Triumph at Kursk - version 2.0.

Here you go.


Triumph at Kursk


Chapter I: Victory Snatched from the Jaws of Defeat, May-September 1943.


It was 1943 and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler had conquered Europe. The dictator controlled Germany by 1939 after having used demagoguery and propaganda to arouse popular sentiment against the Jews and the hated Treaty of Versailles which Hitler had relegated to the dustbin by rebuilding Germany’s armies. Austria and Czechoslovakia had been annexed without French or British responses, same for the remilitarization of the Rhineland. The invasion of Poland, however, had crossed a line. Poland had been crushed in weeks and as per the Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact the Soviet Union had occupied the eastern part of Poland. Denmark and Norway had then fallen in swift paratrooper and naval action. France had been subjected to the so-called Sickelschnitt plan in which a brilliant move through the Ardennes had cut Allied forces in half. The legendary panzers with massive air support had then crushed the French army, destroying its image as the strongest army in the world. Britain stood alone. This changed with the invasion of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union on June 22nd 1941 which had met great initial successes until Case Blue to take the Caucasus. The Battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1942/’43, resulting from Soviet general Zhukov’s counteroffensive code-named Operation Uranus, had inflicted devastating losses and US entry in December 1941 promised little good in the longer term.

After the failure to take Stalingrad, Hitler uncharacteristically left the initiative for decision making with the German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres, OKH) and made Guderian prominent again by making him Inspector of the Panzer Troops. General Von Manstein wanted to trap the Red Army’s southern wing in the Donets Basin by tricking them into pursuing the desperately reforming Sixth Army, but the OKH dismissed the idea, and instead focused on the enormous and obvious bulge in the frontlines between Orel and Kharkov 200 kilometres wide and 120 kilometres deep. Success would pinch off an enormous bulge with nearly a fifth of the Red Army’s manpower in it, straighten and shorten the line, and also take the strategically useful railroad of Kursk located on the main north-south line between Moscow and Rostov on the Black Sea coast. The plan reached its rough final form in March 1943: the Ninth Army under Walter Model would attack south from the Orel salient while Hermann Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf would attack north from the Kharkov salient. And now it was that differences surfaced between German generals about the start date. Model argued for postponement so that the upcoming Panther and heavy Tiger tanks could be used while Von Kluge and Von Manstein argued against it so that the element of surprise wouldn’t be lost, and they pointed to the fact that both tanks still had children’s diseases and that the most recent version of the Panzer IV could take the T-34. Von Manstein and Kluge managed to convince Guderian, who was altogether opposed to the offensive but saw no way to convince the majority of the general staff, to side with them and convince Hitler to launch on the planned launch date of May 4th. Guderian, Von Kluge and Von Manstein together went to convince Hitler and succeeded even if the latter wasn’t enthusiastic about Operation Citadel at all.

The operation went ahead on May 4th as planned with the Ninth Army redeployed from the Rzhev to the Orel salient, the Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf attacking all-out against the Soviet Central and Voronezh Fronts. The Ninth Army reached Olkhovatka, the first objective after an advance of eight kilometres, on the first day with little trouble expect for some sparse minefields which were suppose to have become a major defensive line in two months time. They thereby took the only highland natural barrier before the flat tank land all the way to Kursk and by late May these troops had taken Maloarkhangelsk just 60 kilometres north-north-east of Kursk. The southern pincer spearheaded by the Fourth Panzer Army followed by the II SS Panzer Corps and the Grossdeutschland Panzergrenadier divisions had advanced to Prokhorovka by May 20th despite moving over high terrain facing strong resistance. They managed to take Oboyan about two weeks later on June 5th, again facing high ground, and again an organized Soviet defence as Stalin did not authorize a retreat seeing how that had worked out well at Stalingrad. Around that same time the northern Ninth Army took the important train station at Ponyri by virtue of their control of Maloarkhangelsk and Olkhovatka to the east and west of the town.

