by J. Lee Ready
On the morning of 5 July General Walter Model launched his Ninth Army southwards against the north flank of the Kursk salient, defended by the Central Front [ex-Don Front], while Hoth ordered a continuation of the full-scale assault northwards towards the southern flank of the salient. The plan was for Model and Hoth to meet in the middle. On Hausser’s left [west] flank the XLVIII Panzer Corps advanced towards Butovo, while on his right [east] flank III Panzer Corps [under orders from Detachment Kempf] aimed for the city of Belgorod.
Hausser’s own objectives were for the SS LAH on his left to attack towards Streletskoye, the SS Das Reich to take Yakhontovo in the center, and the SS Totenkopf on the right to skirt the western edge of Belgorod.
Hitler did not have sufficient armor for identical pushes from north and south, so he weighted Hoth’s forces with the armor. Model, for example, only had thirty Tiger tanks in his entire Ninth Army, whereas Hausser’s corps alone had forty-two of the monsters with their 88mm guns. Most army panzer divisions only had four battalions of panzergrenadiers. The SS LAH and SS Totenkopf had six each, and the SS Das Reich had eight! Thus much was expected of Hausser’s troops.
Like all the German divisions, Hausser’s forces had a significant contingent of hiwis, some of whom had been serving for two years by now. As far as many ordinary SS soldiers were concerned, these hiwis were just as much a part of their division as they were.
Hausser’s three divisions moved out before dawn on the 5th, the pioneers [engineers] in front lifting mines out of the muddy ground. Come dawn the sky was blue and filled with 800 German and 400 Soviet warplanes battling each other. Many a soldier forgot about his own personal safety and stood watching the aerial ballet. German artillery was still plastering the Soviet rear. It has been said that Hoth fired more shells in an hour than the entire German Army had done in 1939 and 1940. One thing is certain, the first SS soldiers to advance found churned up mud and pieces of human flesh and broken weapons, all that was left of Stalin’s first line of defense.
On the left the SS LAH was spearheaded by Hauptsturmfuehrer Heinz Kling’s Tiger company. These huge tanks drove right through a barrage of Soviet artillery shells as if they were merely hail stones, and they ignored shells from Soviet anti-tank guns as if they wooden arrows, and they took the gunfire from a formation of T-34 tanks in their stride as if the armored piercing shells were marbles, whereas the machine guns of the Tigers’ shot down the unprotected anti-tank gunners, and the main 88mm guns of the Tigers sent shells straight into the Soviet tanks, blowing them apart, until the surviving Soviets turned and fled. The Tiger crews must have thought themselves invincible.
Brigadefuehrer Teddi Wisch, commanding the SS LAH rushed his panzergrenadiers behind the Tigers. A counterattack by Soviet T-34s only succeeded in knocking out one Tiger.
Coming within sight of the ruined village of Beresov in the center of Hausser’s battlefield, the SS Das Reich watched German Stuka dive-bombers give it a pasting. While they watched a few Soviet artillery shells fell among them. Then the panzergrenadiers of Standartenfuehrer Heinz Harmel’s SS Deutschland Regiment went forward on foot into the ruins with rifles, machine pistols, sub-machine guns, bipod machine guns and flamethrowers. Rather than burn to death many of the Russians of the 52nd Guards Rifle Division surrendered.
On Hausser’s right the SS Totenkopf reported swift movement.
By late afternoon the SS LAH had advanced ten miles along the east bank of the Vorskla River, reaching and destroying the forward headquarters of the Soviet Sixth Guards Army. The SS Das Reich and the SS Totenkopf had each covered twelve miles. At this rate they would reach Model’s forces in five days and cut off the entire Kursk salient.
There is no doubt that the Tiger was working well, but herein lays the rub. The two most important pieces of equipment in the German arsenal to enable Blitzkrieg to work effectively were the radio and the internal combustion engine - in other words the ability to quickly communicate and to quickly move. The German tanks of 1939 and 1940 were mostly Mark I and II, which though fast were poorly armored and badly armed. By 1943 they had been relegated to anti-partisan duty or reconnaissance work, as the bigger and better Mark III and IV were produced in sufficient quantities. The Panther was the Mark V. The Tiger was the Mark VI. However, to carry an 88mm gun, and more importantly to carry very thick armor plate, the fifty-six ton Tiger had to sacrifice speed, meaning that the advance could no longer move quickly, which, as has been seen, was one of the two required elements that enabled Blitzkrieg to work. The Tiger was in fact a lumbering giant turtle creeping across the landscape. Panzergrenadiers on foot easily kept up with them. Thus Soviet infantry was able to outrun the Tigers and reach the next previously prepared defense line.
