Summer 1943. After two years of war,
Hitler is no closer to victory in the East, And has suffered a devastating
defeat at Stalingrad. Now the Germans have gathered their
strength For one last massive offensive Which will decide the outcome of the war. At first, the Soviets called it “the elephant”
because of a drawing on its turret. But soon they learned
its real name… “Tiger”. They’d captured one near Leningrad, and brought it to a tank
testing facility for trials. The results were alarming.
The Tiger’s front armour was impervious to a Soviet T-34,
even at a range of just 200 metres. Only heavy howitzers
could destroy this beast. But that was on a firing range. At a gloomy meeting
of the Stavka high command, Marshall of Artillery
Nikolai Voronov told Stalin, “We have no guns able to successfully
fight against these tanks…” It was April 1943. Along the entire front, the Red Army prepared to meet
what they called "the summer Germans". In both the previous summers, the Wehrmacht’s blitzkkrieg
had proved almost unstoppable. Now these new German
tanks caused fresh concern. Would the Red Army once more be swept
aside by the German summer offensive? Soviet engineers worked frantically
on new tank and antitank guns designs. Few would be ready in time. Meanwhile, the Stavka made plans to meet
the inevitable German offensive. All eyes were drawn to the city of Kursk. Here the Red Army’s Central Front occupied
a large bulge, or salient, in the frontline. It was an obvious place to attack. The Soviet General Staff expected
the Germans to attack simultaneously from north and south, to cut off
the troops inside the salient. To meet this threat, the Red Army
began to construct several defensive lines within the salient. The Stavka planned
to let the Germans wear themselves out attacking these defences, before launching
their own counter-offensive. Soviet intelligence was soon able
to confirm the Stavka’s intuition. On 12th April 1943, Stalin was handed secret
German plans for "Operation Citadel". It was the codename for the Wehrmacht’s
summer offensive in the east. The information came
from an agent codenamed “Werther”. His real identity remains a mystery, but
it’s assumed he was an officer within OKW, the German Armed Forces High Command. His reports were sent to Moscow
via Rudold Roessler, who headed the Lucy Spy Ring
based in Switzerland. The plans for Operation
Citadel exactly confirmed what the Stavka had already guessed. The Germans planned to "pinch out"
the Kursk salient with two simultaneous attacks. They would be made by von Kluge’s
Army Group Centre from the north, and by Manstein’s Army
Group South in the south. At the beginning of May, the Stavka
was able to warn its commanders that: “According to our intelligence, the enemy
plans to attack along the Orel-Kursk line, the Belgorod-Oboyan line,
or along both lines simultaneously.” In May, Hitler held a planning
meeting to discuss the early phases of Operation Citadel.
However, many generals voiced concern. Field Marshal von Kluge, commanding Army
Group Centre, openly opposed the Fuehrer. General Model, meanwhile,
presented air reconnaissance photos. It was his Ninth Army that was to assault
the Kursk salient from the north. Model pointed to the signs of heavy Soviet
defences being prepared in this sector. Walter Model would earn the nickname,
"the Fuehrer’s fireman", because later in the war,
he was frequently sent by Hitler to try and salvage desperate situations.