By June 28th the Ninth Army had taken Svoboda about 20 kilometres from Kursk, the end goal of the entire operation, and German forces threatened to encircle two Soviet Fronts. Similarly the southern pincer had marched to within miles of Ryshkovo, itself a mere few miles of Kursk, and morale was up high among German troops, higher than ever after the deep low following Stalingrad. Von Manstein, who was in overall command, told Hitler the good news himself and Hitler was elated after fits of rage, apathy, depression and pessimism over the past few months. A few days later after their meeting in the Wolf’s Lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia, the two German pincers closed the gap on July 4th and cut off two the Central and Voronezh Fronts to the delight of German commanders. German forces advanced to within Kursk itself and fought fierce street-to-street battles, and also moved to shrink the so-called “Kursk Pocket”. They used mostly superior aerial support against Soviet troops who suffered heavy losses in armour and vehicles and lost ground daily despite relief efforts from the Red Air Force. While Germany suffered serious losses too, they regained a little of their winning streak that they’d had before Stalingrad and shrunk the Kursk Pocket.

The Soviet XIX Cavalry Corps, the XI and XXX Ural Volunteer Tank Corps, and VI Guard Mechanised Corps, amassing east of Kursk, tried to break the encirclement but could not and on August 12th the Central and Voronezh Fronts capitulated to German forces. One million Red Army soldiers were either dead or had been captured, two thousand tanks had been lost to the Germans, and 1.900 aircraft had been lost as well on the Soviet side. The Germans had lost about 190.000 men, 800 tanks, and 750 aircraft. All in all, the Germans had successfully shortened the line, even if at some losses, and they had just about crippled the Red Army’s ability to launch an offensive until the next year, in other words into at least early 1944. A small follow-up offensive launched by Von Manstein was also successful and Germany retook Rostov in early September. Another follow-up offensive against the resource and food starved Leningrad was also successful with reinforcements from both Army Group Centre and South made possible by the shortened front namely the 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions, and the 24th Panzer Division and 76th Infantry Division. It would be the last major German offensive on the eastern front for the rest of the war.

This freed up troops for the defence of Italy which was necessary at this point since the Africa Corps under Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, Rommel’s replacement, had surrendered in May 1943 and therefore an invasion of Italy from North Africa seemed imminent. Hitler initially believed the invasion would come at Sardinia, but given the fact that the OKH had launched a successful offensive without his interference, he allowed the OKH and OKW a lot of leeway in organising the defence of Germany’s southern flank, including General Albert Kesselring who had recently been promoted to commander of the southern theatre. The latter believed that despite captured Allied plans (in reality part of a deception campaign) the landings would take place on Sicily and he would be proven right as Operation Husky was launched on July 10th. The 15th Panzergrenadier division and the 1st Paratroop Panzer Division Hermann Goering (in reality a Panzer Corps) were already based on Sicily, and Kesselring was promised reinforcements in the shape of the 29th Panzergrenadier division, the II SS Panzer Corps, the Panzergrenadier division Grossdeutschland and the 26th Panzer Division plus some elite tank battalions with Tiger Is, Panthers and Elefant tank destroyers which all had mechanical problems although that was less of an issue in defensive warfare. All of these units were battle hardened veteran units from the eastern front who would prove their worth against the Allied invaders, but it would take time for them to be transferred from the eastern front to Sicily and would ultimately arrive too late to prevent the fall of Sicily.

