WI no Zitadelle

Hitler follows his instincts in this case and cancels the planned attack on the Kursk salient because it becomes clear the Red Army is too prepared for it. Germany goes over to the strategic and operational defensive in the summer of 1943. What then happens?
 
My guess would be that when the wallies invade Sisily some of the German reserves are sent to bolster the Italians as OTL. The Russians would see this as an opertune time to attack. However in this senario the Germans haven't sustained the crippling losses of the Kursk offensive so are much better placed to meet the Russian attack. It isn't implausable for the Russians to sustain significant losses fighting a battle of maniuver where they are at a distinct disadvantage.

It would lengthen the war but by 1943 the war is effectively unwinable for the Germans. After 2 years of brutal war in the east it is unlikely the Russians would ever entertain a negotiated peace (regardless of their losses in this senario) which is the best the Germans could really hope for.
 

Deleted member 1487

It is unlikely that Hitler would go on the defensive entirely, the Germans badly needed a strategic offensive victory in the East to cripple the Soviets. The question is do the Soviets act quicker than the alternate German plan and how quickly they find out Zitadelle is cancelled. IOTL the Soviets were heavily aided when they went on the offensive by the losses that German armor took during Zitadelle and the artillery ammo they used up. That means an outright breakthrough like what happened during 4th Kharkov is unlikely ITTL, which means a slog, but the Soviets will advance to the Dniepr, the question is how long it would take.
 
It is unlikely that Hitler would go on the defensive entirely, the Germans badly needed a strategic offensive victory in the East to cripple the Soviets. The question is do the Soviets act quicker than the alternate German plan and how quickly they find out Zitadelle is cancelled. IOTL the Soviets were heavily aided when they went on the offensive by the losses that German armor took during Zitadelle and the artillery ammo they used up. That means an outright breakthrough like what happened during 4th Kharkov is unlikely ITTL, which means a slog, but the Soviets will advance to the Dniepr, the question is how long it would take.

The artillery ammunition is something I have heard of before and have seen cited as a reason for why Smolensk was retaken by the Soviets, beyond the obvious of the Germans having used up potential reserves on the Northern end of the Kursk Bulge. However, with the German tank losses, I thought those had been revised down in recent times thanks to new research? I know they were for sure with the II SS tank corps on the Southern end.
 

Deleted member 1487

The artillery ammunition is something I have heard of before and have seen cited as a reason for why Smolensk was retaken by the Soviets, beyond the obvious of the Germans having used up potential reserves on the Northern end of the Kursk Bulge. However, with the German tank losses, I thought those had been revised down in recent times thanks to new research? I know they were for sure with the II SS tank corps on the Southern end.
Losses yes, but not numbers in repair shops, which were not operational and lost during the September retreat.
 
Losses yes, but not numbers in repair shops, which were not operational and lost during the September retreat.

Given Citadel was over in July, could losses in September even be considered a part of it? We do know in July, for instance, that the Germans were able to return 600 damaged tanks back to the battlefield.
 

Deleted member 1487

Given Citadel was over in July, could losses in September even be considered a part of it? We do know in July, for instance, that the Germans were able to return 600 damaged tanks back to the battlefield.
Fighting was constant from July-September, so there was a constant stream of damage to be repaired and maintenance that needed to be done after heavy use.
 
Fighting was constant from July-September, so there was a constant stream of damage to be repaired and maintenance that needed to be done after heavy use.

Indeed, but with regards to Citadel specifically was my point; operational losses to follow up Soviet thrusts are different in this regard, at least in my judgement. What are the numbers on this, by the way? Like I said, the Germans did manage to recover and repair 600 in July and research into II SS haven shown they took far less losses than what was once believed.
 

Deleted member 1487

Indeed, but with regards to Citadel specifically was my point; operational losses to follow up Soviet thrusts are different in this regard, at least in my judgement. What are the numbers on this, by the way? Like I said, the Germans did manage to recover and repair 600 in July and research into II SS haven shown they took far less losses than what was once believed.
Not really, as the Soviets attacked the Orel Bulge during Zitadelle, forcing them to cancel their offensive on the north side of Kursk, and pull back ASAP, probably abandoning quite a bit of material in the process in the eventually retreat to the Hagen line near Orel. In the south the fighting in the retreat to Belgorod and the continual fighting in that area in the 2 week break between Zitadelle and 4th Kharkov, plus the Mius operation shortly thereafter meant there was little time to repair or replace losses from Zitadelle, while AG-South armor then fought again in August around Kharkov. The Soviets consider Zitadelle through September one giant campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk#Soviet_Kursk_Strategic_Offensive_Operation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgorod-Kharkov_Offensive_Operation
 
Not really, as the Soviets attacked the Orel Bulge during Zitadelle, forcing them to cancel their offensive on the north side of Kursk, and pull back ASAP, probably abandoning quite a bit of material in the process in the eventually retreat to the Hagen line near Orel. In the south the fighting in the retreat to Belgorod and the continual fighting in that area in the 2 week break between Zitadelle and 4th Kharkov, plus the Mius operation shortly thereafter meant there was little time to repair or replace losses from Zitadelle, while AG-South armor then fought again in August around Kharkov. The Soviets consider Zitadelle through September one giant campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk#Soviet_Kursk_Strategic_Offensive_Operation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgorod-Kharkov_Offensive_Operation

I cannot answer for the Northern sectors, but in the Southern ones George Nipe's Decision in the Ukraine states that no repair shops got overrun. Although it doesn't state whether or not repair shops got overrun and the relative breakdown of where the tanks came from, Kursk Operation Simulation and Validation Exercise – Phase III by the U.S. Army's Concepts Analysis Agency is the source for the fact that 600 German tanks got repaired.
 

Deleted member 1487

I cannot answer for the Northern sectors, but in the Southern ones George Nipe's Decision in the Ukraine states that no repair shops got overrun. Although it doesn't state whether or not repair shops got overrun and the relative breakdown of where the tanks came from, Kursk Operation Simulation and Validation Exercise – Phase III by the U.S. Army's Concepts Analysis Agency is the source for the fact that 600 German tanks got repaired.
There seems to be a misunderstanding, I'm referring to losses post-Zitadelle, your link is mainly talking about during and immediately after the battle. One of the later hits for your link search shows how little armor was left operational by early August, 25 tanks for one of the SS armored divisions. As they retreated in August-September armor was lost.

