The Third Reich’s Strategic Imperatives in Operation Citadel, Research Proposal Example

Thesis

The largest tank battle in history, the Battle of Kursk marks the last major strategic offensive of the Wehrmacht in the Ostfront, and the beginning of the great shift in fortunes that saw the Red Army take the offensive from the summer of 1943 until the end of the war. The battle came at a crucial juncture in the war: the Germans’ final defeat at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, had led to a Soviet surge west. German counter-attacks reversed much of this, pushing the Soviets back once more. However, the Soviets remained in control of an enormous salient of territory, centered on Kursk as a key position, and it was this that Field Marshal Von Manstein convinced Adolf Hitler to target in Operation Citadel. Cutting through the Kursk salient would have enabled the Wehrmacht to continue the forward momentum it had regained with the capture of Kharkov. This would have shortened German lines tremendously, and given the Third Reich a much-needed position from which to blunt a Soviet summer offensive. In light of the ever-mounting costs of the war in general, and the costly defeat at Stalingrad in particular, the Wehrmacht badly needed to achieve its objective at Kursk.[1]Thus, for the Third Reich, Operation Citadel was fated to be a turning point no matter what the outcome: either they would regain ground and hold against the Soviets, stalling them, or they would be forced into operational retreat.

Summary

A tremendous concentration of forces on both the Nazi and Soviet sides preceded the battle. On the German side were “43 divisions, with 27000 tanks and assault guns, supported by 1800 combat aircraft.”[2] The Red Army, however, had “100 Russian [Soviet] divisions and 5 tank armies, with 3306 tanks and 2650 [Red Air Force] aircraft.”[3] The salient itself stands as testament to the degree to which the outcome of the war hung in the balance: on the one hand, the Soviet victory at Stalingrad had signaled that the Third Reich could be beaten; on the other hand, after Stalingrad the Wehrmacht had staged counterattacks, successfully recapturing Kharkov.[4]

For the Third Reich, the broader picture was not an encouraging one: despite the Wehrmacht’s successes in Operation Barbarossa and Operation Blau, the defeat at Stalingrad, and the Ostfront more generally, had taken an enormous toll on manpower, material, and morale. The Soviets, on the other hand, had responded by drawing on their tremendous reserves of manpower, material—augmented with aid from America—and patriotism, fueled by the recognition, on the part of Soviet-ruled populations, of the Nazis’ sinister designs. The Red Army and Red Air Force had taken enormous, hideous losses, but they had consistently recouped them. By 1943, it was becoming evident to Hitler and to German intelligence that despite the staggering losses the Germans had inflicted on the Soviets, losses of millions, the Soviets would have 3.4 million men available as a reserve. By contrast, the Wehrmacht had 500,000, making them outnumbered seven to one.[5]

Moreover, the Allies, led by America, had succeeded in taking Tunisia from Italy in May, gaining victory in Operation Torch. And the growing power of the Western Allies had another, very serious, ramification for the Third Reich’s strategic options at Kursk: it forced Hitler to spread his thinning reserves even thinner. Allied victory in North Africa facilitated greater interconnectedness between the various Allied operations, and raised the specter, for the Third Reich, of a threat to Hitler’s Fortress Europe. What this in turn meant was that in 1943, Hitler was faced with the difficult decision of having to spread his forces wider to guard the Third Reich’s conquests elsewhere in Europe from Allied penetration. At the very time when the Wehrmacht’s need for soldiers and equipment had never been greater on the Ostfront, Hitler was forced to transfer troops from the Ostfront to preempt possible Allied beachheads in Norway, France, Italy, and the Balkans.[6]

By July of 1943, then, Adolf Hitler knew that he badly needed to turn the Third Reich’s fortunes once more. Although Hitler’s behavior regarding command of the Ostfront contains examples aplenty of monumental hubris, tremendous folly, and staggering miscalculation, he was painfully aware of the fact that the Wehrmacht would have very limited room for maneuver on the Ostfront in 1943—Stalingrad in particular had seen to that. What Hitler envisioned for Operation Citadel was a limited offensive: the Wehrmacht would eliminate a Soviet army group, and regain a strategic piece of territory which would allow them to shorten their lines tremendously. Hitler was playing for a freer hand in the west: he wanted to push the Soviets back enough to preempt a devastating summer assault on the Wehrmacht’s lines for 1943. If the gamble paid off, he would have a freer hand to safeguard Fortress Europe from an Allied beachhead that could open a second front.[7]

The contrast with Barbarossa and Blau both is very telling: both Barbarossa and Blau were intended to decisively defeat the Soviet Union and extend the Greater German Reich far into the vastnesses of Eastern Europe. Thus, Hitler’s conduct in Operation Citadel evinces that he had learned from his mistakes, at least to some degree. Of course, the lesson had come too late and too dear: certainly by July of 1943, the Wehrmacht’s losses were effectively irreplaceable. By any measure, then, Operation Citadel was bound to be a turning point for the Third Reich. Hitler and Field Marshal von Manstein hoped it would be a turning point that would allow the Wehrmacht to regain lost ground and put up a stiffer front against the Allies. As the outcome of the battle was to establish, however, it proved the beginning of the end: a Soviet victory forced the Wehrmacht to begin its long retreat back across Eastern and Central Europe, and left the initiative firmly in Soviet hands.[8]

