History of the Second World War (84 page)

The Red Army had also improved greatly in tactical ability. Whereas 1942 had seen a deterioration, owing to the loss of a high proportion of its best trained troops in 1941, increasing battle-experience had largely repaired this defect by 1943 and given the new formations a better grounding than the old ones had received in pre-war training. The improvement began at the top. A drastic elimination of the original leaders had made room for the rapid rise of a generation of dynamic young generals, mostly under forty, who were more professional and less political than their predecessors. The average age of the Russian higher commanders was now nearly twenty years less than the German, and the lowering of the age level brought a heightening of efficiency as well as of activity. The combined effects of fresher leadership and ripening battle-experience were reflected both in the staff-work and the tactical ability of the troops.

The improvement would have been even more effective but for the tendency of the generals, from fear or desire for favour, to continue attacks, pressing attacks unprofitably at points where strong opposition was met. Rather than admit failure, their troops were often hurled again and again at unbreakable obstacles, with mounting cost. Such abortive assaulting is a common tendency in armies because of the combination of a hierarchical system with military discipline, but it was naturally accentuated in the Red Army by Soviet conditions, Russian traditions, and Russia’s resources. Under such a system only the best established commanders could venture to exercise a sense of the limits of the possible, while the abundance of human material encouraged lavish expenditure. It was easier to be ruthless in sacrificing men than to risk the wrath of the man above.

On the whole, the vastness of space went far to balance these battering-ram tendencies. There was generally room for manoeuvre, and the Russian High Command had become skilled in choosing soft spots in the enemy’s far-stretched front. Since the Red Army had now a general superiority in numbers, the High Command could count on enjoying odds higher than 4 to 1 on any sector where it decided to concentrate for a thrust, and once a breakthrough was made the room for manoeuvre further expanded. Vain frontal assaults, and the wasteful repetition of them, were more common in the north where the German defences were more closely knit and better established. In the south, the Russians had their best commanders and troops, along with the space to exploit their skill.

Nevertheless, the extent to which the Germans still held firm in face of such odds was evidence — even before two years’ prolongation of the war confirmed it — that the Russian forces were still a long way from overtaking the German forces’ technical superiority. A consciousness of that professional advantage coloured the outlook of both sides in the spring of 1943. It encouraged Hitler, and even his military advisers, in the hope that the scales might still be turned in Germany’s favour if the mistakes of the past were avoided. It left a doubt underlying the confidence which the Russian leaders had gained from their winter successes, for they could not forget that the hopes raised by their successes in the previous winter had been dispelled in the summer following. With another summer at hand, they could not feel sure that the issue was certain.

That underlying uncertainty may have accounted for a significant interlude of diplomacy before the battle was joined. In June, Molotov met Ribbentrop at Kirovograd, which was then within the German lines, for a discussion about the possibilities of ending the war. According to German officers who attended as technical advisers, Ribbentrop proposed as a condition of peace that Russia’s future frontier should run along the Dnieper, while Molotov would not consider anything less than the restoration of her original frontier; the discussion became hung up on the difficulty of bridging such a gap, and was broken off after a report that it had leaked out to the Western Powers. The issue was then referred back to the judgement of battle.

The opening of the summer campaign was later than in either of the previous years. Over three months’ pause occurred after the close of the winter campaign. That prolonged delay was due, in part at least, to the Germans’ increasing difficulty in refitting their forces and accumulating the reserves necessary for another offensive. But there was also an increased desire to see the Russians take the offensive lead, and become hooked, so that the German offensive might have the effect of a counterstroke. That desire was disappointed — not so much by Hitler’s impatience as by the Russians’ decision to adopt a similar angling strategy this time.