On the 6 July the SS Totenkopf found few defenders in front of them, and the division was tired of waiting for the Tigers, so they charged ahead of the Tigers covering twenty miles by nightfall, reaching a point northwest of Belgorod. However, the SS LAH and SS Das Reich ran into fanatic resistance, which slowed them down considerably. The latter was sad to lose Karl Heinz Worthmann.
Two battalions of Austrian panzergrenadiers of the SS Der Fuehrer Regiment of the SS Das Reich waddled in mud up a hillside under a withering fire, until wiser heads called off the attack. The hill was then showered with artillery and automatic weapons fire. Late in the day the panzergrenadiers tried again and this time they made it to the top. Now with this observation point in German hands, the SS Das Reich’s tanks could go forward, aiming for Psyolknee, Teterevino and Prokhorovka. They drove on seemingly oblivious to enemy fire, though many a tank was hit by artillery, anti-tank guns and Shturmovik planes equipped with tank-busting guns. The German tanks then stopped for the night.
On the morning of 7 July Kling’s Tigers moved forward once again, immediately coming into contact with an entire brigade of anti-tank guns. However, Brigadefuehrer Wisch knew his SS LAH was behind schedule now, so he sent a motor cycle detachment from Knittel’s battalion forward past the fighting, and they drove straight into a Soviet headquarters, capturing a bunch of staff officers.
At Psyolknee the Soviets counterattacked with their III Mechanized Corps. Only a solitary Tiger stood in their path, but it destroyed over twenty T-34s and drove the enemy back!
The SS Das Reich ran into the Soviet XXXI Tank Corps of the First Tank Army. Then the Soviet II Tank Corps drove across the path of the SS Totenkopf hoping to attack the right flank of SS Das Reich. The SS Das Reich fought back tenaciously and radioed for German air support. The planes soon arrived and devastated the attacking Soviet tanks, and the remaining Soviets fell back into some woods.
Panzergrenadiers of the SS Der Fuehrer Regiment were informed by one of their hiwi radio interception soldiers that it sounded to him like a Soviet general was nearby. A volunteer party ran forward and they captured him and his staff.
The SS soldiers could not understand it. They were knocking out enemy armored vehicles and guns by the hundreds and killing hundreds of infantry and taking thousands of prisoners and had advanced for miles, yet they were still running into prepared defensive positions. How thick was the front line here, they began to ask?
July 8 dawned hot and Hoth decided to rearrange his lines this day before advancing again. Hausser could have just patiently waited for this to happen, and his SS Totenkopf did just that, but Hausser ordered his other two divisions to push on to the Psel River. They did so, periodically knocking back infantry counterattacks.
On the 9th Hausser permitted the SS Totenkopf to advance, but he wedged the division between the SS Das Reich and the SS LAH at the town of Teterevino, aiming north for Greznoye. The Totenkopf was soon involved in stiff fighting against the Soviet XXXI Mechanized Corps.
On the left the SS LAH advanced northwestwards against rough opposition from the Soviet III Mechanized Corps, while on Hausser’s right the SS Das Reich advanced northeastwards towards Prokhorovka against parts of V Guards Tank Corps.
By the 10th, a hot, sticky, rainy day, the
exhausted SS soldiers realized the Soviet defenses were at last crumbling. That afternoon, Standartenfuehrer Karl Ullrich, a Demiansk veteran, led his 1st SS Panzergrenadier Regiment of the SS Totenkopf over the Psel River. At last they had broken through the Soviet front line!
Naturally the Soviets counterattacked here, but Ullrich was able to hold them off.
Hausser was well pleased. His three divisions were now massed on just a five-mile front and he was in the rear of those enemy forces that were battling German Detachment Kempf to his right [east]. Furthermore, he was informed that reinforcements were on the way including the SS Wiking Division. They would be welcomed, for though Hausser had lost few Tigers, his overall armored strength had fallen from 470 vehicles to 300.
Hausser’s weary troops plodded forward on 11 July, a dismal, windy, rainy day against elements of the Fifth Guards Army. The Soviets were falling back steadily, though not fast enough to suit Hausser, and Prokhorovka still lay beyond his reach by day’s end. It appeared that the Soviets had nothing left to stop the SS, so Hausser’s men were quite confident.