In the meantime the first landings took place with paratroopers of the US 505th Parachute Infantry Division, part of the 82nd Airborne Division, landing in the night of July 9th to July 10th. They were supposed to have landed five miles inland from Gela to block routes to the US 1st Infantry Division, but due to confused friendly fire from Allied ships they were scattered over a large area and nowhere near their drop zone which was worsened by strong winds blowing the gliders off course. The British 21st Independent Parachute Company fared little better as they seized the Ponte Grande bridge across the river Anape near Syracuse and tried to fight off counterattacks. They were eventually forced to surrender to the Italian 75th Infantry Regiment. By July 14th Allied paratroopers, mainly the US ones, had more or less regrouped and caused confusion among Axis troops by attacking their patrols. The paratroopers were followed by amphibious landings across the southern and eastern coastlines on 26 beaches between Licata and Cassibile with some element of surprise since local commanders believed no one would undertake a landing in such windy conditions. After the initial shock, Axis commanders formulated a response by attacking with the Infantry Division Livorno and the Hermann Goering Division and reached the outskirts of Gela, but gunfire from destroyers USS Boise and USS Shubrick destroyed several tanks and drove the counterattacking forces back inland. Italian SM. 79 torpedo bombers, and German Junkers Ju-88 bombers and Ju-87 dive bombers coordinated their attacks, damaging or sinking a number of warships, transport vessels and landing vessels. 8.000 tonnes of shipping was sunk and thirty enemy aircraft were reported as being downed, but this did not stop the Allied landing. By nightfall July 10th seven divisions had landed. They advanced from the beachheads and by around July 25th they had advanced to the arching Catania-Agira-Santo Stefano line relatively easy since Kesselring had abandoned western Sicily to shorten the line.

Reinforcements arrived on August 5th and Kesselring recognised that Sicily could not be held and in a magnificent evacuation operation he succeeded in moving a lot of troops and equipment to southern Italy to prepare the defence of mainland Italy against the expected invasion. Allied intelligence of course knew of the logistics train coming from the eastern front, but anticipated that reinforcements would arrive too late to be able to change the strategic situation on Sicily and they were proven right.

Kesselring had the following forces directly available to defend the “toe” of Italy: the Hermann Goering Panzer Division, the 15th Panzergrenadier division, the 29th Panzergrenadier Division, the II SS Panzer Corps, the 26th Panzer Division and the Panzergrenadier Division Grossdeutschland evacuated from Sicily, as well as the 16th Panzer Division, the LXXVI Panzer Corps and the 1st Parachute Division already in southern Italy. This made for a total of thirteen divisions directly available for the defence of southern Italy which had air support in the shape of fighter and dive-bomber squadrons piloted by experienced eastern front veterans amounting to nearly 2.300 planes complemented by the Regia Aeronautica. To further support the effort, large amounts of flak guns were concentrated very densely in southern Italy. General Kesselring and his commander on the ground in southern Italy, Erwin Rommel, planned a defence which amounted to the main effort being slightly more inland to avoid being exposed to enemy naval guns.

In the meantime, the German air forces in anticipation of the landing attacked enemy shipping whenever they could while Kesselring attempted to hide the massing troops in southern Italy by conducting it all in radio silence with handwritten orders only. While the Allies had an idea of what was happening, they were unsure of the where, when and how of German troop deployments and were also confident after the successful Sicilian campaign. Moreover, Kesselring sent out false information about his troop concentrations to confuse his enemies in a deception campaign which even fooled the Lucy Spy Ring in Switzerland that had so far reported many enemy movements.

British troops in the shape of the British Eighth Army’s XIII Corps landed on the toe of Italy on September 3rd and encountered fierce resistance from the Grossdeutschland Division and the II SS Panzer Corps and were also subjected to aerial attack from Stuka dive bombers, mainly against the transports, but also against the escort vessels. German eastern front veterans proved to be capable of challenging the Allies, a lot. Calabria itself is very mountainous which was excellent for the defenders and the mountains also shielded them from naval gun fire which was complemented by the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica sinking a quite significant amount of enemy vessels using Ju-87 Stukas and S.M. 79 torpedo bombers. The Allies had already lost a significant amount of transports and smaller warships at Sicily. On September 8th the 231st brigade landed at Pizzo to the German rear, but found themselves under attack from three sides from the Kruger Battle Group, the 29th Panzergrenadier Division and the 15th Panzergrenadier Division amassed near Castrovillari and they were forced to surrender before they could link up with the British XIII Corps. In the meantime, Kesselring released the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division and the Tenth Army from the north to reinforce southern Italy. The Calabria landings were contained and treated to intense aerial and artillery bombardment while also encountering heavy Tiger and Panther tanks as well as Elefant tank destroyers. German troops took up positions close to the British which inhibited the threat of enemy naval guns since British and US battleships couldn’t risk hitting their own troops.

