uh generally speaking the Soviets plan for a defensive phase here this is let the Germans call it citadela we'll have two two two operations operation kuso Operation ranf one against the orol Salient in the north against second ponzer Army once down here against the forces that have launched the southern uh arm with the cursed attack and then we'll also launched and these aren't planned in as much detail operations VAR off each one of these is an operation and each one of these has a date and name attached to it and each one of these is planned either in detail or in outline prior to the 5th of July when the Germans launched citadela all of this as we'll see at the end will in fact occur and as a matter of fact it will occur and then be expanded upon to the point where you see this dotted line which is the ultimate Soviet objective that dotted line is back here by the time we get to the end of July and the German Battle of krisk is over okay a few things about the German the Soviet defense it is a defense in depth perhaps one of the most imposing defenses in history uh this isn't going to show it very well and really i' simply you can almost squint your eyes because what I want you to see here are the number of distinct defensive belts you see here the central front and the north of rones front in the South you have core defensive belts Army defensive belts front forward defensive belts front rear defensive belts this goes back to a depth of 200 kilometers and most of these belts are manned with troop units on the ground it is an anti-tank defense and a and a defense tremendously strong in artillery I'm not going to show you some of these things for time sake but this one will show you the northern half of the the northern half of the uh bulge each one of those little circles which you can't see the number in is a division a Soviet rifle division numbering about 7500 to 8,000 men some of the secondary sectors perhaps a little smaller you see these little symbols each one of those symbols is an anti-tank strong point an anti-tank strong point usually has several a company of infantry several anti-tank weapons a field gun or sometimes a tank or a self-propelled gun it will also have in it sappers with shape charges several of those anti-tank strong points together will be an anti-tank region that is the way those things are woven together every division creates them every regimen creates them and they're created all the way up to core level formidable anti-tank then you have artillery this is the artillery fire plan the distribution of artillery units if you could see it you would see all the artillery units and you would see the boxes of pre-planned concentration fires assigned to each along the anticipated Advanced axes of German poner forces because by this time the Soviets well know how the Germans operate they've been murdered by them enough times to know and it goes all the way down to this one this is a graphic for the use of of multiple rocket launchers cus those those rail mounted Rockets some of the truck mounted that fire volleys of 7 8 10 14 waves of rockets these are all woven in you'll see the boxes there pre-planned fire areas I'll tell you in anti-tank defense at K you will see some sectors where multiple rocket launchers located behind first Echelon divisions on Main attacks AES of the Germans are ordered to lure their ramps and fire over open sights on German tanks as they come over ridgel lines you can imagine the surprise of a tanker and SS ponore to see these things they weren't very accurate but they made one hell of a fire show and to have a whole volley fired at you direct fire uh will probably not do much damage but but probably have some effect on your morale I'm not going to show you the graphics for the rest of the thing because essentially the entire curse Salient is so fortified I do want to show you this because this is going to contradict and I won't again I know you can't see it so I'm just going to go ahead and talk about it this is a maneuver plan for tank forces at the operational level separate tank brigades and separate tank course at the Battle of Kur now most people know the Soviets have tank armies at KK first tank Army in the south second tank Army in the north and at the Battle of proroka UPC comes General Mistro's fifth guards tank Army three full cores almost 900 tanks they also had tank cores with 250 20 250 tanks each and separate tank brigades and there is a whole story of the battle of curse that has been forgotten that essentially undercuts this this business of grinding your way through a Soviet positional defense and that is this from the very outset here are the German attack AIS here and to the north and if you see these circles right here you can't but believe me I I'll read them to you one is second guard's tank Corp and one is fifth guard's tank Corp there's several smaller circles that are separate tank brigades and the missions of these brigades and cores is to constantly maneuver around the flanks of the advancing German poner spearhead and strike it on the flanks over and over again incessantly because one of the weaknesses of the Germans is in infantry by this time of the war they simply don't have enough loners to go around and if you strike second SS pondra cor as it's heading north with its three divisions AB breast they're going to have no choice but the turn around one of those divisions toen cof is the one and say okay protect our flank against this attacking German tank Soviet tank force the same thing will happen to every single main German AIS of advance and it's these tank cores the second guards tank fifth guards tank you'll see about day five of the battle a second tankor appear that's also a separate tankor the 10th tankor will appear That's a separate tankor and the same thing will happen up in the north to a lesser extent that is the real story of K the real reason why those two armored spearheads 48th ponor and second SS Pon cor are stopped one is stopped cold 48th Pon cor is because of that constant nibbling along the flanks that erodes their strength combined with tremendous amount of anti-tank forces laid in their path and we'll see these as the de battles develop the same thing on the case of second SS ponor it does get deeper but by the time it gets deep it's a shadow of its former self I want to show you something else and this is a book out of it tell us I think it tells two stories one's an intelligence story and one is a deception story but I'm not going to spend much time on it so I'm just going to show you one graphic if those of you who have read bonin's lost victories I'm sure everyone has I read it when I was a teenager uh this is a map out of lost Victory written 1958 this is a lay that's awful but if you look at it there's a lay down of German of Soviet forces it's a