The 5th GTA was so badly smashed it was virtually combat incapable after the engagement and afterwards the II SS Panzer Corps attacked in a different direction to seal off a bulge on it's flank in cooperation with the III Panzer Corps; that attack succeeded and forced the Soviets to retreat while leaving all their heavy equipment behind, especially the vital AT guns.
You've brought this claim up before and... well, I suppose a necroed thread on the subject is as good a place as any...
*ahem*
Unsustainable losses can mean different things. The losses were unsustainable in that it required weeks after to rebuild from the strategic reserves the effected tank units before they could fight again and they were about down to their last reserves in the salient that would be able to impact the situation on the southern flank.
Also I'm not claiming the Soviets lied outright about their losses, but hid the extent of them from STAVKA through creative accounting means to avoid Stalin's wrath. One book that noted the discrepancies in reports between what was reported to STAVKA and what was noted in unit records is linked below.
No, unsustainable losses has a pretty clear definition: losses which render a force incapable of
sustaining operations. Given that all Soviet armies opposing Citadel were still in action on July 15th and were subsequently conducting massive offensive operations throughout August, it is clear they did not suffer such losses. In any case, claims about the supposed unreliability of the Soviet system of accounting tend to stumble the moment someone points out that the Soviets included an entire second channel of information in the political officers system that would make attempting to hide such losses an exercise in futility and Soviet officers would know this. Indeed, the claim that Stalin was upset with the losses is in direct contradiction with the claim that he was misled on them. If he was misled by his commanders attempting to avoid his wrath, why was he then upset? Furthermore, the sort of internal reports you are claiming were inaccurate were the statistics that formed the basis of all of their accounting, administration and decision-making. It would have been quite impossible for them to formulate plans that were as successful as Kutuzov and Rumyanets and their following operations had these been systemically wrong.
The last reserves were being plugged into the line at different points than that of the 5th GTA, but these were smaller than the forces that had already been trashed in previous days. Orders to the 5th GTA to keep attacking were unable to be carried out as there were no more reserves left to them and they were stuck just helping hold the line around Prokhorovka; I'm referring to the situation on the 16th, after the efforts to crush Totenkopf had been defeated and after Hitler's order to cancel the operation had been made, and with extra time for Manstein to keep going. There was another operation from July 14th-15th, which was Operation Roland, and forced the Soviets to abandon a bunch of their AT guns to avoid being encircled; historically that was the end of the operation, because the SS Panzer corps had to fall back, as they were to be redeployed to Italy and the rest of the corps to the Mius front.
The 27th and 53rd armies constituted 281 and 282 AFVs respectively, for a combined total of 563 AFVs. In addition, the two armies hence contained almost as many operational AFVs as the 5th Guards Tank Armies when it engaged at Prokhorovka, so in armored terms the claim they were meaningfully weaker then previous forces is baseless. What’s worth further considering is that they were not in fact the last of the Soviet reserves, or even the last of the Steppe Front: the 47th Army remained in the reserves and the 4th Guards Army was placed under the Steppe Front’s command and transferred into the region by July 21st, but likewise remained uncommitted throughout most of Rumyanstev. Only around the time of the fall of Kharkov do these two armies appear in the line. So clearly the reserves being moving up on July 15th were far from the last. And Roland was insignificant: it achieved nothing expect eat up minute quantities of empty territory. The claim it depleted the Soviets AT arsenal is not supported by the quantities of Soviet artillery losses, which for the entirety of Citadel amount to 1/13th of those engaged on the southern shoulder of the salient.
IOTL the withdrawn units were in constant transit or combat from the pull back on, they effectively got no rest, while the Soviet survivors of Citadel did.
Yes, they got plenty of rest. Even when in transit, units equipment were subject to maintenance overhauls before being loaded on the trains while men could obviously sleep while being transported by train. Given that the amount of time between the formations being withdrawn and then actually leaving the theatre or being committed elsehwere can be measured from days to weeks. In fact, many of the units slated to be sent to Italy were still around when Rumyanstev launched and participated in blunting it, so there was generally plenty of time for equipment to get maintained and personnel to rest.
They couldn't attack because they were trying barely holding on. Operation Roland ran from the 14th to 15th and during that the SS Panzer corps and III Panzer corps linked up, punching off the Belenikhino salient, forcing a rapid withdrawal of Soviet forces, which while they got out they had to abandon most of their AT equipment in the process.
