20,000 artillery pieces and 2,400 aircraft. The Germans had good information on the Soviet defensive preparations. Why they did not then switch targets remains a mystery.
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Yeah, SSI games had minimal graphics but great game play in ost of their games. Miss the "grand strategy" games.
Yeah Russia would not have allowed it. :-(
LOL.
LOL. No you weren't. ;-)
Hi w. I didn't even think of it. Shame on me, such a sad fate for those men.
Night all.
BE GOOD! Everyone should try it at least once.
Been there. Done that.
Good night Valin.
"a battery of six 75mm smoothbore recoiless rifles that fired downawrds and to the rear. This system was fired by an automatic magnetic trigger that fired when the aircraft flew over metal objects"
With an airspeed input and height over ground input that should work with 1940's tech. Low and slow attacks with constant speed and altitude, target well centered under the magnetic sensor, and it shouldn't miss with only magnetic inputs. Interesting.
Germans made interesting missle warhead fuzes for use against B-17s. The Ruhrstahl/Kramer X-4 air-to-air missile used a Kranich fuze tuned the sound of the B17's engines for proximity calculation.
http://www.luft46.com/missile/x-4.html
An interesting German surface to air missle was the Rheinmetall-Borsig Rheintochter 'Rhine Daughter'. A Kranich fuze was fitted to some of them. The Reich had a number of other proximity fuzes, the names of which I forget.
Rheintochter,
http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargrave/rpav_germany_rb.html
Enzian E-4, http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/LRG/enzian.html
You are likely familiar with this stuff.
A lot of the "Third Reich Secret Weapons" stuff is delusional, but some is not.
I had to go back to read this post. Very interesting revisionist research that the Germans were much closer to victory than previously thought.
Once again, I'm forced to observe what a strategic asset Hitler's awful generalship was for the Allies. He needlessly sacrificed an army at Stalingrad, and then when his weakened forces might have won at Kursk, he pulled the plug on the operation. On the other hand, his general staff produceed a poor, very predictable plan for the Kursk operation, so another Nazi leader might not have done much better than Hitler.
The breadth of the fighting on the Eastern Front, in terms of troops, weapons and territory, is truly astonishing. Most Americans, even in this era of WWII awareness, still don't appreciate the role of Stalingrad and Kursk in paving the way for our victories in Italy and France.
Thanks for this very interesting Treadhead post.
Welcome back home, CT.
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