Model was a fervent Nazi, renowned for his loyalty
to the Fuehrer. In 1945, when his army group was encircled
by the Americans, he shot himself rather than face surrender. Model was one of
a very small number of generals whose opinion the Fuehrer respected. Model was known as a genius of defence. But he and his 9th Army had less experience
of large-scale offensive actions. Some thought that Model was trying
to get the entire operation cancelled, allowing him to fight a defensive
battle against the Red Army. Guderian was another who expressed
doubts about Operation Citadel. As Inspector-General of Armoured Troops, he knew that the panzer divisions were
not ready for such a massive operation. For him, the whole thing was
too much of a risk. The war had already taken a massive toll
on the Wehrmacht. If Citadel was a success, it would allow them to retain
the initiative on the Eastern front. But if it failed, it would be disastrous. The Fuehrer agreed to postpone
the operation by one month, declaring: “There can be no failure”. The delay would allow the Germans to deploy
more of their latest armoured vehicles. These included the heavy Tiger tanks,
the new Panzer V Panthers, and the massive Ferdinand tank destroyers. The Luftwaffe was also receiving
new ground attack aircraft, such as a fighter-bomber
variant of the Focke-Wulf 190. New variants of the Junkers 87 dive bomber
were armed with two 37 millimetre cannon. They fired tungsten-core ammunition against
the thin top armour of Soviet tanks, and proved to be highly effective. Squadrons of new Henschel
ground attack aircraft were also arriving in the Kursk area. The HS-129 was also
a specialised tank-destroyer. But the delay also gave the Red Army
more time to strengthen their defences. Three heavily fortified lines
were constructed, with minefields, trenches, and gun emplacements. But the lack of effective antitank guns
was a still a serious concern. The Red Army hoped that new defensive
tactics would overcome this shortcoming. Previously anti-tank guns had been
distributed evenly along the front. But combat experience proved
they were more effective grouped together. Antitank strongpoints became the foundation
for the defence of the Kursk salient. Each strongpoint contained up to 20
antitank guns and dozens of antitank rifles. The guns were well entrenched
and covered all directions. The distance between neighbouring
strongpoints was 600 to 800 metres. If German tanks tried to pass
between two strong points, they would expose their weaker
side armour to the Soviet anti-tank guns. It took many week of backbreaking labour to build the strongpoints
and anti-tank ditches. Mikhail Badigin,
an antitank gunner, recalled, “We had to dig out
about 30 cubic metres of earth to bed in a 45 millimetre antitank gun. We did more digging than most people
will do in their entire lives.” The Red Army dug 4,200 km of trenches
along the Voronezh Front alone. If they’d been dug in a straight line,
they have stretched from Moscow to Madrid. The Central Front had dug another
five thousand km of trenches. 2,000 km of roads were built, 686 bridges, and 300,000 wagon-loads
of supplies and equipment were delivered to the Kursk salient. The Kursk salient was now
the most heavily fortified position in the history of warfare. Launched against it from
the south would be the 445,000 men and 1,500 tanks of Army Group South. They faced the Voronezh Front
commanded by General Vatutin, with 626,000 men and 1,700 tanks. In the north the attack would be conducted
by von Kluge’s Army Group Centre, with 332,000 men and 1,000 tanks. Facing them, the Soviet Central Front
commanded by General Rokossovsky, with 712,000 men and 1,800 tanks. In addition, more Soviet troops
were gathered into a strategic reserve named the Steppe Front,
under General Ivan Konev. Rokossovsky’s situation in the north
was relatively strong. He knew the German tank assault
would have to come from somewhere along a 90 kilometre gap in the forests. Vatutin’s troops, however,
were on the wide open steppe. There was nothing to restrict the enemy’s
movement. They might attack anywhere. General Nikolai Vatutin was considered one
of the Red Army’s most talented commanders. His peasant origins and Communist fervour
