The massed Soviet tank formations came charging down the slopes in front of Prokhorovka on the morning of July 12, 1943, firing on the move with infantry from the Ninth Guards Airborne Division clinging to their hulls. Over five hundred tanks assaulted the southern outskirts of the town, held by the First SS Panzer Division, while another 240 were committed against the Second SS Panzer Division to the southwest. It was the climactic tank battle of Operation Citadel, the German summer offensive against the Kursk salient, and it would decide whether the Wehrmacht could still seize the initiative on the Eastern Front. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt had agreed that the Axis powers could only surrender unconditionally.
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who had not attended, voiced his displeasure from the start. Although any hope of Germany winning the war against Russia had died at Stalingrad, the German Army in early summer 1943 was still capable of inflicting devastating losses on the Soviet Union if properly led. Roosevelt feared that a disastrous summer campaign might push Stalin toward a separate peace with Germany, leaving the Western Allies to face the full weight of the German war machine alone. After Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s counterstroke in March 1943 had stopped the Soviet winter offensive and inflicted considerable losses, he proposed a summer offensive of his own.
Hitler accepted the plan, which became known as Operation Citadel, but delayed it for two months until new heavy tanks were available. Field Marshal Walter Model, who would command the northern pincer, cautioned that the plan was painfully obvious and that the Soviets were already preparing deep defensive positions to counter it. Manstein argued that Citadel might have worked in May when Hitler signed the operational order, but by summer its success was doubtful. The Soviets had excellent intelligence before the operation began, partly through British intercepts of German Enigma traffic that indirectly gave them advanced knowledge of German plans.
Hitler’s delays played straight into Soviet hands. Stalin heeded Marshal Georgy Zhukov’s advice to postpone any Soviet offensive until the Germans had bled themselves dry on the Kursk defenses. Those defenses were substantial, built with the assistance of 300,000 civilians who dug trenches, constructed fortifications, and laid mines at a density of five thousand per mile of frontage. The German plan was a classic pincer movement attacking from the base of a bulge with the town of Kursk at its center.
Armies from north and south would meet east of Kursk, trapping the Soviet forces inside the salient. Nine Soviet infantry armies and two tank armies were at risk within the bulge, and any further Soviet offensive action scheduled for the remainder of 1943 would have to be cancelled if the Germans succeeded. Despite Manstein’s concerns about the repeated delays, Operation Citadel finally began on July 5 with a short but intense bombardment. In the north, the Ninth Army committed its infantry divisions first, hoping they would break open the Soviet defenses so the panzer divisions could then exploit the openings and crush the Soviet reserves in the open.
The infantry did not break through as needed, and the panzer divisions became mired in the defensive belts. The Soviet defenses were much stronger than expected, and Hitler’s prized Ferdinand Elefant tank destroyers, all assigned to the northern sector, fell short of expectations. Their powerful 88mm guns proved deadly to Soviet armor, but the 67-ton vehicles were mechanically unreliable and lacked machine guns for close protection, leaving them vulnerable to infantry anti-tank units. After several days of bloody fighting, the attack stalled near the town of Ponyri after the Ninth Army had committed its last reserves.
Model’s worn-out army had advanced barely ten miles and was still far from breaking into open country. Soviet casualties were heavy, but that did not prevent them from launching an offensive into Model’s northern flank on July 12. From then on, Model was hard pressed just to contain a Soviet breakthrough, let alone advance. In the south, Manstein had no illusions about his infantry’s capacity to breach the fortified defenses and employed massed armor formations from the outset.
The Fourth Panzer Army used its panzer divisions in the opening attack and had more success. A massive bombardment opened the way for General Hermann Hoth’s advance as it blasted through the defenses of the Soviet First Tank Army and Sixth Guards Army. Over the first three days of the offensive, the Second SS Panzer Corps broke through two of the three main defensive lines in front of it, but its progress was hindered by the failure of the Third and 48th Panzer Corps to provide flank protection. The Third Panzer Corps on the right flank had to start by forcing a crossing over the Donets River, where strong Soviet defenses delayed it.
It could not keep pace with the Second SS Panzer Corps despite having the elite Grossdeutschland Panzer Division with over 300 tanks. The 48th Panzer Corps on the left flank faltered from the outset due to hard resistance, mines, swampy ground, and mechanical failures that rendered 36 of its new Panther tanks immobile. The flanking corps’ failure compelled the SS panzers to divert resources to protect their flank instead of pushing north for a quick decisive breakthrough to Kursk. The pace of the Second SS Panzer Corps alarmed the Soviets.
