Hi all,
I'm just reading a book on the SS panzers at Kursk. My question to you is what would have been the outcome if any of these things had changed?
1)Hitler stooped micro managing the operation and let the commander on the ground make all the decisions?
2) The Germans discovered the "Lucy" spy-ring and either stopped the interceptions or gave false information.
3) The germans didn't delay the start of the offensive until the new wonder weapons (Panthers and Elefants) were ready.
4) The Russians made the first assaults.
5) SS troops were not re-deployed and the operation was allowed to continue with full support, would they have broken through and did they have enough strength left to achieve the objectives?
I look forward to your responses as this battle is seen as one of the main turning points in the war.
Cheers
Robbo

If all of those things had happened, I think the Germans would have succeeded in taking thier objective and straighten out thier lines. They may have even been able to advance with the help of the Panthers and other weapons appearing later. But I do not believe that it would have changed the course of the war. The Allies were out producing the Germans by this time and it only got worse for the Germans after that.
But, here's one to really ponder. What if the Germans had made a separate peace with the West before June 1944? They would have been able to rebuild thier factories and use all of their troops fighting in Itlay and holding in France agianst the Russians. Makes one wonder.
Don

My two cents:
1)Hitler stopped micro managing the operation and let the commander on the ground make all the decisions?

Assuming you mean that he told them to go ahead with the offensive, but then stepped aside? Same exact outcome, perhaps with a slightly longer offensive phase since Manstein did not want to call off his offensive in the south. But in the north the campaign had already turned into a successful Red Army offensive by th etime Hitler intervened. I believe the southern face would *probably* have held further German attacks also, although that is obviously less certain.

2) The Germans discovered the "Lucy" spy-ring and either stopped the interceptions or gave false information.

No effect. The intel was not a major factor. Zhukov correctly predicted the German strategy in his report of April 8, 1943 long before the final german operations orders were even issued. it was an incredibly obvious attack. Also, the Soviet 13th Army sector on the Central front (the main unit facing the German Ninth Army) had *three times* the density of AT weapons as its neightbors. I.e., the Soviets were pretty precise in their tactical-level knowledge, based on analysis of terrain and other pretty obvious factors. In the south they were far more spread out since they were not able to correctly predict the tactical attack zones. But even so they gave ground slowly...there was never a single day when they were in headlong retreat. One other thing: the Red Army was *wrong* about the main weight of the German offensive - they expected it in the north. So at the highest strategic level, their defensive plan worked even though they got some things wrong.

3) The germans didn't delay the start of the offensive until the new wonder weapons (Panthers and Elefants) were ready.

Here I think there might have been an effect in the Germans' favor. Not because of the weapons but because of the effects of time. The Red Army used the time available much more productively than the Germans, therefore an earlier start to the offensive might have favored the Germans. Recall the red Army's tactical skill was certainly not at the same level as the Germans'. So every extra day they had to train their units was a godsend to them. Also, every day they had to dig another line of fortifications or lay a few thousand more mines was a gift. They eventually laid one million mines. How effective was that? For example, the Elefant unit lost more than half their vehicles on the first day, mostly to mines. Those are just mobility kills and most of those vehicles could be repaired and put back into action - but they had to *be repaired* and that took time. Their combat power was not available while they were sitting immobilized in a mine field. The German anti-mine operations were ineffective.

4) The Russians made the first assaults.

That would have had a huge negative effect. Stavka argued strongly to follow the 'backhand' strategy of allowing the Germans to strike first, commit and expend their strength, and *then* counterattack. Had they attacked first, their initial losses would have been higher and the Germans' much, much lower. Would they have lost the campaign? I think it's possible. Here is where Stalin listened to his staff, and Hitler didn't.


5) SS troops were not re-deployed and the operation was allowed to continue with full support, would they have broken through and did they have enough strength left to achieve the objectives?

