Kursk (by popular demand!)

The trouble with these films they are a mishmash job the real classic film footage which pops up from time to time is the one with all those King Tigers lined up for inspection, I saw that bit of film in a Kursk documentary the King Tiger was not around for that one. All footage is interesting but don't always be fooled by any commentary.

 

Ya, the Panther "G"s in the snow were a give away too.
Good footages though, though as was said, many are repeats.
I've got one of the Battle of the Bulge with some of the same footages.
That one has the panthers passing those SU-76's also.
I realize Allies share weapons, but I don't recall any SU-76's being used by the Americans.
Enjoy it for what it's worth, but avoid reading the text.

 

On finding accurate figures......

Do you think finding correct figures for the Eastern front will probably be always hard to find, Stalins regime held back defeats [eg Mars] and lied [eg Katyn massacre] although old Soviet secret archives are now being opened up.

On the other hand the German version of the war, written straight after the war by their historians and in particular, Wehrmacht commanders, also were prone to to be often loose with the facts.

Glantz claims that in Manstein's book Lost Victories,[which I haven't read] opposing force ratios are in conflict with those shown by archival materials of Fremde Heeres 0st Gehlen's organizations, and of the OKH. Soviet superiority's are often overstated.

He says the dominant role of German source materials in shaping American perceptions of the war on the Eastern Front and the negative perception of Soviet source materials have had an indelible impact on the American image of war on the Eastern Front. What has resulted in a series of gross judgments treated as truths regarding operations in the East and Soviet Army combat performance. The gross judgments appear repeatedly in textbooks and all types of historical works, and they are persistent in the extreme. Each lies someplace between the realm of myth and reality.

 

I watched it again, I enjoyed it, but it's not Kursk.
FW-190D's (Doras)?...no
Panther A's & G's?...no
T-34/85's ...no
JdPz IV's ...no
My brother told me that he Micro-Fished old New York Times from the Sundays before the attack.
There were maps of the German/Russian positions, and they predicted (from the Germans) the "Typical" Pincer Attack!
If the Russians had no spies (which they did), all they would have to have done is read an American newspaper from thousands of miles away to know the...."Secret", "Master" Plan.

All in all not a whole lot different from the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg.
Also a determining battle as to the eventual outcome of the war itself.
The South was there first, but hesitated to take the high ground and press the attack when they had greater numbers.
They paused to bring up the rest of their army, instead of pressing the attack to gain the best ground (offering a position to attack down the line). Giving the Union (North) time to consolidate positions on the 4 high points. Not to mention, bringing up reinforcements.
When the army was ready (the South), the situation was all but hopeless. Through whatever circumstances, the South made a "Head On" attack into the teeth of the North's defenses.
I hear tell that Lee was tired of war, and wanted to "END" it one way or the other by this battle.
Hmmmm? Familiar?
And that it did, in both battles.
Not to the attackers liking, and not immediately, but the outcome was assured after the enguagement.
I have seen this scenario replayed in other, at other, times throughout history. I guess when you've had enough, you don't care how it ends, as long as it does.
Just an opinion.

 

It's alive, it's alive, the thread is alive!

Now seriously, I found this to be interesting for an on-line read:

http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0604103-113808/unrestricted/Klug_thesis.pdf

This is interesting too, although rather one-sided:

http://www.balagan.org.uk/war/crossfire/scenarios/ponyri.htm

 

http://www.historynet.com/magazines/world_war_2/3035106.html


Any thoughts or opinions?

 

You mean Manstein´s possible big victories, I guess?!

Maybe , maybe, but then again the Red Army was starting huge attacks to Orel and Belgorod, the second part of Kursk, and even if Manstein might have caused huge losses to the Red Army the pincers might have surrounded his troops and caused the loss of all German force there in Kursk pocket instead.

So I´d be careful there as the Red Army was pouring in troops around the Kursk salient and simply being victorious ( Manstein ) at Prokhorovka would not really count that much.

 

From Hitler´s Commander by S. Newton

" Even by 5th July Model´s infantry divisions remained far below established strength. Exactly one infantry division in the 9th Army was rated at the highest offensive level. And only four were deemed suitable for "limited offensive action"...."

