v1.0.1 / chapter 9 of 15 / 01 mar 08 / greg goebel / public domain
* Stalingrad had been a major disaster for the Reich, but the Wehrmacht still remained a powerful opponent. In the spring of 1943 Hitler initiated a plan for an offensive, codenamed Operation CITADEL, to choke off a Soviet salient in German lines around the town of Kursk. Red intelligence learned of the plan, setting the stage for the greatest armor battle of World War II, a clash that would set Germany on a course of irreversible decline in the East.
* As the weather warmed, Red Army soldiers poured into staging areas behind the front lines, while Soviet industry exerted itself to its utmost to roll out new tanks and planes and guns to make good the losses of the campaigns during 1942 and early 1943. The dislocations caused by the transfer of Soviet factories from the path of the German invaders in 1941 to sites beyond the Urals were largely over, and weapons poured off the assembly lines in increasing quantities. Yak fighters, Sturmovik ground-attack aircraft, and T-34 tanks went to the front in floods. Many would be destroyed, but even more would be built to take their place.
Nazi Germany was also deeply engaged in the production war. Although work continued on advanced weapons, priority was placed on the manufacture of modest refinements of existing weapons to ensure that production volumes were maintained. Over a half million more men were put into uniform, mostly by eliminating various exemptions. This brought the military back up to strength, at the expense of robbing German industry of skilled manpower.
Of course, Hitler was now fighting a war on two fronts, and though the Soviets were the immediate threat, the British were continuing the fight with characteristic doggedness and with increasing American assistance. It would not be very long before American manpower and particularly industrial might would present a threat from the West of comparable magnitude to the massive Red Army. Allied bombing raids siphoned off military resources for air defense, and Hitler needed more submarines to try to cut Britain's lifeline across the Atlantic to the US.
Propaganda Minister Goebbels, knowing the truth could not be hidden, shrewdly did not conceal the fact that Germany had taken battlefield reverses, and used them to call on Germans to make heroic sacrifices. Still, there was only so much defeat people could tolerate before their demoralization became irreversible. Germany's weak-tea allies -- Italy, Hungary, Rumania -- had already had their fill of the war and were quietly looking for a way out. Hitler needed major victories quickly.
Even Hitler knew that he was not in a position to give the Soviets a blow that would knock them out of the war. General Kurt Zeitzler came up with a more limited and apparently workable plan in early April 1943. The Red Army's push in February 1943 had left a great salient into German lines, centered around the city of Kursk. The salient was about 210 kilometers wide and 160 kilometers deep (130 by 100 miles), with the German side of the lines anchored around Orel in the north and Belgorod, north of Kharkov, in the south. Zeitzler proposed that the German Army pinch off this salient with twin drives into its base, one from the north and one from the south, and wipe out all the Red Army forces trapped inside. The scheme was codenamed Operation ZITADEL (CITADEL).
It was a simple, direct plan, and it might have worked if it had been done at the earliest possible moment -- but that wasn't how it happened, it wasn't how it could have happened. The worst problem was that too many tanks had been lost in the fighting up to that time, and the Mark III and Mark IV panzers that were in the ranks weren't the equal of the Soviet T-34 tank. German industry had been working along several lines to develop tanks that could beat Soviet armor:
All of these weapons were now going into production, and all were plagued with manufacturing glitches and teething problems. Hitler wanted to wait until he could build up adequate stocks of these new weapons before going ahead with CITADEL. The earliest possible date for the beginning of the operation was 3 May 1943. The entire effort was planned in maximum secrecy.
* The delays were a problem, but there was a bigger problem: Stalin knew all about CITADEL. Soviet intelligence from the Kursk sector reported the German troop buildup, and more significantly Stalin was getting detailed intelligence on German plans from a Red spy codenamed "Lucy". Lucy was really Rudolf Roessler, an anti-Nazi German living in Switzerland, who controlled an extensive spy ring.
