had also had a good day checking Russian infantry assaults. But these successes as well were on the wrong side of Operation Roland’s ambitions and intentions.
In its men’s perspective, III Panzer Corps might be advancing slowly, almost yard by yard and certainly a far cry from a blitz. The corps and division commanders facing it, however, had been fighting Germans long enough to be well aware of the tactical risks of one of their rapierlike breakthroughs. Vasilevsky’s report to Stalin that the Fifth Guards Tank Army’s units in the sector were “behaving splendidly” was less complimentary about the riflemen. Early on July 15, Vatutin responded to what seemed a destabilizing situation by making Rotmistrov and the Sixty-ninth Army’s commander personally responsible (Red Army code for execution as a possible price of failure) for counterattacking immediately. The order came a day too late. Sixty-ninth Army had already authorized withdrawal to a new defensive line. Trufanov, screening the operation by well-timed, small-scale counterattacks, managed one of the Red Army’s smoother retrograde movements. By dawn of July 15, most of the threatened troops had reached their own lines.
Whether the Russians were ever actually surrounded remains debatable. But Zhukov too had given orders: In the context of the major offensive under way in the Orel sector and the one planned for the Donets and Mius Rivers in the south, local withdrawal in the face of encirclement was acceptable. Arguably of more consequence, and certainly suggestive in any case, was the failure of III Panzer Corps to comprehend that the Russians in front of them were retreating rather than shifting to new entrenchments and new ambush sites, as had been the case since Citadel began.
Das Reich’s panzer grenadiers had attacked at 4:00 A.M. on July 14, aiming first for the Pravorot road and then toward Prokhorovka and a junction with III Panzer Corps. Instead, they ran into elements of Trufanov’s battle group from Fifth Guards Tank Army. For the rest of the day, Germans and Russians slugged it out at gun-barrel range and from house to house. Stukas of VIII Air Corps again were crucial in preparing the grenadiers’ way to, through, and beyond the strongly defended village of Belenikhino. During the night, Das Reich’s workshops had restored the panzer regiment to about a hundred tanks. But even this relatively impressive armored force was stopped by massed antitank guns when it attempted a breakout. Only with the close support of their own artillery and rocket launchers, and at a much more measured pace, did the tanks reach the next village, Ivanovka. By then it was 5:15 P.M. Heavy clouds to the east had prefigured rain most of the afternoon, and the skies opened around 7:00 P.M. It was already growing dark. The torrential rain eroded visibility to the vanishing point. Roads and fields—it was increasingly difficult to perceive much difference—turned to thick mud that bogged tanks, half-tracks, and wheeled vehicles alike. The advance skidded to a halt well short of the Pravorot road and even farther from Breith’s divisions.
The closest III Panzer Corps came to a linkup with the SS on July 14 was when elements of the 7th Panzer Division, in a reprise of the glory days of the French campaign in 1940, reached a dot on the map called Malo Jablonovo before they too bogged down for the night. Around 6:00 A.M. on July 15, they established radio contact with Das Reich. Das Reich’s efforts to strengthen the connection were frustrated by mud so formidable that around noon the division’s artillery reported that moving its guns forward was impossible. Fuel and ammunition supplies were mired even farther back. Luftwaffe assets had been shifted north to the Orel sector and diverted to strike Soviet forces building up a hundred miles eastward, across the Donets. During the day, Das Reich and 7th Panzer reinforced their contact. But the pocket that junction might once have sealed was now empty of anything but abandoned entrenchments, tanks, and guns, plus a few stragglers.
The fragile, now pointless linkup bothered Manstein less than it might—and probably should—have. In the course of the day, the commander of Army Group South had further refined and reconceptualized his proposed battle. Totenkopf’s stand in the Psel bridgehead, plus the successful, albeit limited, advances of III Panzer Corps and Das Reich, combined to support Manstein’s growing belief that the massive counterattack that occasioned the initial eastward turn of the SS panzers had been defeated. That provided an opportunity, he later explained to Hoth, to strike and destroy the Soviet forces south and west of the Psel. Totenkopf would hold the bridgehead, no longer as a springboard for an advance farther eastward, but as a flank guard and pivot point. The combined strength of the Fourth Panzer Army and Detachment Kempf would roll the Soviets up from east to west across the front of XLVIII Panzer Corps and drive them into the rear areas of the Russians facing LII Corps on the army group’s far left. The XXIV Panzer Corps, which had begun assembling in the region of Kharkov on July 12, could be committed with two days’ notice. At the moment, its constantly fluctuating order of battle included only two divisions. But Wiking and 23rd Panzer had more than a hundred AFVs between them and ought to be able to provide any additional muscle needed to exploit the resulting confusion.