British forces barely maintained their cohesion as the Germans heightened the pressure, retaking control over the important port of Bagnara while digging in into the mountainous landscape and destroying bridges that the Allies could use. The British tried to seize the town of Taurianova with an important road junction, but the SS using its heavy tanks inflicted heavy casualties and all but destroyed the 7th Armoured Division as a cohesive fighting force.

At Salerno, US forces did not achieve the element of surprise despite the initial of lack naval and aerial bombardment. While they established a beachhead using fire from naval guns, fierce defensive efforts prevented them from obtaining their mountain pass objectives on the route to Naples. The US Fifth Army was forced to concentrate its efforts and therefore failed to link up with British forces to the south. The Americans remained stuck on the beaches while the LXXVI Panzer Corps, the 16th Panzer Division, the Hermann Goering Panzer Division and the 3rd Panzergrenadier Division prepared for a counterattack. The Regia Marina supported the counteroffensive in what in hindsight was a suicide mission: battleships Vittorio Veneto, Littorio, Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio attacked the Allied support fleet and both Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio ended on the ocean floor while the other two fell back heavily damaged, but it distracted Allied attention long enough for Axis troops stationed a few miles from Salerno at Battipaglia to the south and Scafati to the north to counterattack against the Americans against their left and right flanks. They attacked after nightfall so enemy ships couldn’t see them and they intermeshed with US troops so that the naval component could not risk bombarding blindly since they could hit their own troops. The Fifth Army lost its cohesion as German panzers wedged their way into the X and VI Corps and pocketed part of them. They were pushed back into the sea with heavy casualties. Allied military leaders decided to evacuate the British troops stuck in Calabria seeing how the situation seemed hopeless, and so the first attempt to break into Fortress Europe had failed.

Hitler used this breather to prepare a defence on the eastern for the expected winter or spring offensive of the Red Army expected to begin somewhere between February and May 1944, seeing how Stalin had refused to bow down after the defeat at Kursk and because Hitler himself once again believed that victory might still be possible thanks to his “saving genius” that had led to Kursk. He aimed to construct a defensive line from just west of Smolensk along the Dnieper river, except in the south where it diverged eastward in order to protect the Crimean Peninsula. This line would become known as the Panther-Wotan Line. The northern part of the line would be constructed from Vitebsk to Pskov from where it would then follow the west coast of Lake Peipus and its river delta to Narva on the Finnish Gulf. Like with the Hindenburg Line in World War I, Hitler hoped to shorten his front, release divisions for duties elsewhere and bleed the Red Army dry in a stalemate while defeating the western allies (and making a compromise peace with them in the vain hope of an anti-Bolshevik alliance) and then turning back to deal with the Soviet Union once and for all.

The order for its construction was given on August 11th and soon hundreds of thousands of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Jews and political dissidents were put to work as slave labour under SS supervision. They dug trenches, laid minefields, laid barbed wire and constructed numerous anti-tank obstacles, casemates and pillboxes while thousands of artillery and mortar positions were being prepared and tanks were dug in as casemates to create a system of defences 30 kilometres deep, the same depth as the Maginot Line. Germany prepared for the final clash of titans that would determine the course of the war.
 
