bearing the brunt of the day on the Soviet side and reading the decoded radio interceptions.
IV
Much—perhaps too much—has been made of the myths of Prokhorovka, which in good part still define the Battle of Kursk. The original, Soviet version has more than fifteen hundred tanks, half German and half Russian, grappling tread to tread in a three-mile-wide arena that at day’s end was strewn with over four hundred disabled or burning panzers, seventy of them Tigers. It was a fair price for what even Rotmistrov admitted were roughly equivalent Red Army losses.
Back-of-the-envelope arithmetic based on long-available statistics tells another story. The SS divisions involved, Leibstandarte and Das Reich, had a combined total of around two hundred AFVs available on July 12. The reports for July 10–13 for Leibstandarte and Das Reich list three tanks as total losses. The commander of a Leibstandarte tank company noted only one for July 12, despite odds of ten to one. The best calculation of material losses has over three hundred Soviet armored vehicles destroyed. Most of their crews were blown up or incinerated. Rotmistrov’s tank corps listed more than seven thousand casualties. More—thirty-six hundred—were dead or missing than wounded: an unusual statistic even on the Russian front. Replacing such losses was only half the generals’ problem. Stalin made a point of requiring immediate phone reports on major operations. Neither Vasilevsky nor Rotmistrov would have dared to dissemble regarding the Fifth Guards Tank’s losses. Like God, the Vozhd was not mocked. Stalin, famous for describing a million deaths as a statistic, called Rotmistrov to account, demanding to know what had happened to his “magnificent tank army.” Loss of command, perhaps a court- martial, may have been threatened and was certainly implied. A one-on-one session with Stalin in November 1942 had left Rotmistrov shaking from the stress and with no desire for a repeat experience. His response, supported by Vasilevsky and Khrushchev, presented a highly embellished account that mollified the Vozhd and was memory- holed by a subsequent field performance solid enough to bring Rotmistrov assignment as deputy commander of Red Army armored and mechanized forces in November 1944. With face saved all around, Rotmistrov’s 1972 memoirs repeated the embellished story, giving it canonical public status while the Soviet Union endured.
Stalin remained sufficiently disturbed to transfer Vasilevsky to the Southwestern Front and personally order Zhukov down from the Bryansk Front as a troubleshooter despite the imminent launch of a major offensive in that sector. Zhukov’s presence was not required. For the revisionist accounts describing Fifth Guards Tank Army’s Prokhorovka attack as a mistake, a defeat, a fiasco have obscured the situation on the other side of the line.
On the evening of July 12, Manstein “thanked and praised” the SS divisions for their “outstanding success and exemplary conduct.” Reports of Soviet tank losses, and the firsthand accounts of what had happened to them, further reinforced Manstein’s belief that chances were good the Reds had been bled white. Breith’s corps was on the move. Manstein was so confident of further armored reinforcements, in the form of XXIV Panzer Corps, that at 9:10 P.M. on July 12, Hoth’s headquarters ordered II SS Panzer Corps to make room in its rear areas for the newcomers.
The actual situation merited a more subdued mood. Hoth was edgy. Both of his leading corps had been hit hard across their fronts by Soviet tanks whose numbers far exceeded the original concern that had led Hoth to plan for the SS turn toward Prokhorovka in the first place. Nor had subsequent intelligence and reconnaissance reports prepared the Fourth Panzer Army’s command for tank corps and tank armies that seemed to materialize from the very forests and steppes. For XLVIII Panzer Corps to continue its offensive, the threat to its left, or western, flank must be removed. Neither the panzer army nor the army group had any reserves to send. Knobelsdorff would have to cope. And his coping mechanisms were limited. Among them, the corps’s three panzer divisions counted about a hundred tanks when the day’s fighting ended. It was reasonable to expect that number to increase by morning once the repair shops set to work. At best, however, the increase would be in the low double figures.
The day’s personnel losses were not in themselves crippling. The SS counted around 200 dead, and missing presumed dead. But the numbers of wounded were far higher. Leibstandarte alone reported 321 wounded, most from the tank and rifle companies. And—to repeat Citadel’s universal threnody—nothing could replace the veterans, the platoon and company commanders, the tank commanders, and the noncommissioned officers who were increasingly sacrificing themselves by taking suicidal risks to compensate for declines in skill, energy, and morale in overtired, undermanned units.