On the morning of the 12th Hausser’s men got a late start - much vehicle maintenance needed to be done, so they had laagered in a few wooded areas - and in any case up ahead Stukas were keeping the Soviets occupied by pounding the small villages and farms in the area. Suddenly at 8:30 am shellfire erupted among the trees right among the German crews, mechanics and vehicles. While everyone ran for their battle positions, the tank commanders in their black uniforms, StuG commanders in their light grey double-breasted waist jackets, and pioneer officers and panzergrenadier platoon commanders in grey coats yelled orders over the din and fury, instructing their men to leave the woods at once and prepare to advance.
As they emerged out of the woods in the gray daylight the three SS divisions saw no fewer than a thousand armored vehicles charging down upon them from the northeast. The Soviet Fifth Guards Tank Army was south of the Psel River, and the Fifth Guards Army was north of the river. To use German terms: Hausser’s three panzer divisions were under attack from two infantry and eight panzer divisions!
Hausser had kept the SS LAH south of the Psel, so that when his three divisions turned right to meet this challenge it put the SS Totenkopf on Hausser’s left, north of the Psel River. Here a ferocious struggle began at close quarters with the SS Totenkopf under assault from the XXXI Tank and XXXIII Guards Rifle Corps.
In Hausser’s center the vehicles of the SS LAH were compressed into a stretch of rolling wheat fields three miles wide between the Psel River to the north [left] and a rail embankment to the south [right]. Aiming straight for them were the XVIII Tank and XXIX Tank Corps.
On Hausser’s right, south of the rail embankment, SS Das Reich crashed headlong into the II Tank Corps. The right flank of the SS Das Reich was completely open, because the German Army 167th Division that was supposed to cover it was itself under attack by elements of the II Guards Tank and V Guards Mechanized Corps.
In fact their overwhelming strength enabled the Soviets to take advantage of SS Das Reich’s predicament, so they sent parts of the II Guards Tank Corps across the path of the 167th to hit the SS Das Reich’s open right flank.
The German Army’s XLVIII Panzer Corps was supposed to protect the SS Totenkopf’s left flank, which was also Hausser’s left flank, but it too was under assault, from the XXXII Guards Rifle and V Guards Mechanized Corps. Therefore the SS Totenkopf was stuck out like a sore thumb on the wrong side of the river, and Hausser had no reserves. The SS were truly on their own.
Like medieval knights on horseback, the charging metal monsters of the three SS divisions and the four Soviet tank corps met in the middle of grain fields. Here the Germans discovered Soviet anti-tank guns concealed in tall grain. The clash was on. Some tanks just stopped dead when a white hot armor-piercing round penetrated the hull and spun around inside, smashing equipment, ripping wires and boring through the bodies of the crew, all within a split-second. Other tanks were hit in the fuel tank and they burst into flames, their crew members fleeing the inferno as human torches. Often a tank came to a halt with a shattered tread, thus becoming an immobile bunker. If a shell penetrated to a tank’s ammunition compartment it blew apart like a bomb, its turret tossed into the air as if made of balsam wood, but landing like a giant stamping his foot.
Crewmembers that had been ‘unhorsed’ darted to the rear in tall grass, dodging the treads of oncoming vehicles, afraid of being mashed by friend and foe. A few did not dodge in time. Wounded men certainly had no chance to crawl out of the way of the treads.
Michael Wittman, now a sturmfuehrer, having graduated from officer’s candidate school, commanded a Tiger. In his first day of action his tank destroyed eight Soviet armored vehicles and seven artillery pieces and anti-tank guns.
Soviet infantry appeared, dodging the mechanical monsters, and they shot into the open backs of the German self-propelled artillery guns, killing the crews. Now panzergrenadiers appeared, hoping to perform a similar task on Soviet self-propelled guns, and they tangled with the Soviet infantry. Smoke from burning machines, explosions of dirt and the excessive noise made it impossible to tell who was winning.
Soon all command and control went out the window as each vehicle fought its own battle. The Soviets knew they had to close the range so that their tank guns would penetrate the German armor. They came so close that some Soviet tanks collided with German ones. The Soviet T-34s wrought havoc. Furthermore, at this short range even the smaller Soviet T-70s and some British-made Churchills sent to the Soviets could inflict severe punishment. The Tiger only had one advantage here: it could push a disabled tank out of its way.
