Steven H. Newton KURSK the GERMAN VIEW
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TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND ANNOTATED WITH NEW MATERIAL BY Steven H. Newton KURSK THE GERMAN VIEW Eyewitness Reports of Operation Citadel by the German Commanders Translated, edited, and annotated by Steven H. Newton DA CAPO PRESS A Member of the Perseus Books Group Copyright © 2002 by Steven H. Newton All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Designed by Brent Wilcox Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-306-81150-2 Published by Da Capo Press A Member of the Perseus Books Group http://www.dacapopress.com Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 11 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, or call (617) 252-5298. 12345678 9—05 04 03 02 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi PART 1 Strategic Analysis of Operation Citadel Eyewitness Accounts by German Commanders 1 Operation Citadel Overview by General of Infantry Theodor Busse APPENDIX 1A German Military Intelligence and Soviet Strength, July 1943 27 Armeeabteilung Kempf 29 by Colonel General Erhard Raus APPENDIX 2A Order of Battle: Corps Raus (Special Employment), 2 March 1943 58 APPENDIX 2B Order of Battle: Armeeabteilung Kempf, 5 July 1943 61 Fourth Panzer Army 65 by General of Infantry Friedrich Fangohr APPENDIX SA Order of Battle: Fourth Panzer Army, 12 March 1943 89 APPENDIX SB Order of Battle: Fourth Panzer Army, 5-6 July 1943 92 Ninth Army and Second Panzer Army 97 by Major General Peter von der Groeben APPENDIX 4A Order of Battle: Ninth Army, 5 July 1943 120 APPENDIX 4B Order of Battle: Second Panzer Army, 5 July 1943 128 vi Contents APPENDIX 4C Deception Designations Used by Ninth Army Prior to Operation Citadel 134 APPENDIX 4D Tactical Group Designations: Second Panzer and Ninth Armies, 13 July-13 August 1943 135 APPENDIX 4E Artillery Strength: Second Panzer and Ninth Armies, 5 July 1943 140 APPENDIX 4F Replacements Available, Ninth Army, 5 July 1943 144 5 Luftflotte Six 145 by General of Fliers Friedrich Kless APPENDIX 5 A Order of Battle: Luftflotte Six, 1 July 1943 174 6 Luftflotte Four 179 by General of Fliers Hans Seidemann APPENDIX 6A Order of Battle: Luftflotte Four, 1 July 1943 195 7 Railroad Transportation 201 by Colonel Hermann Teske PART 2 Tactical Aspects of Operation Citadel Eyewitness Accounts by German Commanders 8 XXXV Corps, East of Orel 217 by Colonel General Lothar Rendulic APPENDIX SA Order of Battle: XXXV Corps, 12 July 1943 224 9 XX Corps in Defensive Fighting, August-October 1943 227 by General of Artillery Rudolf Freiherr von Roman APPENDIX 9A Order of Battle: XX Corps, 8-9 August 1943 251 10 XI Corps in the Battles for Belgorod and Kharkov 255 by Colonel General Erhard Raus APPENDIX IDA Order of Battle: Eighth Army, 24 August 1943 291 APPENDIX 10B Combat Strength Report: Eighth Army, 24-25 August 294 APPENDIX ioc Changes in Combat Strength: XI Corps, 4 July-25 August 1943 300 APPENDIX IOD Combat Strength Report: XI Corps, 26 August 1943 302 Contents vii APPENDIX IOE Report of Enemy Tanks Destroyed: 198th Infantry Division, 19 July-14 August 1943 304 11 Sixth Army Defends the Mius River Line 305 by Major Dr. Martin Francke APPENDIX HA Order of Battle: Sixth Army, 17 July 1943 350 PART 3 Operation Citadel An Analysis of Its Critical Aspects Steven H. Newton 12 Hoth, von Manstein, and Prokhorovka: A Revision in Need of Revising 357 13 Ninth Army and the "Numbers Game": A Fatal Delay? 371 14 Army Group South's Initial Assault: Analysis and Critique 381 15 Was Kursk a Decisive Battle? 407 Atlas 417 Notes 439 Bibliography 457 Index 463 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS From an institutional perspective it would be exceedingly difficult to find the time for research and writing without the active support of my de- partment chair, Dr. Sam Hoff, and the provost of Delaware State Univer- sity, Dr. Johnny Tolliver. Research assistance at the National Archives was provided by Andrew Heilmann and Jonathan Scott, who always work enthusiastically. I just hope that next time they'll ask for a price quote before they place an order for full-size map copies. My discussions on battlefield tactics with Lieutenant Colonel Dave Wrenn, Virginia Army National Guard and (as of this writing) Opera- tions officer of the 29th Infantry Division (Light) have been, as always, in- valuable. No books would ever issue from the Newton household without the unwavering support of my wife, Faith, as well as our children, Marie, Alexis, and Michael. I get toleration if not encouragement from Momma and Buddy, the cats who let us share their house, as long as writing doesn't interfere with the