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The Eastern Front of World War II (German: die Ostfront 1941-1945 [3], der Rußlandfeldzug 1941-1945 (Russian campaign) or der Ostfeldzug 1941-1945 (Eastern Campaign)[4]) was a theatre of war between the German Reich and the Soviet Union which encompassed central and eastern Europe from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945. Nazi propaganda dubbed the conflict The Crusade against Bolshevism. In all Soviet and the majority of Russian sources, the conflict in Eastern Europe is referred to as the Great Patriotic War, but sometimes that phrase also includes operations against Japan in 1945. Some scholars of the conflict use the term Russo-German War, while others use Soviet-German War, Nazi-Soviet War, German-Soviet War, or Axis-Soviet War.
It was the largest theatre of war in history and was notorious for its unprecedented ferocity, destruction, and immense loss of life. It bore the bulk of the Holocaust, and stands unparalleled in terms of the volume of scholarly analysis and cultural depictions it generated (films, books, video games etc.). More people fought and died on the Eastern Front than in all other theatres of World War II combined. With over 30 million dead, many of them civilians, the Eastern Front has been called a war of extermination. It resulted in the destruction of the Third Reich, the partition of Germany and the rise of the Soviet Union as a military and industrial superpower.
The series of events preceding the opening of the Eastern Front included the invasion of Poland in 1939 by Nazi Germany and the resulting fourth partition of Poland when the Soviet Union used the invasion as a pretext to annex the eastern regions of the country, populated mostly by Ukrainians and Belarussians, as outlined in the secret codicil to the August 1939 Soviet-German non-aggression pact, which also paved the way for the 1940 Occupation of Baltic states and the occupation of Bessarabia.
This article, however, concentrates on the much larger conflict fought from June 1941 to May 1945, in which the two principal belligerent powers were Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Soviet-Finnish Continuation War may be considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front. In addition, the joint German-Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish-Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front.
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[edit] Forces
The war was fought between the German Reich, its allies, and many pro-Nazi volunteers from occupied states, against the Soviet Union, and eventually its allies of the British Commonwealth, France and the United States. The conflict began on 22 June 1941 as part of the Operation Barbarossa Offensive, when Axis forces crossed the borders, described in the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, thereby invading the Soviet Union. The war ended on 9 May 1945, when Germany's armed forces surrendered unconditionally following the Berlin Offensive, a strategic operation executed by the Red Army, also known as the Battle of Berlin. The states that provided forces and other resources for the German war effort included the Axis Powers — foremost Italy, Romania, Hungary, and pro-Nazi Slovakia and Croatia. The anti-Soviet Finland, which had fought two conflicts with the Soviet Union, also joined the Offensive. The Wehrmacht forces were also assisted by anti-Communist partisans in places like Western Ukraine, the Baltic states and later Crimean Tatars. Among the most prominent volunteer army formations was the Spanish Blue Division, sent by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to keep his ties to the Axis intact.
The Soviet Union offered support to the partisans in many Wehrmacht-occupied countries in Eastern Europe, notably those in Slovakia, Poland and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In addition the Polish Armed Forces in the East, particularly the First and Second Polish armies, were armed and trained, and would eventually fight alongside the Red Army. The Free French forces also contributed to the Red Army by formation of GC3 (Groupe de Chasse 3 or 3rd Fighter Group) unit to fulfill the commitment of Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who thought that it was important for French servicemen to serve on all fronts. British and Commonwealth forces contributed directly to the fighting on the Eastern Front through their service in the convoys and training Red Air Force pilots, as well as in provision of early material and intelligence support. The later massive material support of the Lend-Lease by the United States and Canada played a significant part particularly in the logistics of the war.
[edit] Ideologies
Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for German settlement in Eastern Europe. He envisaged settling Germans as a master race in western Russia, while deporting most of the Russians to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour. After the great purge of the 1930s, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for conquest: "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."[5] Thus, another short Blitzkrieg was expected, no serious preparations for warfare in winter, or prolonged over years, were made. In the aftermath of the Battle of Kursk in 1943 and the resulting dire German military situation, Hitler and Nazi propaganda proclaimed the war to be a German defense of European (Western) Civilization against destruction by the vast "Bolshevik hordes" that were pouring into Europe.