made him a favourite of Joseph Stalin. He was a theoretician,
and highly respected by his adversaries. German generals nicknamed
him “the grand master”. Vatutin would not survive the war. He was killed in an ambush
by Ukrainian nationalists in February 1944. General Vatutin’s Voronezh Front was about to face one of the most
powerful military assaults in history. Vatutin, by nature an attacker,
would be called on to conduct the greatest defensive battle of all time. As the Red Army prepared for battle,
the engineers got to work. A dense minefield was laid
around each strongpoint. The second and third lines
weren’t mined so heavily. Instead, they were assigned mobile engineer
units in trucks and horse-drawn wagons. Their task was to lay
minefields on the fly — in the very path of advancing enemy tanks. A German General wrote, “The speed at which they could lay
a minefield was astonishing. The Russians planted more than 30,000 mine
in just two or three days.” Meanwhile Red Army recruits were being
trained to overcome their fear of tanks. They were sent into trenches and run over
by their own tanks. They called it "ironing". They were also trained to throw antitank
grenades and Molotov cocktails. And in the evening they read pamphlets on
how to destroy German tanks. The Red Army scoured its artillery units
for the most accurate gun-layers. The best became anti-tank gunners,
with improved pay and rations. They trained hard, until they
could pick out the weak points of a tank, and score a bull’s eye on the gun. Batteries of powerful 85mm anti-aircraft
guns were assigned to key sectors, with orders only to engage enemy tanks. Four regiments were armed with German
antitank guns captured at Stalingrad. The Red Army Air Force also
received new anti-tank weapons. They had been attacking
with one big 50 kilogram bomb. But it was difficult to score a direct
hit on a moving target from the air. The new bomblets weighed only 1.5 kg, but could penetrate up to
100 millimetres of armour. Since tanks have much
thinner armour on top, this was easily enough
to knock out any German panzer. 48 bomblets were packed into one container. A Sturmovik ground attack aircraft
could carry four such containers. It was enough to devastate an entire tank
column along a path of 200 metres. As the wait for the German
assault to begin dragged on, some Soviet commanders
became increasingly uneasy. Vatutin repeatedly urged
the Stavka to attack first. “We must seize the moment.” he said,
“The enemy is not attacking. Autumn is coming and all
our planning will have been in vain. Let us stop digging
and launch our attack first.” But the response was always the same. Wait. Meanwhile, a German map was recovered which
accurately plotted all Soviet positions as spotted by their air reconnaissance.
Many Soviet units were forced to move. This time they paid more attention
to camouflage from the air. For the third time, the Stavka
issued a warning to the troops that the German attack was imminent. But by now false alarms were beginning
to play on the nerves of frontline troops. Lev Malikin, a scout with
the 222nd Guards Rifle Regiment, wrote: “It was clearly believed
that the Germans would attack soon. All units in our division
were on high alert. We were ordered by division intelligence to take a German prisoner
for interrogation, at any cost.” That night they captured a German engineer
who’d been clearing mines in No Man’s Land. Under interrogation
he began to speak freely: “German troops have been
put on full alert,” he told them. “They will begin to attack in the direction
of Kursk on 5th July at 2 a.m. European time. There will be an additional
assault from Belgorod.” The hour was not far off. The Red Army planned
a nasty surprise for the Germans. Just as they massed for the attack, the Soviets would hit them
with a massive artillery bombardment. The night sky was lit up
with the blast from hundreds of guns. Not all of the German assembly
areas were guessed correctly. But the deluge of shells
and rockets found many targets. Other German units found it impossible
to advance into this wall of fire. Lieutenant Roshchenko, navigator
of an Ilyushin 4 bomber, recalled: “From a long way off we could see
that something unimaginable had begun along the frontline.
