1943 Campaign AAR: The turn of the tides (German Perspective)

[jonhgalt28943]

Hi everyone,

I’m starting a new AAR based on the 1943 campaign in War in the East 2, playing as the Germans against William Robertson. The “main” AAR will be written in Spanish, but I’ll use this thread to post an english version, mainly translated by Chat GPT over the original file.

The game is active and ongoing; this is not a retrospective or a theory-crafting exercise. Moves are being played, mistakes are being made, and what you’ll see here is the campaign as it unfolds. However, the written updates here will necessarily lag behind the actual game: I need a buffer of turns to write, translate, and shape the material into something coherent, so what you read will always be a bit behind the live state of the campaign.

Unlike many AARs, this will not be a full, turn-by-turn top-down report of everything I’m doing. Instead, I’ll be telling the story of the campaign through the eyes of different characters who are part of it: staff officers, field commanders, logistics people, front-line infantry. From their limited perspective you’ll be able to infer what’s happening on the wider front, but they will not always see (or understand) the entire picture.

Below is the author’s note that sets the tone of the project:

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Author’s note

What follows is not a linear story, nor a grand narrative told from above. It is a file reconstructed from fragments: parts of operations, diary entries, censored letters, conversations remembered many years later, and the cold bookkeeping of a War in the East 2 game, where every counter that vanishes means a unit that no longer exists.

There is no single voice. At times a staff major speaks over a map full of pins; at others, a panzer commander from inside his own exhaustion; a railway officer who sees only numbers and wagons; a grenadier who doesn’t understand the arrows, but does understand who didn’t come back from the last Gegenstoß. Each of them looks at the same front in different weeks of 1943, and none of them sees the whole picture.

The experiment is this: to play on the German side while leaving ideology and the cult of “will” out of it, and to make decisions as a staff that only wants to preserve combat capability and operational position would. Where real history issued suicidal orders, here there will be withdrawals; where armies were sacrificed for pride, here I will try to save what can be saved.

I do not claim to discover “what really would have happened”, but to explore how long a Wehrmacht can hold out when it is run as a military machine and not as an instrument of myth. The gaps are filled with reasonable operational conjectures, dictated by the logic of the game and by a cold reading of the war.

If any part sounds too tidy, bear in mind that under every decision there are several men arguing around a map, without knowing that, in another time and another medium, someone will follow them turn by turn to see whether, for once, military logic can achieve something other than collapse.
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I’ll post the first excerpts and campaign notes as the 1943 struggle against William’s forces develops turn by turn, always with that small delay between the real game and what appears here in the thread.

[jonhgalt28943]

Prologue: The Day the Wehrmacht Decided to Breathe
Chronicle of a Major of the 4th Panzer Army
Obersalzberg, Summer 1943

The Ju 52 touched down at Salzburg with a dry bounce. The fuselage shuddered for a few seconds and then everything fell into that strange airfield silence of wartime, where the engines fall quiet but the anxiety does not.

We went down the metal ramp: first von Manstein, then von Kluge, a small group of staff officers from Army Group South... and me, a major of the 4th Panzer Army, clutching the folder of plans under my arm as if it were a weapon.

A low, discreet convoy was waiting for us: a command Horch and two Kübelwagen behind it. Manstein and Kluge would ride alone in the first. We were sent to the second vehicle.

As we climbed the road that wound up toward the Obersalzberg, the mist snagged on the pine woods like artillery smoke that refused to disperse. From my seat I could barely see the back of Manstein’s neck, rigid, inclined toward Kluge.

I could hear part of their conversation. They did not raise their voices, but every sentence weighed like a casualty report.

“Günther,” said Manstein, “before we arrive I want one thing clear. If by some miracle he behaves like a rational commander today... would you be willing to ease up?”

Von Kluge took his time to answer.

“It is not a question of easing up,” he said at last. “We have let too many chances go by to stop this in time. The only thing I want to see is how hard he clings on once he understands that reality no longer fits on his maps.”

“He’ll take refuge in the big words,” growled Manstein. “‘Destiny’, ‘treason’, ‘will’. Always the same artillery. What matters is what we do once he starts firing it.”

The road narrowed. The valley lay below, covered in a milky haze.

“And about Kursk?” asked Kluge. “Do you think he understands what it means to push there now, with the enemy waiting?”

Manstein looked toward the forest, expressionless.