important things in life—like dinner. IX Introduction Operation Citadel, part of the battle of Kursk, continues to attract interest as the renowned Greatest Tank Battle of All Time. It took place at Prokhorovka, Russia, near the border of Ukraine far south-southwest of Moscow. It followed on the heels of Nazi Germany's thrust into the So- viet Union during the 1942—1943 winter campaign and the Soviets' sub- sequent counterthrust that spring and summer. Recent historical treat- ments have scaled down the size of the action, and some memoirs, such as those penned by German commanders Erich von Manstein and Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, along with German unit histories, have dominated our understanding of the battle for far too long.1 These were the sources primarily utilized by Paul Carell nee Schmidt for his rousing, well-written Kursk segment in Scorched Earth (1966).2 These same sources have continued to dominate the German side of the battle through the publication of Geoffrey Jukes's Kursk: The Clash of Armour (1968), Martin Caidin's The Tigers Are Burning (1974), Mark Healey's Kursk 1943: The Tide Turns in the East (1992), and Robin Cross's Citadel: The Battle for Kursk (1993). Janusz Piekalkiewicz's Operation "Citadel," Kursk, and Orel: The Greatest Tank Battle of the Second World War (1987), George M. Nipe Jr.'s Decision in the Ukraine, Summer 1943: IISS. and III. Panzerkorps (1996), and Walter S. Dunn's Kursk: Hitler's Gamble, 1943 (1997) have each in their own way attempted to expand the universe of German source material, but none produced a comprehensive history of the battle.3 Even so, with such a wide variety of easily accessible books on the battle in print in English, it might be thought that very nearly the last word on that campaign has been spoken.4 When David M. Glantz and Jonathan House published The Battle of Kursk (1999), written with unprecedented access to the Soviet archives, many reviewers suggested that the definitive history of the operation had finally been written. Strangely enough, this has not turned out to be XI xii Introduction the case. Although Glantz and House deserve high marks for the schol- arly perspective and research brought to bear on the Red Army side of the battle, their account of the German conduct of operations is disap- pointingly thin and relies on many outdated secondary sources while ig- noring significant archival material that most historians knew for years had existed. As a result, when the authors set out to debunk the myths surrounding Kursk, their conclusions are at once unsatisfying and based on incomplete data. One almost wishes that the book had been entitled Kursk: The Soviet Perspective, for that of the Germans is strangely lacking.5 There is significant German material on Kursk and its aftermath in the German Archives (Bundesarchiv) and our own National Archives, both in the Foreign Military Studies section and in the Captured German Records section. Much of the statistical information contained therein has recently been published by Niklas Zetterling and Anders Frankson in their landmark study, Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis.6 Yet Zetterling and Frankson, and most of the other authors cited above, have not delved deeply into the postwar accounts "written by former German offi- cers of their battles and campaigns at the behest of the United States Army, which in the late 1940s was assessing its own performance and gearing up for a potential confrontation with the Red Army in Central Europe. Especially as these essays relate to the Russian front, their qual- ity varies widely. Frequently officers lacked official papers and maps and had to work from memory: Errors in times, dates, places, and units abounded. Although some officers—Fritz Bayerlein, Günther Blumen- tritt, Franz Halder, and Lothar Rendulic among them—made virtual sec- ond careers of churning out these works, others wrote only one or two papers. Those who wrote few essays tended to fall at the extremes of the spectrum: either meticulously detailed and accurate, or poorly conceived and sloppily written. Worse still, the translators were company- and field-grade officers with what appears to have been a very limited profi- ciency in German and almost no understanding of the structure and nomenclature employed by the army of their former enemies. This state of affairs was rendered doubly unfortunate when, a few years later, two separate cadres of U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force officers, along with several civil servants, reworked, modified, excerpted, and— in the most extreme cases—completely rewrote some of these essays for official government publication.