On 5 July 1943 the German army opened Operation Citadel, a two-pronged attack on the great Soviet bulge around the city of Kursk in western Russia. It was Germany's last major offensive in the east. The Soviets knew it was coming, struck first with their own artillery, and met the panzers with belts of minefields and antitank guns. Within a week the attack had stalled, and on 13 July Hitler called it off.
The bulge and the plan
By the summer of 1943 a year of fighting had left a Soviet salient around Kursk jutting deep into the German front, about 150 miles (240 km) from north to south. The German plan was a pincer: Walter Model's Ninth Army would strike its northern face and Hermann Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army its southern face, meeting behind Kursk and trapping the Soviet armies inside.1
The attack had been meant for the spring. History.com writes that Hitler pushed it back from an original date in May to wait for better weather and his new Panther and Tiger tanks. The delay was a gift to the defenders. The Soviets had guessed what was coming, and British codebreakers passed warnings of the offensive to the Red Army.2
The strongest defenses of the war
Inside the salient the Red Army built belt after belt of trenches, antitank positions and minefields. History.com speaks of nearly a million antitank and antipersonnel mines, and World History Encyclopedia counts 943,000, laid so as to channel the attackers onto massed artillery.3
The forces are counted very differently. Britannica puts the German attack force at about 900,000 men with 2,700 tanks and assault guns, while the German Historical Museum in Berlin gives about 800,000 soldiers and more than 2,000 tanks, some 70 percent of all German armor in the east. For the Soviet side, History.com gives almost 1.3 million men and 3,600 tanks, and the German Historical Museum about 1.35 million soldiers with just under 4,000 tanks and assault guns.4
The first day
In the early hours of 5 July the Soviet guns opened fire first, a few hours before the Germans were due to move, in the hope of breaking up the attack. Both History.com and World History Encyclopedia judge that this barrage did little harm; History.com says it held the Germans up for about an hour and a half. Then the German artillery and the Luftwaffe opened up, and the infantry and tanks went forward on both faces of the salient.5
From the first day the attackers were fighting through the minefields instead of past them. The sources measure the result differently: Britannica writes that the Germans got only about 10 miles (16 km) into the salient in the north and 30 miles (48 km) in the south, while the German Historical Museum gives about 10 km in the north and just over 30 km in the south. History.com writes that the Soviets had halted the northern thrust by 10 July.6
Called off
The southern attack reached Prokhorovka, where the tank battle of 12 July stopped it, and on the same day the Soviets began their counteroffensive north of the salient. On 13 July Hitler ordered the offensive stopped. The Allies had landed in Sicily on 10 July, and History.com and World History Encyclopedia both say he pulled panzer divisions away to meet the threat in Italy.7
Britannica dates the whole battle to 23 August, when the Soviet counteroffensive retook Kharkov, and calls it the decisive end of German offensive power on the Eastern Front. The German Historical Museum likewise writes that the initiative passed to the Red Army for good. The full story, with the debates about Prokhorovka and the losses, is in our article on the Battle of Kursk.8
Also on this day
- 1814: Battle of Chippawa. On the Chippawa river near Niagara Falls, an American army invading Upper Canada fought British troops under Phineas Riall in the War of 1812.