Joseph Stalin's vision also included the occupation of foreign countries: using the occasion of world attention drawn to the Western Front, Soviet Union occupied the three Baltic countries and Bessarabia in 1940, thus gaining a place d'arme in case of a possible war with Hitler-Germany. Soviet active participation in the 1939 invasion of Poland should also not be underestimated.
[edit] Results
The Eastern Front was by far the largest and bloodiest theatre of World War II. It is generally accepted as being the deadliest conflict in human history, with over 30 million killed as a result. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The distinctly brutal nature of warfare on the Eastern Front was exemplified by an often willful disregard for human life by both sides. It was also reflected in the ideological premise for the war, which also saw a momentous clash between two directly opposed and radical ideologies. To hard line Nazis in Berlin, the war against the Soviet Union was one of a struggle of Fascism against Communism, and the Aryan race against the "inferior" Slavic race. Hitler referred to it in unique terms, calling it a "war of annihilation", one in which the Soviet Union was to be utterly destroyed and the populations of Eastern Europe and Russia were to be enslaved and exterminated. This would further German expansion and provide for the colonization of Eastern Europe and Western Russia. In addition, Hitler also sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Eastern Europe (see The Holocaust). Aside from the ideological conflict, the mindframe of the leaders of Germany and the Soviet Union, Hitler and Stalin respectively, contributed to the escalation of terror and murder on an unprecedented scale. Stalin and Hitler both disregarded human life in order to achieve their goal of victory. This included terrorization of their own people, as well as mass deportation (planned, in the case of Germany) of entire populations. All these factors resulted in tremendous brutality both to combatants and civilians that found no parallel on the Western Front. According to the Time: "By measure of manpower, duration, territorial reach and casualties, the Eastern Front was as much as four times the scale of the conflict on the Western Front that opened with the Normandy invasion."[6]
The war inflicted huge losses and suffering upon the civilian populations of the affected countries. Behind the front lines, atrocities against civilians in German-occupied areas were routine, including the Holocaust. German and German-allied forces treated civilian populations with exceptional brutality, massacring villages and routinely killing civilian hostages. Both sides practiced widespread scorched earth tactics, but the loss of civilian lives in the case of Germany was incomparably smaller than that of the Soviet Union, in which at least 20 million civilians were killed by the Nazis. When the Red Army invaded Germany in 1944, many German civilians suffered from vengeance taken by Red Army soldiers (see Red Army atrocities). After the war, following the Yalta conference agreements between the Allies, the German populations of East Prussia and Silesia were displaced to the west of the Oder-Neisse Line, in what became one of the largest forced migrations of people in world history. The German minority scattered over large swaths of Eastern Europe was thus expelled and those who did not manage to leave were exterminated.
Much of the combat took place in or close by populated areas, and the actions of both sides contributed to massive loss of civilian life as well as a tremendous material damage. According to a summary, presented by Lieutenant General Roman Rudenko at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the property damage in the Soviet Union inflicted by the Axis invasion was estimated to a value of 679 billion rubles. The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the Siege of Leningrad. The combined damage consisted of complete or partial destruction of 1,710 cities and towns, 70,000 villages/hamlets, 2,508 church buildings, 31,850 industrial establishments, 40,000 miles of railroad, 4100 railroad stations, 40,000 hospitals, 84,000 schools, and 43,000 public libraries. Seven million horses, and 17 million sheep and goats were also slaughtered or driven off.[7]Wild fauna were also affected. Wolves and foxes fleeing westward from the killing zone, as the Russian army advanced 1943-45, were responsible for a rabies epidemic which spread slowly westwards, reaching the Channel coast in 1968.[8]
[edit] Background
[edit] Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939 had established a non-aggression agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and a secret protocol outlined how Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania would be divided between them. The two powers invaded and partitioned Poland in 1939. In November 1939 the Soviet Union waged the Winter War against Finland. And in June 1940, threatening to use force if its demands were not fulfilled, it won the diplomatic wars against Romania and three Baltic states allowing it to peacefully occupy Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania de facto while no western state regarded the annexation of these states de jure. The pact allowed for the return of the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Moldavian territories in the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bucovina and Basarabia) to the Soviet Union.