night NE nice neat lay lay down you can see the numbers of the armies there the Germans Miss seven armies seven armies are not there on this map that we're there and this is the deception story this is the intelligence Story by 1943 one of the most fatal problems that the German ver has beginning to surface with a Vengeance and that is the inability to detect operational and strategic reserves when the Soviets bring them up that had been a problem in 41 that's why the Germans in consternation would destroy Five Armies and then look out across the river and see four more lined up they did it over and over again they never knew the armies were going to be lined up because they'd assumed them all away in their Barbarosa plan this happens in 1942 and it will happen again in 19 43 and it kers and it will happen all the way to Wars end until we get to 1945 when in many of the operations the Soviets lose are able to cover up conceal half of their attacking forces six out of 12 armies in large Bridge heads in some instances let me put that in uh clearer form here's a graphic I put together that shows you precisely which armies monstein didn't know was there again this is a little bit clearer this also spells another thing for you and that is the definition of the battle of KK to a German this is kers it starts on five July when the Germans attack and it ends on 12 or 13 July when the Battle of proroka is over that is Curse to the Germans that is it it is a week this is Curse to the Soviets it begins on five July the first phase ends on the 12th of July when the Germans stop it continues with the offens up here and the offensive down and this is on 12 July this is on 5 August and it spreads down here to 13 August and further north the 27th August the Battle of curs for a German for a Russian begins on five July and ends on 28th August with the fall of karov to the Soviets this is why you have a problem in numbers when you see Soviet accounts of KK and German accounts of KK the Soviets count all the tanks 8,000 of them on the entire front whereas the Germans are calculating a much smaller number in this area but that's neither here nor there uh that if you count them there are seven armies there that manstein does not know are there when the commander of second SS ponore General Hower says I want to continue after the battle of proar rova I have 195 tanks and I want to continue and I've knocked out over half of fifth guard's tank armies they've only got 390 left and and I want to continue and I can beat them and I can go deep to vones he doesn't know what's out here three armies a full mechanized core with 240 tanks a full a full tank core with 220 tanks all waiting in the wings and of course all these are up here too these are getting ready to go over to the offensive against German forces at Orel so there is a a major intelligence problem here for the Germans numbers and figures are chilling and I'm not I've got a whole snack of numbers and figures charts uh frankly I don't think we need them because you probably can't read the numbers anyway but what I'm going to do is show you what we have we have the composition of every single German Division and core throughout each day of the battle of curse we know what they're equipped with what models how many they lose of each model BL BL BL BL BL there was a book out there you ought to buy if you haven't bought it already it is a book by Valerie Zulan he's a director of research at the curs Museum he's been fired uh if you read the book you'll understand why uh it it came out about three years ago as the myths of proroka it is now out published by Helen press demolishing a myth is its title it's a beautifully done book The Press has bet the whole their existence on this book selling it is an a number one translation and it's got all these numbers and figures and they're better than the ones I have because they're even more current so if you want a good book on the Battle of pro kovka in its concept its context Valerie zulan's book uh demolishing the myth numbers just going to throw a couple of these up yeah I guess we can read those but I'm not going to spend much time on it just to know what scope we're getting with this is the central front there are the armies of the central front second tank Army notice the strength jeez I can't even read it myself uh 510,000 men6 seven tanks and self-propelled gun that's roughly half of the Soviet Force at K okay that's that's half of the Soviet Force the vones front 46 actually 625,000 men 174 tanks you see them divided down by armies the point here is it's a lot of people and that we do know what the numbers are today that's basically all you need to take away the Germans no sorry reinforcements that go into Veron front another 915,000 by the 15th uh 15th of July Grant total 1.6 million men committed to this battle uh a force of roughly 5,35 tanks that's a lot of a lot of folks a lot of a lot of armor Germans 431,000 in Army group Center 1,4 tanks we'll do a quicky on Army group South 349,000 tanks net total 780,000 you can do the math 1.6 million Soviets uh rough 780,000 it's about 2 to1 the Germans are attacking with a 2:1 Superior enemy to start with uh the tank force also roughly two to1 Superior the Germans are gambling on technology they're gambling on their new Panthers their new ferdinands and their new Tigers to do marvelous things in the battlefield when in the hands of an accomplished Soviet uh poner leader I've got corl ations of forces up to you know what uh let me just show you a couple this one broad number here to give you an idea of what the Germans are dealing with here uh I didn't even mention the step front that's extra that's back there and it's sitting around waiting to to do the counter offensive phase the totals at K Soviet a little over a million German 567,000 the correlations you see 2.0 to1 tanks just a little bit under 2.0 to1 so you know it's not a battle with the Germans now the Germans are very tell them going into a major operation in this war with superiority they did in Barbarosa for a variety of of reasons but they didn't in 1942 and they certainly wouldn't in 1943 any any questions on numbers I'm going to show you only one other nine M num numbing slide of numbers and that'll be the battlefield at proar rova so you can understand exactly what's being committed at any given time there now the battle in the north I'm going to go through this quickly because the battle in the North is an attrition battle it is an attrition battle on both sides for the first time in the history of the war the German ponor units two ponzer cores do not do not break through the Tactical def defects uh depths of the defense they can't do it they'll get about six or seven kilometers deep before they're mired down in an endless war of attrition against anti-tanks and tanks