Tiger Heat: German Panzers on the Eastern Front

The supreme commander decided to dismiss me from command and all but have me court-martialled.”

To analyse the battle of Prokhorovka, Stalin gave orders to set up a State Defense Committee commission, which judged the operation a classic failure.

Manstein’s victory, however, proved hollow. German losses were enormous even though they were smaller than Soviet losses. The Germans had no assets left to exploit their success. Gen Model, who attacked the Kursk Bulge from the north, moving toward Manstein, became stuck in the defence lines of the Central Front commanded by Gen. Rokossovsky.

On July 12, he was attacked from the rear, when Soviet Western Front troops began an advance on Orel. Finally, British and American troops landed on Sicily causing Hitler to panic. The subsequent course of the war showed that the allies did not have a chance on the Italian Front, but in July 1943, Hitler ordered troops to be redeployed from the Eastern Front to Italy. By July 17, 1943 Manstein began to retreat. The Germans ‘achieved a defeat,’ showing that they were still superior fighters while the Soviets ‘suffered a victory’ since the battle had from the start been hopeless for the Germans.

Everything could have been different at Kursk had the Germans attacked head on instead of the base of the bulge, where Soviet forces were expecting them. By attacking head on the Germans would have come across virtually no defensive lines. This would have meant they would have reached the rear service positions of both the Central and the Voronezh Front on the second day of the operation. This was exactly what Manstein wanted to do, and Marshal Zhukov recognized the danger after the war. Hitler was also inclined to support that plan.

But being products of the classical Prussian military school, Wehrmacht generals refused to break canons. They did everything properly and lost. After that, the Germans, having lost their elite units, were unable to attack successfully until the end of the war while the Soviets took another step to victory, once again paying an exorbitant price for that.

CHAPTER ELEVEN – Stuggered

January 1944

The crew of the Sturmgeschütz (StuG) IV had a young Danish driver who volunteered at the age of seventeen to join the Waffen SS. He was one of several Danish teenagers who had volunteered. They were intent on holding back the Soviets whom they hated politically. After his initial training the young driver was posted to an armour unit in Germany. The tank he had been allocated too was the StuG IV a self-propelled anti-tank gun based on the chassis of the Panzer IV chassis with a 75mm gun. Its high reliability with quite good armour protection and low profile made it easy to conceal. Along with the driver the StuG had two gunners’ and a commander all of German origin.

The crew had been sent to the Eastern Front. They loaded their StuG onto a rail car before making the long journey to their intended area of operations. Rail transport was used extensively to move armour to their area of operations. The StuG once unloaded and moving under its own power passed long lines of refugees fleeing the fighting in Russia. Some hated the Soviets as much as the Germans and wanted to get into areas liberated by the British and American forces. The StuG got itself dug into position by digging a large shell scrape to conceal itself. As well as two other StuGs on the left flank. There was a column of five Tigers ready to push forward. The commanding position the StuGs had placed themselves in offered a commanding view. Just behind them was a mortar team. The StuG crews made final preparations ready for the battle. The crew tried to get a few hours’ sleep on the hard, cold floor of the StuG. However, at low temperatures on a cold and hard metal floor it was hard to get comfortable.