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When Gaming Meets History #28: Prokhorovka: The Deciding Battle of Kursk

	Author: Bill Wilder Article Type: Editorial Publication Date: 11/23/2006 Related Categories: World War II, Armor Combat, Background / Research Material, Eastern Front

The Critical Moment

It seems now that the battle of Kursk was really inevitable. It had to come to this. The two opposing sides had been hammering at one another for two years. The pendulum swung one way and then the other. Sooner or later, there would be a decisive battle that would decide the final course of the war. It would take place in southern Russia in an uneven circle of some 75 miles with the town of Kursk at its center. Though the fighting never reached it, Kursk would be the infamous name attached to this mighty series of battles.

Kursk was in essence a show of strength. The German army would stand toe to toe with the Russian bear in a slugfest to the bitter end. It was not a contest of courage or will. If it had been it would have ended in a draw. Both forces demonstrated clearly that they had the will and the desire to win. Ultimately it was a conflict in which skilled warriors with high-tech equipment would fight a larger swarming horde of lesser-trained, but equally motivated soldiers, tankers, and airmen in a fight to the finish.

Oh the war would go on, of course, but this would be the last great offensive action of the German army in the East. From Kursk on to the end, the Wehrmacht began a bloody trek back to whence they had come two years earlier.

The Massive Effort

The path that had led both forces to this point was marked with danger signs for Germany from the start. The first winter in Russia was for the Wehrmacht a nightmare. The second winter, a calamity of major proportions. In a battle that lasted for six months, one tenth of the entire Germany army was lost.

That meant one soldier in ten had disappeared from the German ranks. The vaunted German 6th army and entire divisions of allies were simply sucked off the face of the Motherland as with a giant brown vacuum cleaner. They were gone. The only remains were the blackened hulks and torn bodies that littered both the city and the surrounding countryside. Nature mercifully covered the entire grim spectacle with a blanket of white as if to give the combatants a moment of peace.

Now it was 1943. General von Manstein, in a masterstroke that compensated somewhat for the horrendous losses suffered in the fighting for Stalingrad with the recapture of Kharkov in March. The spring thaw then slowed movement to a crawl and halted any advantages to the Germans to capitalize on the opportunity. Army Group South with its victory had given new impetus to Hitler and the OKW.

The new plan that was generated was Manstein's "backhand stroke." He would allow the Russians to enter the Donetz basin and then begin a sweeping movement north from Kharkov that would place the Soviets in the same peril that his fellow soldiers had fallen into at Stalingrad. When OKW got wind of the idea, it was felt that such a move could be much more significant, perhaps changing the course of the war to that point in favor of the Wehrmacht. Another plan quickly arose that seemed to the higher command to be much more effective and final.

Since there now existed a salient or bulge of Russian forces that had protruded itself into the German front lines, why not cut it off? Instead of a sweep from the south by one Army Group, two would participate and form giant pincers at both extremes of that bulge.

Well equipped and with the newer weapons and tanks, the German army would deal the Bolsheviks such a blow that the whole Russian offensive would stall. Then either Hitler could negotiate a peace of sorts with Stalin or time would be bought to bring more devastating weapons to the table of war.