 

From "Hitler´s commander" by Steven H Newton

Model and Zitadelle

" When Model reluctantly agreed to set aside major offensive action on 9 July in favor of reorganising the spearhead divisions in both the XLI and XLVII Panzer Corps sectors, he recognized that this decision was nearly tantamount to calling off the entire northern segment of Operation Zitadelle. At AGC, von Kluge instantly reached the same conclusion, but both men knew that neither Hitler not Zeitzler would countenance such a unilateral decision, especially since the southern prong of the offensive had broken through Voronezh Front´s defences and continued to push north toward Oboyan and Kursk.

Von Kluge instructed Model to meet him the following morning. It was not an optimistic meeting. Model acknowledged formally to von Kluge that the Ninth Army could not reasonably expect to create the necessary breakthrough, a position he maintained even when the Field Marshal offered him not just the 10th Panzergrenadier and 12th Panzer divisions but the 36th Infantry Division as well.All that Model would promise was a series of tactical attacks, designed as " a rolling battle of attrition " that might at least continue to attract Soviet reserves away from the southern half of the Kursk salient.To this von Kluge immediately agreed.

Given that both Model and von Kluge expected a Soviet counteroffensive any day against the weakly held northern and eastern section of the Orel salient, there are strong indications that the two men were knowingly engaged in misleading OKH and Hitler. No message left AGC for East Prussia that morning detailing the fact that the Ninth Army´s participation in Operation Citadel had effectively ended,instead, von Kluge portrayed 9 July as a brief moment of respite before a renewal of the breakthrough effort. Yet General Schmidt´s 10th Panzergrenadier division moved up to the front so slowly that it did not reach the battlefield until the morning of 12 July, while General von Bodenhausen´s 12th Panzer and General Gollnik´s 36th Infantry lagged 24 hours behind.Moreover, when the Russians did attack east of Orel on 12 July, both the Ninth and AGC reoriented themselves with suspicious rapidity.

Historian Franz Kurowski suggests that all of this was the work of Model: " Without consulting von Kluge, Model called a halt to all attack operations."

 

Hitler should have waited until 1944 at least. An unsuccessful offensive at that stage of the war would, and did, result in the total collapse of the entire front. The very decision to go on an offensive in 1943, regardless of its result, was extremely risky and unprofessional. Germany would have been better off with mobile defense after the catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad.

 

Yes, but Hitler did not feel himself comfortable being defensive. Which , of course, he should have realized after Stalingrad that he had no more troops and vehicles to rule the ostfront and after Kursk it just got worse.

 

"If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object. When one has used defensive measures successfully, a more favorable balance of strength is usually created; thus, the natural course in war is to begin defensively and end by attacking."- Clausewitz, On War
I never knew that Stalin read Clausewitz. I guess I learn something new everyday.

 

Hehe, Stalin was no fool.

 

Can we bring back to life this Mother of All Threads?

 

Anything new on the subject?

On my wish list:

Amazon.co.uk: Kursk: The Air Battle: Christer Bergstrom: Books

 

Not necesarily new, but this old thread has so many misconceptions that it might require an airing

 

Such as?

 

I'd have to reread the entire thread all over again Meanwhile, here's part a text I found filed away in my PC. Hope you like it.

Jay Karamales implies that the Russian assault was literally an attack from the march, with units coming off an all night road march. Is this true?

No it isn’t. First, not all Russian formations on the map came from the Steppe Front. Only the units of the 5th Guards Tank Army proper made the road trip. These would be the 18th and 29th Tank Corps, and the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps, plus the numerous independent units that were part of the 5th GTA. The rest of the units on the board were already there, in some cases for days.

Second, let’s look at the road march itself. The 5th GTA performed the 300 km march from the 6th through 11th of July. The army did its road march at night to avoid aerial observation by the Germans and rested during the day in camouflaged areas. It arrived in the Prokhorovka area in the early evening of 11 July, having performed the last leg of the march in the afternoon, thanks to the presence of rain showers which masked its movement from aircraft. During the night the various units of the 5th GTA moved into their attack positions and got what little rest that they could before the battle in the morning.

Third, the commanders and staffs from the 5th GTA were in the Prokhorovka area as early as the 8th of July, reconnoitering the ground, coordinating their efforts with the 5th Guards and 69th Armies with whom they would be operating in conjunction with, and making plans for a deliberate counterattack further south than where the battle actually occurred. However the German advance to the southern outskirts of Prokhorovka on the 11th of July threw the original counterattack plans out the window, and the Russians had to make new counterattack plans during the night. Because there was not time to prepare for a deliberate counterattack, the Russians had to settle for a hasty counterattack on the morning of the 12th as that would surely be the time that the Germans would resume their own assault.

