Best Case Scenario for Germans at Kursk, 1943?

[lucaswillen05]

That it would fail to achieve the result Manstein desired (A repeat of Third Kharkov on an even grander scale) and result in German losses equivalent to or greater than OTL.

The Soviets also would suffer great losses as they did at 4th Kharkov which is probably a good guide to the kind of fighting the Backhand blow would have seen. Some territory might have been permanently retaken by the Soviets. They would have taken very high losses but it would have been costly for the Germans too.

Whether it would make a difference in the long term depends on whether Stalin,in the wake of a costly failed summer offensive in 1943 would have been willing to offer a seperate peace and whether Hitler would be prepared to agree to that. If so it might be that some territory has to be returned to the Soviets or the ceasefire line reflects the military situation at the time. This allows the Germans to transfer a significant portion of their forces West to effectively prevent an Anglo American invasion of Italy let alone NW Europe.

At this time there is no gauruntee that the atomic bomb program will work so this could well effectively be the end of WW2 With the Soviet Union out of the war the only strategy for the Western allies at this point would be blockade and strategic bombing with no end in site and certainly little hope of anything other than a stalemate.

After that the best the Western Allies can hope for is that Hitler will agree to withdraw from France, Belgium, Holland and Norway.Denmark an Poland will be annexed to the Third Reich. The Germans probably would withdraw from Greece and Yugoslavia.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Whether it would make a difference in the long term depends on whether Stalin,in the wake of a costly failed summer offensive in 1943 would have been willing to offer a seperate peace and whether Hitler would be prepared to agree to that. If so it might be that some territory has to be returned to the Soviets or the ceasefire line reflects the military situation at the time. This allows the Germans to transfer a significant portion of their forces West to effectively prevent an Anglo American invasion of Italy let alone NW Europe.

If the Soviet offensive in 1943 fails, what's to stop Stalin from trying again in 1944?

 

[lucaswillen05]

Depends how badly it fails. A disaster like 3rd Kharkov or Operation Mars on a much larger scale and continuing delay of th Western Allies in startig the Second Front might be enough to convince Stalin to seek a seperate peace.

If the above does not happen Stalin can certainly try again in the autumn of 1943 and with another winter offensive. The Wehrmacht would be better placed to defend against this and renewed offensives in 1944 but it would be a question of who bleeds to death first. And it could well be the Germans assuming theSovieets have the will to keep fighting.

 

[Blackfox5]

The Germans cannot achieve a strategic success. Even if they gain an operational success and cut off the Kursk salient and destroy Soviet forces there, there is an entirely new Soviet force behind the scenes prepared for the counterattack which will still be launched. The strategic situation doesn't change.

At best, Germany delays the ability of the Red Army to advance as far and as quickly as they did IOTL. But that won't even prolong the war by much as the arrival of the Western Allies in 1944 means the war ends in 1945 at some point.

All it does is prevent certain nations in Eastern Europe from being occupied by the Soviets as the Western Allies will get there first.

 

[BlairWitch749]

If these areas were going to be lost anyway in the expected Soviet offensives, why does it matter if the Axis pulled out to save as many men as possible and wreck that area to deny it to the Soviets? Or was the objection that it was better to hold it as long as possible to extract as much of these minerals as possible?

the latter,

given the gigantic bottlenecks in those particular commodities... short of a staged retirement to the 41 border, guderian's idea sucked the least of the options available to germany in that summer

 

[AdA]