Methodology

The methodology will entail a thorough study of the Battle of Kursk, focusing on the imperatives of the Third Reich’s strategic position, but also examining the Soviets’ position, with its much greater freedom of action. The research will focus on the strategic picture primarily with regards to the Ostfront, given that this was by far the largest and most destructive front in the European theater, and quite arguably the most decisive for the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. This in turn will be used to illuminate the dispositions of the respective forces: troop strength, including numbers and morale, and numbers and types of different tanks, artillery, and aircraft, etc.

The research will also highlight the respective commanders, including Adolf Hitler and Field Marshal Erich von Manstein on the Nazis’ side, and Joseph Stalin and Zhukov and Rokossovsky on the Soviets’ side. Beyond the strategic picture, it is necessary to consider something of the nature of the respective commanders: leadership style, how their regimes had fared over the course of the war to July of 1943, and the like. Here, the emphasis will be on ability to command, and on the political cultures of both the Third Reich and the Soviet Union at that time. One of the more salient distinctions between Hitler’s and Stalin’s respective approaches to handling the war, as has often been remarked upon by historians, is that the former tended to seize more personal control as the war went on, while the latter, despite many mistakes, gradually yielded more control to his generals, something that played an important role in the final Soviet victory. Thus, the overall impression given will be of the strategic picture faced by both regimes, and how the limited options of the Third Reich affected the outcome of Hitler’s final great gamble in the east.

References

Arad, Yitzhak.In the shadow of the red banner: Soviet Jews in the war against Nazi Germany.London: Cassell and Company Ltd.,2010

Barbier, Kathryn. Kursk 1943: The greatest tank battle ever fought. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2002.

Chaney, Otto P. Zhukov (rev. ed.). Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Clark, Lloyd.The battle of the tanks: Kursk, 1943. London: Headline Review, 2011.

Davies, Norman.No simple victory: World War II in Europe, 1939-1945. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.

Eberle, Henrik, and Matthias Uhl, eds. (2005). The Hitler book: The secret dossier prepared for Stalin from the interrogations of Hitler’s personal aides.Translated by Giles MacDonogh. New York: Perseus Books.

Erickson, John.Stalin’s war with Germany: The road to Berlin.1983. ReprintNew Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.

Fey, Will.Armor battles of the Waffen-SS, 1943-45. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003.

Fraser, David. Alanbrooke. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011.

Fritz, Stephen. Ostkrieg: Hitler’s war of extermination in the east. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011.

Lemay, Benoit. Erich von Manstein: Hitler’s master strategist. Havertown, Pa: Casemate, 2010.

Luttwak, Edwin. Strategy: The logic of war and peace (2^nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Muller, Rolf-Dieter, and Gerd R. Ueberschar. Hitler’s war in the East, 1941-1945: A critical assessment. 3^rd ed.). New York: Berghahn Books, 2009.

Newton, Steven. H., ed. Kursk: The German view. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group, 2002.

Ripley, Tim. The Waffen-SS at war: Hitler’s praetorians, 1925-1945. St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004.

Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin’s general: The life of Georgy Zhukov. New York: Random House, 2012.

Showalter, Dennis E. Armor and blood: The Battle of Kursk: The turning point of World War II. New York: Random House, 2013.

Stone, David. Hitler’s army: The men, machines, and organization: 1939-1945. St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2009.

Winchester, Charles D. Hitler’s war on Russia. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2011.

Zhukov, Georgi I. Marshal Zhukov’s greatest battles. Edited by H. E. Salisbury. 1969. Reprint New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002.

[1] Kathryn Barbier, Kursk 1943: The greatest tank battle ever fought (St. Paul, MN: MBI Publishing Company, 2002); John Erickson, Stalin’s war with Germany: The road to Berlin (1983; repr., New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); David Fraser, Alanbrooke(London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011); Stephen Fritz, Ostkrieg: Hitler’s war of extermination in the east (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011); Steven H. Newton, ed., Kursk: The German view (Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books Group, 2002); Tim Ripley, The Waffen-SS at war: Hitler’s praetorians, 1925-1945 (St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004).

[2] Ripley, The Waffen-SS at war, 133.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Newton, Kursk: The German view, 10; Ripley, The Waffen-SS at war, 133.

[5] Fritz, Ostkrieg; Newton, Kursk; Ripley, The Waffen-SS at war; Dennis E. Showalter, Armor and blood: The Battle of Kursk: The turning point of World War II (New York: Random House, 2013).

[6] Fritz, Ostkrieg.

[7] Fritz, Ostkrieg.

[8] Fritz, Ostkrieg.