Soviet internal reports do not show any indication they were barely holding on. Instead, they hold the Soviets were busily making preparations for their counter-offensive, having recognized all the signs the Germans had exhausted themselves. The claim the Soviets had lost much of their AT weapons is without foundation: Voronezh Front reports 1,712 losses among artillery pieces of all calibers, of which 672 were irrecoverable, for the entirety of Citadel. Neither Soviet nor German accounts indicate significant Soviet AT losses to Roland and not even the source Wikipedia cites for it’s claim makes mention of significant AT losses. In fact, it indicates the opposite by discussing how the attempts to take Pravorot (their primary objective for Roland) were frustrated by “deep minefields, a wide anti-tank ditch,
large numbers of PaKs [AT guns] and dug-in T-34s”. For having lost so many AT weapons, the Germans sure are running into a lot of them!
In fact, the fact that the Germans could not take Pravorot, which was their primary objective (after destroying the Soviet forces within the salient between, which they were also unsuccessful in doing) highlights how total a failure Roland was and how ill-advised continuing to attack would have been. Even more, when it comes to the issue of the German forces exhaustion, the book this book offers powerful supporting evidence! In discussing the Germans strength by the end of the 15th:
“The normally unshakeable, perhaps overweening confidence of the SS troops that they could overcome any obstacle was undermined by the exhaustion now pervading the ranks of Das Reich, they could not deny the self-evidence truth that the Soviet forces contesting every inch of ground were no nearer collapse. In the absence of any mobile reserve that could step in and supplement the declining combat power of the SS formation and III Panzer Corps, the German attempt to collapse the Soviet defences to the south of Prokhorovka petered out.
The half-light that ushered in the dawn on 16 July emanated from a sky of depressing grey, with rain falling in torrents from the low clouds blanketing the Kursk salient. The elements, however, could not dampen the growing sense of satisfaction pervading Zhukov’s headquarters in Prokhorovka, as the reports flowing in throughout the day all spoke of a significant fall-off in enemy attacks across the length and breadth of the Voronezh Front. For the Deputy Supreme Commander, they all pointed to the irrefutable conclusion that here in the south of the salient, as had occurred some days earlier in the north, the German offensive high tide had not only been reached but was already on the ebb. While the next few days were to be characterized by a bloody stalemate, with either side exchanging artillery and rocket barrages upon their respective positions, the Soviets recorded very few, even tentative probes by German armour.”
-Zitadelle: The German Offensive Against the Kursk Salient 4-17 July 1943
So tired they couldn’t even launch much in the way of probing attacks. Now that’s pretty damn exhausted.
The Belgorod offensive came weeks later after Citadel was over and forces had withdrawn, while Soviet forces were rebuilt from the STAVKA reserves. You're right that the Soviet strategic reserve wasn't depleted, but the on hand reserves of the Voronezh Front and forces able to be committed to the attack or defense were already committed as of the time the Germans pulled back on the 17th. You're conflating strategic with operational reserves and the impact that would have had on the Citadel operation, the former not mattering to the operation, just the ability to rebuild forces shattered during Citadel in the weeks between those forces exiting combat and starting the Belgorod-Kharkov operation.
And your showing no appreciation for the rapidity with which strategic reserves could be deployed forward and replace the operational reserves which had been sent forward. As a case in point, when the 27th and 53rd Army were dispatched towards the front, they were almost immediately replaced from the strategic reserves by the 47th and 4th Guards Army. And when they were moved up to the front in late-August, they were replaced by 3rd Guards Tank Army which had by then had a few weeks to refit itself after being withdrawn from the Orel offensive in early-August. And this is just individual army’s, I’m not taking into account corps or more individual replacements being transferred in from replacement depots. The Soviets were
constantly in a process of moving, reconstituting, and deploying formations from the front to the reserves and as a result were
never without reserves.
The text on the pages around the map makes it abundantly clear where they were being committed, it was directly to their immediate front, not a wider flank, they were trying to stop the Panzer corps west of the SS corps and the SS corps, which had just linked up linked up with III PC in Operation Roland, depriving a large part of Soviet forces their heavy equipment including AT weapons when they fled to avoid being pocketed. I'm at work now, so don't have access to the book to quote it directly, but remember clearly that particular argument about this issue.
No, the text does not make it clear. It states that the armies were ordered “to join with the Voronezh front in a general offensive designed to push the German forces back to their starting positions” but makes no indication about precisely where on the line these forces would be deployed. As I note shortly, the 27th Army never even reached the frontline when the Germans pulled back on the 17th and it isn’t clear whether the 53rd had either.
What do you even mean by 'left flank'? 27th Army was deployed to stop the XXXXVIII PC. The 53rd army was deploying to help the smashed 5th GTA, which was in trouble after Operation Roland and the link up of the III and SS PC. What are you even basing the exhaustion claim on? Yes, Soviet reserves were fresh, but they hadn't done well in combat with 1 PC let alone two linked up with the rest of the Soviet forces on line having been deprived of their AT weapons in the retreat out of the pocket forming on the 13th-14th.