On the evening of July 15, Manstein met with Hoth and Kempf at Kempf’s headquarters. He informed them of the orders he had received from Hitler and of his plans for implementing their intention, if not their letter. Translated into movement orders, essentially Das Reich was to take over 11th Panzer’s northern-facing sector, while Leibstandarte redeployed behind XLVIII Panzer Corps’s line as a tactical reserve. The 7th Panzer would move from III Panzer Corps to Knobelsdorff’s corps as further reinforcement of the projected attack. Totenkopf would hold its position; Army Detachment Kempf, temporarily under Hoth’s command, would guide north on Totenkopf. And 11th Panzer Division would replace Leibstandarte on the eastern flank, essentially as a reserve for that sector.
Two plausibilities lay behind Manstein’s immediate plan. The “optimistic” one is the judgment that the Russian reserves were sufficiently exhausted that one more hard blow might be just enough to start the Russians down defeat’s slippery slope. The “pessimistic” interpretation suggests Manstein was sufficiently worried about the situation on Model’s front, and sufficiently aware of the powerful Soviet forces massing to the east and southeast, that he perceived the necessity of creating space and force for the mobile, flexible defense that was his great talent as a commander. That in turn was best achieved by giving the Russians as bloody a nose as possible in the shortest possible time, then breaking contact and withdrawing southwest.
The credibility of both, however, is called into question by the orders for redeployment presented above. The terrain across which Manstein’s divisions were expected to move, difficult to begin with, had been turned to an obstacle course by shell fire, tank treads, aerial bombs, and rain. The near exhaustion of the combat formations repeatedly highlighted above was replicated in the service echelons—and not least in the higher headquarters. Nothing in the behavior of Rotmistrov and Vatutin suggests either would have been indifferent to such large-scale troop shuffling. Finally, the Russian reserves in the Kursk sector, the tactical skill displayed by the Russian commanders, and the fighting power demonstrated by the Russian troops meant XXIV Panzer Corps was unlikely to revitalize Manstein’s offensive—even had Hitler allowed its commitment.
As much to the point, Voronezh Front’s command was already leaning forward, thinking ahead to its role in Stavka’s planned offensive on the Belgorod–Kharkov axis. Operation Rumyantsev, named for a heroic commander in the eighteenth-century Russo-Turkish wars, was aimed at destroying not only the Fourth Panzer Army but the other main components of Manstein’s army group, the Sixth Army and First Panzer Army. Its final geographic objective was the Black Sea, more than 120 miles away. Even in the initial stages, an operation of that scope was unlikely to encourage a narrow focus.
A final indication of the limited prospects for Manstein’s projected revision of Citadel came in the sector of XLVIII Panzer Corps. At 5:30 A.M. on July 15, 3rd Panzer Division went forward once more into the Tolstoye Forest. Rain, mud, and caution held it back as the Russians in its path slowly withdrew. Grossdeutschland in the center had a similar initial experience, then encountered resistance sufficient to hold it in place for most of the afternoon. The 11th Panzer was barely able to maintain its positions in the face of repeated Russian attacks. By day’s end, the Russians had been forced back to more or less their original start lines of July 12. But all three of Knobelsdorff’s divisions were worn dangerously thin by ten days of constant head-down combat. Russian fighting power, on the other hand, seemed undiminished. The mood at Knobelsdorff’s headquarters was somber, with overt recriminations showing up even in official documents. Far from further attack in any direction, the corps would be doing well to stay where it was.
Manstein’s variant shifted definitively to Citadel’s file of might-have-beens on July 16. That day, Leibstandarte and Das Reich were ordered to establish “main battle lines” where they stood—in other words, shift to the defensive. This was in the context of Manstein’s plans for Operation Roland, and the corps staff was implementing detailed preparations for the next set of troop movements when word came through by teletype from Army Group South: “The Fuhrer has ordered the immediate withdrawal of the SS Panzer Corps and its earliest possible concentration west of Belgorod.” At 7:30 P.M., the Fourth Panzer Army ordered the destruction of all war material remaining on the battlefield.
