For the Germans in July 1943, two crises at once proved too much to take.
At times World War II seemed to be laughing at the participants. Fronts that had long lain dormant suddenly erupted, allies sworn to eternal brotherhood turned fickle or traitorous, operations planned to the nth detail disintegrated on the first day. The best commanders and staff officers reacted by coming up with a workable “Plan B.” Lesser leaders went to pieces. But no one truly mastered the art of fighting World War II.
An object lesson in these difficulties was the situation that suddenly confronted the German high command in the summer of 1943. Two operational crises erupted at virtually the same time in widely separated theaters. First, the great Eastern Front offensive aiming for the Soviet city of Kursk, Operation Citadel—a blow the Germans had been planning for months—came to naught, victim of a pedestrian operational plan, inadequate German resources, and tougher-than-anticipated Soviet defenses. It was time to ask that ancient strategic question: what now? But Hitler and his commanders never really got that chance. As Operation Citadel teetered on the edge, a second crisis erupted 2,000 miles away: a major amphibious Allied landing at the island of Sicily, Operation Husky—the first assault on Axis home territory. One crisis had blossomed into two. The chimera of multi-front war, always Germany’s chief strategic problem, was rearing its head with a vengeance.
The Germans have a reputation for being pretty sharp operators for most of the war, and much of that regard is deserved. The Wehrmacht made vast conquests on a relative shoestring budget early in the conflict, and rolling back those conquests gave the Grand Alliance fits in the later years. For a crucial few weeks in July 1943, however, German military leadership seemed all too human—paralyzed, in fact.
A crisis is, by definition, a difficult situation that is possible to overcome. But two crises at once? These twin Allied offensives caught the Germans flat-footed, with too few fresh divisions to shift between the two theaters and too few hours in the day for an overworked staff to formulate a coherent response. Contradictory reports were flowing in from the fronts, intelligence was spotty, and solid information was scarce. The result was command indecision and decisive defeat in two places at once. Even for the vaunted Wehrmacht, the Kursk-Sicily confluence was entirely too much to take.
WHEN DEALING WITH WORLD WAR II, it usually makes sense to think big. It was the largest and bloodiest war of all time. It affected more human beings than any other war, and covered the earth like the spilled paint in that famous Sherwin Williams ad. In considering what happened to the Germans in 1943, however, the key is to think small and scrutinize the events of a single nine-day period. This “micro history”—a blink of an eye in a long and violent war—must have seemed an eternity to the Germans.
On Monday, July 5, the German army launched its assault against an immense and seemingly vulnerable bulge in the Soviet lines around Kursk, in northern Ukraine. Operation Citadel had General Walter Model’s 9th Army attacking from the north and 4th Panzer Army, under General Hermann Hoth, coming up from the south. The aim was a concentric maneuver toward Kursk, a link-up, and the encirclement and destruction of Soviet forces inside the salient. It was an operation of a type the Germans had patented by this point in the war. Rather than achieving a swift breakthrough, however, the first three days saw Citadel lock itself into a slow, bloody struggle against tough, prepared Soviet defenses—just the sort of encounter the Wehrmacht could not afford after its heavy losses of 1941 and 1942.
The irony is that Citadel might well have been the Germans’ best-prepared offensive of the war. The high command had devoted months to slaving and arguing and wrangling over it. They had drawn it up and then redrawn it, scheduled it and canceled it and rescheduled it. There always seemed to be a reason not to jump: unclear intelligence on Soviet defenses; the need to refit and replenish German formations after the grind of the 1942–43 winter battles; Hitler’s inclination to wait until new tank designs like the Mark V Panther, the Mark VI Tiger, and the immense Ferdinand tank destroyer could arrive at the front. Another issue loomed as well: the Allies were clearly about to land an amphibious blow somewhere in the west. No one on the German side wanted to be embroiled too deeply at Kursk when the enemy came ashore, wherever and whenever that might happen.
