No battle of Kursk. What then?

If Manstein gets his way then you'll see a Battle of the Sea of Azov. He planned to let the Soviets then counterattack when the Red Army got over extended. If everything had gone to plan you'd have seen several Soviet Armies cut off and pinned against the Sea of Azov.
 
Hitler never was all too happy with Operation Citadel and when Hitler was OPPOSED to an offensive, it meant something considering he was usually the first to push for a new offensive. He had a bad feeling about it.

So let's say Hitler cancels it altogether and orders powerful defences to be built up around the Kursk Bulge instead to counter the anticipated Soviet offensive and sits tight. Stalin gets impatient as the expected German offensive doesn't come and orders a summer offensive to take place in the Kursk region which is the obvious location for such an offensive.

A reverse Kursk results in summer 1943 in which the USSR suffers heavy casualties. The Red Army won't launch another offensive until winter 1943/'44 which frees some divisions for service in Italy to slow the Allies down.

Germany still loses even if it takes a few months longer. There might, however, not be a Soviet occupational zone because of their additional losses and subsequent slower advance.
 
Considering how badly the Germans are outbuilt by their enemies and the Soviets in specific, waiting is not an option however wise that might seem on a tactical level.

The delay in Citadel alone from spring to summer allowed the Soviets to build another 60ish armoured brigades IIRC, from reading John Erickson's "the road to Berlin".

No way the Germans can outfight such an industrial capacity.
 
...so basically they had to fight.

Therefore the die had essentially been caste mentally and logistically after Stalingrad since it had been proven that the Russian War Machine was not 'a rotten edifice (sic) ready to cave in' as Hitler thought. If so, could it have been the case that the Germans could have capitulated in the East if some far thinking Generals were ready to eliminate Hitler to preserve the Fatherland?
 
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If Manstein gets his way then you'll see a Battle of the Sea of Azov. He planned to let the Soviets then counterattack when the Red Army got over extended. If everything had gone to plan you'd have seen several Soviet Armies cut off and pinned against the Sea of Azov.

Manstein had this battle on the Mius, and he won; the problem was it put all of his panzer reserves in one place and then Zhukov plastered his left flank with 18 armies (this was the most brilliantly planned soviet attack of the war, even more impressive than bagration) and gutted army group south and ended Germany as serious competitor on the eastern front
 
A reverse Kursk results in summer 1943 in which the USSR suffers heavy casualties. The Red Army won't launch another offensive until winter 1943/'44 which frees some divisions for service in Italy to slow the Allies down.
Or the soviets figure that the Germans have encircled the bulge as such, and attack well to the north and south of the bulge itself, cutting off any German armies still in the area.
 
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