Did you mean phase II of said exercise study? There is not a phase III that I can find via google.
 

Ian_W

Banned
It is unlikely that Hitler would go on the defensive entirely, the Germans badly needed a strategic offensive victory in the East to cripple the Soviets. The question is do the Soviets act quicker than the alternate German plan and how quickly they find out Zitadelle is cancelled. IOTL the Soviets were heavily aided when they went on the offensive by the losses that German armor took during Zitadelle and the artillery ammo they used up. That means an outright breakthrough like what happened during 4th Kharkov is unlikely ITTL, which means a slog, but the Soviets will advance to the Dniepr, the question is how long it would take.

The problem is that any operation that could result in a strategic German offensive victory will look a lot like Zitadelle - which was aimed at a large encirclement - and have similar issues to the actual Zitadelle.
 
IOTL the Soviets were heavily aided when they went on the offensive by the losses that German armor took during Zitadelle

Which was insignificant compared to the losses among German armor when the Soviets took the offensive. Given the capabilities of German panzer repair crews most of the damaged tanks the Germans had to abandon in their workshops had been damaged during the defensive fighting against the Soviet offensive, not from Citadel. Likely the Germans would have been losing more tanks because they would inevitably have been falling back sooner and would have been forced to abandon more of them to the enemy advance. Only if the Germans could have stopped the Soviet attacks dead would this have been otherwise and this not at all likely given the scale of forces the Soviets possessed by the summer of 1943, and the German's consistent failure to correctly anticipate where the Soviets would employ them.

the artillery ammo they used up.

The German's ammunition shortage appear until more roughly 2 weeks after the Soviet breakthrough at Kharkov and roughly a week after the city's fate had already been decided. This is even more obvious when it comes to Orel, where the Soviet gains that decided the salient's fate occurred in the first week of the offensive, roughly more then a month before the ammo shortages appeared yet still Soviets ground through the Germans at the same casualty ratios they took during Citadel and Rumianstev. The Soviets had regained Orel proper on the same day they achieved their breakthrough north of Kharkov, again well ahead of the ammunition shortages appearance according to the literature. In the face of those bald facts, it is difficult to accept the claim that the absence of ammunition expenditures at Citadel would have made a substantial difference.
 
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Deleted member 1487

The problem is that any operation that could result in a strategic German offensive victory will look a lot like Zitadelle - which was aimed at a large encirclement - and have similar issues to the actual Zitadelle.
Not necessarily, there were some proposals for limited offensives and of course Manstein's 'backhand blow', not that the latter would have been particularly successful.
 

Deleted member 1487

Which was insignificant compared to the losses among German armor when the Soviets took the offensive. Given the capabilities of German panzer repair crews most of the damaged tanks the Germans had to abandon in their workshops had been damaged during the defensive fighting against the Soviet offensive, not from Citadel.
Those were related things. German write offs from Kursk were limited, but damage was substantial, which meant there were a lot of repairs to do, which were subsequently lost in retreats during the Soviet offensives. Those tanks wouldn't have been in repair depots and lost during retreats if not for Zitadelle.

Likely the Germans would have been losing more tanks because they would inevitably have been falling back sooner and would have been forced to abandon more of them to the enemy advance. Only if the Germans could have stopped the Soviet attacks dead would this have been otherwise and this not at all likely given the scale of forces the Soviets possessed by the summer of 1943, and the German's consistent failure to correctly anticipate where the Soviets would employ them.
Depends. If you read about their conduct on the defensive in the Orel Bulge they suffered few combat losses, as they were often firing from hull down positions or even at long range due to the new generation of tanks with that capability and exposing themselves far less than they were during their offensive. The Soviets would have the ability to recover losses though. There is the question of whether the Soviets could have pulled off their Belgorod-4th Kharkov victory without German losses at Zitadelle; Soviet losses were all made good and there wasn't any new units committed that didn't exist during Zitadelle, while German strength was severely depleted, especially among tanks and infantry, plus of course in ammo and they had to hold a new extended line north of Belgorod after the retreat from Kursk in July that was not fortified.
It is possible that the Soviet offensive in Ukraine fails the first round, but the Soviets aren't going to stop, they will come back until they win. The question is what price they pay for that and how much longer it takes to get to the Dniepr.

The German's ammunition shortage appear until more roughly 2 weeks after the Soviet breakthrough at Kharkov and roughly a week after the city's fate had already been decided. This is even more obvious when it comes to Orel, where the Soviet gains that decided the salient's fate occurred in the first week of the offensive, roughly more then a month before the ammo shortages appeared yet still Soviets ground through the Germans at the same casualty ratios they took during Citadel and Rumianstev. The Soviets had regained Orel proper on the same day they achieved their breakthrough north of Kharkov, again well ahead of the ammunition shortages appearance according to the literature.
AG-South's ammo problem came to a head during the Kharkov fighting itself when they ran out. We don't know how much it impacted fighting prior to that due to attempts to conserve ammo, but that ammo issue coupled with the infantry and armor losses in July plus the new extended line held north of Belgorod created the conditions for the Soviet breakout from Belgorod in mid-August.

The Orel situation was different, but contributing. There Soviet success was in large part a function of German armor being worn down during Zitadelle and committed to the offensive, so not available to defend the Orel bulge when the Soviet offensive started. That and some early mistakes of German reserve employment due to inexperienced division commanders.
Soviet losses during Orel were substantially worse than during Zitadelle and 4th Kharkov:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kutuzov
Zitadelle was 3:1, but Kutuzov was 5:1. Also armor losses aren't differentiated between Zitadelle and Kutuzov because they overlapped, but total German armor losses for July for the Orel area were 343, while just for Kutuzov the Soviets lost nearly 2600 AFVs and something like 2000 for Zitadelle (assume 40% or so of that lost on the north face of the Kursk Bulge).