[edit] The decision for war
For nearly two years the border was quiet while Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, France, The Low Countries, and the Balkans. Hitler had however always intended to renege on the pact with the Soviet Union and invade, and appears to have made the decision of when to do so in the spring 1940. Hitler believed that the Soviets would quickly capitulate after an overwhelming German offensive and that the war could largely end before the onset of the fierce Russian winter.
Some say Joseph Stalin was fearful of war with Germany or just did not expect Germany to start a two-front war, and was reluctant to do anything to provoke Hitler. Others say that Stalin was eager for Germany to be at war with other capitalist countries. Another viewpoint is that Stalin expected war in 1942 (the time when all his preparations would be complete) and stubbornly refused to believe its early arrival.[9]
British historians Alan S. Milward and W. Medicott show that Nazi Germany--unlike Imperial Germany--was prepared for only a short-term war (Blitzkrieg).[citation needed] According to Andreas Hillgruber, without the necessary supplies from the USSR and the strategic security in the East, Germany could not have succeeded in the West. Had the Soviets joined the Anglo-French blockade, the German war economy would have been starved. With its own raw materials in September 1939, Germany could have been supplied for a mere 9 to 12 months.[citation needed]
Even though Germany had been assembling very large numbers of troops in eastern Poland and making repeated reconnaissance flights over the border, Stalin ignored the warnings of his own as well as foreign intelligence. Moreover, on the very night of the invasion, Soviet troops received a directive undersigned by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and General of the Army Georgy Zhukov that ordered (as demanded by Stalin): "do not answer to any provocations" and "do not undertake any actions without specific orders". The German invasion therefore caught the Soviet military and leadership largely by surprise, even though Stalin did receive a message from his intelligence detailing information on the attack.
For Soviet preparations, see Operation Barbarossa: Soviet preparations.
[edit] Conduct of operations
While German historians do not apply any specific periodisation to the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front, all Soviet and Russian historians divide the war against Germany and its allies into three periods, which are further subdivided into the major Campaigns of the Theatre of war:
1. First period of World War II (Russian: Первый период Великой Отечественной войны) (22 June 1941 - 18 November 1942)
- Summer-Autumn Campaign (Russian: Летне-осенняя кампания 1941 г.) (22 June - 4 December 1941)
- Winter Campaign of 1941-42 (Russian: Зимняя кампания 1941/42 г.) (5 December 1941 - 30 April 1942)
- Summer-Autumn Campaign (Russian: Летне-осенняя кампания 1942 г.) (1 May - 18 November 1942)
2. Second period of World War II (Russian: Второй период Великой Отечественной войны) (19 November 1942 - 31 December 1943)
- Winter Campaign of 1942-43 (Russian: Зимняя кампания 1942-1943 гг.) (19 November 1942 - 3 March 1943)
- Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943 (Russian: Летне-осенняя кампания 1943 г.) (1 July - 31 December 1943)
3. Third period of World War II (Russian: Третий период Великой Отечественной войны) (1 January 1944 - 9 May 1945)
- Winter-Spring Campaign (Russian: Зимне-весенняя кампания 1944 г.) (1 January - 31 May 1944)
- Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1944 (Russian: Летне-осенняя кампания 1944 г.) (1 June - 31 December 1944)
- Campaign in Europe during 1945 (Russian: Кампания в Европе 1945 г.) (1 January - 9 May 1945)
Excellent analytical works in English written on the history of the combat operation on the Eastern front in the past 20 years include those by David Glantz, which deal with large strategic as well as smaller scale operational and tactical aspects of the conflict.
