The worst was in the northwest. Having punctured German defenses at Ulianovo, Soviet units, if left unchecked, threatened to cave in the entire Orel salient, trapping considerable German forces. Despite their initial success, however, the Soviets proved unable to translate their break-in into an operational breakthrough. The Germans had constructed an extensive defense in depth in the salient, with the result that, in many areas, Soviet attacks breached a thinly held position only to lurch forward into a strongpoint, where their offensive momentum was shattered. The decisive role here was played by the German panzer units; within the first two weeks, the Soviet attackers had lost well over half their tanks. These local triumphs allowed the Germans to slow, if not stop, the enemy advance, a circumstance that forced Hitler to relent on his customary stand-firm orders. Model, on his own initiative, took steps to conduct an elastic defense, justifying his actions by claiming that they corresponded to the spirit of the Führer’s orders. Confronted with a series of faits accomplis, Hitler on 22 July validated Model’s actions. At the same time, work had begun on the Hagen position, a line of field fortifications at the base of the Orel salient designed to stabilize the situation and, by shortening the front, free troops both to form a reserve and to be transferred to Italy, which had assumed an “absolute priority” for the Führer.89
On 1 August, then, Model’s elastic defense gave way to a skillful withdrawal executed under extraordinarily adverse circumstances, not least because German troops had been ordered to destroy infrastructure as they pulled back. The Russians not only kept up steady pressure on Model’s forces but also increased their activities elsewhere. Soviet partisans had already been active in the Orel area, in the last two weeks of July blowing up numerous rail lines in support of the offensive, but, on 3 August, over 100,000 partisans launched an extensive, coordinated operation aimed at nothing less than crippling supply into all of Army Group Center. The damage done to the rail network was so extensive that, from the fourth to the sixth, rail traffic was effectively halted. To restore order, already scarce German units had to be sent to the rear to fight the partisans. Then, on the seventh, the Soviets launched an attack to the north of the Orel salient against the Fourth Army that, although generally unsuccessful, forced Model to transfer units to his neighbor. Nonetheless, by 16 August, Model had completed his retreat to the Hagen position, where all Soviet attempts to break through were repulsed at such heavy cost that the Stavka had no choice but to end its assaults. Soviet casualties had been staggering. In little more than a month of fighting, the Red Army lost, according to official figures, almost 430,000 men (112,259 dead and missing) and nearly 2,600 armored vehicles, numbers that are almost certainly too low. German losses totaled a little over 86,000 casualties (25,515 dead and missing) and perhaps 343 armored vehicles. Even taking the official figures, the Soviets’ losses ran at a ratio five to one and eight to one, respectively, against which their failure to achieve a decisive operational breakthrough, let alone the destruction of German forces in the Orel salient, must have been a bitter disappointment. For the Germans, the withdrawal to the Hagen position meant the freeing up of some nineteen divisions (eleven infantry, five panzer, and three panzergrenadier) for use elsewhere on the front.90
That these divisions would be needed had been apparent since 3 August, when the Red Army opened its first summer offensive in the Belgorod-Kharkov area. Once again, the main goal was not just the destruction of German armies (in this case, the Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf as well as the First Panzer Army and the Sixth Army, to be trapped against the Black Sea coast) but the shattering of the entire German position in southern Russia. As at Orel, the Soviets had assembled an overwhelming force of over 1 million men and 2,400 tanks supported by 1,311 aircraft. Ominously for the defenders, the Fourth Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf were mere shadows of the units they had been in July, forced to transfer most of their tank strength to Model in the north. Together, they could muster between them only 237 operational armored vehicles, fewer than 800 aircraft (for all of Army Group South), and perhaps 175,000 men to fend off an enemy that seemed again to have arisen from the dead. With a ten-to-one advantage across the board, the Soviets opened the offensive in the early morning hours of the third with a massive three-hour aerial and artillery bombardment, followed by an assault of massed tanks that swept away the German defenders. On the first day, Soviet spearheads advanced fifteen miles, while, on the evening of the fifth, the Germans were forced to abandon Belgorod, a key pillar of their defense. By the seventh, the enemy had opened a thirty-mile gap between Hoth and Kempf and seemed, for the first time, in a position to exploit a real operational breakthrough.91
The German leadership reacted with skill and alacrity to this new crisis. Not only were units transferred back to Manstein (the Fourth Panzer Army received the Twenty-fourth Panzer Corps, the Seventh Panzer, the Tenth Panzergrenadier, and Grossdeutschland Divisions, while Kempf was strengthened by the addition of the Third Panzer Division as well as the Third Panzer Corps with Das Reich, Totenkopf, and SS Panzergrenadier Division Viking), but plans made to pinch off the Soviet breakthrough. On 12 August, the Third Panzer Corps launched a counterattack and cut off and destroyed a number of Soviet units in a series of engagements in which the enemy again suffered appalling tank losses. In order to close the gap between them, the Twenty-fourth Panzer Corps, attacking from the north, and the Third Panzer Corps, moving from the south, struck simultaneously on 18 August and, by the evening of the twentieth, closed a weak ring around a large part of the Sixth Guards Army and the Twenty-seventh Army. Although the shocked Soviet units suffered considerable losses, the Germans proved unable to prevent many of the trapped forces escaping to the east.92
Nor were they able to prevent the loss of Kharkov in the fourth and final battle for the key Ukrainian industrial city. The German forces defending the city were so weak—the two infantry regiments of the 168th Infantry Division, for example, had only 260 men between them, while the Sixth Panzer Division could boast of only six tanks—that Kempf had already warned that the city could not be held. For his crime of pointing to reality, Kempf was sacked on 16 August, with his unit renamed the Eighth Army. Still, without reinforcements, the new designation meant nothing, and Kempf’s replacement, General Otto Wöhler, quickly demanded that the city be evacuated. Hitler, fearing the loss of this prestige object, nonetheless ordered Kharkov “to be held under all circumstances,” prompting Manstein, pondering the loss of six divisions for vague political reasons, to comment, “I would rather lose a city than an army.” In the event, the field marshal got his wish, for, on the eighteenth, even the Führer bowed to reality and gave permission for the city to be abandoned, if necessary, although he urged that it be held for a few more days. On the twenty-second, faced with a catastrophic situation, Manstein finally gave approval to evacuate Kharkov during the night. The next day, enemy troops streamed into the ruined city as the prize of the offensive, but, with its seizure, their drive to the west largely ended.93