Lucy's information was very accurate and it is still somewhat puzzling as to how he obtained it, since he died in the 1950s without revealing his sources. Some historians have proposed that the British might have been feeding him decrypted messages from the top-secret ULTRA codebreaking operation in England, using him as a filter to keep Stalin ignorant of ULTRA. This theory has been generally deflated, since there are no British records of any such activity, and Lucy intelligence was generally provided to Moscow far faster than could have been obtained by such a roundabout method. It is known that very selective ULTRA intelligence was passed to the Soviets, but it was through the British military mission in Moscow, with the intelligence reports doctored to conceal their source. The Soviets were not fooled, since ULTRA had been penetrated by British Red agents and Stalin was perfectly aware of it.
Stalin was aware of CITADEL even before the initial orders for the operation went out to German forces in the field. Stalin sent Zhukov to the Kursk sector to consider options. On 8 April, Zhukov sent a message back to the Kremlin suggesting that instead of taking the offensive against the Germans there, it would be far more profitable to discreetly build up defenses and let the Germans smash themselves to pieces against them. That would weaken the Germans, and then the Red Army could conduct an overwhelming counteroffensive. Stalin had learned a degree of respect for the abilities of his generals and accepted the recommendations. When Zhukov returned to Moscow on the evening of 11 April, he found the general staff working at a frantic pace to put together the plan for the operation.
As the plan emerged, the defense of the northern part of the salient was to be conducted by the "Central Front", under General Konstantin Rokossovsky. He commanded five field armies, a tank army, an air army, and a number of smaller elements, facing German General Walter Model's 9th Army, part of Army Group Center under Kluge.
There were concerns in the Kremlin about Rokossovsky. He had been arrested during the purges, with the evidence presented against him including "testimony" from another officer who had actually been dead for almost twenty years, and had lost all of his teeth during his imprisonment, acquiring a full set of metal teeth as a replacement. Once released, he had proven his abilities again and again in combat, but he was overly independent, not a quality regarded as admirable in the Red Army. He was also generally pleasant and charismatic, a sharp contrast to the scowly and gruff personalities of Zhukov and most other senior Red Army officers. Zhukov kept an eye on him.
The defense of the southern part of the salient was to be conducted by the "Voronezh Front", under General Nikolai Vatutin. Its composition and size were similar to that of Rokossovsky's Central Front, and it was confronted with Papa Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, part of Manstein's Army Group South. Vatutin was a staff officer by background. He had requested a combat command in the summer of 1942; he had not distinguished himself in the fighting since that time, but he had his advocates who believed he had potential and so he had been given command of the front. Chief of Staff Vasilevsky went to the Voronezh Front to give him direction.
The two fronts were backed up by a huge reserve force, blandly designated the "Steppe Military District", of roughly similar size and composition to each of the two fronts. It was under the command of General Ivan Konev.
The Red Army built up layers of defenses inside the Kursk salient to slow down and trap Wehrmacht assaults, which would then become the targets of massive Soviet counterattacks. The defenders worked quickly, but as it turned out they were to be given time: on 20 April, Lucy reported that CITADEL had been postponed to some time after 3 May.
On 4 May, Hitler had a strategy session with his senior generals in Munich. Walter Model gave the Fuehrer unpleasant news, showing him reconnaissance photographs of the massive Soviet buildup in the salient. Model was an aristocratic officer, even affecting a monacle, and was egotistical to the point of comical. Those who had to work with him found him mean-spirited and unscrupulous, but he was a 100% Nazi. Hitler trusted him, always would trust him.
It seemed clear to the Fuehrer that the Soviets were expecting the attack. However, Hitler did not cancel CITADEL on the spot, and a hot debate followed. Manstein and Kluge said the offensive should go forward with no further delay, and Chief of Staff Zeitzler backed them up. Heinz Guderian, now back on duty as the inspector-general for German armored forces, was dead against it. He believed that Germany should take the time to properly rebuild armored forces before taking on new major offensive operations. Hitler, resting his hopes on the power of new German armor, waffled: CITADEL would go ahead, but no schedule was given for the start of the operation.
* Both sides continued to make preparations and train for the coming battle during the lull, but the delay helped the Red Army more. Many Soviet troops were extremely green, having been swept up by drafts and thrown into action with little if any training. With a period of idle time on their hands, the experienced soldiers, those who had survived the worst the Nazis could hit them with, were able to give them the valuable benefits of their experience.