Unfortunately for the Germans, the serial delays in launch ing Citadel gave the Soviets ample time to prepare for the attack. They guessed correctly about the focus of the German offensive—indeed, it was an obvious choice—and around Kursk had dug eight concentric defensive belts, manned by three complete army groups (“fronts,” in Soviet parlance). Trench lines that German intelligence maps showed as incomplete or the abandoned residue of previous battles were complete, manned, and bristling with arms.
The new German tanks certainly did their share of damage; Soviet T-34s had to close to dangerous range to get near enough to even try for a kill shot, and the Panthers and Tigers destroyed Russian armored vehicles in droves. But with Soviet defensive positions echeloned in depth and the Red Army fighting with its usual grit, the panzers achieved nothing close to a clean breakthrough. The northern pincer, in particular— Model’s 9th Army—nearly hit a full stop after penetrating only 12 miles. Model needed to go at least another 50 miles to play his allotted role, but with the strength of the Soviet lines in front of him, it might as well have been 500. Given that Citadel was the major German offensive effort—indeed, the Germans’ only offensive effort—of the 1943 campaign season, the outcome was a shattering disappointment to Hitler and the staff. For the Germans, Kursk was more than a lost battle. It was an entire year wasted.
So it went all that week. Model stayed stuck in the north, while in the south, Hoth’s 4th Panzer Army and its flank guard to the right, Provisional Army Kempf, slowly ground forward. German hope flickered briefly the morning of Friday, July 9, when Hoth received reports of large Soviet armored reserves heading into the salient and toward his front. They turned out to be elements of the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army, under General P. A. Rotmistrov. The enemy’s decision to commit reserves seemed to be a positive sign. Perhaps Soviet losses were heavier than thought. Perhaps they too were feeling the pinch. Using the traditional German prerogative of independent command, Hoth ordered his army to wheel to the northeast, intending to intercept the Soviet reserves near the village of Prokhorovka. Hoth didn’t make much progress, but enough to raise hopes that hot summer day at the Führer’s headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, in Rastenburg, East Prussia.
Even this moderate euphoria proved temporary, however. A few hours later, around midnight, alarm bells went off as the first reports of American and British airborne assaults on the island of Sicily reached the Wolf’s Lair. The next morning, Saturday, July 10, the long-anticipated Allied invasion of the European continent began when Allied armies landed on the island’s southern coast.
Operation Husky was no minor raid or demonstration. The invasion involved a full army group—the 15th, under General Harold Alexander—consisting of two complete armies—the U.S. Seventh Army, under General George S. Patton, and the British Eighth, under General Bernard Law Montgomery. In support were 3,600 aircraft and 2,590 ships—“the most gigantic fleet in world history,” as the Allied naval commander, Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt, correctly put it. With no fewer than seven infantry divisions disembarking on day one, it was the greatest single amphibious invasion ever, dwarfing even 1944’s Operation Overlord, which on D-Day landed five divisions on the sand at Normandy.
Husky took Hitler by surprise. He and his brain trust in the High Command of the Armed Forces, the OKW, had been expecting a landing in the Balkans, a notion reaffirmed by a nifty series of Allied deceptions. The Führer thought Axis forces could hold Sicily, however, as did the man in charge of the Mediterranean Theater, Hitler’s Supreme Commander-South, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. It was not as if the island was undefended. There was a complete Italian field army on Sicily, the 6th, bolstered by two German mechanized divisions. That should be enough.
Once again, German optimism was short lived. By noon on that fateful Saturday, initial reports were in: thousands, and then tens of thousands, of Italian soldiers were abandoning their posts, fading into the interior, or surrendering. A first attempt to drive the Allies into the sea, a thrust by elements of the Hermann Göring Parachute Panzer Division, had failed utterly. Despite its grandiose moniker, the division was green, consisting of a cadre lucky enough to have escaped the disaster at Tunis in May 1943 along with Luftwaffe personnel hastily retrained to fight on the ground. The evening capper on a bad day was a report that arrived at Hitler’s headquarters: after a brief fight, the largest port in Sicily, Syracuse, had fallen to the British.
