Events
July5, 1943Battle of Kursk begins
July12Germany retreats from Kursk
September25Soviet forces liberate Smolensk
November 6Soviet forces liberate Kiev
January27, 1944Siege of Leningrad is broken
June22Russian offensive through Belorussia (Operation Bagration)
begins
July3Soviet forces liberate Minsk
July24Soviet forces capture Majdanek extermination camp
in Poland
The Germans Post-Stalingrad
After the devastation of the Battle of Stalingrad, which
ended in February 1943,
the Soviets and Germans took more than four months to regroup. Though
forced to abandon the Caucasus region, the Germans continued to
hold the Ukraine, with their forces concentrated to the west of
the city of Kursk in western Russia. Hitler, determined
to avenge his humiliating defeat at Stalingrad, formulated a plan
known as Operation Citadel. Both the Germans and Soviets
built up heavy armor, artillery, and air forces prior to the attack.
The Soviets also created an incredible line of trenches, mines, and
anti-tank barriers to slow the Germans.
The Battle of Kursk
The clash between German and Soviet forces began on the
night of July 4, 1943, on
a 200-mile front with a total of roughly 5,000 tanks and 4,000 aircraft
in place—one of the largest armored conflicts in history. The
Germans proved surprisingly effective at removing and neutralizing
the Soviet minefields. After several days of escalation, the central
episode of the battle took place on July 12 at
the village of Prokhorovka, where nearly 2,000 tanks
clashed at once.
In sharp contrast to Stalingrad, the Battle of Kursk was
over in only a few weeks. By July 14,
Germany was in retreat, with the Soviets pursuing them close behind.
On August 5, the Soviets liberated the city
of Orel, which lay to the north of Kursk, closing another major
gap in the front. From this point forward, the USSR had the initiative
and commenced a long offensive push that would slowly drive the
Germans back to the west.
Soviet Victories in the Ukraine
During the late summer and autumn of 1943,
the Soviets advanced steadily, achieving a series of victories as
they pushed the Germans westward across the Ukraine.
The first major victory came on August 22,
when the Red Army retook the city of Kharkov. Meanwhile, the Germans
were planning the construction of a massive defensive wall all the
way from the Gulf of Finland in the north to the Sea of Azov in
the south. To be called the Panther Line, it was meant
to be analogous to the Atlantic Wall that the Germans were building
near Normandy, France (see The Allied Invasion
of France, p. 59). The wall
was never built, however, for the Soviets advanced too quickly for
the construction site to be held.
On September 25,
Stalin’s forces retook the city of Smolensk, which
was a keystone in Germany’s defense effort. Dnepropetrovsk fell
on October 25, followed
by the Ukrainian capital of Kiev on November 6.
Germany’s southern army group was now in full-scale retreat and
would be expelled from Soviet territory early in 1944.
The End of the Siege of Leningrad
The city of Leningrad, meanwhile, was still
starving under the crippling German siege that had begun all the
way back in September 1941 (see Kiev
and Leningrad, p. 30). The
city was completely encircled by German troops, aside from a sliver
of land that allowed access to nearby Lake Ladoga. Although the
situation for those trapped in the city was grim, Russians were
able to get some food and medical supplies into the city via trucks
driving across the frozen lake. The task was dangerous, as many
trucks fell victim to German shelling or broke through the ice and
sank, but the supplies helped Leningrad’s population endure the
Germans’ brutally long siege.