Mentally, emotionally, and physically, the SS tankers and the panzer grenadiers, the riflemen and the gunners, had been tried to the limit by the nature and intensity of the fighting since July 5. A fair number of men still in the ranks were lightly wounded or mildly concussed, preferring to stay with their outfits than chance an overworked medical evacuation system. The combination of humid heat and torrential rain took its toll as well. Thirst to the point of dehydration was a special problem for the tankers. Food was if and when, with anything hot, even coffee, a welcome anomaly. The universal constant, however, was lack of sleep. When darkness ended the fighting, the digging and carrying began. When these tasks were concluded, finding a dry spot for anyone not a vehicle crewman was pure serendipity. Harassment from the air was a constant. Daylight began around 4:00 A.M. So did the next cycle of stress. A Tiger crewman described diarrhea so severe that he relieved himself outside the tank regardless of the situation—“nothing mattered to me any more.” By Citadel’s end, his weight had dropped below 110 pounds.
It belabors the obvious to note that things were no better on the Russian side of the line. But what in 1941 was an already toxic combination of ideological racism and cultural arrogance in the German military was two years later becoming a survival mechanism. Given the overwhelming Russian material advantage, soldierly superiority and warrior spirit were mutating into survival mechanisms. Anything—anything at all—that challenged those defense mechanisms was a harbinger of collective disaster and individual death sentences. For the Germans at Kursk’s sharp end, denial was not the proverbial river in Egypt.
On the whole and on balance, by the evening of July 12 Prokhorovka nevertheless seemed a vindication for the Fourth Panzer Army’s commander. He had foreseen since Citadel’s beginning the threat provided by Rotmistrov’s powerful tank army. He had planned for the contingency of its deployment almost exactly where it emerged. The two tank corps that were its offensive core had been crippled by the SS at a very acceptable price. Hoth considered breaking off the attack northwest and returning the SS Panzer Corps to its original axis of advance. Two panzer corps might be able to succeed in destroying the Russians in the Oboyan sector where one had not. But as closely and successfully as the SS appeared to be engaged, fighting it out in two sectors, even though they faced in two directions, was the better option. Fourth Panzer Army’s initial orders to Hausser for July 13 were delivered by phone at 6:35 P.M.: Continue the flanking operation from the Psel bridgehead. When Manstein called later in the evening, Hoth stated that he considered Totenkopf’s opposition to have been sufficiently weakened during the day’s fighting that solid prospects existed for a breakthrough against weakened Soviet forces.
Around 8:45, Hoth’s final orders arrived. They described Fourth Panzer Army’s intention to hold ground in the center and expand its flanks—in other words, gain maneuvering room. The SS Panzer Corps was to begin concentrating on the Psel’s northern bank, the bridgehead zone, and begin enveloping the armored formations around Prokhorovka with the aim of encircling them. Any offensives farther east and north would depend on the success of that encirclement.
Hausser’s early situation reports reflected neither triumph nor ambition. Neither did the corps intelligence summary submitted at 9:00 P.M. It described major atttacks across the sector, their repulsion with heavy loss— and at least three hundred operational enemy tanks remaining. The SS Panzer Corps was facing three tank corps plus three or four rifle divisions. Additional reserves seemed on their way from neighboring fronts. Radio intercepts indicated Soviet intentions of resuming the offensive on July 12. In short, the intelligence chief declared, the enemy intended to stop the German offensive across the Psel at all necessary cost.
Hausser responded to Hoth by ordering Das Reich to consolidate its positions, organize a reserve, and hold its assault gun battalion ready to support the 176th Infantry Division on its right. Leibstandarte would develop a main line of defense on its right but hold its left-flank elements, ready to cooperate with Totenkopf when that division’s armor appeared from the Psel bridgehead. Totenkopf was ordered to resume its attack early on July 13. The division’s reconnaissance battalion would screen the left and reestablish contact with 11th Panzer Division.