Fortifications were constructed and minefields laid. Peasant villages that were in the way of the impending battle were relocated out of the front-line zone, a process that ended up being troublesome, with peasants fighting with pitchforks, stones, and whatever else was handy when Red Army troops tried to evict them from their homes. With very good reason, the peasants did not believe reassurances that there would be adequate shelter and provisions waiting for them at the end of their relocation. After some mad brawls, the decision was made to use NKVD units for such evictions in the future.
One way or another, the civilians were sent out of the way; the defenses were built, and supplies, ammunition, and weapons were accumulated. Not only did the Soviets have plenty of T-34 tanks, they also had small number of the "SU-152 self-propelled gun" or "assault gun", featuring a 152 millimeter howitzer mounted on a KV tank chassis, the gun fixed to fire forward with a limited traverse. The SU-152 was an improvisation, having been implemented in an unbelievable hurry, but it was still formidable. It was called the "zverboi (beast basher)", since it had the hitting power to take out the new German heavy tanks -- though only at dangerously short range.
In the meantime, partisans operating in the German rear played hell with German supply lines, blowing bridges and wrecking trains. In a short time, partisan attacks tripled, another hint that German secrecy had been compromised.
Finally, on 1 July, Hitler sent an order to Manstein that CITADEL would begin on 5 July. Soviet intelligence knew of the order within hours. The Red Army went to full alert. The Red Army had 1.3 million soldiers, backed by 3,500 tanks and 19,000 artillery pieces. The Germans had a million troops, with 2,700 tanks and 10,000 guns. Both sides remained quiet in hopes of surprising the other. It was so silent that the loudest noise was the sound of the wind rippling through the grass of the plains.
* On the afternoon of 4 July 1943, Hoth performed a probe into Soviet lines to seize some hills that presented a threat to his line of advance. Things went quiet again for the night, though few were getting much sleep since last-minute preparations were under way on both sides. German planning envisioned drives forward using "armored wedge" formations, with heavy Tiger armor at the tip of the wedge; Panther, Mark III, and Mark IV tanks behind; with panzergrenadiers and mortar teams in half-tracks in the rear. The wedges would be supported by artillery and Stuka tank-busters fitted with a 37 millimeter cannon under each wing, Germany's somewhat improvised answer to the Red Sturmovik.
Soviet planning in turn involved large antitank minefields that would channel the German advance into "kill traps" plugged by dug-in batteries of antitank guns. The guns were backed up by heavy artillery and Katyusha rocket launchers, along with mobile armored formations that could respond to threats as needed. The Soviets had made full use of their skills at combat engineering and concealment to make their traps as devious as possible.
Soviet artillery began the fight in the small hours of the morning, blasting away at the Germans with heavy guns and Katyusha launchers in a preemptive attack. Since the fire was not generally directed at highly specific targets, it was more noisy than dangerous, but it did interfere with German organization. At dawn, the German tanks went forward under the cover of Stukas. Although the Red Army had been expecting the assault, the weight of the German attack was so great that the front lines of the Soviet defenses crumbled. Still, there were further layers to the defenses and as the Germans drove into them, the momentum of the assault gradually ground down.
The Red Air Force was out in numbers and contesting the Luftwaffe for air supremacy, with roughly 2,000 German warplanes against 3,000 Soviet aircraft. The Germans still held the edge in the sky, with generally better equipment and superior training, but their advantage had narrowed greatly from the early days of the war in the East.
Sturmoviks and other attack aircraft pounded German armor and positions. Soviet mobile formations were sent to threatened sectors, while Red combat engineers swiftly laid minefields ahead of the Wehrmacht advance. The Tigers proved hard to kill, but the Panthers were vulnerable since they were still unreliable and their crews were poorly trained. The Elefants were even less useful, being not merely prone to breakdowns but also slow and painfully vulnerable to destruction by Red Army anti-tank pioneer teams armed with explosive charges. By the time the sun went down, the southern prong of the German advance had advanced all of 18 kilometers (11 miles) into Soviet lines. The northern prong had advanced only 10 kilometers (6 miles).