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Kesselring was promised reinforcements in the shape of the 29th Panzergrenadier division, the II SS Panzer Corps, the Panzergrenadier division Grossdeutschland and the 26th Panzer Division. Both the II SS and the Grossdeutschland would include three elite armoured regiments each, one equipped with Tiger I tanks, another equipped with the lighter Panther tank and the last one with the heavy “Elefant” tank destroyers. All of these units were battle hardened veteran units from the eastern front who would prove their worth against the Allied invaders

1. A 1943 German armoured division would have one regiment made up of two tank batallions and one attached tank destroyer batallion. Tank batallions were at best 60 and normally 40-50 tanks

2. Elefants were practically immobile due to mechanical difficulties (not too serious on defence I'll grant) but more problematic was their extreme weight (70 tonnes) which meant they couldn't be deployed in may circumstances due to road and bridge limitations. They only built around 100 of them and you've just deployed c. 150

3. At this point Panthers were horribly unreliable. 50% of the tanks out of service at Kursk were due to mechanical failures. There were only about 250 panthers assigned to Kursk anyway and you'd struggle to get 150 fit for service to Italy

4. Tiger batallions were not used in armoured divisions as a general rule but in separate heavy tank batallions. You might get one company of Tigers in an armoured division

5. Regia Marina are now kamikazes in the style of the Yamato?

6. Shore bombardment is not carried out at night????????? Tell that to the RN in the Western Desert. As for not hitting their own troops, the accuracy of naval gunfire is such that +/- 100 yards is possible to contain all fall of shot. The entire German army can't hug the Allies that closely - their logistics will be targetted and shot to hell.

7. How are Stukas and SM 79 getting through against overwhelming allied air superiority based out of Sicily?

Version 3.0?
 
1. A 1943 German armoured division would have one regiment made up of two tank batallions and one attached tank destroyer batallion. Tank batallions were at best 60 and normally 40-50 tanks

2. Elefants were practically immobile due to mechanical difficulties (not too serious on defence I'll grant) but more problematic was their extreme weight (70 tonnes) which meant they couldn't be deployed in may circumstances due to road and bridge limitations. They only built around 100 of them and you've just deployed c. 150

3. At this point Panthers were horribly unreliable. 50% of the tanks out of service at Kursk were due to mechanical failures. There were only about 250 panthers assigned to Kursk anyway and you'd struggle to get 150 fit for service to Italy

4. Tiger batallions were not used in armoured divisions as a general rule but in separate heavy tank batallions. You might get one company of Tigers in an armoured division

5. Regia Marina are now kamikazes in the style of the Yamato?

6. Shore bombardment is not carried out at night????????? Tell that to the RN in the Western Desert. As for not hitting their own troops, the accuracy of naval gunfire is such that +/- 100 yards is possible to contain all fall of shot. The entire German army can't hug the Allies that closely - their logistics will be targetted and shot to hell.

7. How are Stukas and SM 79 getting through against overwhelming allied air superiority based out of Sicily?

Version 3.0?

To add to this...

Where are these maasses of AA guns coming from??
The defensive terrain you mention is hardly suitable for tanks (especially the heavy german tanks), so all those armoured divisions arent going to be much help.
There is no way the airfields in southern italy can cope with 2300 planes (2300!? just which fronts are being stripped bare to supply them??) even if the RA sits it out in the vino bar... and just where is the aviation fuel for all this air activity coming from? The Italians werent exactly swimming in the stuff...

Better than V1, but still way too much magical force deployment (oh, and stupid allies, of course..:)
 
1. A 1943 German armoured division would have one regiment made up of two tank batallions and one attached tank destroyer batallion. Tank batallions were at best 60 and normally 40-50 tanks

2. Elefants were practically immobile due to mechanical difficulties (not too serious on defence I'll grant) but more problematic was their extreme weight (70 tonnes) which meant they couldn't be deployed in may circumstances due to road and bridge limitations. They only built around 100 of them and you've just deployed c. 150

3. At this point Panthers were horribly unreliable. 50% of the tanks out of service at Kursk were due to mechanical failures. There were only about 250 panthers assigned to Kursk anyway and you'd struggle to get 150 fit for service to Italy

4. Tiger batallions were not used in armoured divisions as a general rule but in separate heavy tank batallions. You might get one company of Tigers in an armoured division

5. Regia Marina are now kamikazes in the style of the Yamato?

6. Shore bombardment is not carried out at night????????? Tell that to the RN in the Western Desert. As for not hitting their own troops, the accuracy of naval gunfire is such that +/- 100 yards is possible to contain all fall of shot. The entire German army can't hug the Allies that closely - their logistics will be targetted and shot to hell.

