What if the Russians Never found out about Zitadel plan?

If the Russian intelligence never uncovered the German plans to attack the Kursk salient, would the utcome have been different? Surely the Russians would not have been able to build all the anti-tank emplacements and trench systems they made to stop it. However, could the Russians bring up reserves enough to block the German advance and turn the ofensive into the "battle of the bulge" of the eastern front?

I know this is a general topic, but please feel free to tell what you think would've happened.

 

The Kursk salient was an obvious target to anyone who can read a map. I don't see how the Russians could miss that. The STAVKA had superlative intel and they knew exactly what was going on. They didn't chance to discover the Germans, they deduced it from such a gross quantity of intellegence that they had no doubt Kursk was gonna be "it".

 

Actually it was Stalin who wanted to attack first and Zhukov made him change his mind. So it was about to be a major Red Army offensive even if Stalin had found out about German plans.

Hitler once again underestimated the Red Army reserves and believed that even if the Zitadelle failed he would have 6-8 months time before the Red Army could start a major offensive.

 

According to John Keegan, Zeitzler, Chief of OKH was the culprit for the German defeat in this instance. Hitler was extremely consternated by the Zitadel Plan and far from enthusiastic of its execution, but after the debacle at Stalingrad he had lost the will to prevail over the OKH for the time being.

This theory meshs better with the fact that Hitler repeatedly delayed the assault, obstensibly because Panther tank production was behind schedual.

 

While the date and specific details might have been overlooked, with the amount of men and equipment which was being built in the area would have been hard to miss.

By this time both the Germans and the Russians knew where each others armies were (for the most part), the trick was to find out when, where and which army would move. With Germany lacking in men and materials at this time, the Red Army had a much easier time figuring out the German intentions. Not to mention that the Kursk salient was simply right for the picking.

 

Should have been hard to miss? It wasn't missed, I know it for a fact! =) The GRU was putting the entire sector under close surveillance and "destruction" teams had been dispatched to raid any ammo dump, bridge or rail in the area. STAVKA knew what was comming.

 

As far as i know that "lucy" played a bigger role than some give credit.

The Soviets learned through "Lucy" the entire plans of Citadel of when, where, by whom and the exact time of the expected Citadel offensive.

So much so that the Soviets launched their artillery bombardment minutes before the Germans and the game was up but Hitler as far as i know insisted that Citadel procede.

Soviets were by the information given were able to counter any move by the Germans and after that the Citadel Offensive was assured to fail.

Now we have the situation of where the Soviets did not know, let me clear this up for a moment, i mean that they knew that their was a very high chance of an offensive to reduce the Kursk Bulge but did not know in detail of what the Germans had in relation to the actual Operation Citadel.

They (the Soviets) did not get any information from "Lucy" so they did not know when, where, by whom and the exact time of the Artillery and Aerial attack and so many of the Soviets formations that were deployed in the OTL were in fact in this senario are still held in reserve or still arriving.

Soviets are taken completely by surprise and unlike Stalingrad, this is another Cauldron Battle basically out in the open where so far the Germans are very good at, the schwerpunkt of the German attacks are at the neck of the bulge and make good deep penetrations both in the North and South, Soviet comunications breakdown and confusion reigns supreme.

Within days i suspect it takes that long for the Soviets to regather themselves to launch any kind of Counter-Attack but it is too late as the neck of the Kursk Bulge is finally closed and a second envelopment is secured further east thus trapping the three Soviet Fronts located within the Kursk Pocket, then the Germans begin to launch a multi-pronged attack on all sides, the Germans in the east are able to blunt any attempt to releive any attempt at rescue.

Finally the trapped Soviet troops are further cut into smaller and smaller groups and within two weeks three Soviet Fronts are destroyed, all told something like 2 million Soviets are captured and thousands of artillery and tanks fall into German hands and is quickly begins to shipped to Italy, the blow to the Soviets is catastophic as a massive breech has now opened up and Germans now begin to pour into the breech in their hundreds of thousands.

The Soviets have their Stalingrad and now the Germans and their Axis allies have the momentum, panic spreads throughout the Front, both German and Axis forces roll along the front, while in the North the Finns and Germans relaunch their efforts, now whether the Axis can still win the war in the east is up for speculation.

v.R

 

This question makes no sense whatsoever. How on earth would someone not see 2,000,000 men and thousands of tanks? It was impossible not to see it plus, the STAVKA reserve behind the Russian lines was bigger than the German attack force so, even if the Soviets were all mute deaf and blind, the Germans would still have lost.



Cheers...

 

I beg to differ Miguel. Although such build up wasn't a total secret, the Soviet intelligence obtained exact date, time, location of the attack and where entire divisions would be attacking. Although the Russians came away with a crushing victory, the German army is commendable in breaching the salient to a degree and inflicting massive casualties to the Russians.

 

Yes, but the Russians could take it and replace losses, the Germans could not....

 

That is very true, but I was just pointing out that the question isn't totally pointless since the intel gathered by the spy ring was invaluable.

 

I don't understand why the Germans attacked Kursk in the first place. Why not somewhere else?

 

The point is there was no way the Soviets would fail to gather intellegence about this attack. The Luftwaffe had relocated to the west so red aircrafts ruled. Partisans stiffened by parachutists were everywhere in Ukraine to feed the Russians a steady flow of information, and foot patrols infilitrated the German build-up almost at will. The Soviets obtained the exact date and units used in the attack not by freak coincidence but by dominance in capability. The Germans did not penetrate the Kursk Salient to a degree that deviated from the Russian plan. The losses they inflicted on the Red Army was nothing compared to what they sustained themselves because Russia could afford to lose whole rifle divisions, the Germans could not risk attrition to their more valuable panzer and panzer grenadier divisions. Remember, the whole thing was a set up to draw the Germans in before Zhukov and Vatutin let slip their dogs of war.

 

There was nothing else to attack. The Germans had no reserves for a strategic offensive so the objective became inflicting maximum damage on the Soviets to disrupt their anticipated winter attack. Time was not on the German side so they had to continue to kill Russians, or they would be overwhelmed.

 

Shorten the front line and destroy several Soviet armies at the same time.

For instance the Germans had evacuated the Rzhev salient ( Towards Moscow ) ca. march-april 1943 to be able to release reserve troops for the Zitadelle and at the same time shorten the front line remarkably. This was of course very much against Hitler´s wishes but he did put the Kursk sector No 1 at that moment.

 

They would have been fools to think the Germans would NOT try to "shorten" the lines.

For once & for all to finally defeat the Red Horde was all the Germans thought.

The Germans figured the Russians were scrapping the man-power pool by the early parts of summer 1943.