In the face of those bald facts, it is difficult to accept the claim that the absence of ammunition expenditures at Citadel would have made a substantial difference.
Not sure that follows; the German line at Orel was never penetrated, rather squeezed out partially as a result of armor losses and commitment due to Kursk, and I never said the ammo situation for AG-Center was the issue for their retreat. Rather the 4th Kharkov counterattack/defense fell apart due to a combination of factors including infantry depletion, armor numbers being heavily reduced due to combat damage, AND ammo running out during the critical phase of the Kharkov battle that crippled the defense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgorod-Kharkov_Offensive_Operation#Offensive_Operation
The supply situation in Kharkov was now catastrophic; artillerymen after firing their last rounds, were abandoning their guns to fight as infantrymen. The army's supply depot had five trainloads of spare tank tracks left over from "Zitadelle" but very little else. The high consumption of ammunition in the last month and a half had cut into supplies put aside for the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September; until the turn of the month the army would have to get along with fifty percent of its daily average requirements in artillery & tank ammunition. XI Army Corps now had a combat strength of only 4,000 infantrymen, one man for every ten yards of front.[24]
 
Those were related things. German write offs from Kursk were limited, but damage was substantial, which meant there were a lot of repairs to do, which were subsequently lost in retreats during the Soviet offensives. Those tanks wouldn't have been in repair depots and lost during retreats if not for Zitadelle.

A assertion not supported by the known capacities of the German repair crews. The tank maintenance company of a Panzer Regiment could handle about 30-40 tanks at once. The 16 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions that participated between them easily would have had the repair capacity for about 1,000 tanks and the regimental repair shops worked on timelines of days and weeks, not months. First hand accounts by Panzer troops indicate the majority of damaged vehicles would have been back in a matter of days. Any tanks which were not capable of being repaired within 14 days would have either been cannabilized for spare parts or shipped back to depots too far behind the lines for the Soviets to reach. So the preponderance of available evidence indicates that the tanks which were lost in the retreats were overwhelmingly there due to the Soviet offensives, not Citadel. As such, the we can safely say that the bulk of those tanks would still indeed be there if Citadel has not occurred.

Depends. If you read about their conduct on the defensive in the Orel Bulge they suffered few combat losses, as they were often firing from hull down positions or even at long range due to the new generation of tanks with that capability and exposing themselves far less than they were during their offensive. The Soviets would have the ability to recover losses though. There is the question of whether the Soviets could have pulled off their Belgorod-4th Kharkov victory without German losses at Zitadelle; Soviet losses were all made good and there wasn't any new units committed that didn't exist during Zitadelle, while German strength was severely depleted, especially among tanks and infantry, plus of course in ammo and they had to hold a new extended line north of Belgorod after the retreat from Kursk in July that was not fortified.

There is nothing to indicate German Panzer losses during Kutuzov were lower then during Citadel and indeed the basic dynamics of tank warfare on the Eastern Front would suggest the opposite. There is little doubt that the Soviets could have probably pulled off their breakthrough at Belogorod given that said offensive did far more to deplete German strength then Citadel ever did and that Citadel did not have as much impact on German strength as you are claiming.

It is possible that the Soviet offensive in Ukraine fails the first round, but the Soviets aren't going to stop, they will come back until they win. The question is what price they pay for that and how much longer it takes to get to the Dniepr.

Oh, it’s possible but unlikely due to German defects and even if it takes the Soviets a few more months to do it, that is offset by the fact they have a few more months to do so. Even if the first offensive fails, the second offensive will be liable to succeed as the German panzers are out of position dealing with the first. And, to paraphrase Robert Citino, the Germans will run out of strength long before the Soviets run out of offensives.

AG-South's ammo problem came to a head during the Kharkov fighting itself when they ran out. We don't know how much it impacted fighting prior to that due to attempts to conserve ammo, but that ammo issue coupled with the infantry and armor losses in July plus the new extended line held north of Belgorod created the conditions for the Soviet breakout from Belgorod in mid-August.

AG-South’s ammo problem came to a head long after the battles that actually decided the fate of Kharkov had occurred. There is no indication it impacted prior fighting or that there were efforts to conserve ammunition and indeed the existing literature indicates the opposite as they attribute German expenditures during the defensive fighting with just as much, of not even more, importance in creating the ammo shortage. That German infantry were incapable of defending against Soviet armored attacks was a situation that existed even before Citadel, so obviously Citadel didn’t impact that, and I have already covered how armored losses at Kursk were primarily due to the Soviet offensive stage and not the German offensive stage. The German Front line established at the end of March 1943 was already far too long for the depleted Wehrmacht to defend, with or without Citadel. Similarly, where the German infantry were and were not dug in was unimportant since the Soviets repeatedly demonstrated the ability to overrun defending infantry regardless of how dug-in they were. There really isn’t anything to indicate that Citadel created the conditions for the Soviet breakthrough. It is far more likely that those conditions instead already existed.

The Orel situation was different, but contributing. There Soviet success was in large part a function of German armor being worn down during Zitadelle and committed to the offensive, so not available to defend the Orel bulge when the Soviet offensive started. That and some early mistakes of German reserve employment due to inexperienced division commanders.
Soviet losses during Orel were substantially worse than during Zitadelle and 4th Kharkov:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kutuzov

That Soviet losses were worse at Orel then at Citadel is not in dispute. But what is also not in dispute was that German losses also were worse nor that the losses the Soviets suffered was debilitating, given that they immediately followed up Orel with a offensive that broke through the German defenses at Bryansk and pushed them back to the D'niepr.

Zitadelle was 3:1, but Kutuzov was 5:1. Also armor losses aren't differentiated between Zitadelle and Kutuzov because they overlapped, but total German armor losses for July for the Orel area were 343, while just for Kutuzov the Soviets lost nearly 2600 AFVs and something like 2000 for Zitadelle (assume 40% or so of that lost on the north face of the Kursk Bulge).