The next two days, Sunday, July 11, and Monday, July 12, were some of the most eventful of the war. Near the tiny Sicilian port of Gela, the Germans launched a second, better-prepared assault against the American beachhead. The attack started well, smashing an American battalion and fighting to the town’s outskirts. But American defenses held firm, with Allied ships pouring direct naval gunfire into the oncoming waves of German armor. By now, virtually the entire Italian 6th Army in Sicily, more than 200,000 men, had ceased fighting, leaving the island’s defense in the hands of just two German divisions, the Hermann Göring and the 15th Panzergrenadier. Only hours before, the Germans had thought Sicily secure. Now? Not so much.
With the Wolf’s Lair now a house of mood swings, hopes again rose later that day. At Kursk, Hoth definitely seemed to be picking up steam. The southern pincer—4th Panzer Army and Provisional Army Kempf—was starting to make forward progress. The northern face of the Kursk salient was still quiet, but perhaps Hoth was on the verge of something big.
He certainly was. As Monday, July 12, dawned, forward elements of 4th Panzer Army crashed into the Soviets and an immense clash of armor took place near Prokhorovka. Hoth’s spearhead, the 2nd SS Panzer Corps under General Paul Hausser, ran more or less headlong into the 5th Guards Tank Army. It was one of the war’s great meeting engagements, and the result was carnage. The first reports, later proved true, spoke of heavy Soviet losses, but it soon became clear that there would be no quick breakthrough. The defenders were lapping around both flanks of the German penetration, German commanders were dropping off infantry units to protect the threatened sectors, and for all the death and destruction they inflicted on 5th Guards Tank Army, the Germans generated no real momentum.
Breakfast-time buoyancy sagged by lunch, as the first reports came into the Wolf’s Lair of a vast Soviet counteroffensive north of Kursk at Orel, where the Germans held a salient of their own around that city.
The target this time was the German 2nd Panzer Army, which, despite its designation, was largely tankless by this point in the war. Its mission had been static, protecting the deep flank and rear of 9th Army on Model’s abortive drive on Kursk. The Soviet counteroffensive, Operation Kutuzov, thus represented a clear and present danger to 9th Army and, indeed, to all German forces in and around Orel. Guarded hopes gave way to a teeth-gnashing sense of emergency. General Model now received orders to remove two panzer divisions from the attack toward Kursk and devote them to warding off this new threat. Model was a wily and tenacious commander, but the situation was as bleak as it could get.
This “black Monday” for the Germans culminated on Sicily. Just as Operation Kutuzov’s opening barrage was smashing German positions around Orel, Field Marshal Kesselring was touching down near Catania in Sicily, determined to form his own impressions of the situation on the island. A day earlier, Kesselring had been optimistic. But after a few desultory hours of firsthand study, he deemed the situation hopeless. Shorn of Italian support, German defenders would never be able to hold out against the Allies’ vast materiel advantages. Planning had to start immediately for an evacuation across the Strait of Messina. Lest the defense collapse while preparations were getting underway, Kesselring wired the OKW to demand the immediate transfer of another German division, the 29th Panzergrenadier, to Sicily.
Hitler agreed with him, and reached other conclusions besides. The next day, Tuesday, July 13, he summoned to the Wolf’s Lair the army group commanders involved in Operation Citadel: Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, commander of Army Group South, Hoth’s parent formation, and Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Center, Model’s parent formation. The Führer delivered the bad news: Citadel was finished, and it was time to revert to a defensive posture on the Eastern Front.
Manstein tried to argue with Hitler, as he always did. Things were looking up at Kursk, the field marshal claimed. Hoth’s assault had destroyed the Soviet strategic reserve at Prokhorovka, and a breakthrough was imminent. He could feel it. And, as always, Kluge disagreed with Manstein, observing that Model’s assault from the north had barely dented the enemy’s defenses and that the Soviets had just launched a major counterattack. But also as always, the generals’ arguments were moot: Hitler had made up his mind. The Allies had invaded Sicily three days before, he told them, and Italian forces on the island had already collapsed. Consequently, to shore up the foundering strategic position, it was necessary to transfer forces from the Eastern Front to the west. Citadel, the operation on which the Wehrmacht had pinned so many hopes, was dead.
