Kursk -- Lost Victory or Defeat

trajen777

Banned
Just finished Armor and Blood by Dennis Showalter, as well a good article (http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-kursk-germanys-lost-victory-in-world-war-ii.htm) ---

Questions :
1. Is the lost Victory a real lost victory ?
2. What would have been the Soviet impact of the loss of 2 armies ?
3. Could this have led to a negotiated settlement ?


that talks about the Lost Victory. :::::::::::::::::

Waffen SS formations’ records of their Eastern Front operations were not declassified until 19781981. By that time, many of the major works about the Eastern Front had already been published. Later authors accepted the accounts of the battle as given in the earlier books and failed to conduct additional research. As a result, one of the best known of all Eastern Front battles has never been understood properly. Prochorovka was believed to have been a significant German defeat but was actually a stunning reversal for the Soviets because they suffered enormous tank losses.

As Manstein suggested, Prochorovka may truly have been a lost German victory, thanks to decisions made by Hitler. It was fortunate for the Allied cause that the German dictator, a foremost proponent of the value of will, lost his own will to fight in southern Ukraine in July 1943. Had he allowed Manstein to continue the attack on the two Soviet tank armies in the Prochorovka area, Manstein might have achieved a victory even more damaging to the Soviets than the counterattack that had recaptured Kharkov in March 1943

The reality of the Business ::;;
On July 13, the day after the Battle of Prochorovka, Fourth Panzer Army reports declared that the II SS Panzer Corps had 163 operational tanks, a net loss of only 48 tanks. Actual losses were somewhat heavier, the discrepancy due to the gain of repaired tanks returned to action. Closer study of the losses of each type of tank reveals that the corps lost about 70 tanks on July 12. In contrast, Soviet tank losses, long assumed to be moderate, were actually catastrophic. In 1984, a history of the Fifth Guards Tank Army written by Rotmistrov himself revealed that on July 13 the army lost 400 tanks to repairable damage. He gave no figure for tanks that were destroyed or not available for salvage. Evidence suggests that there were hundreds of additional Soviet tanks lost. Several German accounts mention that Hausser had to use chalk to mark and count the huge jumble of 93 knocked-out Soviet tanks in the Leibstandarte sector alone. Other Soviet sources say the tank strength of the army on July 13 was 150 to 200, a loss of about 650 tanks. Those losses brought a caustic rebuke from Josef Stalin. Subsequently, the depleted Fifth Guards Tank Army did not resume offensive action, and Rotmistrov ordered his remaining tanks to dig in among the infantry positions west of the town.

Another misconception about the battle is the image of all three SS divisions attacking shoulder to shoulder through the narrow lane between the Psel and the rail line west of Prochorovka. Only Leibstandarte was aligned directly west of the town, and it was the only division to attack the town itself. The II SS Panzer Corps zone of battle, contrary to the impression given in many accounts, was approximately nine miles wide, with Totenkopf on the left flank, Leibstandarte in the center and Das Reich on the right flank. Totenkopf‘s armor was committed primarily to the Psel bridgehead and in defensive action against Soviet attacks on the Psel bridges. In fact, only Leibstandarte actually advanced into the corridor west of Prochorovka, and then only after it had thrown back initial Soviet attacks.

Early on July 12, Leibstandarte units reported a great deal of loud motor noise, which indicated massing Soviet armor. Soon after 5 a.m., hundreds of Soviet tanks, carrying infantry, rolled out of Prochorovka and its environs in groups of 40 to 50. Waves of T-34 and T-70 tanks advanced at high speed in a charge straight at the startled Germans. When machine-gun fire, armor-piercing shells and artillery fire struck the T-34s, the Soviet infantry jumped off and sought cover. Leaving their infantry behind, the T-34s rolled on. Those Soviet tanks that survived the initial clash with SS armor continued a linear advance and were destroyed by the Germans.