Your, and Wikipedia, claimed ratios are horribly off: the ratio at Citadel was 5:1, just like at Kutuzov. Wikipedia compares the loss figures for the Voronezh and Steppe fighting Army Group South against the entirety of German loss figures. It does not compare the entirety of German loss figures against the entirety of the Soviet loss figures, or even those of the Central Front against those of Army Group Center. Those historians which have bothered to do so, like Glantz, have found that the figure is 5:1... the same ratio as Kutuzov and Rumianstev. In fact actually doing the math with some of the numbers presented on Wikipedia instead of blindly accepting the stated-but-unsupportable suggested ratio would actually suggest that the Germans had better tank loss ratios during Citadel then they did during Kutuzov and Rumianstev: rather the opposite of what you claim to be the case.

Not sure that follows; the German line at Orel was never penetrated, rather squeezed out partially as a result of armor losses and commitment due to Kursk, and I never said the ammo situation for AG-Center was the issue for their retreat. Rather the 4th Kharkov counterattack/defense fell apart due to a combination of factors including infantry depletion, armor numbers being heavily reduced due to combat damage, AND ammo running out during the critical phase of the Kharkov battle that crippled the defense:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgorod-Kharkov_Offensive_Operation#Offensive_Operation

To quote Citino in the Wehrmacht Retreats:

"By now, a week into Operation Kutuzov, the Soviets had landed a great blow, had traded casualties with an enemy force that could not afford them, and had overrun major portions of the original German front line. There had been no true operational-level breakthrough. Perhaps it had been too ambitious to expect one. After all, as 9th Army's rear, and thus the strategic and logistical base for Operation Citadel, the Orel salient had been able to turn them around rapidly and hustle enough of them north to prevent catastrophe. Still, the offensive had destroyed the German defensive position around Orel. What had been a nice, sharp bend of the salient pointing toward Novosil, Rendulic's sector of the line, now resembled a broken nose. The assault by Bryansk Front had punched it in badly. In the northwest, too, the assault by 11th Guards Army, along with its supporting tank corps, had ripped a jagged gash into what had formerly been a smooth straight line. The German front line was compromised, more and more Soviet forces were on their way, and the German replacement and reinforcement well had run completely dry. Even an amateur could take a quick glimpse at a map, read a handful of field reports, and conclude the obvious: the Orel salient was doomed." -Page 217

As the above quote makes clear, the German line at Orel was penetrated, which is what forced them to a fighting withdrawal to a new defense line at the base of the salient. That it wasn't same sort of outright "true" operational breakthrough as seen at Rumianstev is beside the point: by the end of the first week, the German defenses to the salient had already been overrun and the Germans were forced to conduct a fighting retreat. Whether the Germans would hold Orel had already been decided and everything after that merely determined how much of the German forces managed to escape the salient.

The depletion of infantry numbers long predates Citadel and the armored losses to combat damage were from the Soviet attack. And the point when the ammo ran out, as outright stated by your quoted Wikipedia segment, was after the critical phase and was a function of defending against the Soviets more then attacking them. By the time the shortage manifested, Kharkov was already lost and the only question was whether the German forces would be able to survive the fall of the city, not whether the city would fall. They could have had infinite ammo stockpiles and the city would have still fallen at roughly the same time it did.
 
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Deleted member 1487

A assertion not supported by the known capacities of the German repair crews. The tank maintenance company of a Panzer Regiment could handle about 30-40 tanks at once.
They could perhaps do work on 30-40 tanks, that doesn't mean they could repair battle damage that quickly for that many tanks depending on the situation and extent of damage or what the average turn around time was (p.26). Of course that assumes that they situation were stable, it was ideal conditions, and the unit was up to strength and in good supply.

The 16 Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions that participated between them easily would have had the repair capacity for about 1,000 tanks and the regimental repair shops worked on timelines of days and weeks, not months.
Assuming theoretical optimum perhaps, but nothing was said about average repair times in the document, especially for situations as massive as Zitadelle, especially given that they were on the retreat from the bulges they pushed into the Soviet lines and around Orel were under attack both frontally and against their flanks when the Soviet counter offensive started on July 12th. So these units weren't in one position optimally functioning, they were constantly moving around and having to deal with substantial attacks; in the case of the SS Panzer Corps, 1st SS division was stripped out and left all it's equipment and repairs behind, meaning more work with less men. Plus more and more damage and maintenance was stacking up throughout July-August-September. As Forczyk's 'Dnepr 1941' Osprey book points out, by September operational rates for armor were disastrously low and built up from Kursk.


Any tanks which were not capable of being repaired within 14 days would have either been cannabilized for spare parts or shipped back to depots too far behind the lines for the Soviets to reach. So the preponderance of available evidence indicates that the tanks which were lost in the retreats were overwhelmingly there due to the Soviet offensives, not Citadel. As such, the we can safely say that the bulk of those tanks would still indeed be there if Citadel has not occurred.

As your monograph says:
Theoretically, the maintenance company field repair shop handled only those repairs which could be completed within a specified time. Work requiring more than 14 days was supposed to be turned over to depot maintenance installations. In practice, however, most of the field repair shops were able to handle all types of repairs, provided adequate stocks of spare parts were available. Usually the larger items were in short supply. If, for example, three tanks were disabled because of damaged engines and the time required to supply the necessary parts was 3 weeks, the tanks would usually remain at the shop and return to service within 4 weeks. Had they been dispatched to some depot maintenance installation, the unit of origin would surely have been compelled to wait longer for their return and probably would not have seen them again. This unsatisfactory condition was caused by jurisdictional conflicts, the critical shortage of spare parts, the great distances between depot maintenance installations and the front lines, as well as inter- and intra-theater transfers of armored units. Under these circumstances, the personnel at the field repair shops preferred to deadline the tanks for prolonged periods or even cannibalize them rather than use the depot maintenance services. Among the armored forces in Russia there was a strong aversion to allowing a disabled tank to leave the regimental area. Even though cannibalization of a tank meant its loss, this procedure enabled the maintenance personnel to put other tanks back into operation.

So that 14 day theoretical situation basically didn't happen and the heavily damaged equipment was cannabilized and lost in movements and retreats due to long deferred repairs. As per usual, the quick repairs got preference and heavier damaged vehicles got constantly pushed to the back of the repair line. So it is very plausible that by September there were still Panzer waiting since July for repairs and not yet returned to deeper depots. Of course those deeper repair depots, say in Kharkov, weren't evacuated totally of equipment and supplies before being overrun, in part due to having some of the rail lines to it cut.