Still, the Germans had yet to commit all their forces. Model kept up the pressure from the north, only to meet with stubborn resistance, with bodies and wreckage piled up on both sides. By 10 July the northern prong had spent its force, having advanced only another 10 kilometers. Both sides continued to fire on each other, with both sides stubbornly refusing to give any ground.
On the southern side of the salient the Germans made better progress, spearheaded by the elite 2nd SS Panzer Corps under Hausser. On 12 July, Hoth began a major push with his armor, only to find that by coincidence the Red Army had also planned a big armored push in precisely the opposite direction. The resulting head-on collision was one of the biggest tank battles of the war.
On the early morning of 12 July 1943, 850 tanks of the Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army, under Lieutenant General Pavel Rotmistrov, ran into the 600 tanks of the 2nd SS Panzer near the village of Prokhorovka. The Soviets were mostly equipped with T-34s, while German force featured about a hundred Tigers. Although the Tigers could in principle stand off at long range and destroy T-34s with impunity, due to the surprise of the engagement and the nature of the terrain -- dotted with hedges and small clumps of trees that provided cover -- the T-34s were able to close with the German armor, resulting in a violent and confused close-quarters brawl.
Soon the battlefield was hazy with dust and the smoke of burning tanks. Luftwaffe and Red Air Force close-support aircraft and fighters streaked overhead, contributing to the confusion. An armor-piercing round slamming into a tank would set off its ammunition and blow its turret off, sending it flying through the air. T-34s were able to isolate and destroy Tigers, pounding on the relatively weak side and back armor from close range. By afternoon, there were hundreds of dead tanks and tankers on the field. Hausser's panzers had been forced to pull back to a defensive position, where they held their ground against repeated attacks by Soviet armor.
Hoth wanted to commit General Werner Kempf's 3rd Panzer Corps, with about 300 tanks, to the battle, but that prong of Hoth's offensive had been trying to grind forward against stubborn opposition and was mostly on the wrong side of the Donets river, to the southeast of the battlefield.
3rd Panzer had been able to get a bridgehead over the river at the town of Rzhavets the night before, 11 July, through a trick. A Major Franz Baeke led a small column of armor through Soviet lines, with a captured T-34 in the lead to deceive Red Army sentinels. It worked, but then the T-34 broke down, blocking the road. The Germans had to get out and push the steel monster off the road, while Soviet troops in the area idly watched the Germans laboring in the dark. Some of the Germans even forgot themselves and muttered "scheisse! (shit!)" and the like, but nobody caught on.
Farther up the road, Baeke's column passed a column of T-34s heading the other way. The Germans held their breath and the two columns passed, but then the Soviets got suspicious and a number of T-34s turned around to investigate. There was a very tense moment -- and then firing broke out, resulting in a confused fight at point-blank range. Baeke's column managed to make its way into Rzhavets and hold on until reinforcements arrived in the morning.
However, 3rd Panzer spent most of 12 July simply reassembling, and wasn't able to join 2nd SS Panzer until the morning of 13 July. Fighting had died down by that time, with both sides having suffered the loss of about 300 tanks. 3rd Panzer's arrival more or less made good German losses and it is likely that a renewal of the battle would have not gone well for the Soviets, but then the order came down to the Germans: break off combat. The operation had been called off by the Fuehrer.
That day, 13 July, Kluge and Manstein had been summoned to Hitler's headquarters at Rastenburg in East Prussia, where they found the Fuehrer in a foul mood and the staff officers sunk in gloom. Hitler briefed Manstein on the situation, which was not good: the Western Allies had landed on Sicily on 10 July. The Italians were not putting up much effective resistance, and in fact it seemed very likely that Italy was going to throw in the towel and surrender in the near future.