Thus the hasty attack was not a result of coming off of an all night road march as Mr. Karamales implies. It was the result of a hastily conceived plan made in light of the changing circumstances based on the results of the previous day’s combat.


The Russians tended to exaggerate the numbers of tanks that the Germans had (which includes over 100 Tiger Tanks and Ferdinand tank destroyers). Why is that?

There are a number of reasons for this. First let’s look at the combat units making the spotting reports. These units were making reports of what their soldiers, gunners and tankers thought they saw. One must remember that at a distance, a long barreled Pz IV tank looks a lot like a Tiger tank, and that’s in good visibility. Compound this with the smoke, haze, poor Russian optics, and the frequent rain showers of that day and one can see how the mistaken identity could be made. Nor was this problem unique to the Russians, the Western Allies experienced the same problem during the Normandy campaign the following year. The Tiger tank was something of a boogey man to the Allies and everyone kept a watch out for them.

Next, let’s talk about the Ferdinand tank destroyer. As everybody knows, the Ferdinand was only used in the northern attacks against the Russian Central Front during the battle of Kursk. As soon as they were seen and captured, the Russian sent out descriptions and crude drawings of them to their other commands in order to warn them about this new tank destroyer. Of course this information was passed on down to the combat units, including those at Prokhorovka. At a distance, a Marder could easily be confused with a Ferdinand, especially in light of the conditions mentioned above, and a lot of Russian tankers and gunners thought that they actually saw a Ferdinand when they were looking at a Marder in the distance. All in all, the gunners, tankers, and soldiers reported what they thought they saw, regardless of whether they got the identification right or not.

Now let’s look at the staffs of the middle and higher level Russian formations. When the spot reports came in from the units in the line, the staffs tended to treat each one as a report on a separate enemy unit, even when several reports were on the same enemy unit. Thus they tended to come up with inflated numbers of enemy units, vehicles, and equipment. Of course this was a problem in all armies during the war. It’s just that the Russians were the worst at it. Of course as the Russians became more experienced towards the end of the war, there was a reduced frequency of this problem, although it was never eliminated. That the higher commands accepted these figures is evident in the command staff studies that were done on the Battle of Kursk in 1944 (and translated into English in 1999). And this was before all the myths and falsehoods about Kursk and the Battle of Prokhorovka that got started after the war.


The Russians tended to exaggerate the number of losses, especially in AFVs, which they inflicted on the Germans. Why is that?

Again it goes back to the combat units making the kill reports and the staffs evaluating the results from the reports. To start off with, tankers and gunners tend to believe that they have killed an AFV when they see that they have hit it and it is burning, it blows up, or it does not move or shoot for some time after that. The problem is compounded when multiple weapons have scored hits on the same target AFV and each weapons crew believes that they are the ones who killed it. This problem was not unique to the Russians, it was common in all armies in the war. Then we must look at the target AFV. When an AFV is hit, it may only be damaged so it can not engage in further combat for the rest of the battle but is still be repaired afterward. It can also be that the AFV crew is only stunned in an otherwise undamaged vehicle and may take a while to recover and resume fighting, long after the enemy firing units have switched to other targets. Let’s look at the German AFV losses for the 12th of July at Prokhorovka. Over 150 German AFVs were hit that day. Of these about a third of them were not damaged (rounds bounced off of their armor) or suffered minimal damage that did not effect their fighting or movement capabilities. Another third of them suffered damage which took them out of the fight but were repaired in their units once the battle was over and put back into operation fairly quickly. These usually showed up on the end of the day AFV strength reports as operational if they were repaired or would be repaired by the next morning. The last third were AFVs that were either destroyed, captured, or were so heavily damaged that they had to be sent back to rear area repair units to be fixed. Ones sent back for long term repairs were absent from their units in excess of 24 hours. Of the 49 AFV losses that the Germans claimed that they suffered that day, about 8 or 9 were destroyed or captured, and the rest were sent back for long term repairs. Now of course the Russian gunners and tanks could not know all of this so they reported what they hit as kills.

The Russian staffs had the same problem with kill reports as they did with spotting reports, they tended to accept each one as a separate kill on a separate enemy AFV. Thus multiple hit reports on single enemy vehicles greatly exaggerated the estimated number of enemy AFVs destroyed. As before this was a common problem in all armies during the war, its just that the Russians were the most prolific at it. As the war continued and the staffs gained more experience, the amount of exaggeration decreased, although it was never eliminated.