Seizing the moment of balance in mid-afternoon Soviet General Pavel Rotmistrov, commander of the Fifth Guards Tank Army, sent in his reserves, the 24th Tank Brigade, to reinforce XVIII Tank Corps against the SS LAH.
As darkness fell the tanks ceased to fight, but neither side retreated. Tanks were no good in the dark, for they could neither see to shoot nor to drive. The sky was lit by the occasional machine gun burst of tracers, a flash of lightning in the light rain and the glow from burning vehicles. The stench of explosive powders and burning material and burning oil and burning human flesh was overpowering.
In the darkness engineers, medical personnel and resupply teams from both sides sneaked forward to drag wounded back to makeshift medical tents, bring up fuel and ammunition, repair tank treads, haul off salvageable tanks and try to make sense of the day’s events.
An adjutant of the SS LAH, twenty year-old Untersturmfuehrer Werner Wolff, saw a panzergrenadier company wavering, so he took command and kept them in the line. He was later awarded the Knights Cross for this. He was a Memellander.
Come a late rainy gray dawn two new problems arose - mud, which threatened to keep all the tanks immobile, and rising water, which threatened to trap the SS Totenkopf north of the river. Therefore, Hausser ordered his units to hold and not try to advance. He need not have bothered, for the Soviets were still here and as dawn grew into daylight the gunfire crescendoed into a cacophony of fury. Neither side could advance nor retreat so they just shot each other to bits.
SS Das Reich did have one success. As an ace up their sleeve, the SS Das Reich had put together a force of recently captured T-34 tanks, now bearing the black and white cross of Germany. When a Soviet tank force tried to outflank SS Das Reich on its right [south], the SS counterattacked with this T-34 unit. At a distance in the gray rain the Soviets could not see the markings, but they did recognize the shape and assumed the T-34s were friendly. The German-manned T-34s were thus able to come quite close before opening fire: they massacred the Soviet column. [Both sides used captured tanks.]
After sundown the medics and mechanics etc of both sides crawled onto the battlefield once again to tidy it up in preparation for a third day of slaughter on the same ground.
At dawn on the 14th, perhaps buoyed up by their success the previous day, the SS Das Reich began to move for
ward under a creeping artillery barrage, catching the Soviets somewhat off guard, and after eight hours of bloody mobile strife the panzergrenadiers of the division’s SS Der Fuehrer Regiment rushed forward into the village of Belenichino and began a house-to-house struggle. The Soviets of II Tank Corps and elements of XXIX Tank Corps counterattacked the village, but the panzergrenadiers held on ably supported by divisional and corps artillery and Stukas.
However, SS LAH had not been able to advance this day, and the staff of SS Totenkopf had consulted with their divisional pioneers and had come to the conclusion that the division had to retreat south of the Psel owing to the rising water level and the soggy state of the ground and the condition of the dirt roads which were turning into canals of mud. Throughout the day the division fell back. The Soviets maintained contact, but did not press the attack.
On 15 July SS Das Reich’s troopers were elated when the German Army’s 7th Panzer Division suddenly appeared on the southern horizon, their right flank. This maneuver trapped the Soviet II Guards Tank Corps and part of their II Tank Corps, and now the Soviets began a major attempt to break out. The men of SS Das Reich hunkered down and with every weapon available shot down waves of infantry and tanks. Thousands of Soviet infantry and unhorsed tank crews threw up their hands.
Meanwhile the SS LAH remained immobile and the SS Totenkopf settled in along the south bank of the Psel.
On the 16th Hausser’s men remained stationary, while the SS Das Reich counted their numerous prisoners, and on the following day Hausser was happy to hear that his II SS Panzer Corps was to be relieved. Each SS man thanked his personal god. Hausser was happy. His maintenance crews had performed wonders and had kept his armor strength at about 300 vehicles, but his men were worn out, having fought for two weeks straight with but a couple of fitful hours of sleep per night, and his casualties were high: 2,750 in SS LAH alone. Some of the losses were irreplaceable, such as Heinz von Westernhagen an outstanding StuG commander who had been evacuated with a serious head wound. Many officers and men had performed brilliantly. Sturmbannfuehrer Walter Kniep earned the Knight’s Cross leading the Das Reich’s StuG battalion.