Kluge was happy to recall Model, since his efforts in the Kursk salient were going nowhere and, as discussed later, the Red Army was exerting pressure on Army Group Center to the north. Manstein protested, since he believed that if he broke off combat the Soviets would simply hit him farther to the south, where Army Group South was more vulnerable. Hitler granted Manstein permission to keep on fighting, and the struggle on the southern flank of the Kursk salient went on for another six days, with the battle increasingly bogged down in driving rains until it fizzled out.
* That was the end of CITADEL. The Germans had lost about 100,000 men, with about a third of them killed, and Soviet losses were at least as great. However, the Red Army could afford such losses much better than the Germans. The Germans had lost too many panzers and they would never be able to rebuild their armored forces to adequate levels.
The battle of Kursk was, in a sense, the high point of the war in the East. Enormous battles lay ahead, but in the global reportage of the time and in histories afterward, they would not seem so prominent. Events elsewhere would steal headlines, and besides, whatever the scale of operations conducted by the Red Army for the rest of the conflict, the outcome was an almost completely forgone conclusion: the Germans would be ground steadily down towards defeat.
* The end of CITADEL didn't stop the fighting in the region. The German offensive into the Kursk salient had jumped off from Orel in the north and Belgorod in the south; in effect, the area around these cities amounted to twin salients into Soviet lines, and even before the shooting in the Kursk battle died down, the Red Army was on the roll to pinch the two salients off.
The attack on the Orel salient, codenamed Operation KUTUZOV after the great Russian general of the Napoleonic Wars, began on 12 July. Twin prongs were launched against Orel, with the Central Front under Rokossovsky advancing out of the Kursk salient towards the south of the city, and the Bryansk Front under Lieutenant General Markian Popov moving towards the north of the city. A third prong, the West Front under Lieutenant General Vasily Sokolosky, also jumped across German lines north of the Soviet-held town of Kirov, well up the line from Orel.
The Soviets forces involved in KUTUZOV outnumbered their German opponents by a rough factor of two-to-one in both men and equipment, and the Red Army made good progress at first. However, on 13 July Model was put in charge of the 2nd Panzer army to conduct the defense of the area, and he did so skillfully. The Germans had built up extensive field defenses around Orel and the Soviets found it very nasty going.
Manstein's stubborn resistance in the Kursk salient delayed the offensive against Belgorod into August, since the Red Army had to take the time to refit and resupply. On 2 August, German signals intelligence reported to Manstein that Soviet radio traffic had risen very sharply and that an attack was certain within the next few days. The offensive jumped off at dawn the next day, 3 August, with Vatutin's Voronezh Front driving south to the west of Belgorod and Konev's Steppe Front driving to the east of the city. The Soviet advantage over the Germans in the region was even greater than it was in the north -- about three-to-one in men and equipment.
The German defense around Belgorod was disrupted beyond any salvation, and the Germans fell back on Kharkov, to the south of Belgorod, to set up a new defensive line. On 5 August 1943, the Red Army retook Belgorod, the same day that Orel was finally retaken by Soviet forces. However, Model got his 2nd Panzer Army out of Orel in good order, with his troops falling back to a new defensive line across the base of the Orel salient.
The recapture of Belgorod and Orel put Stalin in a good mood, and he ordered fireworks and artillery salutes in Moscow to celebrate. Some of the citizens thought an air raid was in progress and took shelter. Stalin issued an order commemorating the victory, saying that the Red Army had proven that it conduct and win a summer offensive, and concluding: "Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle for the freedom of our country. Death to the German invaders!" There was something in this snappy phrase that resonated with Stalin, and the same words would be used to celebrate every victory from that time on.
* Belgorod was only a way station for the Red Army's thrust into the Donets Basin. Kharkov was a bigger prize. Not only was it one of the biggest Soviet cities to fall into German hands, but its recapture by the Germans earlier in the year was a particular humiliation for Stalin that had to be avenged. Hitler just as stubbornly demanded that it not be given up: "Kharkov must be held at all costs."
Vatutin's Voronezh Front advanced towards Akhtrya, to the west of Kharkov, in hopes of cutting off and isolating the Germans. The Germans reacted quickly, resulting in a battle beginning on 7 August. After brutal fighting, the German 19th Panzer Division and 48th Panzer Corps managed to stabilize the line around Akhtrya and halt Vatutin's advance. On 10 August, Konev, eager to outshine Vatutin, launched his Steppe Front against Kharkov and managed to penetrate into the eastern suburbs of the city, only to be driven back out of the city by a furious German counterattack.
