What was Operation Kutuzov?
Operation Kutuzov was the Soviet offensive against the German-held bulge around Orel, north of Kursk, launched on 12 July 1943 while the German attack on Kursk was still under way. It helped force Hitler to stop that attack the next day. By 18 August it had taken Orel and driven the Germans back to the Hagen line at the base of the salient.1
In the summer of 1943 the front line near Kursk ran in two great bulges. The Soviet salient around Kursk pointed west; just north of it, a German salient around the city of Orel pointed east. From that Orel bulge the German Ninth Army under Walter Model attacked south on 5 July as the northern arm of Operation Citadel. The US Army's official historian, Earl Ziemke, notes that Citadel was launched out of the tips of two far from stable salients, whose outer faces invited a Soviet attack as much as the Kursk bulge invited a German one.2
The northern attack stalls
Model's attack soon ran into the dense Soviet defenses. On 8 July his center corps was stopped by a heavily fortified ridge southwest of Ol'khovatka, and Model predicted a rolling battle of attrition rather than a quick breakthrough. Two more attempts on 10 and 11 July failed to take the ridge. The Soviet command had kept armies in reserve northeast of Orel for exactly this moment.3
Twelfth of July
On the morning of 12 July, confident that the German reserves were tied down at Kursk, the Bryansk Front under Markian Popov and the left-flank armies of Vasily Sokolovsky's West Front opened a three-pronged offensive against the north face of the Orel salient. Russian accounts date Operation Kutuzov from that day to 18 August. It was the same day that, far to the south, Soviet tanks met the SS panzers at Prokhorovka.4
The German Second Panzer Army, holding a front of 170 miles with only 14 divisions, could not stop deep penetrations. Before noon the army group commander, Günther von Kluge, had to divert two divisions meant for the Ninth Army, and by evening the Ninth Army itself had to give up two panzer divisions, half of its Ferdinand tank destroyers and much of its artillery.5
Citadel called off
On 13 July Hitler told Manstein and Kluge that Citadel was over. The danger to the Orel salient was one reason; the Allied landing in Sicily on 10 July was his greatest worry. That day he gave Model command of both the Ninth and Second Panzer Armies, with orders to close the breakthroughs and restore the front. Ziemke sees the appointment as the rise of a new kind of German commander, the specialist in stubborn defense.6
Five weeks in the bulge
On 15 July the Soviet attack spread into the Ninth Army's sector, and on 16 July the Germans began building the Hagen line, a belt of field fortifications across the base of the salient. On 18 and 19 July the Soviet high command added the Third Guards Tank Army, the Fourth Tank Army and the Eleventh Army. The Soviet artillery was now formidable: Ziemke counts 3,000 guns and heavy mortars in the Eleventh Guards Army alone for the Orel offensive. Then heavy rains set in, and skillful German defense took some of the force out of the attacks.7
Events in Italy decided the matter. Mussolini was deposed on 25 July, and the next day Hitler told Kluge he needed divisions for Italy and the West, which could only come from giving up the Orel salient. Ziemke has the withdrawal begin on the night of 1 August, delayed by roads turned to mud; Cartwright dates its start to 31 July. The Germans destroyed the ripening rye harvest, drove about 250,000 civilians and their cattle west, and set demolition charges in Orel, while Soviet partisans blew the railways behind them: on 4 August alone the army group counted 4,110 demolitions.8
Orel and the first salute
The fight for Orel began on 3 August, and the city was freed early on the 5th, according to Argumenty i Fakty. Ziemke also records the Bryansk Front taking Orel on 5 August, the same day Belgorod fell in the south. That evening Moscow fired its first artillery salute of the war, twelve volleys from 120 guns by Ziemke's account; Argumenty i Fakty writes that Stalin had asked for a salute of 100 guns. Some Muscovites, Ziemke notes, thought it was an air raid and went down to their cellars.9
The end of the bulge
On the night of 17 August the last German troops moved into the Hagen line, and the Orel salient was gone. Operation Kutuzov ended on 18 August; Cartwright notes that by then the Soviet advance was outrunning its supplies. Ziemke calls the withdrawal a major tactical achievement for the Germans, but concludes that Citadel had left the Soviet Union in full possession of the initiative. The German Historical Museum says the same: the initiative had passed to the Red Army for good. The whole battle is told in our article on the Battle of Kursk.10