Both sides were firing intensely.” As soon as the Soviet guns fell silent, the air was filled
with the scream of German shells. This barrage was intended to soften up
Red Army defences ahead of the assault. The Scout Lev Malikin remembered, “The sound of explosions made us leap
from our plank beds in our dugouts, grab our submachine-guns
and race into our trenches. Fire, smoke and falling earth
were everywhere. The enemy bombardment
lasted more than an hour. At last it ended,
and the Hitlerites began their attack under the cover of smoke shells.“ Tank divisions,
air fleets, infantry units – all the military might
that had been assembled around Kursk over the course of several months,
was now set in motion. The largest tank engagement of all time, and one of the greatest
battles in history, had begun. July 1943. The long-awaited German
offensive at Kursk had begun. Radio-controlled tankettes led the way, sent ahead to clear paths
through the Soviet minefields. Their heavy toothed metal rollers
detonated all the mines in their path. Others laid powerful explosive charges that could clear a large area
with a single blast. These machines cleared the way
for the Ferdinand tank-destroyers. But it wasn’t always easy to spot
the safe lane across a field churned up by countless explosions. Many Ferdinands lost their way,
and were disabled by anti-tank mines. By the end of the first day, half of the
mighty Ferdinands were out of action. Most had been immobilised
by damage to their tracks and wheels. In the south, heavy Soviet shelling hampered
German attempts to clear the minefields. Many Tigers and Panthers
soon had their wheels and tracks shattered by anti-tank mines. The Germans also ran into
500 kilometres of antitank ditches. The ditches had to be collapsed
by accurate dive bomber attacks before the tanks could pass. The famous German blitzkrieg
had been reduced to a crawl. German units became caught
in a labyrinth of Soviet defences. As soon as they suppressed one strongpoint,
they came under fire from its neighbour. General Friedrich von Mellenthin wrote:
“The Russians were excellent at camouflage. No minefield or antitank
strongpoint was detected before the first tank
was blown up by a mine, or the first Russian
antitank gun opened fire.” However, German experience
and firepower soon began to tell. They began to concentrate all their effort
against a few narrow sectors of the front. German panzer units
attacked in a V-formation. Its tip was formed
by the heavy Tiger tanks, which took out Soviet
anti-tank guns at long range. Medium and light tanks followed. When the Germans had succeeded in smashing
a hole through the defences, they rushed to exploit it. Army Group South was supported by almost
400 aircraft on the first day of the battle. They rained bombs
onto the Soviet strongpoints. They also bombed minefields to clear
lanes for the advancing panzers. It took 17 hours
for the elite 2nd SS panzer corps to breach the first
line of Soviet defences. General Vatutin responded by sending
in Katukov’s 1st Tank Army. Katukov recalled a report
from one of his brigade commanders: “Burda began his report. The enemy
was attacking his position incessantly, from fifty to a hundred tanks at a time.
Tigers and Panthers came first. “Dealing with them
is difficult, sir,” he said. “You shoot at them, but the shells
only ricochet. So what’s the outcome?” “Losses… Terrible losses, sir.
About 60 percent of the brigade.” A Soviet Т-34 tank had to get
within 500 metres of a Tiger, and then fire at its thin side armour. The German Tigers and Panthers, meanwhile, could penetrate the Т-34’s front armour
from a range of 2 kilometres. The huge losses sustained
by the 1st Tank Army forced Katukov to share his concerns
with General Vatutin. But there was no change of orders. As he prepared for another suicidal assault,
the phone rang at his headquarters. It was Stalin. He asked Katukov to speak
his mind about possible courses of action. Katukov proposed digging in the tanks, and letting the enemy come
into close range before opening fire. Stalin was silent for a while…
“All right”, he said at last. “You will stop the counterattack.” Katukov’s tanks took up defensive positions
alongside the artillery and infantry. But when General Kravchenko’s 5th
“Stalingrad” Guards Tank Corps was threatened with encirclement, Colonel
Nikoforov arrived at his headquarters with special orders
from the army commander. He would shoot Kravchenko if he did not