THIS MICRO HISTORY, with its ups and downs and twists and turns, illuminates three points. The first is the close linkage of the war’s various fronts. On the surface, the massive clash of armor deep inside the Soviet Union and the great amphibious operation in the Mediterranean had little in common. But it is impossible to study either Citadel or Husky in isolation. Events in Sicily had a deep impact at Kursk, and vice versa.
Of course, the Eastern Front was the war’s dominant theater, the place where the Wehrmacht suffered the vast majority of its casualties. But the Citadel offensive was land warfare, which was at least familiar stuff to German military planners. It was essentially an operational problem—a tough one, to be sure, but comfortable conceptual ground.
Husky was a more mysterious beast, wreathed in speculations about where, when, and how large. For months these questions had been keeping German military planners awake at night, a state of tension heightened by Germany’s inexperience with amphibious warfare. Moreover, Husky touched on issues of grand strategy, international politics, and coalition warfare, all of which kept Hitler awake as well. These were areas that his officers did not seem to care about at all, but which he saw, rightly, as keys to the war. Today it is easy to reduce Italy’s wartime role to a series of japes about military incompetence and political stupidity. This was a country that fought ineptly, then botched its own surrender, for heaven’s sake. In the summer of 1943, however, Hitler saw things differently. For all practical purposes, Italy was Germany’s main ally, the only one even approaching Great Power status. Italy’s performance mattered to the Germans.
The second point to emerge from the 1943 sequence was the immense burden of high command in World War II, with its quagmire of information flowing in non-stop from all directions, sketchy first impressions of vast operations, and often wildly inaccurate reports. In this war, intelligence gathering and evaluation required thousands of highly trained personnel. So did essential tasks like long-range planning and personnel administration. Modern industrial warfare involved more than battlefield heroism, in other words. It also demanded miles of office space and a horde of bureaucrats with manila folders and filing cabinets.
Some combatants recognized this more acutely than others. By September 1941, for example, the United States had broken ground on the most sprawling bureaucratic metaphor of them all: the Pentagon. There is nothing particularly noble about that structure, especially to anyone who has ever been inside it, but its 6.5 million square feet of office space express a basic truth: modern conflict needs to be managed.
By contrast, the German military traditionally handed planning off to a small elite. In 1943, for example, Germany’s equivalent of the Pentagon was the Operations Section of the General Staff, which contained precisely 17 officers. “People today don’t believe this number!” one of those officers, General Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg, later exclaimed. Kielmansegg went on to become the postwar Supreme Commander of NATO forces in Central Europe in 1966. He compared the number of officers on his new staff with his old days in the Wehrmacht, and was astonished again: “You would have to hang a zero on that 17, and it still wouldn’t be enough,” he said.
At the end of the day, German staffs like the “sweet 17” were simply overwhelmed by multiple Allied threats. They had already proven their inadequacy in December 1941, when they faced the Soviet counterblow in front of Moscow and the entry of the United States into the war, and in 1942 during the twin Allied counteroffensives at Stalingrad and El Alamein. They would do so again in the summer of 1944, as they were whipsawed by the massive Soviet blow in Belorussia—Operation Bagration—and Operation Overlord in Normandy. For all their training and operational acumen—we might even say genius—German war planners were like owners of a mom and pop store fighting a corporate chain.
It is no surprise, then, that the Germans responded to the twin crises of July 1943 by sitting passively, confecting overly optimistic scenarios riddled with wishful thinking, and waiting for the next report of disaster. Indeed, there was little else they could do. Both the Husky landing and the Soviet counterblow at Orel were the products of months of preparation by gigantic administrative staffs. They did not occur by accident or chance, and there was little chance of improvising a meaningful response.
Trapped in the nightmare of a multi-front war against wealthier opponents, the Germans by July 1943 were facing hard realities. They might possibly have found a way to defeat the invasion of Sicily. Amphibious operations are inherently difficult, and the uncertainties of the landing could well have led to a different outcome. And they might have been able to eke out some sort of victory at Kursk, or at least something enough like victory to bolster morale and confound the Allied camp. Either was a long shot. What the threadbare German command structure most certainly could not do, however, was pull off both at the same time.
Originally published in the December 2013 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.