“No. For him, II SS Panzer Corps is some kind of talisman. He doesn’t see that we’re hanging it out on the tip of a salient already preregistered by their artillery. But he has a right to have us tell him that to his face. After that, what happens will no longer depend on him.”

The convoy slowed. Ahead, the white silhouette of the Berghof emerged, with its terraces and its impossible façade, half Alpine hotel, half personal altar.

“The only thing that worries me now,” added Kluge, lower, “is whether our own men will understand that today we are not here to ask for an audience, Erich. We are here to change the way this war is fought.”

“If they don’t understand it today,” replied Manstein, “there won’t be another chance to explain it.”

On the Berghof’s forecourt the guard of the SS-Leibstandarte was waiting for us. Black uniforms, immaculate, perfectly aware of whom they were protecting.

The officer in command stepped forward.

“Heil Hitler,” he intoned, formal, almost mechanical. “Identification, please.”

We handed over our credentials. After the first round of courtesies, a small detail set off my radar: beyond the building, on the service road, I saw the snout of an Sd.Kfz. 251 with different camouflage. Not SS. Heer. And on the sleeve, clear as day, the cuff title: Großdeutschland.

The plan was moving.

The SS officer was taking longer than reasonable with the documents. He looked up.

“We were informed of a restricted meeting,” he said. “The presence of so many staff officers was not foreseen.”

Von Kluge smiled without a trace of humor.

“The war wasn’t foreseen like this either,” he answered. “But here we are.”

While they argued, the Großdeutschland half-track advanced along the side road with studied slowness. The rifle platoon jumped down: M35 helmets, worn leather webbing, MP 40s hanging low, Heer insignia clearly visible. The NCO in charge headed straight for the secondary entrance of the building, with a messenger from Zeitzler at the front.

The SS officer stepped out to intercept them.

“Stop that platoon,” he ordered his men. “No one enters the inner sector armed without authorization from the Leibstandarte.”

The Großdeutschland NCO did not even slow his pace.

“Authorization from OKH,” he shot back, pointing to the messenger. “Order from the Chief of the Army General Staff: extraordinary relief of internal security.”

In a matter of seconds, the packed snow of the entrance filled with crossed rifles. Kar 98s pointing at MP 40s, black helmets facing grey-green ones. There were about ten meters of frozen air between both groups, loaded with powder and pride.

I saw one of the SS men, very young, his jaw tight, unconsciously measuring distances. One twitch of a finger was enough to turn the Berghof into a trap.

The OKH messenger stepped forward, raising an envelope stamped with the seal of the General Staff.

“Written order,” he shouted. “Internal change of guard. The Leibstandarte maintains the outer perimeter. The Heer takes over the interior for service reasons.”

The SS officer hesitated. In that regime, the right piece of paper could weigh more than forty magazines.

He took one step, took the envelope, opened it under everyone’s eyes. He read quickly. His eyes clouded.

He looked at the Großdeutschland men, then at us, then at the building.

“Very well,” he said at last, his voice tight. “The outer perimeter remains the responsibility of the Leibstandarte. The interior passes to the Army.”

He made a sharp gesture. The weapons lowered a few degrees. They were not at rest. Just... suspended.

The Großdeutschland men moved down the corridor, hugging the walls, passing between the SS without brushing them. You could feel that electricity that appears when two armed sides cross and both know that one of them has just lost part of its power.

As he passed by me, the Großdeutschland NCO murmured without looking at me:

“All set, Herr Major. From here on, if a shot goes off, it’ll be inside, not outside.”

We were led to an anteroom. Zeitzler and von Tresckow were there, looking as if they had aged five years in five days.

Zeitzler shook our hands without protocol.

“The inner guard is ours,” he reported. “If he decides to resist, he is not leaving here wearing a commander-in-chief’s uniform.”

Von Tresckow signaled to me.

“Did you bring the annexes? Kursk, Donbass, Kerch, Volkhov...”

“They’re all in here,” I said, lifting the folder. “Figures for combat-ready strength, percentages of operational armor, fuel stocks, division density per kilometer of front, estimates of Soviet reserves around the salient and east of Kharkov.”

“Perfect,” he replied. “Today, at last, we’re going to talk about war as war, not as liturgy.”

An aide opened the door to the conference room.

“The Führer will see you now.”

When the door swung open, the room was already heavy with tension.

Hitler was by the window, not posing, but leaning on the sill like a man who has spent too long standing in the same spot. The map of the East covered almost the entire central table: the Kursk salient marked in red, pencil lines hardened from being traced over so many times, pins with little flags that pretended to show control we no longer had, not even in the daily reports.

