The Battle of Kursk - Myths and Reality

Myth #4:  Prokhorovka  was the "death ride of the Panzers" because the Germans lost so many tanks.

Traditional western sources, citing propagandized Soviet accounts, place tank losses at Prokhorovka for both sides at about 1200.  Considering the fact that less than half that number even participated in the battle, this number is ridiculous.  If it was anything, it was the death ride of the 29^th Tank Corp, which experienced a 75% drop in its number of on-hand AFVs in one day.  In fact, the Germans barely noticed the effects of the battle at Prokhorovka, while the Soviets had several units rendered ineffective in a matter of hours.  Simply put, the Germans put a licking on the Red Army.  I have provided data for the number of "damaged" and "destroyed/abandoned" AFVs July 10, 11, and 12.

German AFVs Out Of Action Due to Damage

Soviet AFVs Out of Action Due to Damage

This hardly reveals a "death ride" for the Panzers.  The LSSAH permanently lost a grand total of 7 AFVs.  A further 25 were damaged and sent to repair shops, only 1 of which was a Tiger (note that no Tigers were destroyed).  The Soviets, on the other hand, permanently lost at least 134 AFVs, more than 19 times the losses of the Germans.  A further 125 were temporarily lost due to damage.  Therefore total AFV losses due to combat at Prokhorovka come out to 32 German against 259 Soviet.  It is no wonder the Soviets had to inflate the size and losses of the German force; they were beaten badly.

Myth #5: The weather at Prokhorovka was clear and dry.  Most popular accounts of the battle at Prokhorovka feature swirling tank battles kicking up enormous clouds of dust.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  We already know that there were no swirling tanks battles at point blank range.  Nor was there dust.  The ground was waterlogged, and the weather during the battle featured occasional thunderstorms.  According to the reports of LSSAH, July 9^th was "dreary and rainy" and July 10^th featured "heavy showers which hampered [the] division's movements".  For July 11 and 12, the division reported that there were "heavy downpours which severely hampered combat operations" and that the roads were "in very poor shape".  These are hardly the conditions that would allow for huge clouds of dust to be kicked up!

Myth #6: German forces were heavily supplied with Panthers, Tigers, and Elefant tank destroyers.  While the Germans did decide to delay their attack so that more new weapons, such as the Panther and the Elefant, would be available, these weapons were not present in large numbers.  A grand total of 119 Panthers went into battle with the Gross Deutschland Division (GD) on July 5^th.  After 65% of those went out of action, either damaged or destroyed, on the first day they ceased to play a crucial role in the remaining week's worth of combat.  Note that there were absolutely no Panthers available to any other unit besides GD.  The paintings and drawings of Panthers in battle at Prokhorovka are absolutely wrong: none of the three SS Panzergrenadier divisions used Panthers at Kursk.  A total of 90 Elefants were available, and all of them were used by the 9^th Army to help its divisions crack through the defensive lines on the north face of the Kursk salient.  Despite the Soviet accounts which have Elefants participating in practically every battle on the north and south faces, Elefants were used only by the 9^th Army, and only on the north face (primarily in the German assault on the town of Ponyri).  Most of them were lost in the first few days of the fighting.  Tiger tanks were equally rare.  On the entire south face of the salient, only 89 Tigers started the battle.  About half of these were in the heavy battalions of the three SS Panzergrenadier divisions and the GD.  These four divisions started with 12 to 15 Tigers each, but by the second or third day of fighting, they were down to about 4 to 6 operational Tigers each.  This situation remained until the end of the fighting.  Popular drawings and paintings of waves of Tigers rolling toward the Russians are pure fantasy.  The battle where Tigers are supposedly present in droves, at Prokhorovka, featured just 4.

Myth #7: Hitler called off CITADEL because the Americans and British landed on Sicily and the Germans needed to shift forces to the western front.  This component of the overall myth of Kursk is undoubtedly due to western authors trying to increase the otherwise paltry contributions of the western allies in 1943.  In actual fact, the German units on the southern face of the Kursk salient received new orders to renew their attacks several days after the landing on Sicily.  Hitler called off CITADEL not because a couple of British and American divisions were attacking a strategically insignificant island in the Mediterranean, but because the Soviets had (1) blunted and stalled the German CITADEL offensive, and (2) launched their own massive offensives on the flanks of the German attack.  These attacks soaked up reserves the Germans had planned on using to complete the destruction of the Kursk salient.  Without them, the Germans were too weak to continue CITADEL and they began withdrawing their units.