and guns and rocket launchers and you name it uh in the south proov in the South the southern half of the Bulge the Germans will get into the operational depths they'll get about 20 kilomet deep but realize that in no campaign prior to 1943 did the verock get stopped short of the Strategic depths never did they get stopped short of the Strategic depths so this is very very much new for operations on the Eastern Front Germany's Eastern Front here's a lay down let me see how these look on this uh if you notice the blue is the German start point you probably can't read the numbers here but these are infantry divisions ponzer Division ponzer division ponzer division ponzer division they generally put one poner or two ponors forward to kick off in the front lines then they'd follow again shortage of infantry always a shortage of infantry by this stage of the war the German Soviet defenses rifle cores in two echelons with two divisions up one back the divisions themselves with two regimens up one back the armies themselves with two cores up one back and lurking in the rear Soviet second tank army with two tank cores each made up of three tank and one motorized rifle brigades and two separate tank cores the 19th and the ninth in the mix back there a lot of forces and the commander of the central front will decide to commit all of those forces to the positional battle in other words the orders that go out the J general romanenko second tank Army are go into combat in support of the Infantry engage the tanks head-to-head and fight them to a stop if necessary dig your tanks in and he will do just that therefore you'll see this turn into and well I'll show it to you day by day this is 2200 hours from the 4th of July the day before the attack the attack begins on the 5th you can see the German Advance beginning to make inroads here in the axes of the two poner Corp generally speaking the German poner divisions go forward the Soviets essentially eat up their lead rifle divisions trying to absorb the ponzer attacks relying heavily on those anti-tank regions I showed you and tremendous Mutual support between the various elements and the guns in those regions when they when necessary when they break through the first division they'll send in the leading separate tank regiments usually with heavy tanks to go in to Simply support the Infantry and then on the heels of that they'll send in light medium or heavy self-propelled artillery pieces these are not artillery these are direct fire heavy guns mounted on t34 tank chassis that charge into bus bunkers and smash advancing infantry formations and tanks these things will meet head-to-head in the battlefield and a virtual slugfest with heavy caes to both sides and then you'll see the separate tank cores going in a brigade by a brigade roughly 49 tanks per Brigade the brigade's broken down into companies and finally second tank army with its two tank cores the 16th and the ninth they will go in I'm sorry the third and the 16th they will go in with their brigades six of the tank brigades committed with a motorized rifle forces didn't have trucks they rote on the tanks they provided the Infantry support so that's the way this battle will develop and you'll see it doesn't develop very deep and it doesn't develop very fast but it is very intense and very bloody in specific sectors where these forces meet to give you an idea of how this work this is the 6th of July there are two places a little village called sod durova right here another one over here called ponier station number one ponier station being a station on the railroad line that's associated with poner State Farm both of those areas will become focal points for combat and they'll exchange hands six seven times each over the course of three or four days as each side commits more forces into combat gives you a blowup this is a blowup of the 15th rifle division you can see it's its regiments deployed up this way three forward uh two forward one back battalions arrayed the same way this is the lead regiment the other two regiments are back here there's another rifle division back here and I'll just show you the way this thing develops in this particular uh case this is about a 5 kilometer front we're looking at actually it's a 1 km front you can see the scale right here but you can see the general envelopment with Soviet of German tanks buy these units they fight their way out in between the tank peners you'll then be getting support from the second Echelon regiment a lot of individual small unit stuff going on on the ground and what is a very very intense combat this is uh 18800 hours 5 July to 0600 hours overnight on the 6th of July you'll see the Soviets extract what's left of those units back these units are designed to do nothing more than and cause attrition on the German units to slow them down cause casualties cause damage uh disrupt their formation and once they're disrupted of course then they'll run into the next Soviet division which will do the same thing and as the disruption to the Germans increases new Soviet armor will come in self-propelled gun units tank regiments tank brigades and all of the cumulative effect of all of that is to road down the German strength this is the 7th of July now we're into three days of combat we're about ready now to have the tank cores committed into combat and support this is Pon re station this is Samu durova that I was showing to you a moment ago uh we have a blowup we can do py station pretty well this is0 600 hours in the 7th it's a sector held by the 307th rifle division backed up to the rear by two guards Airborne divisions the Third the fourth uh you can see the regiments two forward one back self-propelled artillery anti-tank reserves all sorts of things you can't read them on this on this map the way it's configured but these are the sorts of heavy weapons that are committed on a Time sequenced basis to support those infantry as they absorb the German blow and in this case we're dealing with essentially 18th Pon division advancing in two comp groupin uh comp group and one formed around its ponds or grenadiers it's motorized infantry and other around its armor and and basically if you just look at the arrows you'll get the idea of what's going on first the commitment of the second Echelon Regiment of that division Fielding forward of the next guards Airborne Division getting ready it its Progressive commitment into the area of fresh forces each Force designed to further erode the German strength this is the 8th of July you can see the extent to which they've they've moved roughly from here to here that's about 8 kilometers not much it's certainly not a an operational Breakthrough by any means and you can see if you had if you could see it You' see the two tank armies now beginning to position their course to go into