It forced the Stavka, the Soviet high command, to prematurely commit strategic reserves to reinforce the southern defenses. The Fifth Guards Infantry and Fifth Guards Tank Armies from the reserve Steppe Front, along with the Second Tank Corps, were rushed forward to blunt the German advance. These formations were commanded by General Ivan Konev, who objected to this piecemeal commitment of his strategic reserve, since these two guard armies were meant to lead the planned counteroffensive after the Germans had exhausted themselves against the Kursk fortifications. Konev’s opinion was quickly changed by a personal call from Stalin.
By July 9, spearheads of the First SS Panzer Division were already at the outskirts of Prokhorovka, the last major line of Soviet defenses. The early commitment of two reserve armies showed how critical the situation had become around Kursk. The attack by the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army and several attached corps on July 12 marked the start of the final phase of Operation Citadel. The Soviet tank crews tried to close the distance between themselves and the German tanks as rapidly as possible to offset the superior firepower and range of German tank guns.
The gunsights and rangefinders on Russian tanks were crude compared to the advanced optics on the German vehicles, allowing the panzers to pick off Russian tanks at greater ranges. The Russian tactic of closing at speed disrupted the control and coordination of their tank formations and further reduced their accuracy. SS panzergrenadiers engaged the Soviet infantry at extended range with their machine guns, then waited for the Soviet tanks to close before attacking them with magnetic anti-tank mines. Despite this, German after-battle damage reports showed that most Russian armor losses were caused by artillery and mines rather than tank kills.
Another reason for the high Russian casualty rate was that Soviet air power was spread along the entire length of the front, dissipating its strength, while the Luftwaffe concentrated its effort on the Prokhorovka area. This gave the Germans local air superiority, which they exploited to the full. Luftwaffe liaison officers attached to German ground forces guided close support units to carry out pinpoint attacks on Russian armored columns to devastating effect. Even though it had managed to hold most of its ground, the First SS Panzer Division was exhausted by the end of July 12 from having to repel five Soviet tank brigades to its left.
The Third SS Panzer Division had advanced according to plan along the Psel River’s northern bank, outflanking Prokhorovka to the northwest. For the Soviets it was disastrous. In total they lost about 650 tanks to the Second SS Panzer Corps and lost more ground than they gained. Only 62 tanks had been lost by the three divisions of the Second SS Panzer Corps, and 80 percent of those could be repaired within days.
Enraged by reports of the heavy losses, Stalin angrily chastised Pavel Rotmistrov, the Fifth Guards Tank Army commander, over the phone late on July 12. He then dispatched Zhukov to take over coordination of the various armies near Prokhorovka, and simultaneously sent a commission to investigate the causes of the large losses and how much Rotmistrov and his plans had contributed to the disaster. Two weeks later, the commission’s report was finished and sent to Stalin. At first Stalin considered dragging Rotmistrov before a military court, the prerequisite for the firing squad in the Soviet Union at the time.
Only after several high-ranking generals begged him to reconsider did he change his mind. There was an air of optimism at Manstein’s headquarters on the morning of July 13. The Third Panzer Corps had finally broken through and was coming up on the right flank of the Second SS Panzer Corps, with the prospect of surrounding and destroying yet another Russian army. Manstein’s strategic reserve, the 24th Panzer Corps, consisted of two panzer divisions, one of them the elite Fifth SS Panzer Division Wiking, and was preparing to move into the front at Prokhorovka for the final push to Kursk.
Later that day, Hitler summoned Manstein to his Wolf’s Lair headquarters in East Prussia. Hitler stunned the generals present by ordering the termination of Operation Citadel with immediate effect. Manstein was bitterly disappointed. He argued that his forces were now on the verge of achieving a major breakthrough on the southern side of the salient, and that they would be halting the offensive just at the moment when victory was in hand.
Hitler gave permission for the offensive to continue in the southern salient but withdrew the 24th Panzer Corps to support the First Panzer Army, which was facing mounting pressure further south, ensuring Manstein had no chance of accomplishing his goal. Hitler had been alarmed by the Allied landing in Sicily two days earlier. He felt that moving forces from Kursk to Italy was imperative due to the possibility of additional Allied landings. By July 16, the Second SS Panzer Corps had started to redeploy troops to other Eastern Front sectors and the Mediterranean theater.
Hitler had run out of time. The Germans gained nothing from the delay in starting Operation Citadel, although it had proven crucial to its failure. The Elefant and Panther tanks had failed to live up to expectations, though the Panther would become the best tank of the war once its defects were solved. Only the Tiger tank achieved success during the battle, having entered service earlier and allowed time to mitigate its faults, but its low availability meant its impact was minimal.
The failure of Operation Citadel effectively sealed the fate of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. From then on, the Germans would never again take the initiative, fighting a defensive war of attrition they could never hope to win.