First hand accounts by Panzer troops indicate the majority of damaged vehicles would have been back in a matter of days.
Got some? Anecdotes aren't the plural of data, especially when talking about the a-typical situation of Zitadelle and the quick Soviet offensives in the followup, plus then transfers to other fronts (like the quick move from Kursk to Mius in July, which would have disrupted repair ops heavily).


There is nothing to indicate German Panzer losses during Kutuzov were lower then during Citadel and indeed the basic dynamics of tank warfare on the Eastern Front would suggest the opposite.
We cannot know because the records don't differentiate. Being on the offensive against the heavily mined and defending northern face of the Kursk Salient was drastically different than defending against a Soviet offensive when in prepared defensive positions. German armor use in Kutuzov could not have been more different than attacking Kursk.

There is little doubt that the Soviets could have probably pulled off their breakthrough at Belogorod given that said offensive did far more to deplete German strength then Citadel ever did and that Citadel did not have as much impact on German strength as you are claiming.
Other than the depletion of German infantry attacking Soviet trenches in July?
https://books.google.com/books?id=lZb7AQAAQBAJ&pg=PT125&lpg=PT125&dq=zetterling+kursk+infantry+casualties&source=bl&ots=E16eU2Q-gy&sig=mCcNfvi3mTaHPUFj2aCryn6aus4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj06urbwPnZAhVM74MKHUh_Bw8Q6AEIPDAC#v=onepage&q=zetterling kursk infantry casualties&f=false

Oh, it’s possible but unlikely due to German defects and even if it takes the Soviets a few more months to do it, that is offset by the fact they have a few more months to do so. Even if the first offensive fails, the second offensive will be liable to succeed as the German panzers are out of position dealing with the first. And, to paraphrase Robert Citino, the Germans will run out of strength long before the Soviets run out of offensives.
That's assuming the second go works. It may well not depending on how long it takes the Soviets to replace losses and the quality of the replacements. A break gives the Germans time to repair and replace too, plus their losses will be more moderate in defensive positions as Smolensk 1943 demonstrated. Eventually the Soviets will grind the Germans down, the question is how long will that take and how costly will that be...and where do the Soviets eventually run out of steam? Soviet manpower is not endless and they needed the 4 million men they drafted from liberated territory in 1943-45.

AG-South’s ammo problem came to a head long after the battles that actually decided the fate of Kharkov had occurred. There is no indication it impacted prior fighting or that there were efforts to conserve ammunition and indeed the existing literature indicates the opposite as they attribute German expenditures during the defensive fighting with just as much, of not even more, importance in creating the ammo shortage. That German infantry were incapable of defending against Soviet armored attacks was a situation that existed even before Citadel, so obviously Citadel didn’t impact that, and I have already covered how armored losses at Kursk were primarily due to the Soviet offensive stage and not the German offensive stage.
Certainly the Soviets did push a bunch of bulges into German lines, but the fall of Kharkov was the direct result of running out of ammo. Eventually it would have taken even if there had been enough ammo, but it would have been deferred, been more costly for the Soviets, and given the Germans time to evacuate in a much more efficient and less costly fashion. Endless fighting throughout July-August burned up ammo stocks; during Zitadelle though German-Soviet ammo expenditure was 3:1 according to Zetterlin's Kursk book.

The German Front line established at the end of March 1943 was already far too long for the depleted Wehrmacht to defend, with or without Citadel. Similarly, where the German infantry were and were not dug in was unimportant since the Soviets repeatedly demonstrated the ability to overrun defending infantry regardless of how dug-in they were. There really isn’t anything to indicate that Citadel created the conditions for the Soviet breakthrough. It is far more likely that those conditions instead already existed.
Dug in actually did matter in 1943, as loss rates during the 1943 Smolensk offensive demonstrated, exchange rates were far better for the Germans than Zitadelle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Smolensk_(1943)
Casualties and losses
German
'German sources:[3]

Total: 70,593
3 panzer army 10.08 - 30.09.43: 765 KIA, 3,386 WIA, 270 MIA;
4 army 10.08 - 30.09.43: 8,825 KIA, 35,237 WIA, 4,127 MIA
9 army 20.08 - 30.09.43: 3,394 KIA, 12,688 WIA, 1,901 MIA

Soviet
Soviet sources:
451,466 overall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk
German:
Operation Citadel:
[e]

Soviet:Operation Citadel:[e]


1:6 vs 1:3

That Soviet losses were worse at Orel then at Citadel is not in dispute. But what is also not in dispute was that German losses also were worse nor that the losses the Soviets suffered was debilitating, given that they immediately followed up Orel with a offensive that broke through the German defenses at Bryansk and pushed them back to the D'niepr.
That was a function of the Smolensk offensive pushing back AG-Center through August-September. Endless shoving backward as part of very costly offensives.

Your, and Wikipedia, claimed ratios are horribly off: the ratio at Citadel was 5:1, just like at Kutuzov. Wikipedia compares the loss figures for the Voronezh and Steppe fighting Army Group South against the entirety of German loss figures. It does not compare the entirety of German loss figures against the entirety of the Soviet loss figures, or even those of the Central Front against those of Army Group Center. Those historians which have bothered to do so, like Glantz, have found that the figure is 5:1... the same ratio as Kutuzov and Rumianstev. In fact actually doing the math with some of the numbers presented on Wikipedia instead of blindly accepting the stated-but-unsupportable suggested ratio would actually suggest that the Germans had better tank loss ratios during Citadel then they did during Kutuzov and Rumianstev: rather the opposite of what you claim to be the case.
So you got some Glantz quotes about that? Seems unlike Wikipedia to under count Soviet losses.

I don't know how you can claim anything about Kutuzov as German losses in armor for that operation aren't stated separately from Zitadelle. And the reason that they would have had better ratios is that there was a lot less operational armor fighting back in late July-August than there was during Zitadelle.