combat to add that final heavy crushing weight against the German spearheads to bring them to a stop again situation 8 July here goes the third guards Airborne Division in fourth guards airborne division is getting ready to go the entire battle has encompassed about a three Square kilm area around poni station and by now after 3 days of fighting it is a graveyard of wrecked Vehicles smashed tanks guns artillery pieces bodies you name it it's just a god- awful mess the effect is of course to bring the Germans to a grinding screeching halt this is the final stage on the 9th of July the commit into the third guards Airborne back out of Reserve again fourth guards Airborne going back into 307th is already out now and by this time the Germans are utterly sacked they've had to commit the 10th ponza Grenadier to try to bolster the 18th sponsor it doesn't have the energy to go any further the situation on the 11th the 10th of July you can see the line basically stabilizes it's not going very far and I'll show you the 12th of July the same thing by this time the Germans are down to one ponzer division it's back here it's the 12th ponzer it has not been committed yet modal the Army Commander keeping it in reserve and at this point this is uh 2,200 hours 16 hours before all hell had broken loose to the north the entire second ponzer Army up here in the oral Salient attacked by two Soviet fronts eight armies the fourth tank fourth tank Army several separate tank cores and within a day third guards tank Army all go after second ponor Army the a warning flags go up there are huge penetrations in the Germans front modal receives the order send me 12th ponzer immediately and whatever else you can get from down here he has to essentially take everything he can extract from this battlefield mind you it's the 12th noon time on the 12th of July and send it North to saave off impending disaster at orol Bear this in mind when we look at the southern half of the uh cursed bulge and you get to the date of brovka which is the 12th of July and you ask yourself were German commanders really sincere really accurate when they said oh if you just let us go further on the 13th in light of what's Happening Here and what's happening to the north this operation by modal's ninth army goes nowhere it stalls with casualties of roughly 20,000 dead in the operation uh several hundred lost tanks uh they gain about 7 kilometers yeah one of the ironies of this whole attack the plan for the orol offensive that's going on now against you know second bonser Army the plan assigns a mission to Central front the mission is join the attack on the evening of the 22nd in other words they're supposed to take all these forces in mesed in this battle and go over to a Counterattack they will actually Mount one on the 13th it's not very effective it's somewhat feeble but but they're on the offensive within a day any questions about the northern side of the uh the bul yeah the Germans have excellent tactical intelligence their tactical intelligence is fairly good to the end of the war except for one exception and that is when the Soviets wish to deceive wish to conceal something they will conceal it it's just as simple as that at K the Germans have no strategic intelligence they don't know what's out there in the depth they do have a good picture of what's in that what's in that bulge they know the units here they know the units here and what surprises them is that the units here can stop them that's the first time that's happened what they don't know and won't know for 40 years later from 1970s is what's out there when we look at at the southern half and the attack stall when the start reaches poova and the stalemate and they want to go further they don't know what's out there so basically I'm saying the German intelligence operationally and strategically is lousy tactically very good Germans have their injunction with their ground one of the one of the things I skipped over here for the sake of time is the air we have the air figures by the time we get to curse there is air parody which means that the Germans can obtain air superiority for their initial blow they can cover the advance of the poner course here and when we get to the South as we will momentarily they can cover the advance of the second SS ponore in 48 but having said that once the initial thrust is over and you're three or four days in then there is an air battle going on and it's very very difficult for the Germans to provide that close air St of support that they had relied upon before by the end of the time by the Battle of krisk over with and with Soviet definition in the north the Oro Germans can't handle the air anymore it's kind of like late stying grad they throw their hands up in the air because they just don't have the resources to do it anymore that's a a brief answer to it's very you need a book on on air air power G question you have a34 F manver uh let let me let me try to hold that question until I get to this battle of proar rova because there you're going to see the many tanks Ro mistro commands a tank Army that is predominantly t-34s the German tanks that they have to fear are the new ones the Panthers the handful of tigers and the then the and the uh the the pons are four is still a reputable tank as we'll see in as we see in the southern the Germans lose their Panthers on day one all the whole 100 120 of them go out of action in a swamp because of a thunderstorm then they discover they don't work well after that water in the transmissions and so on so they're they're out this is why 48th poner core doesn't go it's supposed to go uh the Tigers have been over how should I say it overstressed at the tigers are burning we had a book by Kaden years ago there weren't many tigers at Turk modal had a lot uh if you sque if you could read these you'd see the 55th puns are up tiing or Detachment that's tiger it has maybe 20 uh they get mired down in in in this this fight we I've just described uh the SS sponsor divisions have a handful each Tigers aren't burning at KK now the story is if you look at I was as I was telling my escort today Mr cam there's a there's a what is it E3 something Stewart out there little Stewart tank outside there little little puddle jumper kind a 197 vintage two of these Soviet tank brigades have have stewards given to them when I say I've got numbers I haven't even begun to expose them but there there are two tank brigades that have nothing but steart tanks light tanks Recon tanks 37 mm gun won't shoot anything I mean they're hopeless but they're there and Soviets don't throw anything away uh they've got Stewart they got t6s T70 lights they've got t-34s a lot of them they got KVs and KV 2s uh they don't have any t34 85s yet wrot mistos parl as we see when we get to Pro corova the night before the 12th when the