When the initial Soviet attack paused, Leibstandarte pushed its armor toward the town and collided with elements of Rotmistrov’s reserve armor. A Soviet attack by the 181st Tank Regiment was defeated by several SS Tigers, one of which, the 13th (heavy) Company of the 1st SS Panzer Regiment, was commanded by 2nd Lt. Michael Wittmann, the most successful tank commander of the war. Wittmann’s group was advancing in flank support of the German main attack when it was engaged by the Soviet tank regiment at long range. The Soviet charge, straight at the Tigers over open ground, was suicidal. The frontal armor of the Tiger was impervious to the 76mm guns of the T-34s at any great distance. The field was soon littered with burning T-34s and T-70s. None of the Tigers were lost, but the 181st Tank Regiment was annihilated. Late in the day, Rotmistrov committed his last reserves, elements of the V Mechanized Corps, which finally halted Leibstandarte.


 
1. Is the lost Victory a real lost victory ?

No, it was not. In fact, it was almost an even worse defeat for the Germans. By 15 July the Germans had already, as Glantz puts it in his book on Kursk "shot their bolt." Von Manstein wanted to keep grinding away at 5 GTA in the hopes of destroying it, but doing so would have left him hideously vulnerable when Steppe Front's reserves (of whose existence he was completely unaware) started pouring into the area.

The link relies an awful lot on the Germans perspective, but what the Germans never knew was that entirely new and fresh Soviet armoured formations were massing on their flanks. On the night of 15 July, the 27th and 53rd Armies of the Steppe Front, in possession of the 4th Guards Tank and 1st Mechanized Corps were closing on the left flank of the Germans at Prokhorovka from assembly areas near Oboiani, with orders to launch a general counter-offensive to encircle and crush the German spearhead. When combined with the Soviet mechanized forces already on that flank (formations such as the 1st Tank Army, 3rd Mechanized Corps, and 31 Tank Corps), the Soviets would have at their disposal 800 tanks, 500 of which would be ready to go on July 15th. These flanks had already been shuddering under the battalion and regimental-scale attacks of independent Soviet tank units, which gives us a pretty good idea of how poorly they would handle a full-scale mechanized counter-offensive. They would have been assisted by the 200 remaining tanks of the battered but not beaten 5th Guards Tank Army fixing the German attention firmly to their front. For their own part, the Leibstandarte division had less then a 100 AFVs still going and this was close to the average for all the German panzer forces.

The withdrawal of the Germans pre-empted what could have been a very, very bad day for the exhausted SS divisions.
 
I lost at this:

...
Waffen SS formations’ records of their Eastern Front operations were not declassified until 19781981.
...

Declassified by who? The nazi government? The US or Brit army kept these records secret? The Soviet government kept a lot of stuff locked up, was this declassification part of some Perestroika move?
 
Those SS divisions were more skilled than their USSR counterpart divisions far and away. Michael Wittmann and Rudolf von Ribbentrop were at that battle.

In Kursk Operation Simulation and Validation Exercise - Phase II (KOSAVE II) by Bauman, Walter J. they say that on that day the three panzer divisions destroyed 144 Soviet tanks, mainly T-34s, and only lost 6.

Why was this?

In Men, Machines, and Modern Times Elting E. Morison it says the side that fire first even if outnumbered 2 to 1 has more of an advantage than a enemy force with a force ratio of 8 to 1 that fires second during WWII experiences in France

In Combat Failure:Nightmare of Armored Units Since World War II by in the couple of years leading up to 1990 these reasons represented the majority of reasons why trainees at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin failed
Poor reconnaissance/counter reconnaissance
Direct fire systems killing potential not maximized
Inability to breech enemy obstacles
Poor tank gunnery killing skills
Difficult conducting actions on enemy contact and assaults
Lack of operational endurance
Not rehearsing the plans to be executed
Poor fire support planning and execution
Failure to maintain momentum while maneuvering
Inability to fight at night
Poor command, control, and leadership under fire
Poor battalion security
Neglecting essential force ratios needed to attack or defend

I would add information and decision making superiority to this

German armor divisions used tank regiments which lack infantry which as the Israelis found out in 1973 can be highly susceptible to antitank artillery on their own

However, as Bauman concludes, while the German tank forces were better, the number of losses they were taking was unsustainable despite the fact they were winning

The reason at this point USSR forces were losing probably had little to do with information and command and control which had been sorted out at this point, and any resulting disadvantage in the USSR tempo of battle relative to German forces, e.g. battle of Brody
 

trajen777

Banned
IN Showalters book --- released archives shows German Tanks losses of about 250 - 10 of those are Tigers --- Russian losses were 1900 - 2000 tanks. German casualties 54,000 vs Russian losses of 320,000.
 
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