Vatutin, going nowhere at Akhtrya, sent General Rotmistrov's Fifth Guards Tank Army to fall on Kharkov from the northwest. Soviet tanks drove into the German defenses on the morning of 19 August. They were met by the German 11th Corps under General Erhard Raus, a tough and combative Austrian. His defense was led by the 6th Panzer Division. The first attack was a bloody failure, with Rotmistrov losing at least 184 tanks and driven off. He came back again the next day, 20 August, losing 150 tanks and being driven off again. That night, he tried a third time, losing about 80 more tanks. Three T-34s did manage to make it into the city, where they raised hell and confusion until they were destroyed.
The Soviets had been taking a beating, but the Germans were by no means undamaged themselves. The 6th Panzer division had been almost completely wrecked, with only 15 tanks left. Once again, Manstein was a realist, and he knew the Red Army could and would win this battle of attrition, probably with the next push. Manstein decided to withdraw. Hitler protested that the loss of the city would undermine Germany's credibility with the country's Axis allies. Manstein was unmoved: there was no question that Kharkov was lost, the only question was whether the Reich wanted to lose the 11th Corps along with it.
Hitler sullenly agreed with the decision to withdraw, and Manstein ordered Raus to pull out on 22 August. The Red Army moved back into Kharkov, this time for good. The tide was now flowing strongly against the Nazis.
* The Red Army was also hammering on Manstein from the southeast. The Soviet Southern Front, under Lieutenant General F.I. Tolbukhin, had jumped over the Donets River and was now trying to push on to the Crimea. Manstein knew that the defense of the entire Donetz Basin had become unhinged, and he made a pointed request back to Berlin: either he would be given a half-dozen panzer divisions, or he would fall back across the Dnieper, where he could set up a solid defensive line that was shielded by a wide river: "I request freedom of movement."
Hitler replied that they would discuss the matter at his advance field headquarters, codenamed "Werewolf", at Vinnitsa in the western Ukraine. The meeting took place on 27 August. Hitler seemed bewildered as Manstein's officers outlined the comparative strength Red Army forces operating against Army Group South: the Germans were outnumbered at least four to one in every respect. Manstein then hit the Fuehrer again: either provide reinforcements, or authorize a withdrawal behind the Dnieper. Manstein proposed that reinforcements could be transferred from Kluge's Army Group Center. Hitler waffled, but Manstein rightly insisted that a decision had to be made immediately. Hitler caved in, ordered the transfer, and went back home.
* Whatever relief Manstein got out of this concession was short-lived. The next day, 28 August, the Red Army smashed into Army Group Center. Kluge was under far too much pressure to spare any forces. Manstein's fortunes were no better, since the same day the Soviet Southern Front broke through his lines, trapping the German 29th Corps up against the shores of the Sea of Azov.
Everything that Manstein had feared was now coming true very quickly. Manstein called Hitler and arranged a conference at the Fuehrer's "Wolf's Lair" headquarters in East Prussia. The meeting took place on 3 September, with Kluge in attendance as well. The two field marshals presented a united front, proposing that the top military command be consolidated under a military officer who would act as a supreme commander.
Hitler had no intention of giving up his powers and flatly rejected the proposal. The most he was willing to do was authorize a few modest retreats. As if to underline the inadequacy of these half-measures, later that day news arrived that the Western Allies had landed in Italy. The Red Army had also renewed its pressure, the Southwest Front smashing through German lines and Rokossovsky's Central Front driving a wedge between German Army Group Center and Army Group South.
Manstein repeated his request for freedom of action. The Fuehrer flew to Manstein's forward headquarters at Zaporozhye in the Ukraine on 8 September. Manstein bluntly stated that a withdrawal behind the Dnieper was absolutely necessary. Hitler replied: NO. He did promise Manstein reinforcements from Army Group Center, but it is difficult to believe that Manstein thought for an instant this was even possible. It wasn't. The next day, 9 September, an exasperated Manstein called up chief of staff Zeitzler and told him: "Kindly inform the Fuehrer that he may expect the beginning of a disastrous Soviet breakthrough to the Dnieper at any moment."