order an immediate counterattack. Kravchenko’s counterattack ran straight into
the heavy tanks of two SS Panzer divisions. With half his vehicles destroyed,
he was barely able to fight his way out of an encirclement
with the remnants of his corps. Meanwhile in the northern sector, General Rokossovsky also ordered
an armoured counterattack. On the second morning of the battle,
near the village of Olkhovatka, General Rodin’s 2nd Tank Army
was ordered to attack. The counterattack failed to dislodge
Model’s panzer divisions. Later in the day, they attacked one more
through heavy thunderstorms. Advancing against powerful
and accurate German gunnery, the Soviet tank divisions took
horrific losses in men and machines. But they did manage
to blunt Model’s advance. The 2nd Tank Army went on the defensive. When a fresh German panzer
division renewed the attack, it ran straight into
the camouflaged Soviet tanks. The ruined train station at Ponyri
became the focus of heavy fighting. The Germans gathered their surviving
Ferdinand and Brummbär self-propelled guns into a task force,
and attempted to storm it. German units managed to get behind
the Soviet troops holding the station. But now they found themselves in one of
the Red Army’s pre-prepared “fire pockets”. It was here that Sergeant Mikhail Fomin, a gun-layer of the 159th
Guards Artillery Regiment, was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet
Union, for destroying 7 tanks. He continued firing even when wounded. The “fire pocket” was a tactic used
by Soviet anti-tank guns working together to lure German
tanks into an ambush. Some guns would act as bait,
opening fire at long range and drawing the enemy tanks towards them. Once in range, camouflaged anti-tank
batteries on their flanks would open fire. At a range of just 200 to 300 metres,
there was a good chance of a kill. Model’s Ninth Army had failed to achieve a
breakthrough at either Olkhovatka or Ponyri. By the fifth day of the battle, the northern offensive
was running out of steam. Rokossovsky had accomplished
his task of exhausting the enemy. Now it was time to think of attack. On the telephone to Stalin and Zhukov,
he was given the date…12th July. While the enemy had been held in the north, in the south the battle was entering
its most critical phase. Here the Germans had more room
for manoeuvre across the open steppe. And despite heavy tank losses, they had broken through
the first two Soviet defensive lines. The Red Army rushed reinforcements
to the area of the enemy breakthrough. The Germans had 200 Panthers
at the start of the battle. After five days of fighting,
they were down to just 16. The new Soviet antitank aerial bombs were
an unpleasant surprise for the Germans. Just one hit could destroy a tank. But the Waffen SS panzer divisions
leading the charge were experienced, determined, and tactically skillfull. Strongpoint by strongpoint, they fought their
way into the heart of the Soviet defences. The breakthrough into open
country appeared imminent. One Soviet operations report stated: “The circumstances that allowed
the enemy’s tanks to advance were these: as our tanks and trucks retreated,
they were pursued so closely by the enemy, that it was impossible to lay anti-tank
mines on the roads to hold them up.” One Communist Youth member, serving with the 287th
Guards Rifle Regiment, wrote later: “On the night of 11th July
we reached the Oktiabrsky collective farm. We were told: “There will be
a battle tomorrow. Dig trenches. They will be either your fortress,
or your grave.” To prevent a German breakthrough, the Stavka used its strategic
reserve to reinforce the Voronezh Front. More than 400 tanks,
hundreds of other vehicles and thousands of infantry were on the move
through the arid heat of the Russian steppe. Boris Nazarov, the loader
in a self-propelled gun, recalled: “We were on the move
all night and all the next day. We had all our hatch covers open,
but it was still unbearably hot inside. The commander forbad us
to lean out of the hatches, so inside we were practically naked.” Vatutin planned to use these reserves
to deliver his long-awaited counter-attack. General Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army was due to take up positions near
the village of Prokhorovka. This was to be the base for its assault. But the German 2nd SS Panzer Corps
had already reached Prokhorovka. Here they were poised to break
through the last Soviet defences. They had only been held here by a miracle.