7. How are Stukas and SM 79 getting through against overwhelming allied air superiority based out of Sicily?

Version 3.0?

OK, I edited so that the heavy tanks are in separate tank battalions so there should only be a few dozen of each in Italy which I suppose is more realistic.

The Regia Marina has had its hassles with the RN before such as in the Battle of Cape Matapan and got away even if it was with serious losses. Raiding the enemy's ship movements is not out of the question (the Italians and Germans of course don't know of Ultra...).

When it comes to coastal bombardment I have my doubts about the accuracy level that you state, especially in windy September seas. Moreover, German troops in mountainous Italy are generally not in these ships line of sight. And we're talking about a front dozens of miles long which means that Allied ships cannot be everywhere at once.

As for the last point, you may notice that a lot of planes with veteran pilots were transferred from the eastern front to southern Italy. Perhaps my estimate of the number of aircraft in chapter I may actually be low (1.500 IOTL + the 1.900 that IOTL were still busy fighting a Kursk in the east when the Italian campaign commenced). I'll edit the number shortly. Plus, Calabria is filled with flak as I wrote.

To add to this...

Where are these maasses of AA guns coming from??
The defensive terrain you mention is hardly suitable for tanks (especially the heavy german tanks), so all those armoured divisions arent going to be much help.
There is no way the airfields in southern italy can cope with 2300 planes (2300!? just which fronts are being stripped bare to supply them??) even if the RA sits it out in the vino bar... and just where is the aviation fuel for all this air activity coming from? The Italians werent exactly swimming in the stuff...

Better than V1, but still way too much magical force deployment (oh, and stupid allies, of course..:)

IOTL, both sides of the Straits of Messina were riddled with flak...

As for the numbers, see above.
 
From "Naval Gunfire Support of Amphibious Operations: Past, Present, and Future" NAVAL SURFACE WEAPONS CENTER DAHLGREN LAB VA...
http://www.dtic.mil/srch/search?q=n...yes&n=10&sum=yes&hl=y&searchview=d4&pg=2&sort=
on Salerno and naval gunfire support

Of the 14 September assault, General Vietinghoff wrote:
"The attack this morning pushed on into stiffened resistance but above
all the advancing troops had to endure the most severe heavy fire
that had hitherto been exjcerienced; the naval gunfire from at least
16 to 18 battleships, cruisers and large destroyers lying in the
roadstead. With astonishing precision and freedom of maneuver,
these ships shot at every recognized target with very overwhelming
effect."

Early on the morning of 15 September, Field Marshall Kesslering, in
overall command, remarked to Vietinghoff during a conference that the counter-
attacking Panzers seemed to be reverting to positional warfare. He warned:
"This must not happen. If attacks on the level ground of the
Salerno plain were impractical because of Allied air and naval bom-
bardment perhaps the Panzers could attack further sou.th .... 14•"

General Herr, Commander of the LXXVI Panzer Corps, thought not as he stated
that Allied naval fire made it doubtful that he could ever reach the coast.

That same night Vietinghoff recommended to Kesslering that the German
forces be withdrawn to the north. In his recommendation he stated:
"The fact that the attacks which have been prepared fully and
carried out with spirit, especially by the XIV Panzer corps, were
unable to reach their objective owing to the fire from naval guns
and low flying aircraft makes withdrawal imperative"


What's changed in this TL?
 
Oh - and why hasn't Italy surrendered by the time the Allies land?

As for the planes - you've got to be including the Italian airforce in your 2300 planes which would be of limited value due to morale (see above surrender) and quality.

