The race for the east was on.
In the North and the South,
German divisions were reporting…
…heavier than expected resistance by the Red Army,
and in the sky, the Soviet air force…
…was giving the Luftwaffe a run for its money.
Mud and mines slowed the advance.
Operations were behind schedule at almost every point.
But at the same time, Soviet high command…
…was receiving reports of breaches…
…in the first line of defense…
…all along the front.
Messages were coming in…
…about the ferocity of the Tiger corps.
For the first time since the war in the east began,
the T-34 was outclassed.
Soviet tankers now had to contend…
…with crack German crews…
…with equipment that bested their own.
In the North, the Germans had made it…
…to the outskirts of the crossroad town of Ponyri…
…in the second defensive ring.
As the second day began,
the Soviets prepared a counter attack.
Red Army troops would sweep back the invaders.
But the reality on the ground was different.
Messages got mixed,
lost somewhere along the way,
and only some of the troops supposed to attack engaged.
The attack was smashed,
leaving nearly 70 Soviet tanks smouldering in its wake.
Now it was the German's turn…
…to renew the offensive.
But now too it was the German's turn…
…to be turned away at high cost.
Forces began to be siphoned off,
the front began to shrink.
But the real fight was at Ponyri.
With no decisive breakthrough,
it turned into the same type of house to house fighting…
…the Germans had faced at Stalingrad.
The town swung back and forth…
…as attack and counter attack…
…swept away the gains of previous day,
or at times even previous hours,
from whatever side had made them...
... and the front narrowed further.
By the 9th, operations were down…
…to a roughly one mile stretch of the front.
The German command staff met.
There was a disagreement.
Not about whether the assault had stalled,
or whether the operation had failed.
In that they were all in morbid agreement.
Rather the remaining question was whether they withdraw…
…or continue to try to apply pressure on the north…
…simply to divert resources away…
…from the defense of the south,
Germany's last hope…
…for a resolution to the war in the east.
Opinion was divided, but at last…
…the resolution was to stay.
Because in the South things fared better for the fascist army.
The breach was larger.
The Soviets were holding at the second line of defense…
…but the German tanks were pressuring them hard.
There were no counterattacks here…
…just a desperate attempt to hold on.
Vatutin, the local Soviet commander,
decided to dig in his T-34s.
Literally dig in.
He didn't just throw up defenses in front of them,
he had them buried up to the turrets.
So, in the middle of this sweltering and humid July,
his men were out, burying their tanks.
Turning these mobile beasts into small hills,
or rather small hill fortresses.
Because the truth was that, in the South…
…there was a stronger Tiger presence,
the T-34s were getting hammered in the field,
but by burying them,
they essentially became highly defensible anti-tank guns.
The small profile of the turret…
…meant that the Tigers would have to get close enough…
…that their superior range was no longer an advantage
and the T-34s turret was so stoutly constructed…
…that even a direct hit,
…as difficult as that would be…
…on a target that small, might not disable it.
These dug in tanks provided…
…far more of a hindrance than their mobile counterparts had.
They had to be cleared one by one.
They couldn't be driven off,
or easily neutralized from afar.
And when coupled with the occasional unentrenched tanks…
…which launched surprise attacks,
they proved especially disruptive.
Still the panzers advanced,
slowly carving their way forward through the second line.
And as more reserves were called up,
the third line began to look paper thin.
If the Germans weren't halted here,
they could potentially drive forward…
…and achieve what would be so disastrous for the Soviet cause:
the encirclement of the Kusrk salient.
A breakthrough here would be a true breakthrough.
More reserves were released.
Two tank corps were pulled forward.
The 5th Tank Army and the 5th Guard Army were moved towards the front.
But Stalin was willing to play a dangerous game.
They had another strategy in the works.
If the forces at Kursk could simply pin down the Germans for long enough,
other Soviet forces could sweep around them in a crushing counterattack,
but this meant reserving troops for this counterattack force,
which in turn meant that not every able body,
tank and rifle could be committed to the defense.
The southern front would have to hold with what it now had.
But then the mist and rain swept in,
bogging down the Germans, again causing delays.
Still they pushed on.
Slowly they clawed their way forward,
under artillery fire, through minefields and past entrenched tanks.
But just as it looked as though the front might crack,
the Soviets swept in with a massive tank counterattack.
It was beaten back, but again it slowed the advance.
Even still, the southern German front was continuing to press forward.
Especially the SS divisions which fought with the ferocity and madness...
...that had come to characterize these war criminals and butchers.
One SS rifle division was pinned down by a railway.
Their company commander was wounded,
and second lieutenant Joachim Krüger took over.
He fought like a savage.
Twice wounded, he continued to fight.
A T-34 flanked his company...
...and he charged it by himself.
Then in the hail of fire,
a bullet ignited a smoke grenade he had been holding in his pants pocket.
He ripped off his pants and undergarments and continued to lead the fight...
Against such madness what could the Soviets do.
But the order came down from on high...
...that the front must hold, and so they would.
It would be a fight to the last,
because after this line there was nothing.
Just open ground and the possibility of a lot of trapped men
As each day passed attrition favored the Soviets,
but held ground meant that the Germans had a chance...
...to repair any damaged vehicles that now stood in the rear.
Still, even with these repairs,
the German tank corps were but a fraction the strength...
...that they initially started this offensive with,
and their infantry reserves had run out.
The decisive showdown had to come,
and on July 12th it did on the fields of Prokhorovka.
The Germans were on the verge of the breakthrough they needed...
...to seal Operation Citadel.
Something had to be done.
The Soviets’ 5th Tank Army, which had been brought up,
was finally deployed to surprise and cut off the German advance.
On the morning of the 12th, with artillery raining down,
1000 tanks met in the field.
Caught off guard, the Germans met, then fought off the Soviet charge.
Hundreds of Soviet tanks were left smoldering ruins,
while fewer than 50 German tanks were damaged beyond repair.
But the breakthrough the Germans so desperately needed did not happen.
The advance had been halted for the day, again.
And then word started came down: the allies had invaded Sicily.
Hitler ordered the operation called off,
the troops recalled to fight a European invasion.
His officers protested. They were so close.
But he would not hear of it - the order was given.
Manstein planned one last push, but even as this was getting underway,
Stalin's long planned counterattack was beginning to roll out.
The Soviets would hit the Nazi German forces...
...with a force size and ferocity they were not expecting.
It was a total rout.
The Eastern front collapsed.
After this the Germans would never again go on the offensive in the East.
They would never again have a major victory against Soviet forces.
They would fall back and back and back...
...untill, nearly 2 years later, Soviet troops entered Berlin.
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