Germans are about to begin their Advance through the famous poppy fields between the pel river and the railroad track with the bulk of lifeand Art and a regiment of dust Reich about 195 tanks the word goes out and those Pon start rolling Northeast toward poova Ro mistro orders his tank brigades nine of them lined up to charge the F34 charge engage the Germans at close range go hell for letter basically right into the German formations and just fire widely I mean it's a chaotic tank battle some of the brigades get through go deep go into the German rear then around all afternoon before they finally work their way back up again a lot of the German units are so units are just flat out destroyed by by the German the Germans if you talk to a German who was there he my God I never thought saw anything might like it I saw a whole wave of these things coming at t34 is maximum speed uh he loses 400 of his tanks on the 12 and he gets a message from Stalin saying what have you done to my tank Army what have you done to my beautiful tank Army well he has 800 900 tanks three cores he only uses two brovka the two tank goes but he gets chewed out for losing that many but it is a shock I don't care what you say what the Germans right it was a shock to the Germans to see this happen this hadn't been happening before and they said yeah we'll go tomorrow but they really weren't too happy and they didn't know that the fourth guards tank core and the first met cor were out there in the rear if they did they wouldn't have said that besides Hitler at that point has an invasion going on in solerno just happened all hell is broken loose at orol his second pwn arm Commander SM smid's telling him I can't hold I'm going to collapse you got to give me all the forces you got there at K there was no way in heck they could continue KK that I digress as I always do okay the South I want to cover this any more questions I don't want to short cut anybody off yeah was the what was the L offer they were there first day they were there second day they were there third day they were there and fewer numbers uh because the Red Army was there too and there were lots of dog fights over it and by the time you get to the 12th I would say second SS poner Corp can call for Effective air support for an hour or so at a time but that's it that's not enough to carry a sustained defensive without any doubt at all say this right now without any doubt at all the most serious flaw in the in the uh firir 1941 1942 I don't care what context is most serious constraint was Fuel and G Fuel and ammo always had it it limited operations it curtailed operation they could never get it up in sufficient quantities therefore they could never operate in other than fits and starts the same thing will be at the case of K the question is if they had gone through poova you get to vonius where do you go and besides you're out to fuel anyway and if you got five armies out there we hadn't identify fight them what happens if they attack from the North and South uh you're putting yourself in a situation Allah sixth Army at Stalingrad and you're doing it over and over and over again because you're doing what you have been congenitally doing since June 22nd you're trying to do too much with too little and relying on on Native wit to pull it off and you can't do that you simply can't do that the South going to go through this quickly and this is probably the most effective graphic I've got good maps on 1 to 50,000 scale with printed up grid lines the whole shmear uh that you'll see them on you'll see replicas here I've got an atlas of these things I actually mark it but but you can get cursed down to the Battalion level on this particular side of the conflict but we aren't going to see that but we can certainly use what we've got here and and get done what we need to get done hey thank you I was wondering where that went okay here's here's your German configuration classic configuration fourth ponzer army army Detachment Kemp 48th ponzer core organized around the great big gross dolon division this is the one that'll become a Corel lator it's always big it's got this the panther the panther Brigade with it uh it might be 200 Panthers I'm not sure 200 120 to 200 but it's a lot of Panthers and this was they're betting a lot on this one I will show you one of these detail Maps I'll show you the precise Gully that gets filled up with water that the panthers run into by accident and that's the end of them uh 48th poner cor live standard D Reich and Toten cof third poner core three more divisions down here the problem is that that these units are compartmented compartmentalized three pondor cor should go along parallel axes that's okay you see the main rail line here it runs north this way goes up to proroka 48th pondr will go this way toward ooon in the north the trouble is about to here they're going to reach the river a river that's got banks that are too steep to cross and so they're going to have to suddenly besides when they get there on the other side is first tank Army dug in which kind of makes things unpleasant and so they're going to have to divert this way SS Pon cor goes this way right up the road toward proar rova but as they go there's nobody engaging the units over here there's a river here the northern donuts and they keep getting fire from their right flank from the yeah right flank it's the second and second guards and fifth guards tank core that begin attacking and they don't have any infantry there so they had to DET detach big chunks of Totten cough to watch that flank well as you go deeper more of toen cough is chopped off to look at one flank there's only the 168 over here it's too small to do much so they'll have to chop part of livest at Adolf Hitler to look at the other flank and you can see what happens over time when you get deeper you're your spearhead gets smaller and smaller and smaller because you don't have the flank protection and then of course third ponzer has to go across the river here the northern Donuts it tries to get across here it doesn't make it it's too strongly held they then have to move South and go across here they lose about two days finally they get going this way and they're separated by Soviet forces from second Pon Corp and oh by the way they got very heavy forces on their flank and not enough infantry so as they Advance they've got to take one of their three poner divisions and give it the onerous duty of watching that flank against counterattacks as they go deeper they get weaker and you you can see the story as it progresses the German the Soviet defense sixth guards tank Army seventh guards tank Army excuse me seventh guards Army sixth guards Army these are all Stalingrad armies you got the guards onor rics later behind that first tank Army up here 69th Army dug in back here uh and behind