As tanks of the SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler
had rushed forward, they’d been hit
by enfilading Soviet artillery fire from the far bank of the Psel River. Concern about their exposed flanks would
delay the Germans just long enough. The Leibstandarte division
took up defensive positions, waiting for the SS Division Totenkopf
to cross the Psel and secure the flank. Meanwhile Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards
Tank Army was approaching Prokhorovka. The Soviet tanks maintained
strict radio silence. Their approach remained
unknown to the Germans. But when the sun rose,
German air reconnaissance soon spotted the multitude of vehicles, and alerted their own troops
by shooting violet flares. The 5th Guards Tank Army
was due to attack on a narrow front between the Psel River and the railway. The front was further restricted
by an impassable ravine. The Soviet tank brigades
would need to form up in columns to attack through this narrow gap. Soviet tanks usually attacked
on masse across a wide front. When an enemy gun fired,
several tanks immediately answered back. Attacking on such a small frontage
would be a severe handicap for the Soviets. But there was no hope of
the orders being changed. Shortly after dawn, the 5th Guards
Tank Army launched its assault. Hellmuth Becker, commanding a regiment
of the SS Division Totenkopf, wrote: “I saw clouds of dust on the horizon. Soon, out of these clouds
Russian tanks began to appear. “The Russians have sent in their reserve”,
I said to our chief of staff, and realized that
we had lost the battle of Kursk.” But events at Prokhorovka were far
from a foregone conclusion. As the Soviet tanks rounded the wide ravine,
they were funnelled into a narrow channel, where they made easy targets
for the German gunners. Tank after tank was hit,
bursting into flames or being torn apart in massive explosions. Tank commander Briukhov remembered:
“Tanks were ablaze everywhere. Powerful explosions sent 5-tonne
turrets flying 20 metres into the air. Some explosions were so powerful that an entire tank was blown
into a pile of scrap metal.” As the tank battle raged
around Prokhorovka, the thick black smoke from countless
burning vehicles turned day into night. Soviet losses were terrifying –
more than 300 tanks in a single day. In the pulverising engagement,
neither side emerged as a clear victor. But the implications
for the Wehrmacht were obvious. Paul Hausser, commander
of the 2nd SS panzer corps, immediately began to withdraw
from Prokhorovka. Operation Citadel had failed.
There had been no breakthrough. That same day, two Soviet Fronts launched
an offensive against the northern face of the Kursk salient.
The operation was codenamed Kutuzov. The goal of the operation was
to destroy German forces around Orel, including Model’s Ninth Army,
leading the German offensive. A powerful artillery bombardment
signalled the start of the operation. It was so effective that the initial
Soviet advance was almost unopposed. But as the advance continued,
the Germans began to fight back. Model realised the threat.
Units engaged in the Kursk offensive were hurriedly redeployed
to reinforce his defences. He directed the Luftwaffe to attack Soviet
tank formations advancing from the north. The famous Stuka ace Hans-Ulrich
Rudel led the attack. He wrote: “My aircraft was armed with antitank guns,
other Junkers armed with bombs followed me. I destroyed four tanks in the first attack.
By that evening, my score was up to 12.” To cover Model’s retreat,
German pilots flew several sorties a day. Rudel’s stuka was shot down near the town
of Bolkhov. He made a forced landing, but was back in the air
in a fresh aircraft two hours later. “The Soviets began to repel our airborne antitank attacks quite successfully.”
He wrote. “This was because they learnt to bring up
their anti-aircraft guns alongside their lead tanks.” Soviet fighters were also in action.
It was over Kursk that Ivan Kozhedub, the Soviet Union’s top-scoring fighter ace,
brought down his first enemy aircraft. Ivan Kozhedub was a triple Hero
of the Soviet Union by the age of 25. He wasn’t shot down once in the entire war. He flew 330 missions and brought down 64
enemy aircraft, including one Me-262 jet. It’s rumoured that his victories
included two American P-51 Mustangs, which had attacked his unfamiliar
aircraft in the belief it was German. Meanwhile down below, Soviet tank reserves
had arrived to bolster the offensive. Tanker Nikolay Zhelesnov was in the thick
of the fighting. He recalled: “The German defences
on the outskirts of the village consisted of antitank guns
and dug-in tanks. I destroyed 2 guns
and one tank during this engagement. I shot at it twice, and it went dead. It was due to our driver, not me,
that we crushed the two guns. I just told him over the tank radio:
“Misha, to the right! A gun!”. After we ran over its carriage,
I noticed another one about 10 metres away: “Crush the other one too,
or it will turn round and hit our stern!” The Red Army failed to encircle
the German troops around Orel. But Model was forced into retreat. Eventually he was able to regroup
and dig-in at the Rzhev line. By 5th August, the Red Army
had mopped up the last pockets of German resistance in Orel. Vatutin’s assault against Army Group South
took much longer to materialise. It was a full three weeks
before the Voronezh Front had regathered sufficient strength.
