Bill Fawcett - 100 Mistakes That Changed History

Just to make sure things went badly, there was also a Russian spy network, code name Lucy, that extended all the way up into the German high command. It made sure Stalin was apprised of the plan and any changes right up to and during the battle itself. It also allowed Stalin and Zhukov to know the numbers and plans for Citadel. It is significant that, knowing all this, they actually waited for the German Kursk offensive and even held out large formations from that battle for counterattacks once it failed. It seemed everyone but Hitler knew his offensive was doomed to failure. But Hitler was the only one who could stop it.

At midnight on July 4, two hours before Operation Citadel’s scheduled jump-off time, a massive Soviet barrage hit the German assembly areas on both flanks. This put every Wehrmacht soldier on notice of what their commanders already knew. There would be no surprise for the long-planned and -prepared attack. Within the Kursk bulge, the Russians had placed 20,000 artillery pieces, many of them antitank guns grouped by the dozens and protected by earth and concrete defenses. Inside or near the salient were 3,600 tanks, 2,400 aircraft, and 1.3 million soldiers. Every square mile of the bulge had been saturated with more than 5,000 land mines evenly split between personnel and antitank. Civilians drafted from the nearby cities had dug thousands of miles of trenches and ditches deep enough to slow or trap a tank.

The two German attacks consisted of 10,000 guns, 2,700 tanks, 2,000 airplanes, and 900,000 soldiers. These men all came from the best-equipped and most-experienced veteran divisions left to the Wehrmacht. Even with the loss of surprise and knowing about the defense they faced, the sheer size of the attack force gave the German commanders some degree of optimism. General Mellenthin stated, “No offensive was ever prepared as carefully as this one.”

The two prongs of the German attack took some time to recover from the disruption caused by the surprise Soviet barrage. At 4:30 AM, rather than 2 AM as scheduled, both armies began their attack. At first the Germans, at high price, managed to break through the defenses. But it was slow going, with losses mounting. In the north the Ninth Army was able to push forward only six miles at the cost of two-thirds of its tanks. The Ninth’s losses after six days were 25,000 men and 200 tanks. In the south, the Fourth Panzer had more men and tanks and was comparatively more successful. But by July 12, the only way to continue their attack had been by committing all of the German reserves to it. By that day, the southern attack had lost half its tanks, and to continue attacking, it gathered the 600 tanks that remained into a single force.

Marshal Zhukov realized that the northern penetration had been stopped and that the Germans were just about played out. He released his reserve, the Fifth Guard Tank Army, in an attack on the massed German tanks, which were still spearheading the Fourth Army’s attack. The two tank forces met about fifty miles from Kursk. The day was foggy and the tanks had intermingled by the time the Fourth Panzer was aware of the 1,500 Russian tanks. A wild melee followed, with some tanks fighting literally barrel to barrel. The Germans lost more than 300 tanks, and by nightfall, the Fifth Guard Tank Army was torn and in ruins. But those German tank losses made it impossible for the offensive to continue. The Battle of Kursk was over.

Within days, Russian offensives on both sides of the Kursk bulge began. These really did not stop until Berlin. By betting it all on a “decisive battle” that even he must have realized his army could not win, Hitler completely ceded the initiative to Russia for the rest of the war. Germany was never again able to make up for the tanks and trained crews lost attacking Kursk. Had the limited counterattack plan, which was the alternative, been chosen, the Wehrmacht might have retained enough tanks and planes to slow or stop the Soviet army. Without those lost tanks, even the most valiant and brilliant tactics could do no more than cause local delays. The Battle of Kursk was a mistake that sealed the defeat of Nazi Germany and guaranteed the Soviets control of eastern Europe.

Erwin Rommel knew that he had to stop the Allies on the beach when they invaded France. This was mandated simply by the dominant air superiority the British and Americans had. The field marshal had seen, in North Africa, what damage the aircraft could do to any column of troops or formation of tanks. If the Allied army got a foothold on the French coast, they might well be able to reinforce it quicker and in greater numbers using ships from Britain than he could transport over what remained of the French highways and railroads. History is to show that he was correct. Part of Rommel’s reaction to this reality was to pour money and labor down the drain of the West Wall. His other efforts were spent attempting to ensure that there would be enough men, tanks, and artillery near where the Allies landed to throw them back into the sea.

Erwin Rommel’s opinion was not shared by everyone. Having seen the damage ships’ guns could do at Salerno, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt wanted to let the Allies land and then chew them apart on a line that was just out of the range of the naval weapons. Hitler, as always, did not want to give up an inch of French soil and pushed to make the beach defense of the West Wall so strong that the landing craft never made it to shore. But he also encouraged the competing views of both of his field marshals.

A chart of the actual command situation in France in 1944 would resemble a plate of spaghetti, with lines of command and responsibility that bore little resemblance to those on the charts on the walls of the high command in Berlin. The high command (OKW) ran the war in the west, but Hitler personally could, and often did, override their decisions. These changes could be quite painful for the staff and OKW generals: By this time, the Führer was disposed to screaming fits and loud lectures. Just telling Hitler something he did not want to hear could be hazardous to your career; and explaining why any order or demand he made was wrong could have fatal consequences. Often these consequences involved a long train ride to the Eastern Front.

While Field Marshal Wilhelm von Keitel was in overall command of France, he did not have control of the Third Air Fleet, which Goering held tightly, or Navy Group West. The navy group had few ships, but it did control most of the heavy guns built into the West Wall. So the man in charge of defending France was not in control of much of his shore artillery and none of the aircraft in the theater. The ground forces in France and the Low Countries were commanded by von Rundstedt. He controlled, when his orders were not countermanded by Hitler, fifty-eight divisions, including seven panzer divisions. Also in France were almost totally independent panzer units controlled by the SS. The SS were responsible directly to only Hitler or their own headquarters in Berlin.

Preparing to meet the Allied landing as it moved inland, von Rundstedt located a strong reserve force, including most of the panzers available, near Paris. Erwin Rommel felt that with Allied air superiority, any unit not close to the front would be unable to get there until it was too late to matter. So he lobbied to have the best units, including most of the tanks, stationed near the beach. He even went over his commanding officer’s head, talking Hitler into giving him control of all seven of the panzer divisions in France. Needless to say, Field Marshal von Rundstedt was upset to be overruled and went himself to the Führer. So Hitler reversed himself and gave control of the panzers back to von Rundstedt. But both men continued to bicker, and eventually Hitler made a compromise by assigning three of the panzer divisions to Rommel and four to von Rundstedt for the OKW reserve. This was a mistake since now neither field marshal had a large enough force to be decisive.