that the step front fifth guards Army 46th Army 27th Army and fifth guards tank army they don't even show on the map here the let's see how it develops told you had great graphics this is the defensive sector of the 67th guards rifle division ah boy uh this is the front line the Soviets have got they classically put something out no man's land in between this is an anti-tank regiment out there with some infantry and support if you squint you'll see gr do lawn division here's the the axis gr Lo Laine big this is a valley right here the valley has a little string bed through the middle of it guess what it does in July in in southern Soviet Union it thunderstorms the night of uh 4 or five July about 2 in the morning they they're they're firing artillery preparations back and forth but it's a rainstorm and it fills up this Valley right here and guess what's on the other side of that rainy area it's a couple of Soviet anti-tank guns the Panthers when they advance in the morning would go right up screw that into that swamp get stuck under Fire and mutably bogged down it will take them 48 hours to get them out back this way and then put back over another route headed north again and from that point on they have transmission problems and another series of problems and there never any factor in this battle that is one of the reasons why this particular thing falters other than that this is a very nice map but you can't read it uh we're going to stick with the more detailed maps as far as strength figures correlation of forces uh heck with that one you've seen that before let me see if there's anything this is a repeat of the slides I showed you before with greater number now I do want to show you this Just for kicks and that is you can tell exactly what the units at this is a geez this is a German one uh I'll give you one one of the top is SS pons division Adolf Hitler 116 tanks seven ponor 2os 13 ponser 3s 83 ponsor 4S 13 ponsor sixes that's a tiger sixes uh the one below that is oh they've also got 70 two assault guns 21 Martyrs 35 sto threes six Hummels 15 12 wespes and so on the only point I'm making here is we got the numbers now we know what they are if you could read it and you can get these things I've got these things available for anybody who particularly wants to see this is the interesting one for the Soviet side this is the tank strength of the vones front six and seventh guards armies uh 230th tank regiment 39 tanks 32 M3 Stewarts 7 M3 Le all lendle 240 fth tank regiment 39 tanks 12 M3 Stewarts 27 M3 Le we get out in the 21st tank Brigade seventh guard's Army 52 Tanks 3 t-34s 18 Mark 2 matildas 31 Mark three Valentine's I'm not sure which one is which but one of those earns the subro the the coffin for the seven brothers because it catches fire instantly when hit by a German tank gun and the whole crew burns up uh and I've got the breakdowns the 27th guards tank Brigade 54 tanks 4 t7s those are modern light tanks and 50 t34 so some of these units are not weak units and uh let's take an SP unit 2 uh 1438 self-propelled artillery regiment 21 Su 76s and 122s these are the 76 12252 Su guns on the tank carriages okay we know the numbers the numbers are all there the only other side I'll B burden you with is the one that shows you the correlation for the battlefields at prokorov so you get an idea of what the real numbers actually were this is the 5th of July the first day of the attack you can see 48th pondra cor makes a little finger attack that's right through the boundary between two Soviet rifle divisions over here you can see second SS ponor a much more sizable Gap it rolls over the 52 guards rifle division because it's got an immense amount of armor riding forward over a fairly rolling piece of terrain the reason that the loss the gain here isn't any big is because the the P the panther tanks are all stuck in the mud and have to be redirected from this point on 48th Pon cor will have problems especially when it reaches this line up here a line of a stream it cannot cross you notice also there's no action by very little action by Third ponor cor it could not get across the river opposite belard had to go further south the river here is quite wide and the West Bank quite a bit higher than the East Bank as is in the case of most Russian Rivers let me just show you how it goes this is the 6th of July and I'm not going to show you the blowups of the various sectors this is a very intricate battle and it's in this series of of slides the next five or six days where in essence what you will have is you will have Soviet second guards tank core and fifth guards tank core attacking this way basically distracting the second SS pondra cor as it advances the same thing will happen over here with first tank Army dug in it's six mechanized core it's six tank core it's 31st tank core and it's mechanized core the same thing will happen here and then suddenly you'll see two more tank cores the second and the 10th appear and they will begin nibbling at both flanks and the matter of fact the first Soviet tanks and the pro corova axis are from are from these two separate tank cores and it's this battle more than the actual ual grinding positional struggle that will ultimately erode uh the attacking German forces in this particular venue 7th of July you can begin to see well you can begin to see that the Maneuvers going on you'll see arrows from these units overnight quite literally the Veronia front Commander General vatutin will move entire cores around from one flank to the other to keep the fires burning on both of these flanks and give no rest to those those cores in particular the 48th ponre core in the west No Rest For The Wicked at all and uh at this particular juncture they are running into first tank Army it's right here it's dug in uh you can see SS ponor now beginning to make appreciable advances towards proar rova proor rova is located right here uh because of this German Advance you will see very short shortly the second and 10th tank cores appearing they will be the fourth to First units to engage the ponors and then very short fashion you'll see fifth tank core pack up and move completely around to this flank over here to back up uh first tank Army when it begins to get rolled over by 48th poner cor so there's a very vital day byday hour by hour tank struggle going on here long before we get to proar rova this is the 8th of July the feature here as you can see third ponore fining now making its advance northward but well behind second SS ponser core and again the problems are protecting this flank from incessant counterattacks by the Soviets the same thing here here's second guards tank core fifth guards tank core is still up here I think if you look at the map there you can see yeah 10th tankor and second tankor are coming in right here their orders are to