[edit] Operation Barbarossa: Summer 1941
Operation Barbarossa began just before dawn on June 22, 1941. The Germans wrecked the wire network in all Soviet western military districts to undermine Soviet communications.[10] At 03:15 on 22 June 1941 ninety-nine (including fourteen panzer divisions and ten motorized) of 190 German divisions, deployed against the Soviet Union began the offensive from the Baltic to the Black seas. They were accompanied by ten Romanian divisions, nine Romanian and four Hungarian brigades.[11] On the same day the Baltic, Western and Kiev Special military districts were renamed to Northwestern, Western and Southwestern Fronts respectively.[10] For a month the offensive conducted on three axes was completely unstoppable as the panzer forces encircled hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops in huge pockets that were then reduced by slower-moving infantry armies while the panzers continued the offensive, following the Blitzkrieg doctrine. As part of this high tempo campaign the German air force began immediate attacks on Soviet airfields, destroying much of the forward-deployed Soviet Air Force airfield fleets consisting of largely obsolescent types before their pilots had a chance to leave the ground.
Army Group North's objective was Leningrad via the Baltic States. Comprising the 16th and 18th armies and the 4th Panzer Group, this formation advanced through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the Russian Pskov and Novgorod oblasts.
Army Group Centre comprised two panzer groups (2nd and 3rd), which advanced to the north and south of Brest-Litovsk and converged east of Minsk, followed by the 2nd, 4th, and 9th armies. The combined panzer force reached the Beresina River in just six days, 650 km (400 miles) from their start lines. The next objective was to cross the Dnieper river, which was accomplished by 11 July. Following that, their next target was Smolensk, which fell on 16 July, but the engagement in the Smolensk area halted the German advance until mid-September, effectively disrupting the blitzkrieg.
Army Group South, with 1st Panzer Group, 6th, 11th and 17th armies, was tasked with advancing through Galicia and into Ukraine. Their progress, however, was rather slow, and took heavy casualties in a major tank battle. With the corridor towards Kiev secured by mid-July, the 11th Army, aided by two Romanian armies, fought its way through Bessarabia towards Odessa. The 1st Panzer Group turned away from Kiev for the moment, advancing into the Dnieper bend (western Dnipropetrovsk Oblast). When it joined up with the southern elements of Army Group South at Uman, the Group captured about 100,000 Soviet prisoners in a huge encirclement.
As the Red Army withdrew behind the Dnieper and Dvina rivers, the Soviet Stavka turned its attention to evacuating as much of the western regions' industry as it could, dismantled and packed onto flatcars, away from the front line, re-establishing it in more remote areas of the Urals, Caucasus, Central Asia and south-eastern Siberia. Most civilians were left to make their own way East as only the industry-related workers could be evacuated with the equipment, and much of the population was left behind to the mercy of the invading forces.
With the capture of Smolensk, and the advance to the Luga river, Army groups Centre and North had completed their first major objective: to get across, and hold the "land bridge" between the Dvina and Dnieper. The advance to Moscow, now only 400 km (250 miles) away, could now begin.
The German generals argued for an immediate offensive towards Moscow, but Hitler overruled them, citing the importance of Ukrainian agricultural and mining resources, and heavy industry if under German possession, not to mention the massing of Soviet reserves in the Gomel area between Army Group Centre's southern flank and the bogged-down Army Group South's northern flank. The order was issued to 2nd Panzer Group to turn south and advance towards Kiev. This took the whole of August and into September, but when 2nd Panzer Group joined up with 1st Panzer Group at Lokhvitsa on 14 September 665,000 Soviet prisoners were captured as Kiev was surrendered on 19 September.
[edit] Moscow and Rostov: Autumn 1941
Hitler then decided to resume the advance to Moscow, re-designating the panzer groups as panzer armies for the occasion. Operation Typhoon, which was set in motion on 30 September, saw 2nd Panzer Army rush along the paved road from Orel (captured 5 October) to the Oka river at Plavskoye, while the 4th Panzer Army (transferred from Army Group North to Centre) and 3rd Panzer armies surrounded the Soviet forces in two huge pockets at Vyazma and Bryansk. Army Group North positioned itself in front of Leningrad and attempted to cut the rail link at Tikhvin to the east. Thus began the 900-day Siege of Leningrad. North of the Arctic Circle, a German-Finnish force set out for Murmansk but could get no further than the Zapadnaya Litsa River, where they settled down.
