anti-Soviet Ukrainian partisans. He left no systematic reflections on his handling of the Voronezh Front during Citadel. But on the evening of July 9, he did some serious thinking. The German spearheads were still a good distance from Oboyan and Prokhorovka. In the past two days, however, they had advanced at a much faster and steadier pace than at Citadel’s beginning. Logic—and the Red Army approached war making as a scientific, rational exercise—suggested that losses should have been slowing them down. Vatutin had been committing his own reserves by corps, divisions, regiments, and battalions, for five days. Ten of his antitank regiments had lost all their guns; twenty more were at less than half strength. Logic suggested either that the Germans were bringing in reserves—or that their shock power and fighting prowess were proving a match and more for Vatutin’s men. Front intelligence, moreover, had been asserting the arrival and commitment of fresh German forces since the night of July 5.

Vatutin considered his front’s tactics. In Citadel’s early stages, they had featured an active defense. Short, sharp, tank-heavy counterattacks had bloodied German noses and retarded their progress. On July 8 and 9, casualties and material losses combined with fog and friction to impose a passive approach. What were the prospects of shifting back to an aggressive mode?

Reevaluating the intelligence, Vatutin and his staff noticed reports overlooked in the previous days’ intensive fighting. As early as 7:00 A.M. on July 8, the Germans were described as constructing trenches on their steadily lengthening left flank. By July 9, trenches were emerging on both flanks of the salient, supplemented by mines and barbed wire, suggesting long-term occupation. A disgruntled German prisoner said he was one of thirty men from a veterinary company condignly transferred to a flank-guard infantry regiment: a sign the Germans were scraping the manpower barrel.

Were these straws in the wind? Perhaps. For Vatutin, they were sufficient to conclude that the recent German progress had been achieved by concentrating their mechanized forces at the expense of their flanks. That in turn meant the panzers were thrusting their own heads into a noose: a salient within a salient. How best to take advantage of the developing situation? In a map exercise, the answer was clear—strike the overextensions. But Voronezh Front’s realities made that option a nonstarter. The Germans had Vatutin’s main forces no less pinned in place than they were themselves. A counterattack in force would require the just released Stavka reserves. And Fifth Guards and Fifth Guards Tank Armies were concentrating at the salient’s tip: around Prokhorovka. Even had Vatutin considered redeploying them, there was no time. He and his front were the balance point for the entire sequence of strategic offensives from Leningrad to the Ukraine, projected to end the Russo-German War by the turn of the year. The first—or next—phase, Operation Kutuzov, was planned to begin against Army Group Center on July 12.

Operation Kutuzov is best described as Citadel in reverse. Its genesis becomes obvious by even a casual look at the monadic shape of the post-Stalingrad, post-Kharkov front in south Russia, with its two salients matching each other. Preliminary planning began in April. By mid-May, the operation was on the board. By early June, forces had been allocated and details established. Directly, Kutuzov was a counterpoint to the plans for a defensive battle around Kursk. Indirectly, it was part of another in Stavka’s war-long series of coordinated strategic offensives. Once the Orel blow had taken effect, Voronezh and Steppe Fronts would finish off Manstein’s army group. Stavka expected that this task would be easier because the II SS Panzer Corps would have been sent north to stem the tide in the Orel sector. Even before Stalingrad, this had become an almost automatic German reaction: seeking to restore a breakthrough with minimum force promptly applied. This time it would be too little and too late. Once the Germans were stopped and pinned at Kursk and Orel, Southwestern and Southern Fronts would begin diversionary, sector-level offensives, to fix German forces in that area and deprive Manstein of reinforcements. The final stage was expected when Soviet forces around Leningrad and the two southern fronts launched full-scale offensives against anything remaining in their sectors.

Although Vatutin was hardly a careerist, his prospects were unlikely to be improved were he to be viewed by Stalin as dancing with the Germans rather than hammering them. The Vozhd indeed was already commenting acidly on who would bear the responsibility if the Germans broke into Voronezh Front’s rear areas. Nor could Vatutin forget about the Germans. Even if they were unaware of the magnitude of the strategic campaign confronting them—which could not be assumed—the concentration and deployment of their forces indicated a final try to break Voronezh Front’s defensive system. Manstein had demonstrated in the Crimea that he feared neither frontal offensives nor heavy casualties. Add up intelligence reports of increasing concentrations of AFVs in the Psel region, connect them to Totenkopf’s determined attack in the river bend, and the deciding question became which adversary would be first off the mark.

