How successful were Kutuzov and Rumyantsev?
Soviet’s counteroffensives in the Kursk campaign August 1943
I was asked (on Quora) about how successful the Soviet counteroffensives in the battle of Kursk were, and expanded the answer slightly to the offensives in the rest of the summer and autumn of 1943. There is a lot to unpack and I won’t explain everything since most who are interested also have some knowledge about this.
Background
During the winter months of 1943, the Red Army (RKKA) destroyed the encircled Axis army at Stalingrad, destroyed the minor Axis armies (Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians) along the Don river, forced the Germans to evacuate the Caucasus region, and pushed the German line back to the Donets river.
In the beginning of spring, after several armoured divisions had been sent to eastern Ukraine, German field marshal Manstein temporarily brought the situation under control and defeated the spearheads of the Soviet Southwest front. (The military structure has formations and units on different levels of “detail”: in this article I am concentrating on Army formations on the German side and Front formations on the Soviet side, since they are roughly equal in strength.) Manstein used his 1. and 4.Panzerarmee to push the Southwest front back over the Donets and the II.SS-Panzerkorps to retake Kharkov (Kharkiv) and Belgorod, and likewise push the Voronezh front across the Donets. He then anchored both ends of his front line by moving one tank army and one army detachment (grab-bags of units rescued from the Stalingrad debacle).
Meanwhile, the front line north of this received the 9.Armee as reinforcement. It had successfully defended the Rzhev salient in the middle of the German line for most of a year, and was stronger and more experienced than most German armies.
This meant that by a combination of accident and design, at the start of the summer the southern sector of the front had been arranged into strongpoints (the blue-tinted areas on the map), the two northern ones being the Oryol and Belgorod salient, and the southern one the area enclosed by the Donets and Mius rivers and by the Sea of Azov. Between the German salients was the Soviet Kursk salient.
This created the staging for the German phase of the battle of Kursk, Unternehmen Zitadelle. Though a large battle with considerable losses, it was a bit of an anti-climax, since neither Model’s attack in the north nor Hoth’s attack in the south managed to make much of an impression on the Soviet defensive lines.
Counteroffensive
While the Germans were building up their strength for Zitadelle, the Soviets had their sights on the Oryol and Belgorod salients. Assaulting them would constitute the Soviet phase of the battle of Kursk. The plan was to knock out the German strongpoints there in individual operations and, if possible, follow up with a general offensive pushing the Germans west. Both operations were designed to be simple but strong offensives, well matched in strength to the resistance. Zhukov had planned a sequence which incorporated
- Dense artillery barrage (150 / 170 minutes) by separate artillery divisions, on a scale never seen before. German defences were devastated in many places. During the barrages, Soviet sapper brigades approached with assault troops following, clearing paths through the minefields.
- Infantry attack with tank and close air support attempting to break through the German line.
- Individual Tank Corps formations sent through the breakthroughs to infiltrate and attack the German rear.
Orel Strategic Offensive Operation “Kutuzov”
The Western, Bryansk, and Central fronts were assigned to Operation Kutuzov. It was said to have been launched early to help take pressure off the central front. Poor synchronisation between the Western and Bryansk fronts meant that Model (who had pulled out early from his attack towards Kursk) was able to shift his assets around to maintain local superiority and exploit mistakes made by the attackers.
When Rokossovsky was in place and in senior command of the operation, Model was outmatched and began to retreat, using his armoured divisions as a rearward protection and causing heavy losses for the pursuing Soviet tanks.
(The 2.Panzerarmee at the start of the operation only had a half-strength armoured division and a half-strength mechanised division, the rest were infantry divisions. It was taken out of the line and transferred to anti-partisan duties in Yugoslavia after this battle.)
Belgorod–Kharkov Strategic Offensive Operation “Commander Rumyantsev”
The Voronezh and Steppe fronts were assigned to Operation Rumyantsev. Vatutin was able to draw off some German divisions by misdirection and then drove straight into the 4.Panzerarmee with his divisions deployed in echelon, which meant that he could increase the pressure as the operation went on.
The German defensive battle during Rumyantsev has many interesting parallels with the Soviet defence during the early phase of Barbarossa. Like Zhukov in 1941, Manstein and Hoth were now reduced to leading by telephone, with their units in a state of disorganisation. While Manstein called in reinforcements from everywhere, Hoth was trying to juggle his armoured corps formations with a lot less success than Model in the north.
The result was a confused and hectic, and ultimately indecisive, tank engagement that was unexpectedly punishing for German armour. And while the Soviets couldn’t win many victories, the fighting wore down Hoth’s divisions, and they were unable to destroy or evict the elements of two Soviet tank armies roaming the area, destroying rear area services and ambushing German units on the move. While Hoth spent all his energy fighting Vatutin’s troops, Konev’s front took Kharkov. In the end, Hoth and Wöhler had to retreat too (Wöhler had replaced Kempf, and his Armeeabteilung became the 8.Armee at the same time).
Result of the operations
In the end, the Soviet operations were successful: the German strongpoints were taken, and the front moved west to the Dnepr. A lot had improved within the RKKA since 1941:
- Unit coordination was much better (but fronts were still often out of step)
- Preparation for an offensive was now much more sophisticated, bringing down losses
- For the first time in the war in summer, the RKKA was able to not only break into strong positions, but also to keep up a sustained and successful offensive
- The independent artillery divisions were functioning well, much better than organic artillery in infantry units
- The VVS (Soviet air force) performed well for close air support, as long as there wasn’t a strong presence of Luftwaffe units. During Kutuzov especially, the 6.Luftflotte devastated many VVS sorties. At the same time, VVS now had better crews and better fighter aircraft and put up more of a fight.