The 2100 planes at Kursk were virtually the entire combat force on the Eastern Front - the Russians may have suffered a huge defeat but their air force is mostly intact - have the Germans abandoned the Eastern Front completely?

As for AA, the Straits were heavily defended, the whole of Calabria wasn't.

Also what happened to the landing at Tarranto - or are the Italians still fighting there too?
 
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OW,

My nitpicks where ignored (I'll leave the Sicily stuff to others)

Just on the Kursk stuff

The Germans CANT FIGHT FOR EIGHT WEEKS STRAIT ON A SUSTAINED OFFENSIVE... they didn't have fuel or ammo for such an enterprise... they had crippling ammo shortages 5 days after Kursk started in OTL with 2 extra months of stock piling

The Kursk front wasn't defenseless in May... it was less defended, but not defenseless... by May 4th, the Russians had 8 weeks to build up defenses, which going by Glantz's mine laying calculations means the average rifle division on line at Kursk would have laid 30k mines to defend their sector (as opposed to 70k during the otl battle)

the number of panther tanks available the first week in may for actual combat would be less than 100 due to factory cluster fuck and the chaos of speer and guderian taking over the armaments industry and whipping them into shape

WHERE DO THE GERMANS GET THE INFANTRY TO BREAK THE FRONT LINES, ADVANCE AROUND THE POCKET 200 MILES ON FOOT AND DESTROY THE POCKET? Manstein had 0... 0 infantry divisions in reserve in July...Kluge and Model had 0...0 infantry divisions in reserve.... the OKH reserves for the operation where 2 divisions the 17th ss panzer grenadier division and 5th ss panzer division "wiking"...the field forces, plus those two divisions are supposed to defeat the soviet front line divisions which outnumbered them considerably, advance 100 miles a piece against heavily defended territory, surround the pocket, and beat it into submission whilst defending against relief attempts or secondary Russian counter offensives...

No 1943 POD allows the Germans to win Kursk PERIOD... they can do better, but not recreate the Kiev pocket... those days ended at Stalingrad and could never return
 
In short, when Hitler says an offensive makes his stomach turn, there's something wrong. I think you've got an interesting idea with a decisive German victory in 1943 but Kursk should be abandoned for another strategy, maybe another backhand blow?
 
In short, when Hitler says an offensive makes his stomach turn, there's something wrong. I think you've got an interesting idea with a decisive German victory in 1943 but Kursk should be abandoned for another strategy, maybe another backhand blow?

The backhand blow isn't enough in 1943... Manstein's plan was too risky and Hitler was correct in rejecting it

1. The Donets basin was supplying critical war materials such as manganese and nickel and couldn't be abandoned without considerable cost
2. The new generation of German tanks (even the Panzer IV's weighed 25 tonnes now on a suspension and engine not designed for such weight) where not particularly capable of sustained road marches of hundreds of kilometers of the sort practices in 1941 and 1942
3. There was no garuantee that the Russians would attack where Manstein wanted them to... the large numbers of American trucks and half tracks had drastically increased the red army's mobility so they could advance cross country from unexpected directions
4. The Russians had such gross numerical superiority, that even if Manstein heavily defeated an entire army group, the several concurrent offensives along the entire front would find many sectors starved of armored support and the Russians would break through and collapse the front which is what happened in OTL after Kursk


The only strategy that made sense was the one proposed by Guderian and Rommel, sit the hell put. The Germans by July had 5 solid months to fortify the front without much action. They should have dug in as much as humanly possible, parcelled the panzer corps into strong reserve positions and tried to repeat operation mars if humanly possible (they should have proactively evacuated the rhzev saliant and the mius loop which would have put about 6-10 divisions into reserve/digging duty
 
The backhand blow isn't enough in 1943... Manstein's plan was too risky and Hitler was correct in rejecting it