Army Group South pushed down from the Dnieper to the Sea of Azov coast, also advancing through Kharkov, Kursk, and Stalino. The 11th Army moved into the Crimea and had taken control of all of the peninsula by autumn (except Sevastopol, which held out until 3 July 1942). On 21 November the Germans took Rostov, the gateway to the Caucasus. However, the German lines were over-extended and the Soviet defenders counterattacked the 1st Panzer Army's spearhead from the north, forcing them to pull out of the city and behind the Mius River; the first significant German withdrawal of the war.
One last lunge on 15 November saw the Germans attempting to throw a ring around Moscow. On 27 November the 4th Panzer Army got within 30 km (19 miles) of the Kremlin when it reached the last tramstop of the Moscow line at Khimki, while the 2nd Panzer Army, despite its best efforts, failed to take Tula, the last Soviet city that stood in its way of the capital. After a meeting held in Orsha between the head of the Army General Staff, General Halder, and the heads of three Army groups and armies, it was decided to push forward to Moscow since it was better, as argued by head of Army Group Center, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, for them to try their luck on the battlefield rather than just sit and wait while their opponent gathered more strength.
However, by 6 December it became clear that the Wehrmacht was too weak to capture Moscow and the attack was put on hold. Marshal Shaposhnikov thus began his counter-attack, employing freshly mobilized reserves[12], as well as some well-trained Far-Eastern divisions transferred from the east following the guarantee of neutrality from Japan.
[edit] Soviet counter-offensive: Winter 1941
During the autumn, Stalin had been transferring fresh and well-equipped Soviet forces from Siberia and the far east to Moscow (these troops had been stationed there in expectation of a Japanese attack, but Stalin's master spy Richard Sorge indicated that the Japanese had decided to attack Southeast Asia and the Pacific instead). On 5 December 1941, these reinforcements attacked the German lines around Moscow, supported by new T-34 tanks and Katyusha rocket launchers. The new Soviet troops were prepared for winter warfare, and they included several ski battalions. The exhausted and freezing Germans were routed and driven back between 100 and 250 km (60 to 150 miles) by 7 January 1942.
A further Soviet attack was mounted in late January, focusing on the junction between Army groups North and Centre between Lake Seliger and Rzhev, and drove a gap between the two German army groups. In concert with the advance from Kaluga to the south-west of Moscow, it was intended that the two offensives converge on Smolensk, but the Germans rallied and managed to hold them apart, retaining a salient at Rzhev. A Soviet parachute drop on German-held Dorogobuzh was spectacularly unsuccessful, and those paratroopers who survived had to escape to the partisan-held areas beginning to swell behind German lines. To the north, the Soviets surrounded a German garrison in Demyansk, which held out with air supply for four months, and established themselves in front of Kholm, Velizh, and Velikie Luki.
In the south the Red Army crashed over the Donets River at Izyum and drove a 100-km (60-mile) deep salient. The intent was to pin Army Group South against the Sea of Azov, but as the winter eased the Germans were able to counter-attack and cut off the over-extended Soviet troops in the Second Battle of Kharkov.
[edit] Don, Volga, and Caucasus: Summer 1942
Although plans were made to attack Moscow again, on 28 June 1942, the offensive re-opened in a different direction. Army Group South took the initiative, anchoring the front with the Battle of Voronezh and then following the Don river southeastwards. The grand plan was to secure the Don and Volga first and then drive into the Caucasus towards the oilfields, but operational considerations and Hitler's vanity made him order both objectives to be attempted simultaneously. Rostov was recaptured on 24 July when 1st Panzer Army joined in, and then that group drove south towards Maikop. As part of this, Operation Shamil was executed, a plan whereby a group of Brandenburger commandos dressed up as Soviet NKVD troops to destabilise Maikop's defenses and allow the 1st Panzer Army to enter the oil town with little opposition.