The retrospective view of the German leaders was that their offensive might have achieved a great success it the striking forces had been ready in time to launch it six weeks earlier. When their pincer-stroke became hung up in a deep series of minefields, and they found that the Russians had withdrawn their main forces well to the rear, they ascribed their frustration to the fact that the Russians had got wind of their preparations during the interval, and thus been able to make appropriate dispositions. That view overlooked the obviousness of the Kursk salient as an objective. It offered as clear an invitation to a German pincer-stroke as the Germans’ adjoining salient round Orel offered to a Russian pincer-stroke. Thus there was little room for doubt as to the site of a stroke by either side, and the main question was which would strike first.

That had been in debate on the Russian side. There, the argument for striking first was that the Russian defence had been overcome two summers running by the German attack; and the confidence generated by the Russians’ many offensive successes from Stalingrad onwards made their leaders more eager to take the initiative in the summer. On the other hand, it was pointed out that in 1942 Timoshenko had, in fact, led off with his Kharkov offensive in May, to which the Russian collapse between there and Kursk in June had been a disastrous sequel.

At his first conference with the Russian General Staff at the end of May, the new head of the British Military Mission, Lieutenant-General G. Le Q. Martel, gained the impression that the balance was tilted in favour of initiating the offensive. He frankly said that he thought they were asking for trouble if they launched it while the renewed German panzer forces were still uncommitted, and that the Russians ‘would be hit for six if they tried anything of the kind’.

A few days later he was asked about British tactics in North Africa, and ‘explained to them that our success at Alamein was largely due to the fact that we had let the Germans smash up, or at any rate blunt, their armoured forces on our defences. When they were committed and had been badly knocked about, then was the time to assume the offensive.’ At the next conference he had the impression that the Russian General Staff were inclining to that plan. He took the opportunity to impress on them another lesson of British experience: the importance of holding the ‘haunches’ on each side of a hostile tank penetration, and using all available reserves to stiffen the flanks of the breach , as an indirect check, rather than to meet the torrent head-on.*

* See Martel:
An Outspoken Soldier,
pp. 211-54.

In tracing the origins of any plan it is usually difficult to assess the influences that determined it, even where all the files are open to examination, for documents rarely register the real originating causes. They do not show how ideas are sown, and grow, in the minds of the actual planners. While some who sow ideas are apt to overestimate the effect of their particular seed, those in whose minds they grow are even more inclined to discount the effect, however influential it may have been. That applies with special force in official quarters, and most of all where national pride is concerned. Among allies, it is normal for each to minimise the help received, and maximise the help given, whether material or intangible. It is thus unlikely that history will throw any clearer light on the way that the Russians’ plan of 1943 was determined, while it is manifest that their strategic planners had ample experience from their own campaigns to draw the conclusions that were implicit in the plan they came to adopt.

The greater significance lies in the dramatically decisive outcome of following the defensive-offensive method.

The German attack was launched at dawn on July 5, against the two flanks of the Kursk salient. The straight face of that salient was nearly a hundred miles wide; the southern side was about fifty miles deep; the northern side was over 150 miles, since it coincided with the flank of the Germans’ Orel salient which projected in the opposite direction. The main stretch of the salient was held by Rokossovsky’s troops, while Vatutin’s right wing embraced the southern corner.

Manstein s southern pincer and Kluge’s northern pincer were approximately equal in strength, but Manstein had a larger proportion of armour. In all, eighteen panzer and panzergrenadier divisions were committed to this offensive. They formed nearly half of the total force engaged — and nearly the whole of the German armour that was available on the Eastern Front. Hitler was gambling for high stakes.

The southern pincer penetrated about twenty miles at some points in the first few days — that was not a rapid penetration. The Germans were slowed down by the deep minefields they met, and found that the mass of the defending forces had been withdrawn to the rear, so that their bag of prisoners was disappointingly small. Moreover, the wedges which they drove in were hindered in expansion by the stubborn defence of the haunches. Kluge’s pincer on the north made a still more limited penetration and did not succeed in breaching the Russians’ main defensive position. After a week of struggle, the panzer divisions were much reduced in strength. Kluge, alarmed by signs of an imminent threat to his own flank, began to pull out his panzer divisions.