strike the nose of ss poner cor and tie it down they have about 180 tanks each they'll be able to to keep SS poner cor's attention over here you you you see a grinding struggle going on and to make a long story short I'm not going to stop on it very long but what happens is that the ponor divisions accompanying gross Deon the third becomes totally bogged down in a fight in its flank gross deuts absent its Panther tanks also becomes bogged down and the only Force that's capable of moving forward is 19th pondra division it tries to break loose along this highway and if you look at the map and squint you'll see a whole series of units lined up along that road northward those are anti-tank regiments and brigades and there must be somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 anti-tank guns that are deployed on that access by the time we get to the eth and 9th of July and the ponor division which by this time is down to about 40 or 50 of its original 80 or 90 maybe 100 tanks it simply can't overcome these things uh again it's this flank battle going on here this flank battle going on here this flank battle going on here which is eroding the strength of those spearheads as they lunge northward and notice you haven't seen anything out of the step front yet this is all vonish front stuff there's no step front units being moved in the 9th of July it's beginning to reach the the crescendo that it will ultimately reach uh by this time time the pondra core down here third ponre is beginning to make slow progress northward ultimately they will be able to squeeze these Soviet units out and link up with second SS ponor but by this time second SS ponor is has such a long flank it's got very little armor in which it can commit along that Pro corova axxis and by now of course the second and 10th tankor they aren't firstline tankor by any by any stretch of the imagination but they are both exper exped and blooded cores and uh they can in fact keep the Germans attention this battle over here is becoming more complex fifth guards tank core has left it's over here now it will be coming in 10th tank core once it when it finishes up up here before the arrival of fifth guard's tank Army which is what will come in a day or two it will be moved over here to reinforce this battle so the Soviets will keep throughout this entire fight a sizable tank force here to tie down 48th ponor we see a lot of flexibility on yes we don't see any F that's true two reason two reasons the configuration of the battlefield in the Germans are operating on interior lines but they have no reserves once a unit is committed it's committed you don't withdraw draw it without replacing it with someone so unlike the Soviets who can take these operational reserves like the two tankor fifth guards and and pull it out willy-nilly and move it around they've got rifle divisions over there and separate tank brigades and regiments the Germans don't so they have no flexibility at all for moving units laterally when we get to Pro corova you'll see an attempt the night before the 12th the Germans will try to concentrate all yeah maybe it's shler uh when you order order an offensive with the forces at hand and the forces aren't capable or aren't numerous enough to fulfill the function who do you blame uh monstein does the best I've I've done Stalingrad and one of the villains of my third volume is is manstein manstein set up paulus for the fall I know he lied and lost victories I have the the documents that will prove it but I can't fault manstein here and I don't know what in incidentally we we don't I don't read lost victories in German I don't know what the original said so maybe the translator screwed up the dates but anyway I do fault him back there I do not fault him here he he's operating with what he has and he may have been a bit optimistic in saying to Hitler if you let me go I can go further that that would probably a mistake because he had no idea what was out there as most Germans didn't does that answer your question okay okay I do have interim slides here that show you the losses both sides are suffering losses as you might expect in something like this this is the 2200 hours in the 10th of July we're reaching the culminating point now on this thing the big culminating point is not so much what's going on here as it is the appearance of this great big circle up here that great big circle represents two armies out of the step front General zad off's fifth guard's Army and general re Mistro's reinforced fifth guard's tank Army and their orders are to enter combat and halt the advance of second SS pondra cor to the north now this is the evening of the 10th what manstein and haw will try to what monstein Hoth and uh and the commander of the second SS pjer cor will try to do is they will try to move forces if they can from 48th which is clearly stalled over to reinforce this unit they never succeed in doing it because it's on these slides we won't get to it but what happens over here is the Soviets send in 10th tank and fifth guards tankor that have been over here they attack and put tremendous pressure on third ponzer third ponzer and gr do line hold up their arms and hey we we can't send anybody because if we do we're going to collapse over here and so that pre prevents uh monstein from from reinforcing second SS poner Corp uh I will add this when we get up to the Battle of brovka fifth guard's tank Army when it arrives in that large goose egg up there takes control of the remnants of second guard's tank Corp and second tank core so that will raise its tank strength from some 850 tanks to somewhat over a thousand altogether on the field of battle unlike many of the German units when fifth guard's tank army goes into combat it will have two guards Airborne divisions out of fifth guard's Army cooperating with it right up here in other words it has infantry to its front with its field guns and its sappers and its support whereas second SS ponor is basically tanks and pon grenadiers poov is a beautiful battle and it's nice to cover it hour by hour but we're not going to do that for the sake of time but what I am going to do is show you first this graphic and then we'll get into the actual Counterattack and it is a rather dramatic morning the 12th of July this is an armor correlation and I think if you squint you can probably see it K overall well let me give you the numbers if you can't see it the Battle of curs by Soviet definition Soviets 1430 tanks Germans 646 the correlation is roughly 2.2 to1 that's on the entire battlefield of K uh in this particular in the Veron in the uh Army group South sector the pro corova axis Soviets fifth guards tank Army 830 tanks Germans second SS ponzer core 293 tanks leap ster division 77 do dasri 95 and Toten cof 121 we know what they are too correlation roughly 2.8 