* The moment came five days later, on 14 September. In a two-pronged offensive, Rokossovsky's Central Front smashed through German lines to advance on Kiev from the northeast, while Vatutin's Voronezh Front moved on the city from the southeast. Manstein simply informed Berlin that he intended to begin a withdrawal to the Dnieper come the morning. He met with the Fuehrer at the Wolf's Lair the next day, 15 September. Hitler had little choice but to agree to the retreat.
This was welcome to Manstein, but far from a miracle cure. Hitler's refusal to consider retreat up to that time meant that no real advance work had been done for a withdrawal under fire, always a difficult operation. Although German propaganda had been boasting about the "East Wall" of defenses along the west bank of the Dnieper, in reality little work had been done to build fortifications there. Hitler had judged that doing so would have guaranteed a retreat.
Manstein still managed to pull it off, and the Germans took the time to perform Operation SCORCHED EARTH, taking everything that could be moved and destroying everything that couldn't. When time and resources permitted it, mines and devious booby traps were sown in numbers. The region was simply "sterilized". Hundreds of thousands of livestock were taken, along with about 280,000 Soviet citizens who were to be put to work as slave laborers.
The season had been unusually rainy, bogging down both the Germans and the Soviets in the mud. German forces reached the Dnieper on 21 September, crossing at Kanev about 105 kilometers (65 miles) south of Kiev, with the Red Army right behind them. Partisan fighters radioed that there were no Germans on the west bank of the Dnieper near the "Bukrin Bend" in the river, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) north of Kanev. Both the Red Army and the Germans got the message and a race began.
The Red Army got there first, sending a company across during the night to join partisan fighters. More forces flowed in during the day. The Germans countered with troops and reinforcements of their own and the fighting escalated, with the Soviets gradually expanding the bridgehead.
On 24 September, three brigades of Red Army paratroopers, about 7,000 men, were airdropped on the bridgehead. The Red Army had been a pioneer of paratroop operations as far back as the early 1930s, but that effort had been derailed by the purges, and this was the first Soviet large-scale operational drop. It was hideously bungled. The paratroopers were poorly trained -- many apparently had never actually performed a parachute jump before -- and the transports flew in without coordination, dropping the soldiers almost at random, many falling over German troop concentrations to be shot as they descended. Those that landed alive were quickly hunted down. Only about 2,300 of them managed to escape and join partisan fighters.
Stalin was furious at the fiasco. He continued to pump reinforcements into the Bukrin bridgehead with blind determination, though days of fighting produced no results. The Soviets stayed bottled up in the bridgehead, with little to show for their efforts but growing casualty lists.
* The Red Army managed to get small forces across the Dnieper in several other places, but the Germans reacted quickly each time and these other bridgeheads didn't go anywhere, either. However, on the night of 26 September, elements of the Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army established another bridgehead at Lyutezh, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Kiev and upstream from the confluence of the Dnieper and the Desna River.
The Germans pounced on this penetration and bottled it up as well. Voronezh Front commander Vatutin decided, without much hope of success, to see if he could expand the bridgehead. He ordered Lieutenant General A.G. Kravchenko, head of the armored corps of the Fifth Guards Army, to get his tanks there as fast as possible.
Kravchenko's armor had to get over the Desna. There was no bridge in the area, but local fishermen pointed out where the river could be forded. The ford was over two meters (seven feet) deep and Kravchenko's T-34s weren't rigged for snorkeling, but the tankers managed to seal them up and get 90 of them across. There was no way to ford the Dnieper in such a way, but Kravchenko's men found two damaged barges that could carry three tanks each, and managed to get most of their armor across the river during the night of 5 October, with the rest following during the day. They quickly expanded the bridgehead, but the Germans once again reacted fast and the Soviets quickly bogged down.