To quote Citino in the Wehrmacht Retreats:

"By now, a week into Operation Kutuzov, the Soviets had landed a great blow, had traded casualties with an enemy force that could not afford them, and had overrun major portions of the original German front line. There had been no true operational-level breakthrough. Perhaps it had been too ambitious to expect one. After all, as 9th Army's rear, and thus the strategic and logistical base for Operation Citadel, the Orel salient had been able to turn them around rapidly and hustle enough of them north to prevent catastrophe. Still, the offensive had destroyed the German defensive position around Orel. What had been a nice, sharp bend of the salient pointing toward Novosil, Rendulic's sector of the line, now resembled a broken nose. The assault by Bryansk Front had punched it in badly. In the northwest, too, the assault by 11th Guards Army, along with its supporting tank corps, had ripped a jagged gash into what had formerly been a smooth straight line. The German front line was compromised, more and more Soviet forces were on their way, and the German replacement and reinforcement well had run completely dry. Even an amateur could take a quick glimpse at a map, read a handful of field reports, and conclude the obvious: the Orel salient was doomed." -Page 217

As the above quote makes clear, the German line at Orel was penetrated, which is what forced them to a fighting withdrawal to a new defense line at the base of the salient. That it wasn't same sort of outright "true" operational breakthrough as seen at Rumianstev is beside the point: by the end of the first week, the German defenses to the salient had already been overrun and the Germans were forced to conduct a fighting retreat. Whether the Germans would hold Orel had already been decided and everything after that merely determined how much of the German forces managed to escape the salient.

The depletion of infantry numbers long predates Citadel and the armored losses to combat damage were from the Soviet attack.
Maybe our definitions of penetrated differ, but having bulges punched into a line doesn't mean penetration, it means a break in. Citino's quote says that the bulges compromised German positions, but were NOT an operational breakthrough.
There had been no true operational-level breakthrough.

Squeezing the Germans out of a bulge into a straighter line was not the point of the offensive, nor did it cripple German forces:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Kutuzov#Aftermath
Some of the Soviet commanders were displeased with the results, complaining that an even greater victory might have been won. Said Marshal Rokossovsky: "Instead of encircling the enemy, we only pushed them out of the bulge. The operation would have been different if we had used our force for two heavy punches which met at Bryansk". Zhukov held a similar opinion.[24]
Results would have been worse had their been no Zitadelle.


By the time the shortage manifested, Kharkov was already lost and the only question was whether the German forces would be able to survive the fall of the city, not whether the city would fall. They could have had infinite ammo stockpiles and the city would have still fallen at roughly the same time it did.And the point when the ammo ran out, as outright stated by your quoted Wikipedia segment, was after the critical phase and was a function of defending against the Soviets more then attacking them.
It suggests they could have held with artillery support, but they were out of sufficient ammo:
Wöhler, recognizing the hopelessness of the situation, did not prove anymore resolute, in view of the harsh realities facing the defenders of Kharkov, he knew that the depleted Infantry regiments could not hold their positions without copious artillery support.

The supply situation in Kharkov was now catastrophic; artillerymen after firing their last rounds, were abandoning their guns to fight as infantrymen. The army's supply depot had five trainloads of spare tank tracks left over from "Zitadelle" but very little else. The high consumption of ammunition in the last month and a half had cut into supplies put aside for the last two weeks of August and the first two weeks of September; until the turn of the month the army would have to get along with fifty percent of its daily average requirements in artillery & tank ammunition.
 
They could perhaps do work on 30-40 tanks, that doesn't mean they could repair battle damage that quickly for that many tanks depending on the situation and extent of damage or what the average turn around time was (p.26). Of course that assumes that they situation were stable, it was ideal conditions, and the unit was up to strength and in good supply.

In late-July, the situation was indeed stable, the conditions were quite decent, the repair units were indeed up to strength, and the supply of spare actually pretty excellent even through most of August (and made better by the cannibalization of unrepairables). The number of tanks damaged during Citadel was high, but not anything the forward repair shops couldn't handle.

Assuming theoretical optimum perhaps, but nothing was said about average repair times in the document, especially for situations as massive as Zitadelle, especially given that they were on the retreat from the bulges they pushed into the Soviet lines and around Orel were under attack both frontally and against their flanks when the Soviet counter offensive started on July 12th. So these units weren't in one position optimally functioning, they were constantly moving around and having to deal with substantial attacks; in the case of the SS Panzer Corps, 1st SS division was stripped out and left all it's equipment and repairs behind, meaning more work with less men. Plus more and more damage and maintenance was stacking up throughout July-August-September. As Forczyk's 'Dnepr 1941' Osprey book points out, by September operational rates for armor were disastrously low and built up from Kursk.

Since you yourself proceed quoted the section of the document which noted that repair times maxed out at 14 days, so I'll let the bald face incorrectness of the first sentence stand on it's own. And all this would be as true IATL as it was IOTL. Your other assertions in this paragraph do not jive with the actual reality: the SS divisions that were sent to Italy had their vehicles sent to the rear depots, not to the forward repair shops. While panzer formations were indeed dispatched to other fronts, this represented only a minority of available German formations and the vast bulk still were available to do repairs. And of course the September operational rates (I assume the quoted book title is a typo as it would be odd for a discussion on actions along the D'niepr in 1941 to discuss the situation in autumn 1943) for armor were disastrously low: they had just lost a grueling, month long defensive battle against the Soviets in August with many of their repair companies overrun and were immediately thrown into another series of rear actions to protect the retreat to the D'niepr. That would have translated to disastrous operational rates in armor even regardless of what happened in July. On the whole, AGS had a three week grace period between the end of Citadel and the start of Rumianstev: more then enough to put the gross majority of tanks back into service.

As your monograph says:

So that 14 day theoretical situation basically didn't happen and the heavily damaged equipment was cannabilized and lost in movements and retreats due to long deferred repairs. As per usual, the quick repairs got preference and heavier damaged vehicles got constantly pushed to the back of the repair line. So it is very plausible that by September there were still Panzer waiting since July for repairs and not yet returned to deeper depots. Of course those deeper repair depots, say in Kharkov, weren't evacuated totally of equipment and supplies before being overrun, in part due to having some of the rail lines to it cut.