Meanwhile, 6th Army was driving towards Stalingrad, for a long period unsupported by 4th Panzer Army, which had been diverted to help 1st Panzer Army cross the Don. By the time 4th Panzer Army had rejoined the Stalingrad offensive, Soviet resistance (comprising the 62nd Army under Vasily Chuikov) had stiffened. A leap across the Don brought German troops to the Volga on 23 August but for the next three months the Wehrmacht would be fighting the Battle of Stalingrad street-by-street.
Towards the south 1st Panzer Army had reached the Caucasian foothills and the Malka River. At the end of August Romanian mountain troops joined the Caucasian spearhead, while the Romanian 3rd and 4th armies were redeployed from their successful task of clearing the Azov littoral. They took up position on either side of Stalingrad to free German troops for the proper fighting. Mindful of the continuing antagonism between Axis allies Romania and Hungary over Transylvania, the Romanian army in the Don bend was separated from the Hungarian 2nd army by the Italian 8th Army. Thus all of Hitler's allies were involved — including a Slovakian contingent with 1st Panzer Army and a Croatian regiment attached to 6th Army.
The advance into the Caucasus bogged down, with the Germans unable to fight their way past Malgobek and to the main prize of Grozny. Instead they switched the direction of their advance to approach it from the south, crossing the Malka at the end of October and entering North Ossetia. In the first week of November, on the outskirts of Ordzhonikidze, the 13th Panzer Division's spearhead was snipped off and the panzer troops had to fall back. The offensive into Russia was over.
[edit] Stalingrad: Winter 1942
While the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army had been fighting their way into Stalingrad, Soviet armies had congregated on either side of the city, specifically into the Don bridgeheads that the Romanians had been unable to reduce, and it was from these that they struck on 19 November 1942. In Operation Uranus, two Soviet fronts punched through the Romanians and converged at Kalach on 23 November, trapping 300,000 Axis troops behind them. A simultaneous offensive on the Rzhev sector known as Operation Mars was supposed to advance to Smolensk, but was a failure, with German tactical flair winning the day.
The Germans rushed to transfer troops to Russia for a desperate attempt to relieve Stalingrad, but the offensive could not get going until 12 December, by which time the 6th Army in Stalingrad was starving and too weak to break out towards it. Operation Winter Storm, with three transferred panzer divisions, got going briskly from Kotelnikovo towards the Aksai river but became bogged down 65 km (40 miles) short of its goal. To divert the rescue attempt the Soviets decided to smash the Italians and come down behind the relief attempt if they could, that operation starting on 16 December. What it did accomplish was to destroy many of the aircraft that had been transporting relief supplies to Stalingrad. The fairly limited scope of the Soviet offensive, although still eventually targeted on Rostov, also allowed Hitler time to see sense and pull Army Group A out of the Caucasus and back over the Don.
On 31 January 1943, the 90,000 survivors of the 300,000-man 6th Army surrendered. By that time the Hungarian 2nd Army had also been wiped out. The Soviets advanced from the Don 500 km (300 miles) to the west of Stalingrad, marching through Kursk (retaken on 8 February 1943) and Kharkov (retaken 16 February 1943). In order to save the position in the south, the Germans decided to abandon the Rzhev salient in February, freeing enough troops to make a successful riposte in eastern Ukraine. Manstein's counteroffensive, strengthened by a specially trained SS panzer corps equipped with Tiger tanks, opened on 20 February 1943, and fought its way from Poltava back into Kharkov in the third week of March, upon which the spring thaw intervened. This had left a glaring bulge in the front centered on Kursk.