1. The Donets basin was supplying critical war materials such as manganese and nickel and couldn't be abandoned without considerable cost
2. The new generation of German tanks (even the Panzer IV's weighed 25 tonnes now on a suspension and engine not designed for such weight) where not particularly capable of sustained road marches of hundreds of kilometers of the sort practices in 1941 and 1942
3. There was no garuantee that the Russians would attack where Manstein wanted them to... the large numbers of American trucks and half tracks had drastically increased the red army's mobility so they could advance cross country from unexpected directions
4. The Russians had such gross numerical superiority, that even if Manstein heavily defeated an entire army group, the several concurrent offensives along the entire front would find many sectors starved of armored support and the Russians would break through and collapse the front which is what happened in OTL after Kursk

Fair enough.

The only strategy that made sense was the one proposed by Guderian and Rommel, sit the hell put. The Germans by July had 5 solid months to fortify the front without much action. They should have dug in as much as humanly possible, parcelled the panzer corps into strong reserve positions and tried to repeat operation mars if humanly possible (they should have proactively evacuated the rhzev saliant and the mius loop which would have put about 6-10 divisions into reserve/digging duty

I guess so, although there isn't much chance Stalin will attack, the man didn't like to gamble. Still a MUCH better strategy for the Germans though.
 
As has already been said the Soviets had penetrated German military planning to such a degree that they not only knew well in advance of the German offensive at Kursk but were able to plan, position units and even construct defensive lines against an operation before it took place.

You present the German offensive as a surprise which it could not be under those circumstances and go so far as to include in the pocket Soviet units which were not sent until after the German plan was known.

You then follow up with a series of other operations in the Soviet Union yet also have Germany deploying to southern Italy more aircraft than the Luftwaffe had in the Soviet Union and tanks/vehicles of several classes in complete disregard for such factors as the number actually existing, none of this movement causing problems for German fuel supplies, the transport net or being noticed by the Allies.


You've completely ignored Italian opinion which was to get out of the war, and which was already sharing information with the Allies, especially such information as German reinforcements whose presence would make it more difficult to get Italy out of the war, and instead have the Italian fleet embarking on a suicide run at a time when Italy is withdrawing from the war.


You consistently ignore or underestimate Allied intelligence operations, air and naval power and so forth while wildly overestimating German capacity, starting with this absurdity of Germany packing several more divisions into the extreme south of Italy than were deployed in all of Italy OTL without consideration of the actual transport capacity in southern Italy, not to mention having these forces unnoticed by the Allies.


Another failed TL.
 
People, ease up on the man a bit. Sure there are some nitpicks in this TL, but labeling it as a failure is just being a douche.
 
People, ease up on the man a bit. Sure there are some nitpicks in this TL, but labeling it as a failure is just being a douche.

I was only chippy because he "borrowed" my LW figures but didn't reton based on my Kursk info :p

There is a story in the Pete Tsouras "Third Reich Victorious series" that you may want to check out OW; called Known Enemies and forced allies

First POD is that the Germans have a somewhat more effective battle of Kasserine, capturing more fuel and disorganizing the allies a bit more... the DAK skips the battle of mareth (where they lost badly) and instead retires to tough defensive positions to the north... Hitler is more overwhelmed by the failure at Stalingrad and orders the DAK (to the extent possible) to evac Tunisia (9 battalions make it out) and these forces take station in Sicily

Hitler is so distraught by Stalingrad that he can't go through with Kursk and keeps postponing it and postponing it until Stalin gets impatient and attacks first into the Rhzev saliant and Manstein's Belgorad defensive positions, where Manstein and Kluge fight a tough defensive battle but inflict heavy losses to the point where the main soviet exploitation forces are too torn up to be viable

The allies use the 36th division instead of the big red 1 in sicily, and they perform badly... also monty is wounded on the first or second day in an air attack which disorganizes the british army since lease and patton can't even pretend to get along and alexander has a hard time getting them into sync.... the disorganization allows the germans to build a powerful defensive line around mt etna and conduct a violent pitched retreat towards it using the river lines
 
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