However, Vatutin was becoming more optimistic about the Lyutezh bridgehead, believing that if he just had the resources to push harder he would be able to break out. Unfortunately, Moscow remained focused on the Bukrin bridgehead downstream. Vatutin's political commissar, the noisy and energetic Lieutenant General Nikita Kruschev, lobbied the Kremlin to reconsider.
The general staff finally realized that the Bukrin bridgehead was a lost cause and decided to shift the effort to the Lyutezh bridgehead. In the last week of October, the Soviet Third Guards Army quietly moved from the Bukrin bridgehead north, moving at night to keep the Germans in the dark. Strict radio silence was observed, with the radio operators left in their original positions to continue their chatter as if an entire army were still there. Dummy tanks were set up in the old positions as well. The rains continued, further helping to conceal the transfer of troops and equipment.
Vatutin loaded up the Lyutezh bridgehead with troops and armor, backed up by 2,000 guns and mortars along with 500 Katyusha rocket launchers. The Germans were hit by a thunderous bombardment on at dawn on 3 November, followed 40 minutes later by the advance of six infantry divisions of the Thirty-Eighth Army and a tank corps of the Fifth Guards Army. The German defense crumbled and the Third Guards Army followed through the breach. Soviet forces entered Kiev on the evening of 5 November, and by 7 November, the 26th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the city had been cleaned of German forces.
A half-million Germans and Soviets, soldiers and civilians, had died in the Dnieper campaign. Of all the Red Army soldiers who were awarded the prestigious Hero of the Soviet Union decoration, almost half won it on the banks of the Dnieper. Kiev had been reduced to a rubble heap. Stalin celebrated his triumph in Moscow with fireworks and artillery salutes.
Stalin spoke to the Soviet people, as he always did on 7 November. He stood in front of a crowd at the Kremlin, bathed in orchestrated applause that was kept going until the audience could clap no more. He was now triumphant and boasted in complete truth of the Red Army's great victories. He gave little credit to the people, the "little cogs in the machine", who had actually done it. As always, their deaths were only a matter of sums on a sheet to him, a resource to be expended to achieve his goals.
* With the massive movement of Soviet forces, the various fronts in the campaign were redesignated:
The Red Army kept up the momentum for the moment. There were increasing cases of German troops inflicting wounds on themselves in hopes of escaping to the rear. Such wounds could be detected by powder burns and the unlucky soldiers were usually quickly court-martialed and shot.
Once again, however, the Germans still proved they shouldn't be underestimated. When the First Guards Tank Army took Zhitomir, about 70 kilometers (45 miles) to the southwest of Kiev, Papa Hoth saw that the Soviets were out on a limb and counterattacked on 14 November, throwing the First Guards out of the city after five days of tough fighting. It was smartly done, though it did Hoth little good. Hitler needed miracles to win the war now, and even Hoth couldn't deliver miracles. The Fuehrer soon sacked him for failing to recapture Kiev.
Stalin was not happy with the reversal at Zhitomir and sent Rokossovsky to Vatutin's First Ukrainian Front headquarters to check up on Vatutin and relieve him of command if it seemed necessary. Rokossovsky got a chilly welcome from Vatutin and his staff, but Vatutin soon realized that Rokossovsky had taken his instructions from the Kremlin with a grain of salt. Rokossovsky was on the front lines and knew that some reverses could be expected in combat, however much Moscow might be displeased with them. Overall, things had gone very well for the Red Army in the campaign and there was no reason to do more than examine the mistakes made and determine the proper corrective actions for the future.
Things had not gone so well for the Germans. Hitler had stubbornly held on to the Donetz and only authorized a retreat to the Dnieper at the last moment. Thanks to the haste of the withdrawal and the lack of preparation of defenses, now the Dnieper line had been compromised, almost certainly beyond repair. The Fuehrer's forces in the East had been badly battered, and the resources were not available to rebuild them to adequate strength. It was obvious to everyone in the German high command that the Western Allies would land in somewhere in Western Europe sometime in the coming year. If the invasion succeeded, the British and Americans would soon be at Germany's borders. Building up forces to meet the threat in the West took priority.