* As the weather warmed in the Soviet Union in the early spring of 1943, 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 repaired, 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. The Americans were approaching full mobilization of their manpower and, more importantly, their industrial might, and they would soon present a threat from the West of comparable magnitude to the massive Red Army. Allied bombing raids siphoned off military resources to 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 at Orel in the north and at 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 the Germans had lost too many tanks 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:
• The "Tiger I" tank, which had been in development for several years, featured thick armor and a hard-hitting 88 millimeter gun that could easily outrange the 76 millimeter gun of the T-34.
• Another new tank, the "Panther", had been developed in a hurry with the lessons taught by the T-34 in mind. The Panther featured sloping armor plus a long-barreled, high-velocity 75 millimeter gun.
• Finally, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche of the Porsche company had developed a heavily-armored monster assault gun known as the "Elefant", sometimes nicknamed the "Ferdinand" after Dr. Porsche. Adolf Hitler was enthusiastic about it, since really big weapons appealed to his megalomania, but many of the generals weren't so sure about the oversized beast.
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, one that Hitler wasn't aware of: 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 debunked, since there are no British records of any such activity -- while the record is clear that the British had been feeding the Soviets sanitized ULTRA information through the British military mission from the beginning of the war in the East.
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 build up forces to 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 monocle, 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 and 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.
* By the middle of the month, Hitler had been confronted by another disruption to his plans when Axis forces in Tunisia finally surrendered to the Allies on 13 May, with about a quarter of a million men taken prisoner, including roughly 100,000 Germans. Hitler had regarded North Africa as a sideshow and then funneled in resources when it was too late for him to win. The result was another serious setback for the Reich.
Even Stalin had to concede that this was a substantial victory. He was, however, furious when Roosevelt and Churchill informed him on 4 June that the protracted fight for North Africa had forced the postponement of the invasion of Western Europe to 1944. The British and Americans were
planning a massive amphibious assault codenamed Operation HUSKY on Sicily in July, but Stalin did not regard HUSKY as a substitute for a second front.
Earlier in the year Stalin had given Molotov his opinion of the British and Americans: "The only thing they do is talk, nothing else." But for the moment, Koba had other things on his mind other than his despised allies.