No effect. Only one SS Division (Totenkopf) was redeployed to Italy, and they went without their heavy equipment. In contrast, another W-SS Division (Wiking) was held in reserve for the entire offensive and never committed. Other mech divisions were also never committed. So you have to ask, if one or two more divisions would have made the difference, why didn't the Germans commit them? I think the answer is obvious - they would NOT have made a difference. The lead units of AG South were on such a narrow front, they could not deploy the units they *already had* usefully. The eastern flank of their penetration was being squeezed and thus kept narrow by Guards Airborne units, very strong artillery and engineer support, and dug-in tank units. There was no where to put more strength - the tip of the spear was too narrow, and they couldn't widen it.



Cheers back to ya

Danny Egan
President
AMPS
Certifiable history geek
Join us: http://www.amps-armor.org

The key thing was that Hitler over-rode his General Staff. He did the one thing that his Army couldn't afford to do-make a frontal attack on prepared defenses. He did much the same thing at Stalingrad. The Whermacht was a rapier not a club. They excelled at manuever warfare and gave up all their advantages when beating their heads against fixed defenses. Stalin's Generals used their relatively poorly trained and immobile troops in the most effective manner. The Germans should never have even attacked the salient- they should have made a deep penetration 20 to 50 miles and put the Soviet Armies in the salient in the bag as they had done in the first phase of Barbarossa.

I don't believe that any tactics in any land battle would have had any far lasting effect on the final outcome of the war by 1943. I'm no expert on the Eastern Front but wasn't the whole idea of the battle pretty much to cut off a "bulge" in the German lines? At best this was just a very large defensive operation and defense wasn't going to win the war for the Germans.

Yet the Wehrmacht had been making exactly these kinds of attacks for several years and had generally been very successful. It is only in hindsight that we say the plan was poor. The difference at Kursk was that the Red Army had been given a lot of time to prepare an incredibly dense defensive network. But it was really the first instance in the war where a large-scale German offensive failed at the tactical level.

IMHO Kursk was the wrong battle fought in the wrong place with the wrong tactics. Hitler himself said the plan made him "sick to his stomach", but he insisted that the Wehrmacht had to take the offensive to the Russians in 1943, after the catastrophic results of Stalingrad. But the method chosen was completely wrong. Instead of attacking in force & grinding down the irreplaceable Panzer reserve carefully built up by amongst others Guderian, it would have been much better to have deliberately "weakened" the shoulders of the salient, & put in a spoiling attack to provoke the Russians into aggressive action, meanwhile keeping the reserve placed to cut off the Russian forces once they put their heads into the noose. This was the play used at Kharkov & elsewhere, the "backhand blow" which was so effective. But it is debatable if the Russians would have fallen for it again.

What is crazy about Kursk is nobody wanted to fight it.




Guderian asked:
Was it really necessary to attack Kursk, and indeed in the east that year at all? Do you think anyone even knows where Kursk is? The entire world doesn't care if we capture Kursk or not. What is the reason that is forcing us to attack this year on Kursk, or even more, on the Eastern Front? Perhaps more surprisingly
Hitler replied:
I know. The thought of it turns my stomach.

So, you have your best Panzer officer asking why are we doing this and you answer him pretty matter of factly it is wrong, but you still attack? Had Stalin gotten his way Russia would attack fist and then given the advantage to the Germans. Germany might have been able to exploit this and pushed the Soviet forces back and maybe even went on into another Blitz once they were in open ground.

So many what ifs.

Well, the Red Army very much wanted to fight it, because they thought they could win this time.

LOL, I ment the Germans.

But the tactics were pretty much the same ones that had worked over and over again for the Germans. They had every reason to expect success at the tactical level - Guderian's opposition was at the strategic level (and turned out to be correct of course).

As for weaking the 'shoulders' of the salient - that is precisely where they attacked, and it is precisely where the Red Army expected them to attack. If you look closely at where they deployed their units in the greatest density, it corresponds pretty closely (in the north, *very* closely) with where the Germans eventually attacked.