Almost by default, Vatutin’s decision was to make his main effort around Prokhorovka. Its preparation involved readjusting deployments, resupplying frontline formations, providing detailed orders, and supervising their implementation. That last point reflected less a doctrinally based Red Army mania for control than it did the very large number of independent, regiment- or battalion-sized formations that had been shuffled from armies to corps to divisions almost at random. Just determining their locations was a demanding task after the past week. Above all, it was necessary to inform Stavka and secure permission. On the night of July 10, Voronezh Front reported that the Germans had suffered heavy casualties, had exhausted their reserves, and were concentrating in the Prokhorovka sector. The front proposed to attack with all available force on the morning of July 12. The main thrust would be delivered by the Fifth Guards Tank Army: four tank and one mechanized corps, more than seven hundred tanks, reinforced by three additional rifle corps. In the front’s left sector, two tank corps and supporting elements of the First Tank Army, plus two rifle corps of the Sixth Guards Army, would hit XLVIII Panzer’s overextended flank. The intended result was encirclement and annihilation of a half dozen of the Wehrmacht’s best armored divisions: a perfect counterpoint to the simultaneous attack in the Orel salient.

Rotmistrov’s Guardsmen were the key. On July 10, he met with Vatutin at front headquarters in Oboyan. Vatutin explained the situation and the mission and told Rotmistrov he would have two additional tank corps. Then Vasilevsky interjected. The Germans, he said, were deploying new heavy tanks, Tigers and Ferdinands, that had been very effective against Katukov. How did Rotmistrov feel about taking them on? Rotmistrov replied confidently. Steppe Front, he declared, had provided tactical and technical information on the new German tanks. Rotmistrov and his staff had considered ways to combat the German heavies. The Tigers’ thick frontal armor and long-range guns meant that T-34s could succeed only at close quarters, using their superior mobility to engage the weaker side armor. “In other words,” Vatutin observed, “engage in hand-to-hand combat and board them.”

Perhaps the front commander was being sarcastic. Since he was aware that a large number of Rotmistrov’s tanks were the light T-70s, he may also have been indicating his awareness that the Fifth Guards Tank Army could expect heavy losses whatever its tactics. Further indication of his concern came later on July 10, when he and Khrushchev met with Rotmistrov’s corps commanders and their political officers. Khrushchev insisted on the importance of moral preparation. Get the men ready to fight, he said. Explain our goals. Remind them of the suffering of their countrymen under German occupation. Tell them that victory is near, and that it will begin here, in the Kursk salient. Vatutin emphasized that the Guardsmen should not expect easy success. Stubbornness, decisive action, and skillful maneuvering were essential. In conclusion, aware that the SS were likely to press their offensive the next day, he emphasized that the start lines must be held. His facial expression reinforced the subtext: Hold, whatever the cost.

Voronezh Front’s staff worked through the night and into the next morning on the attack’s details. Vatutin ordered all preliminary measures to be undertaken in a twenty-four-hour time frame: on July 11 and during the following morning. This was a nearly blitzkrieg-level standard, impossible to implement without mistakes, misunderstandings, and missed connections. Subordinate armies received their orders at varying times between 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. Not until midnight on July 11 did they percolate to some of the brigades and independent regiments.

Simultaneously, Vatutin and Rotmistrov considered the launch point for the Fifth Guards Tank Army. Vatutin initially favored concentrating on the right, against the Psel sector. The combination of seriously inundated ground, few favorable crossing points, and going directly through even a weakened Totenkopf marginalized that option. Rotmistrov and his staff favorably considered going in on Fifth Guards Tank’s opposite, left flank. A breakthrough there would put the Russians directly in SS Panzer Corps’s rear and in good field position to turn toward Oboyan. The German front was held by an overextended infantry division: easier pickings than the Waffen SS. Here, however, broken terrain and the steep, heavily mined railroad embankment gave pause.

Finally decisive for the next day’s Schwerpunkt was Rotmistrov’s conviction that

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