The left flank of the German thrust on the 17th constituted the LII Corps, with the right flank manned by the formations of Army Detachment Kempf. Whether the XXXXVIII constituted part of the 4th Panzer Army’s front or a part of it’s left flank is debatable, given the overall northeastward turn of the German advance during the course of Citadel. But that the II SS Panzer Corps and III Panzer Corps represented the front of the German attack force by July 12th, there is no doubt.
As to the deployments, anyone can click on the links where the maps are and see that neither the 27th nor 53rd Army’s were in the line in the positions you claim they are on July 15th. The 27th Army was up at Oboian, well to the rear of the 6th Guards and 1st Tank Army. In fact, if one flips forward to the map on page 238, they’ll see that on July 21st it was STILL off the line and had moved off to the southwest a way’s, behind the boundary between the 6th Guards and 40th Armies. Although the Germans had long withdrawn by that point, had they still had their salient it would have left the 27th Army well positioned to strike the LII Corps, particularly the 332nd Infantry Division. They would have been joined by the shock group 6th Guards Army was assembling in this region. Even assuming the 53rd Army didn’t move around to join this counter-stroke, the 6th Army and 27th Army combined would be tossing 481 AFVs against the 332nd and possibly it’s neighboring 255th, neither of whom had a AFV to their name.
As for the 53rd Army, it was behind the Donetskaia Seimitsa tributary of the Donets river, far to the rear of 5th Guards Tank Army which itself was still in the fight and dug in like a tick at the defense line anchored by Prokhorovka. It’s subsequent take-over for the 5th Guards Tank Army would indeed have let positioned it in front of. But OTL it only took over that section of the front because the Germans withdrew and the 5th Guards could be freed up to shift westward to exploit the breach in the line created by the initial assault. Had the Germans not withdrawn, there is nothing preventing it from moving behind the front in that direction as well while the 5th Guards continue to tie the Germans down in a protracted slugfest.
If about OTL then yes that would be an issue, but perhaps if those divisions were stuck in on the south flank of Kursk they would send a different armored division to help instead of GD. How did one depleted Panzer Division without rest or time to refit then stop the entire Soviet thrust of a Soviet army and cavalry corps by itself?
If the Germans had a spare panzer division in reserve, they would have sent it instead of transferring forces in from the south. The reality is that the transfer was of absolute necessity as the commitment of armor to Citadel had left the Germans without any such reserve. The subsequent withdrawal from Orel was in fact quite vital in reconstituting such a functioning panzer reserve that proved vital in blunting subsequent Soviet offensives at Smolensk and allowing Army Group Center to fall back across the D’niepr during the fall. The claim that Grossdeutschland Division had no time to rest or refit is clearly false: the time between it’s withdrawal and arrival leaves at least several days worth even if we assume the troops weren’t able to catch any rest on the train. When combined by the already-on-the-scene surviving elements of two German corps, it would certainly represent more then enough force to hold the 11th Guards Army until the 9th Army panzer corps withdrawing from Orel arrived to solidify the defense.
What date are you talking about? Because Hitler called off Citadel on the 13th as a result of Sicily Landings and Soviet offensive against Orel, but only applied it to the northern face of the offensive, allowing it to continue with Manstein for a few extra days before the SS PC was broken up and shipped out. So while yes it was cancelled for two reasons, Sicily for the Southern flank, the Soviet Orel offensive for the North, it wasn't a clean cancellation of the entire thing at once and arguably could have continued in the South as the SS PC wasn't ultimately needed for Italy, while the Sicily Landings freed up 1st Panzer Division from Greece to be used elsewhere (it was held their to counter a potential landing in Greece and it showed up in the East eventually and could have left sooner than IOTL if needed).
And Hitler called off Manstein because yet further Soviet offensives were developing (yet more proof that Soviet reserves were far from immediately exhausted). And yes, the south could have continued but for the reasons I already noted that would have achieved nothing and only set the Germans up for an even bigger defeat. Finally, it is also wrong to claim that 1st Panzer was immediately freed up by the Sicilian landing. Part of it was because Hitler wasn’t sure that there wouldn’t be a second landing in Greece anyways and part of it was the subsequent need to disarm Italian forces and secure the country in September. So the division wasn’t free to transfer east until October, but by that time Kursk was long over and the battle had shifted far to the west… and it’s arrival continued to prove unable to stem the tide.
If anything the wider Kursk campaign was more the death of the German infantry arm, as manpower went into terminal decline for the Germans after the casualties suffered in the series of brutal attrition battles fought that summer, especially in Ukraine, though the fighting around Smolensk was quite bad and going on at the same time.
Oh, the death of the German infantry arm had started well before Kursk. It had already proven unable to beat off Soviet relentless assaults unless backed up by German panzer forces well before then.