But on 3rd August, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev was finally
launched towards Belgorod and Kharkov. The SS panzer divisions had been
redeployed to the Donets Basin. Therefore the German line
was considerably weakened. Achieving a rapid breakthrough,
Katukov’s 1st Tank Army and Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army
advanced swiftly towards their objectives. On the third day of the offensive, Red Army
forces liberated the city of Belgorod. On 5th August,
the roar of guns was heard in Moscow. The salutes, the first to be fired
in Russia’s Great Patriotic War, honoured the liberators
of Orel and Belgorod. The Soviet troops now advanced on Kharkov.
On the fourth day of the operation, lead units of Katukov’s 1st Tank Army
broke into the town of Bogodukhov, and crossed the Poltava-Kharkov
railway branch. It was there that they were hit
by von Manstein’s counterattack. He had scrambled together
all the reserves he could muster, and thrown them into
a desperate battle to hold Kharkov. The Soviet vanguard was forced
to fall back to Bogodukhov. Meanwhile Konev’s Steppe Front
was advancing directly on Kharkov. The Germans had turned
the city into a fortress. A frontal attack would be disastrous. And so 5th Guards Tank Army
was ordered to make a flanking manoeuvre, to threaten Kharkov’s defenders with
encriclement, and force them to retreat. But now Rotmistrov’s “old friends”, the SS
Panzer Divisions Das Reich and Totenkopf, returned from the south,
and immediately attacked near Bogodukhov. At one stage, General Rotmistrov
received two contradictory orders – one from Vatutin, demanding,
he defend Bogodukhov, another from Konev,
demanding his troops storm Kharkov. It triggered a heated discussion
at Rotmistrov’s headquarters involving the army commander,
his chief of staff, and the Military Council,
led by Major General Grishin. “You have to come to some decision, sir”,
Grishin told Rotmistrov. To which he replied, “I’ve decided to hold
my positions until the situation is clear.” “But sir, we could be put on trial and shot
for this delay”, Grishin said anxiously. “If we leave our positions
and the Germans capture Bogodukhov, we will certainly be shot. It would expose the entire left flank
of the Voronezh Front to enemy attack.” Fortunately for him, Rotmistrov’s
decision proved to be the correct one. His army played a crucial part in repelling
the German counterattack around Bogodukhov. Soon Rotmistrov’s 5th Guards Tank Army
was also able to support Konev’s troops by advancing on Kharkov from the west. The German’s only line of retreat was
in imminent danger of being cut off. Hitler demanded that Manstein
hold Kharkov at all costs. But this would mean the encirclement
of the whole of Army Detachment Kempf. Manstein was not prepared
to risk another Stalingrad. On the afternoon of 22nd August, Soviet air reconnaissance reported that
the Germans were pulling out of Kharkov. Konev launched an immediate assault. The city was liberated
by noon the following day. It was a triumphant finale
to the Red Army’s great victory at Kursk. General Guderian wrote in his diary: “With the failure of the Citadel offensive
we suffered a decisive defeat. Needless to say, the Russians
exploited their victory to the full. There would be no respite
on the Eastern Front. From now on, the enemy was in
undisputed possession of the initiative.” Operation Citadel was the last
large-scale German offensive in the East. Now the Wehrmacht began a long retreat. In their wake, they left
a devastated country. Hundreds of Russian and Ukrainian
villages were burnt to the ground. Crops were destroyed.
Bridges and railway stations were blown up. Any villagers capable of work were shipped
to Germany to be used as forced labour. The Soviet troops
were marching to liberate Ukraine. Here, on the banks of the Dnieper River,
the war of liberation would begin.