[edit] Kursk: Summer 1943
After the failure of the attempt to capture Stalingrad, Hitler had deferred planning authority for the upcoming campaign season to the German Army High Command and reinstated Guderian to a prominent role, this time as Inspector of Panzer Troops. Debate among the General Staff was polarised, with even Hitler nervous about any attempt to pinch off the Kursk salient. He knew that in the intervening six months the Soviet position at Kursk had been reinforced heavily with anti-tank guns, tank traps, landmines, barbed wire, trenches, pillboxes, artillery and mortars. However, if one last great blitzkrieg offensive could be mounted, just maybe the Soviets would ease off and attention could then be turned to the Allied threat to the Western Front. The advance would be executed from the Orel salient to the north of Kursk and from Belgorod to the south. Both wings would converge on the area east of Kursk, and by that means restore the lines of Army Group South to the exact points that it held over the winter of 1941–1942.
Although the Germans knew that the Red Army's reserves of manpower had been bled dry in the summer of 1941 and 1942, the Soviets were still re-equipping, simply by drafting the men from the regions liberated.
Under pressure from his generals, Hitler bit the bullet and agreed to the attack on Kursk, little realising that the Abwehr's intelligence on the Soviet position there had been undermined by a concerted Stavka misinformation and counter-intelligence campaign mounted by the Lucy spy ring in Switzerland. When the Germans began the operation, it was after months of delays waiting for new tanks and equipment, by which time the Soviets had reinforced the Kursk salient with more anti-tank firepower than had ever been assembled in one place before or since.
In the north, the entire 9th Army had been redeployed from the Rzhev salient into the Orel salient and was to advance from Maloarkhangelsk to Kursk. But its forces could not even get past the first objective at Olkhovatka, just 8 km (5 miles) into the advance. The 9th Army blunted its spearhead against the Soviet minefields, frustratingly so considering that the high ground there was the only natural barrier between them and flat tank country all the way to Kursk. The direction of advance was then switched to Ponyri, to the west of Olkhovatka, but the 9th Army could not break through here either and went over to the defensive. The Soviets simply soaked up the German punishment and then struck back. On 12 July the Red Army battled through the demarcation line between the 211th and 293rd divisions on the Zhizdra River and steamed towards Karachev, right behind them and behind Orel.
The southern offensive, spearheaded by 4.Panzer-Armee, led by Gen. Col. Hoth, with three Tank Corps made more headway. Advancing on either side of the upper Donets on a narrow corridor, the SS Panzer Corps and the Großdeutschland Panzergrenadier divisions battled their way through minefields and over comparatively high ground towards Oboyan. Stiff resistance caused a change of direction from east to west of the front, but the tanks got 25 km (15 miles) before encountering the reserves of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army outside Prokhorovka. Battle was joined on 12 July, with about one thousand tanks doing battle. After the war, the battle near Prochorovka was idealized by the Soviet historians as the biggest tank battle of all time. The meeting engagement at Prochorovka was a Soviet defensive success, albeit at heavy cost. The Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army, with about 800 light and medium tanks, attacked elements of the II SS Panzer Corps. Tank losses on both sides have been the source of controversy ever since. Although the 5th Guards Tank Army did not attain their terrain objectives, the German advance was halted.
At the end of the day both sides had fought each other to a standstill, but regardless of the standstill in the north Manstein intended to continue the attack with the 4th Panzer Army. But the Soviets could absorb the attack, and German strategic advance in Operation Citadel had been halted. Under the impression of the successful counter-attack operations in the south the Red Army started the strong offensive operation in the northern Orel salient and achieved a breakthrough on the flank of the German 9th Army. Also worried by the Allies' landing in Sicily on 10 July, Hitler made the decision to halve the offensive even as the German 9th Army was rapidly giving ground in the north. The Germans' final strategic offensive in the Soviet Union ended with their defense against a major Soviet counteroffensive that lasted into August. A detailed analysis of this campaign is available in the Battle of Kursk article.
The Kursk offensive was the last on the scale of 1940 and 1941 the Wehrmacht was able to launch, and subsequent offensives would represent only a shadow of previous German offensive might. Following the defeat, Hitler would not trust his generals to the same extent again, and the quality of German strategic decision fell correspondingly. The Battle of Kursk cost Hitler over 500,000 troops and 1,000 tanks, forever hampering future war efforts on the Eastern Front.