Myth #8:  The Germans almost won, or they could have won.  Some authors would have us believe that the Germans could have won at least a partial victory in CITADEL.  Certainly the Germans were not decisively defeated in CITADEL.  While the 9^th Army bogged down almost immediately on the north face, it was only forced back due to Soviet attacks on the German 2^nd Army, protecting its flank and rear.  On the south face, the Germans had won nearly every tactical battle, including at Prokhorovka.  George Nipe has argued that given these tactical victories, the Germans could have continued to destroy the armored forces of the Soviet Union, and that Hitler called off CITADEL too early.  Nipe offers no evidence that: (a) the Germans could have continued to win Prokhorovka-style battles; (b) the Germans could have continued moving forward at all; (c) that the XXIV Panzer Corps could actually have been committed.  Let's examine these problems is turn.

While Prokhorovka offered the Germans a tactical victory, operationally it was a death knell for CITADEL.  The 9^th Army's advance had already stalled several days earlier.  And even though it was defeated in the space of two days, the arrival of the 5^th Guards Tank Army signaled the fact that the Russians were committing their armored reserves, and that from July 11 on the Germans would have to content with these.  It is doubtful that the Germans could have continued to defeat these reserves, given the context of the problems with the rest of the operation.  Even if a few more tactical battles were won, to what end?  CITADEL, as an operation, had failed before the battle at Prokhorovka; there was no way that the north and south face could meet to encircle the Soviet forces.  Continuing to attack would have wasted resources.

It is doubtful that the Germans could have kept moving forward at all anyway.  The north face had degenerated into static warfare before the Germans even got through all the defensive lines.  On the south face, the Germans enjoyed some forward progress, but at a tremendous cost.  Loses in AFVs, vehicles, and men were high enough to soak up a significant portion of the offensive power of the German armored divisions.  Further, the attack had been launched with insufficient infantry forces.  The salient that the armored units pushed forward could not be adequately protected due to a lack of infantry divisions.  Thus, the German offensive was contained and stalled.  Having the three SS Panzergrenadier divisions move forward after the battle at Prokhorovka would have made things worse, not better, for the Germans.

Finally, Nipe identifies the XXIV Panzer Corps as an "uncommitted reserve" that Manstein could have used to force the attack forward, at least on the south face.  This is only technically true.  The XXIV Panzer Corps, made up of the 17^th, 23^rd, and SS-Wiking Panzer divisions was theoretically available as a reserve, to be used once a breakthrough had been achieved.  This force was not useable for two reasons.  First, no operational breakthrough had actually been achieved.  Due to the depth and flexibility of the Soviet defenses, the German attack never achieved anything close to operational maneuver, despite the fact that it steadily moved forward on the south flank.  There simply was no space to commit the XXIV Panzer Corps.  Second, the Soviet attacks to the south of the Kursk salient, along the Mius river, required the commitment of this reserve.  As part of the overall Soviet operational plan for the Summer of 1943, the Red Army would absorb the (obvious) German attack while simultaneously launching its own attacks against the 2^nd Army (to the left and behind the 9^th Army on the north face) and to the south of Kharkov (to outflank the 4^th Panzer Army and Army Group Kempf).  Given that the German lines had been stripped to provide reinforcements for CITADEL, the XXIV Panzer Corps was committed to blunt these southern attacks.  As armored units were pulled out of CITADEL, they too were committed in a defensive role along the Mius.  Had CITADEL been continued with the commitment of the XXIV Panzer Corps, the German lines along the Mius would almost certainly have been decisively penetrated, leading to operational disaster for the Germans.  As it was, the Soviet attacks still forced the Germans out of the Ukraine, even with the use of Panzer forces on the defensive.

Conclusion

The myth of Kursk has been surprisingly resilient.  Some of this undoubtedly is due to how long it remained unchallenged.  Powerful counterarguments have only been published in the last 10 years or so.  Even these are somewhat inaccessible: since they've been published by specialty presses they have high price tags and do not show up on the average bookstore's shelves.

It is certain that CITADEL failed and in no way were the Germans positioned to even score a partial victory.  The Germans did not fail, however, due to a defeat at Prokhorovka.  There was no "death ride of the panzers" on July 11 and 12.  Nor was there a very big battle on those dates.  It's time to put to rest the fanciful notions of waves of Tiger and Panther tanks riding across the dry, dusty plains to do battle with Soviet tanks at point-blank range.

It just didn't happen.

Newton, Steven.  2003.  Kursk: The German View.  DaCapo Press.

I just like to point out that the Germans had the best armies once not because of their weapons, but because of their generals' nature. Germans were probably among the worst shaped land after WWII. But they rose to become the most powerful nation during WWII. Why?