But the German army was still strong enough to give RKKA many unpleasant surprises, and there were still some operational mismanagement on the Soviet side that needed to be ironed out. The remaining German tactical superiority still counteracted their numerical inferiority, and again, Soviet success came down to the infantry’s ability to soak up losses.
Zhukov himself spoiled some aspects of the operations: he refused to make more armoured corps available to attempt an encirclement of the 2.Panzerarmee and the 9.Armee, and he forced Vatutin to commit some of his reserves early, expending them to little use.
Soviet tank forces still weren’t quite mature. The RKKA now had many more veteran tankers, and even tank aces, but they had few good tank commanders. Tank units were still far too often used in inappropriate ways by generals, e.g. breaking them up when they should be concentrated, speeding them up when they should rest and refill, sending them into the killing zones of Model’s massed Ferdinand and Hornisse tank destroyers, etc.
Soviet tanks types were also being left behind. The KV-1 tanks had been excellent breakthrough tanks in 1941, but now they were mostly large, slow targets. Their armour could no longer withstand the 8.8 cm or 7.5 cm extra high-pressure guns that the Germans had upgraded to.
And the 76.2mm tank guns or towed anti-tank guns could not deal with the new German Tiger/Panther tanks or the up-armoured PzKpfw IV Ausf H tanks except on very close ranges. This had been clear already during the battles in the Kursk salient, and during the summer and fall new types of guns and tank configurations were tested, leading in 1944 to new types like the T-34–85 and the IS series of heavy tanks, the latter originally based on the KV design.
A new type of armoured vehicle with an 85mm gun had already entered production and begun reaching units for training and testing, the SU-85.
The SU-85 had teething problems, but was more of a match for the German tanks in terms of firepower and protection than the T-34 tanks were. However, it was intended to be used as a self-propelled gun (SPG), and the crews were not trained for tank combat. Because of the general Soviet deficiency in armour in late 1943, it still ended up in such combat, where the still mainly veteran German tank crews could dispatch it without too much trouble at normal combat ranges. Still, its improved gun made it possible to engage German armour at a distance, which also gave its armour a chance of holding off German shot.
Aftermath
There was fighting in the southern nest as well (the river Mius battles), but not of the same scale. It was intended by Zhukov as a diversionary attack. The German armies there still had to retreat when the rest of the front buckled. The 3 and 4 Ukrainian fronts pursued.
For the Germans, the battles were another disaster. Earlier in the war, they had been advancing and kept the field after a battle. Ever since they began retreating from the Caucasus and the Don, they had been losing stores, equipment that couldn’t be transported away, and damaged but repairable armoured vehicles. During the retreat from Belgorod, they were forced to destroy a large number of brand new Panther tanks which had been damaged in the battle of Kursk.
Model had made good use of Ferdinand and Hornisse tank destroyers, and PaK 41 towed anti-tank guns with APCR shot which had a particularly good effect on armour. A lot of those now had to be destroyed and left behind as breakdowns and losses of tractors made it impossible to bring it. For Germany, which had only recently accelerated production to replace the equipment lost east of the Don, this was a palpable loss.
Not only equipment had to be left behind. Soldiers that had been cut off from a retreating or destroyed battalion, or wounded men who could not move on their own, were overrun and killed or captured by the RKKA. The losses in infantry, especially the Panzergrenadier, mechanised infantry trained to fight along tanks to protect those from anti-tank weapons, were getting higher than before. Lack of Panzergrenadiers forced the German armoured battalions to avoid direct contact with Soviet positions, taking some of their edge off.
The debacle at Stalingrad had cost Germany many of its most experienced troops, and the losses during summer and autumn 1943 counteracted the attempts that had been made to rebuild the infantry units. While experienced soldiers were more likely to survive combat than new recruits, the commanders had no choice but to send them into battle again and again until they, too, were gone.
And the army expected to replace and renew its NCO stock with experienced privates, and to carefully select suitable NCOs for officer training. Now they had to drain the NCO group to replace fallen lieutenants, captains, and majors without giving them the skills they needed, and then make new NCOs of clueless privates and hope for the best. This problem was still only making itself somewhat felt, but it would increase.
Lastly, the loss of most of the Dnepr also meant loss of the resources taken from that region, like grain, hydropower, ores and minerals mined in the region. At the end of this campaign, as the manganese stores ran out, German armour ceased to be as strong as before.
(Maps based on Kirchubel’s Atlas of the eastern front with Google Earth providing the base map.)
To the left: the German armies and the frontline at the end of November 1943. The blue arrows show how the armies retreated from the frontline during the long pause before the battle of Kursk, the blue line in the first map. To the right, the Soviet fronts as they were renamed at the end of the year.
Where are they now (~1 December 1943)?
4.Armee had retreated to the Dnepr when the 9.Armee was forced back.
9.Armee was west of the Dnepr, trying to rebuild, resting on the shoulder of the 2.Armee, which had retreated from the western end of the Kursk salient.
4.Panzerarmee was to defend from the Pripet marshes to Kiev, spreading itself too thin to be fully mobile. When the 1 Ukrainian made a final push before winter into Zhitomir the 4.PzA had to yield and pull south.
The 8.Armee was given a long stretch of Dnepr bank to hold while the 2 Ukrainian front gradually worked around its right flank: this would cause a rather grand and terrible encirclement during the winter near Korsun-Cherkassy.
1.Panzerarmee and 6.Armee (former Armeeabteilung Hollidt) were deployed to protect the important mining resources in the Dnepr bend and to threaten any incursions into the Crimea. They failed.
17.Armee found itself isolated in the Crimea. Hitler had demanded that it be kept in the region in preparation for the next try to capture the Caucasus region. Now it would be a loss instead.