to1 in the Soviets favor if you include the southern approach that's that third core down there which will close up ultimately will close up with second SS poner core you get something like 900 Soviets 443 German and the field of proa itself and this is where history has has conjured up the 1200 versus the 1500 the actual field of proroka for 450 Soviet 172 Germans a correlation of 2.6 to1 you can actually break it down by divisions this is a Soviet graphic it comes out of the Soviet general staff secret study this is the Counterattack plan because essentially the meeting engagement at proar rova was a meeting engagement initiated when fifth guard's tank Army launched its counterstroke notice also that it's not just fifth guards tank Army it's also these cores over here so this is something a lot bigger than just proar rova everybody's history's forgotten that too we have nice neat German Maps this is taken out of uh it's just a g whiz slide out of one of the ponre core units I'm not going to show them to you but here is the actual engagement perova 2 I call it because the engagement had already occurred there the day before essentially what happens is about 0600 in the morning the lead elements of DS Reich uh and and livon dart Adolf Hitler begin initiating their attack from positions about here Broar rova is kind of fuzzy it's over here these are the forward positions of 19th and 29th tank Corp of fifth guards tank Army R misto anticipates the German attack and orders his two tank cores to conduct a head-on attack with all six tank brigades if you could look at this map you'd see each of them lined up side by side each one with in company column attack form as the Germans come over the first crest of the Hill heading north across the poppy fields between the railroad line and the cell River they they see in front of them the tank C the tank brigades coming over the Ridge and essentially you end up with a kind of a meeting engagement in the valley the Soviets Break On Through there's a vicious fight the orders are to close as fast as you can the German tanks because they do have tank they do outgun them uh and speed is on the Soviet side so they will go in and attack in pxs some of the brigades that have orders to go beyond that there are individual orders given to brigades will go into the German rear area and you see this one here wandering around quite a ways before it come disengages and comes back it's an all day battle it's an all day battle and it will culminate in another attack a separate one up north of the cell River by SS Toten COV division that's a separate battle and that's fought by separate units of fifth guard's tank Army away from the actual battlefield of proar rova itself I'm not going to get into the day byday blow but I will show you the results the battle is a draw it will go on the next day the overall position on the 15th of J July looks like this but what this doesn't tell you on the 15th is that by now we are three days into a Soviet offensive against oral and the German front of second ponzer Army is gone Northeast of oral and it's gone east of oral and the commander of second ponzer Army Schmid is calling for help and saying we've got to have every actually matter of fact gross deuts laon comes out post haste and is sent North to try to restore the situation so it's all hell is breaking loose elsewhere there is every reason in the world for Hitler to say no no might not continue on here and if you want to ask the question should he have continued on then of course you get into this question that's all what these are all this is a Soviet map and these are all forces that have maneu been maneuvering to the rear and are sitting back there waiting for whatever decides to come out of the pro proc corova area to come out we do know the losses I'm not going to show them to you except for the bottom line here fifth guards tank army goes into the battle with 888 tanks commits 642 loses 340 comes out on the 13th of July with 399 the next evening by repair they're up to 458 again again for lustr purposes I can do the same thing with uh the Germans I think yes uh nope got lots and lots of numbers if you buy the new book by zamu and you'll find out all these figures and they're probably even better than mine uh the Germans lose about half of their tank strength in this particular operation now I want to show you to finish up here what should be shown in any presentation of curse because it is the end of the story the story does not end on the 12th of July that is the 12th of July right there there is a big markup you can see where the Battle of K is you can see where the orial salent is now let's take that one step further that's the 12th of July here's a blow up it's a Soviet map I haven't translated it of the battle for Orel you can see the various phases and attacks and it's a very complicated very vicious fight question question right okay yep that's good we'll wrap it up yep 21st of July just watch what happens to this up here the oral Salient it's about half gone now 4th of August Oro saling almost totally gone this is the front back here in the South Here Comes Your Soviet belor carof offensive right here and if you carry it out to the 28th of August it will be the end of the battle of cursed by Soviet definition that's it right there the entire all the Sant are gone the whole thing is flattened off and if you carry it one step further this is the rest of the campaign that began with K and will finish in the fall it is essentially drives the Germans back beyond the nepper river and that's another whole story any questions at all before we wrap it up and if you have any and want to stick around I'll be here as long as you folks want want to be here to answer anything you've got ladies and gentlemen let me just say that that's exactly what we're going to do we know it's gone on quite a bit but I know some of you are very interested in asking some questions so David is uh graciously offered to stay those that would like to go please do so and please give a Round of Applause for David gland now we don't offer much here when we do these uh on a night but we do offer our slight token of gratitude a water bottle with the first Division Museum logo on the front of it for you that is very nice I have a guards whiskey flask a Russian gave me I'll put it side by side aw and if anyone has any uh spare change or something they would like to help out the American Legion Post here at K post 556 is uh collecting for the Wheaten uh shelter for homeless veterans so please donate generously thank you very much good night I will stay right here for anybody that wants to answer a question as long as also bring you a chair in case anyone wants their book signed oh yeah sure and if you have book signed I'll be happy to do that too question two questions yeah