OK, I'll jump in.
After the war every german General claimed to have a better plan for Citadel. Von Manstein was the first to lay such a claim, in Lidell Hart's book "the german generals talk"
The fact is that the germans actually did better while they were attacking than when the soviets counter attacked.
The Germans had a technical edge in that summer that was only overcome when the IS2 and T34/85 arrived in large numbers in the spring of 44. They exploited that edge by ammassing excelent kill/loss ratios.
They could have bettered those by maintaing some operational flexibility and launching a large number of localized attacks that would actually have some element of surprise.
In the essence, an operational concept not much diferent from what the allies did in final stages of WW1 in France.
To do so the Front would first have to be rationalized, wich would mean abandoning the German held salient that was both an excelent staging area for OTL Citadel and an atractive and obvious target for a Soviet counter offensive.
This "multiple battles" concept would allow a large scale depletion of soviet reserves, and in case the soviets countered by launching their own offensive, a large enough reserve to stage a proper defence. But if the attacks were timed just right the soviets miht spend the summer of 43 engaged in a series of actions that would in the end prevent the masive Soviet breakthrough that happened OTL.
The drawbacks would be that the Germans would have to use a lot o fuel and move their units around much more, but in 43 they still had that capability, and that there would be no large scale victory that would allow for any sort of peace with the USSR.
Even if Germany does everything right, at most they gain a few extra months, and the west enters the cold war in better position.

 

[jmc247]

The Germans cannot achieve a strategic success. Even if they gain an operational success and cut off the Kursk salient and destroy Soviet forces there, there is an entirely new Soviet force behind the scenes prepared for the counterattack which will still be launched. The strategic situation doesn't change.

Russia did not have limitless resources of men able to fight and keep their economy going even with Lend Lease. Stalin was very much aware of that and at least to those watching at the time Germany pre-Kursk still seemed in a better economic and military position then it actually was looking back on things. Strategic success requires a leadership willing to make a deal with Stalin. Hitler simply wanted to much so even if military success caused Stalin to send out reasonable peace feelers they wouldn't have been accepted.

Even with Russia out of the war Hitler would have had to have offered up more then he would have been willing to give the U.S. and UK for peace. The only way to achieve strategic successes at that point was a change in governmental leadership. A military led wartime government pre-Kursk willing to go for the Gudarien, Rommel, Speer strategy in the East would change alot more then it appears on the surface.

Even down to the level of the German military intelligence service which Canaris was using to undermine the war effort would change overnight. Did people like Canaris know how infiltrated German intelligence was? I think he knew (its hard to know regarding if he knew or suspected the codes were broken), but at this point the German intel service which was being used to undermine the war effort by its leader and all the sudden it would be fighting for it. The not insignificant resources Himmler was using for his side 'projects' would be reallocated to the war effort and the ability of the Western Allies to sustain a long military effort in Europe politically even with press controls in place would be diminished overnight. Basically, FDR would have until November 1944 to be able to show to the American people there is major military progress in Europe or they are going to be voting Republican in 1944 as the GOP with a new German government talking peace is certain to run hard on that the U.S. needs to focus on the enemy who attacked us if the summer invasion of Europe in 1944 fails.

 

[lucaswillen05]

The best Germany could do in Russia by the summer of 1943 would be a draw and that means convincing Stalin to agree to a seperate peaceandthatwouldbe difficult to achievewithout German military success significant enoughto cause heavy enough Soviet losses to convince Stalin the hecould not win either. Howeve abig problem forGermany was they were starting to run short of manpoerthanks t the horrific casualty rates The three weekOpration Mats may have cost the RedArmy 200000men (100000 ofwhomwere killedbut Moels 9th Army hadwona phyrric victory. The 1942- 3 SovietWinteroffensivehad been stopped but at a high cost to the Wehrmacht.A purely defensive strategy wouldsurrender the initiative to the Soviets andresultinmoreofhe same. The only choices available thatgave anyprospectof success were limited offensives like Citadel or a mobilrdefenc.Itmay be that Citadelwas too and better results achieved by abandoning the Orel Salient taking upa shoorter defensive position on the Hagen Line and mounting more limited offensivesl like the proposed Operations Habicht or Panther to eliminate the smaller Kupyansk/Chuguyev Salientand straightening the line and releasingmore forces forstrategic reservesButinthe long run even this strategy might not be enough toprevent an eventual German collapse