At the same moment, July 12, the Russians launched their offensive — against the northern flank and the nose of the Orel salient. The northern stroke penetrated thirty miles in three days, towards the rear of Orel, while the other advance, which had not so far to go, came within fifteen miles of the city. But four of the panzer divisions which Kluge had disengaged came up just in time to check the Russians’ northern wing from establishing itself astride the railway from Orel back to Briansk. After that the offensive became a process of hard pushing, relying on superior weight to force the Germans back. It was a costly effort, but was helped by Rokossovsky’s forces changing over to the offensive on the southern flank, from the Kursk salient. The Germans were at last squeezed out of Orel on August 5. Orel had not only been one of the main and most formidable bastions of the German front since 1941, but while it remained intact a renewal of the menace to Moscow remained possible. Orel’s strategic situation had combined with its proved strength to make it a military symbol — and its evacuation was thus as depressing to German confidence as it was stimulating to the Russians.

Meanwhile Vatutin’s troops had followed up the Germans’ withdrawal from the breach on the southern side of the Kursk salient, to the original line. On August 4 Vatutin launched an attack on that weakened line, and captured Belgorod next day. Exploiting the enemy’s exhaustion, he drove eighty miles deep in the next week, wheeling down towards the rear of Kharkov and its communications with Kiev. This scythe-stroke opened up a prospect of dislocating the Germans’ whole southern front. Ten days later Koniev’s forces, on Vatutin’s left, crossed the Donetz south-east of Kharkov and threatened to complete the encirclement of the city. Koniev had created the opening for this threat by audaciously choosing the Liubotin marshes as his point for crossing the Donetz.

If either of the strokes had reached Poltava junction it might not only have trapped the garrison of Kharkov but spread confusion among all the German forces forming the extended right arm along the Donetz. At that moment the 3rd Panzer Corps was almost the only considerable reserve left. With the three S.S. panzer divisions it had just been sent to meet a threat to the fingers, on the Mius River near Taganrog. It was now rushed back up to the arm, and just sufficed to check the danger round Poltava. This enabled the bulk of the troops at Kharkov to be safely withdrawn before the city fell, on August 23. At other points, too, the depleted panzer divisions showed that, though they had little punch left, they were still able to keep a curb on the advancing Russian masses. The crisis was weathered and the situation became stabilised — though not static. The Russians continued to make headway, but at a slow pace. In the six weeks that followed the launching of their offensive they took 25,000 prisoners. It was a small total for such a vast battle, covering many sectors, and an indication that any collapses of the defence had been local and limited.

In the second half of August the Russian offensive was more widely extended. While Popov’s forces were advancing gradually from Orel on Briansk, a push towards Smolensk was begun by Eremenko’s forces on their right flank. On their left flank a deeper thrust towards the Dnieper near Kiev was developed by Rokossovsky, while Vatutin was also converging thither. In the extreme south, Tolbukhin crossed the Mius River, and forced the abandonment of Taganrog. Then early in September Malinovsky struck south across the Donetz towards Stalino, and this flanking leverage produced a hasty retreat of the Germans from the projecting ‘arm’ south of the Donetz. Significantly, however, they managed to hold on to the points that immediately covered the flank of their long retreat, and to the railways, until most of their troops were safely out of the trap. Lozovaya junction, in the armpit, was not yielded until the middle of September.

The pattern, and rhythm, of the Russian operations came to appear still closer to Foch’s general offensive in 1918 — with its alternating series of strokes at different points, each temporarily suspended when its impetus waned in face of stiffening resistance, each so aimed as to pave the way for the next, and all timed to react on one another. In 1918 it had led the Germans to scurry reserves to the points that were struck while simultaneously restricting their power to move reserves in time to the points that were going to be struck next. It paralysed their freedom of action, while progressively draining their balance of reserves. The Russians were repeating it a quarter of a century later under more favourable conditions and in an improved form.