Nothing in your quoted section says what you are claiming. What it essentially says is that tanks that would take more then 14 days to repair would be sent back to depots or cannibalized for spare parts, as I said. Since German regimental repair shops on the Eastern Front were reluctant to send their tanks to the depots, they tended to prefer to cannibalize them. And while the monograph does state there were some cases of damage taking more then two weeks, it is also clear that was the exception rather then the rule. WWII AFVs were pretty robust and it didn't take that long to repair most combat damage. Nothing in there supports your claim that there were still a lot of panzers damaged in Citadel waiting for repair in September. It is up to you to provide solid evidence that there were still excessive numbers of tanks damaged from Citadel, and not from defending against the more recent Soviet attacks, in German forward repair depots in September. Until then, your blowing smoke.

Got some? Anecdotes aren't the plural of data, especially when talking about the a-typical situation of Zitadelle and the quick Soviet offensives in the followup, plus then transfers to other fronts (like the quick move from Kursk to Mius in July, which would have disrupted repair ops heavily).

There really wasn't anything about the aftermath of Citadel that was atypical for the Eastern Front. Indeed, the most atypical thing about it was that most of the panzer divisions got an extended rest period before they were transferred to the other areas of the front (or to Italy) as the Soviet offensive didn't occur for several more weeks.

We cannot know because the records don't differentiate. Being on the offensive against the heavily mined and defending northern face of the Kursk Salient was drastically different than defending against a Soviet offensive when in prepared defensive positions. German armor use in Kutuzov could not have been more different than attacking Kursk.

The difference does not change the fact that tank warfare on the eastern front meant it was always easier for the attacker to recover disabled tanks then the defender.

It also does not change the fact that Model withheld the preponderance of his armor from taking part in Citadel as he had doubts about it’s validity and was worried about the threat to his eastern flank, which is why he was able to redeploy them so rapidly to slow the Soviet offensive and prevent the Red Army from achieving a full operational breakthrough. AGC’s armor was much more committed heavily against Kutuzov then it was for Citadel, which necessarily would have meant heavier losses.

Other than the depletion of German infantry attacking Soviet trenches in July?

Given that German infantry had already proved incapable of holding against Soviet massed armored attacks even before Citadel, unless backed up by German panzer divisions, and even proved unable to secure the extremely small flanks of the German penetration at Kursk... no.

Plus, German infantry losses defending against the Soviets were again heavier then attacking them so the sooner the Soviets are able to go on the offensive, the faster German infantry formations lose strength.

It may well not depending on how long it takes the Soviets to replace losses and the quality of the replacements. Certainly the Soviets did push a bunch of bulges into German lines, but the fall of Kharkov was the direct result of running out of ammo. Eventually it would have taken even if there had been enough ammo, but it would have been deferred, been more costly for the Soviets, and given the Germans time to evacuate in a much more efficient and less costly fashion. Endless fighting throughout July-August burned up ammo stocks; during Zitadelle though German-Soviet ammo expenditure was 3:1 according to Zetterlin's Kursk book.

There is nothing to indicate that the ammunition made any difference and in any case, endless fighting IATLs July-August (or, more likely, May-June) will burn up German stocks just as rapidly. Which still leaves the Germans out of ammo and the Soviets with a minimum of seven months, likely more, of offensive capability in them.

Dug in actually did matter in 1943, as loss rates during the 1943 Smolensk offensive demonstrated, exchange rates were far better for the Germans than Zitadelle:

Except at Smolensk the difference wasn't that the Germans were dug-in, they were dug-in at Kutuzov too and it did them no good, but that the Soviets did not deploy any of their tank armies there them with no mechanized forces above the division-equivalent to conduct the sort of breakthrough-exploitation work that you need mechanized corps/armies to be able to do. Even the wikipedia article notes this was what made the decisive difference. Wherever the Soviets did deploy their tank armies though, German infantry proved totally incapable of standing up to them regardless of how dug-in they were... unless they had their own panzer support. But German panzers could not be everywhere and the Soviets had more tank formations then the Germans could ever hope to counter. In short what mattered wasn't how dug-in the German infantry was, it was where the German panzer corps and Soviet tank armies were.

However, even then the Soviets steadily advanced and repeatedly cleaved through the German defensive lines, advancing hundreds of kilometers in the course of two months and their casualties, while heavier, were never unsustainable. The German losses, on the other hand, were never made good.

That was a function of the Smolensk offensive pushing back AG-Center through August-September. Endless shoving backward as part of very costly offensives.

The Bryansk Offensive operation executed in September 1943 was the follow-up to Suvorov and chewed through the Haagen line just as efficiently as the Soviets had gone through the German lines around Belgorod. For some bizarre reason, Wikipedia includes it as a minor section of it's 1943 Smolensk article but the Soviets list it as a independent operation from their Smolensk offensive.

That's assuming the second go works. It may well not depending on how long it takes the Soviets to replace losses and the quality of the replacements. A break gives the Germans time to repair and replace too, plus their losses will be more moderate in defensive positions as Smolensk 1943 demonstrated. Eventually the Soviets will grind the Germans down, the question is how long will that take and how costly will that be...and where do the Soviets eventually run out of steam? Soviet manpower is not endless and they needed the 4 million men they drafted from liberated territory in 1943-45.

It's statements like this that make me think you just don't understand the strategic dynamic of the Eastern Front in mid/late-1943 and starts making me do comparisons with the historical OKH, who showed an equal lack of understanding to the strategic pattern. We have the actual history of OTL to show that the Soviets could and did replace their losses rapidly and resume offensives far faster then the Germans could recover from their own losses, whether suffered defensively or offensively. From July 12th all the way to March of 1944 the Eastern Front, particularly the southern sector in Ukraine, was an endless calvacade of Soviet offensives that, inspite heavy losses, continuously gained ground and inflicted losses upon the Germans they could not sustain. Every time one attack started to lose steam, another one on another section of the front commenced. Armies and fronts which became exhausted were always almost instantly replaced by fresh formations who would proceed to renew the advance. In the end, only the Spring Raputitsa proved able to end the Soviet offensive cycle. And the quality of the Red Army only steadily improved in this time. Look at the aftermath of Rumianstev: the entire Voronezh Front was burnt out after the fighting of both Citadel and Belgorod-Kharkov... so the Soviets simply replaced it with the Steppe Front and continued the advance, seamlessly following Rumianstev that cleaved through the defensive line the Germans had stitched together after Kharkov and forced them to withdraw all the way to the D'niepr. Hell, Citadel itself demonstrated the capacity of the Soviets to replace losses without sacrificing quality far beyond anything the Germans could handle: the Soviets lost five times as many tanks and had entire Tank Armies wiped out, yet still assembled a crushing offensive edge in late-July and August far faster then the Germans believed was possible.

