"THE ARC OF FIRE" II. THE BATTLE OF KURSK

Josef Stalin’s second in command, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, was keeping a close eye on the situation at the fronts and, together with the front commanders, drew up a detailed action plan for the Red Army.

Just as Zhukov was doing that, the German Field Marshal Erich Manstein was out front inspecting, binoculars pressed to his eyes, the enemy positions.

But there also were hundreds of thousands of ordinary soldiers preparing to breath life into the color-coded pointers on the generals’ maps. We don’t know much about them, all we have is some cursory video footage we can find in the archives. Each one of those unknown heroes had a family though, his happy and sad moments... Those were the heroes and martyrs of that war… Some were real daredevils, others were not, but it is the blood they all spilled that ultimately decided the outcome of all the battles they fought, big and small… The wait was long and draining but it gave the army a chance to better prepare for the final showdown….

In the early hours of July 5, Red Army scouts seized a couple of German sappers cutting through our barbed wire and mine fields. From them we learned that the Germans planned to attack in the morning…

That night General Konstantin Rokossovsky decided to launch a preventive artillery strike against the enemy positions. Fully aware of the risk he was running, he still knew that, under the circumstances, it was the right thing to do. Professor Alexander Kolesnik, a military historian, provides the following details:

“Rokossovsky said: “I’m certain that there is exactly where the Germans will strike with all their might. If they manage to break through, we are done for…” When Rokossovsky ordered the preventive artillery barrage, he inflicted heavy losses on the enemy and, of course, severely undermined its maneuverability…”

After the initial barrage was over, everything was silent for about a half hour, and then the big guns opened up again. The Commander ran the risk and won the opening hours of the Kursk Battle even before it actually began. We only realized that well into the fight though…”

The Germans mistook Rokossovsky’s preventive strikes for the start of a general Soviet counteroffensive.  At 6.a.m. hundreds of German tanks, backed by aviation, went into motion, three hours later than originally planned… At 7 a.m. General Rokossovsky telephoned Stalin and said: “The Germans have finally decided to attack.” Coldly, Stalin queried: “What makes you so happy, I wonder?”  “That our calculus was perfectly right, meaning that the outcome of the battle is already decided,” Rokossovsky replied. Stalin was not so sure though…

Erich Manstein’s headquarters. July 6, 1943. 7.40 a.m. Hitler rings up his Field Marshal. Speaking through a scrambler, the Furher says: “Has it started?” -  “Yes.” After a brief pause, Hitler goes: “You voice sounds so strange, what’s the mater?” Startled, the commander of the southern army group says: “Tired of waiting for so long…”

Then, just as the German armies were already poised for attach, a mighty artillery barrage surprised them. The roar of the big guns, Katyusha rockets and aviation bombs came together in an earsplitting cacophony of death... Caught flat-footed by Rokossovsky’s preventive strike, the Germans suffered heavy losses and attacked two and a half hours later than planned.

The commander of a German tank company said after being taken prisoner: “The 30 minutes of Russian artillery barrage were one big nightmare. We  couldn’t figure out what was happening. The fear-stricken officers were asking each other who was actually going to attack, us or them…”

On July 5 the German struck out at the village of Olkhovatka in the north of the Kursk Bulge. 500 tanks and self-propelled guns surged forward, backed by 300 bombers. A fierce battle ensued…

During the war Guards Captain Grigory Surzhan was a deputy commander of the 75th battery of heavy Katyusha multiple rocket launchers. 

“Throughout the day on July 5, the Germans made four attempts to break through our defenses and each time we beat them back,” he said in an interview.  Only after the fifth assault did they finally manage to get 8 kilometers deep into our defense lines suffering tremendous losses as they did that. Our artillery alone knocked out 15,000 enemy soldiers and 110 tanks, especially our Katyusha launchers which fired nearly a thousand rockets at the advancing enemy.”

July 4 was a clear sunny day but the gigantic battle fought on the ground and in the air turned that sunny day into a horrible night. The sky was thick with smoke and dust. The acid gas from exploding shells and mines sent tears rolling down the people’s eyes, soldiers, deafened by the earsplitting blasts and the clanking of armor tracks, kept fighting on and on… Even tanks and trucks were moving around with their headlights glaring… It looked like hell itself had broken loose, a giant mincer devouring people and machines…”