One final thing, there were individual commanders in all armies who did inflate the number of AFVs that their units knocked out in their reports. Obviously this was done down at the tactical and operational levels by officers who were trying to enhance their own careers with an excellent war record. But their numbers were small and many were eventually found out and discredited, in many cases long after their reports were used in the official histories and it was too late to change them.


So how did the story of the gigantic tank battle at Prokhorovka really get started?

First and foremost, it got started because it really was a gigantic tank battle. About 1,100 AFVs packed into a small area around the town of Prokhorovka could hardly be called anything else. The problem is not what it was, but how it was portrayed in the post war histories. Soviet historians, after the war, used the massive meeting engagement around Hill 252.2 and the October State Farm on the morning of 12 July to set the tone for the entire battle of Prokhorovka. Just about every engagement in that battle was described in those terms. And they did not do it out of a sense of the dramatic, they were under orders by the Communist Party to do so.

After the war, the Communist Party, under a personal mandate from Stalin himself, supervised the rewriting of the history of the Great Patriotic War. This was done to put the Russian government and the Army in a more favorable light not only to the world, but to the Russian people as well. Having regained control of the Russian Army after the war, the Party made sure that all Army operational records, plus captured German records, were put under lock and key, so that only those people with high security clearances had access to them. The generals had nothing to do with the creation of the myths and falsehoods about the war, though I sure a good number of them collaborated with the Party in the rewriting of the history. Those generals that were against the rewriting of the history were either cowed into silence or removed from their duties. Thus the generals lied about the war because they were ordered to lie by the Party, not because they were afraid of Stalin.


If that is true, then where did the story of the lying generals get started?

The story got started in the early Nineties when the leaders of the Russian armed forces were negotiating with the new Russian government in an attempt to keep as much power in the new government as they had in the old Communist one. The leaders were attempting to justify the actions of their predecessors during the years of Communist government. Naturally the time when Stalin ruled figured prominently in the story. While it may be that the generals lied to Stalin some of the time, they certainly did not lie about the massive casualties incurred by the Russian Army during the war. Stalin did not care how many casualties it took as long as the Germans were defeated. As to the possibility of generals lying to make them look better that what they were, this does not seem to of happened much. Besides after the end of the war, it was the successful victorious generals who had much to fear from Stalin. It seems that he returned to his old paranoid ways of the pre-war era and started arresting or removing generals that he felt were a threat to his power. Thus lying to improve one’s success rating as a general was in fact detrimental to one’s career and in a few cases, one’s life. So the story of the lying generals does not hold much water.

 

We're in the middle of the anniversary of the Battle of Kursk. Here goes something to start us talking a bit

In the first place, Kursk in Wikipedia ! Battle of Kursk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is the Order of Battle for the entire FEBA.

TOEs (Tables of Organisation and Equipment) for several types of tactical units. Watch out for possible variations!

Weather!

The Mythbusters

Brush your Ciryllic up!

Col. David Glantz great article on Soviet defensive tactics at Kursk.

Another great study on the Soviet defense

Lots'a pics here!

I know those Hs129 were armoured, but this is taking things a bit too far :lol:

 

Here's more info breaking the mith of Kursk:

During the battle of Prokhorovka, only 54 german tanks and assault guns were destroyed (max number).



The German losses on AFVs on the Kursk offensive battle and following defensive battles on Orel and Kharkov was not as decisive as many would think. Their losses during Zitadelle did not exceeded a total of 300 tanks and assault guns. Even taking the Orel and Kharkov offensives, the losses were not irreplaceble. Average monthly loss of AFVs in the German army was in 1943 of 640. Production in mid 43 was on average 908 tanks and assault guns per month. In December 1943, there were more tanks on the Eastern front than at any other time prior to it. The number of tanks even surpassed the number with wich the Germans started the kursk offensive.

Casualities for the Germans during Zitadelle was 56,827 men killed wounded or missing. The Germans suffered 1,601,454 men in 1943 thus Zitadelle accounted for 3% of the yearly losses. The replacements for the Germans exceeded 86,000 men.


So, all in all, Kursk and it's consequent Soviet offensives, did not have a stagering effect on german forces. The germans lost the eastern front because the Russians could field more divisions and recover losses faster than the Germans.

Like a friend of mine put it, "It's like pissing against the wind... Even if you can produce a strong stream eventually, the wind will bring it back..."



Cheers...