The long and short of it is that the historical record of Soviet offensive operations for the summer, autumn, and winter of 1943-1944 very much demonstrates that Soviet endurance means they can continuously mount non-stop offensives and give the Germans no break.

And even if the Soviets advance at the pace they did at Smolensk, then they'll still liberate their territory and get their "4 million men" at roughly the same time they did OTL... if not earlier.

Seems unlike Wikipedia to under count Soviet losses.

More like (possibly) over counting German losses. The wikipedia section lists Frieser as saying Army Group South lost 161 tanks and 14 assault guns by 16 July when Citadel ended. So if we use THAT number (assuming it is correct) then its 161 to 1,342, which is a whopping 8:1 in the German's favour for the fighting when they were on the offensive in Citadel as opposed to the 5:1 ratio they suffered in Rumianstev.

I don't know how you can claim anything about Kutuzov as German losses in armor for that operation aren't stated separately from Zitadelle.

I'm having trouble locating my copy of the Battle of Kursk, but I recall Glantz actually states that the 323 figure was what AGC just in Citadel and his estimate for what the Germans lost to Kutuzov numbers around 500 AFVs. I can't recall how he justifies those figures however.

And the reason that they would have had better ratios is that there was a lot less operational armor fighting back in late July-August than there was during Zitadelle.

Not an assertion you have supported. The German losses at Citadel were real enough, but they were hardly debilitating. The idea that Citadel, and not Kutuzov-Rumianstev, did outsized damage to the German panzerwaffe does not stand up to scrutiny and is pretty much entirely the product of post-war German general memoir apologia. Said memoirs have since been found to be, at best, unreliable and, at worst, deliberately misleading.

Maybe our definitions of penetrated differ, but having bulges punched into a line doesn't mean penetration, it means a break in. Citino's quote says that the bulges compromised German positions, but were NOT an operational breakthrough.

And I said that it was not a full operational breakthrough. That does not mean, however, the defenses were not penetrated. Indeed, to achieve a break-in one still has to penetrate the enemies defenses. A tactical penetration is still a penetration, especially if it operationally means the defense line is overrun (albeit not the enemy forces). Citino makes this perfectly clear a few pages before when he says that the opening offensive of the Bryansk and Western Fronts “penetrated just about everywhere.” (Pg 215).

Squeezing the Germans out of a bulge into a straighter line was not the point of the offensive, nor did it cripple German forces:

The point of the offensive was to retake Orel and eliminate the salient. This it did and did so handily. That some Soviet general complained they did not achieve a greater victory does not change that the Soviets achieved a victory. And while it did not cripple German forces by itself, it did so as part of one of innumerable Soviet offensives up-and-down the line. It also didn’t cripple the Soviet forces involved, as they immediately followed up with a successful offensive against the Haagen line near the end of August.

Results would have been worse had their been no Zitadelle.

Not a assertion you have supported.

It suggests they could have held with artillery support, but they were out of sufficient ammo:

Nothing in there actually suggests that and even the supposition advanced by Wohler is based on assumptions that don't stand up to an objective analysis of the situation. To claim that the 10,000 men holding the city could hold out against the 500,000 coming down on it, backed by their own far more numerous artillery that could counterbattery the German artillery to death, runs screaming straight into Wehraboo territory. Indeed, Kempf was stating that the city would fall, that trying to hold it would produce another Stalingrad, and requested permission to withdraw on August 12th, a week before the ammunition shortage manifested. Manstein, in a rather Hitlerian move (and possibly on Hitler’s orders, to be fair), had him relieved for stating the obvious two days later and replaced him with Wohler. It’s rather obvious in that context that Wohler used the ammunition shortage as an excuse to save the army detachment, not to mention himself, without being fired like Kempf was. But the reality is that the city was lost even before the shortage as the Soviets has crushing superiority across the board. Even if the Germans had all the artillery ammo they could wish for, the final result of trying to hold would indeed have been a Stalingrad and the Germans would have lost both the city and the army instead of just the city. In other words, it would be an even worse defeat for the Germans, not a victory.

It also doesn’t change the fact that the Soviet breakthrough occurred on August 5th, two weeks before the ammunition shortage developed. So there is no argument to be made that the shortage had any impact on that.
 
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There seems to be a misunderstanding, I'm referring to losses post-Zitadelle, your link is mainly talking about during and immediately after the battle. One of the later hits for your link search shows how little armor was left operational by early August, 25 tanks for one of the SS armored divisions. As they retreated in August-September armor was lost.

Indeed, and I think Nuker hit on what I was trying to get across in some ways; that Zitadelle by itself was not that costly in terms of armor.

Did you mean phase II of said exercise study? There is not a phase III that I can find via google.


No, I meant Phase III; it's cited in this graduate thesis by a student who had help from Glantz and the Phase II abstract mentions it, although I can't seem to find it either.
 

Deleted member 1487

Indeed, and I think Nuker hit on what I was trying to get across in some ways; that Zitadelle by itself was not that costly in terms of armor.
In terms of total write offs? No. In terms of damaged, then it was, which turned into a major issue during the retreat from the Orel bulge, which resulted in armor being lost in depots or blown up if they couldn't retreat quickly enough. Moving around quickly throughout July-August to 'fire fight' crisis in Ukraine also disrupted repairs post-Zitadelle, which then meant major losses in repair depots during the huge retreats. Zitadelle sapped operational armor strength at the critical moment prior to the great defensive battles of 1943.


No, I meant Phase III; it's cited in this graduate thesis by a student who had help from Glantz and the Phase II abstract mentions it, although I can't seem to find it either.
If you can find I and/or III let me know.
 
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