He turned when he heard us enter. The smile he tried to force was more a movement of the jaw than of the eyes.

“Ah... Manstein. Kluge,” he said. “The East in person. I suppose you bring good news about Citadel.”

No one rushed to perform the regulation salute. We walked up to the table, each of us taking his place almost by habit. I ended up one step behind Manstein, the folder resting against my side. You could hear the fire, the ticking of the clock, and nothing else.

Manstein did not sit down. He did not ask for the floor. He simply spoke.

“My Führer,” he said, “if we start by pretending there is ‘good news’, we deceive ourselves from the first sentence. We have not come to discuss the angle of an attack or the day for H-hour. We have come to talk about how this war is being conducted.”

Hitler narrowed his eyes, as if he had not expected the first shot to be that direct.

“What exactly are you implying?” he asked, his voice still contained. “I am the Supreme Commander. The people have given me...”

Von Kluge cut him off, without raising his voice but without leaving him any room.

“The army also gave you something,” he said. “Its divisions, its corps, its army groups. And the army considers that the current conduct has lost contact with the actual situation. When that happens, fronts don’t bend, my Führer. They burst.”

Hitler looked at him as if he had heard an insolence from a captain, not a field marshal.

Zeitzler, silent until then, stepped up to the table. He laid a folder in front of Hitler. The scrape of cardboard on wood sounded louder than it was.

“Assessment by the Army General Staff,” he said, dryly. “Proposal for a reorganization of command. Operational and strategic conduct is to be concentrated in OKH, under a professional command. Political decisions remain yours. The orders that reach the divisions do not.”

Hitler opened the folder without sitting down. He read standing, the sheet half a handspan from his face. We saw him pass a line, go back, reread. Color began to creep up his neck, first to his ears, then to his forehead.

“What is this?” he asked at last, without looking up. “A piece of paper for you to hide behind? A comfortable ‘coup’ from behind a desk?”

Von Tresckow spoke then, with a calm that was not coldness but exhaustion.

“There is nothing comfortable about this, my Führer,” he answered. “This is not a salon gesture. It is a reaction to something very simple: our front is bleeding out. Men, matériel, cadres. Either we keep grinding them down with the same orders... or we try to save what’s left by changing the way those orders are given.”

This time there was no solemn silence, just a few seconds of interior noise: breathing, an ember dropping in the fireplace, the faint crackle of the map as it shifted.

Then Hitler exploded.

“Treason!” he spat. “Exactly the same as in eighteen! The same generals, the same poison! I conceived Barbarossa, I gave Ukraine back to the Reich, I...!”

Manstein cut him off without brusqueness, but without letting him breathe.

“And you also left 6th Army inside Stalingrad,” he said. “And now you intend to play the same card at Kursk, only with tanks. Against an enemy who is no longer the one from ’41, with reserves we do not have, and with a front our railways and fuel lines cannot sustain.”

He leaned forward just enough to look him straight in the eye.

“So let’s leave the speeches aside. I want to speak to you in the only language war does not argue with: numbers.”

He took the folder from my hands without looking at me, opened it, pulled out the first annex and spread it on the map, covering part of the red salient. The paper smoothed out under a quick gesture.

“First point, and it is non-negotiable,” he said. “Citadel will not be launched. It is cancelled.”

Hitler stared at the map as if he had not heard correctly.

“Cancelled...?” he repeated, more to himself than to us. “It is the decisive blow! II SS Panzer Corps is ready, they are our best divisions, our...!”

Von Kluge cut him off before his tone could rise.

“Precisely for that reason,” he said. “Because they are the last thing we have that resembles a real hammer. And you do not throw a hammer against a wall the enemy has been reinforcing for months. You keep it for when the wall cracks.”

Manstein braced his knuckles on the table, on the edge of the Kursk salient.

“Listen to the logic, not the pride,” he said. “If we renounce Citadel, the question is not ‘what do we lose’, but ‘what can we save’. And the only thing that can still change the equation in the East is not a frontal blow, but how we use what little armored strength we have left.”

He pointed to the south of the salient with the tip of his pencil, tracing an arc from Belgorod toward the Donbass and the Sea of Azov.

“We are going to concentrate the bulk of the tanks in 4th Panzer Army under Hoth. Not scattered everywhere, but forged into a single instrument. That army will cease to be a paper formation and become what it should have been from the start: the mobile backbone between the southern face of Kursk and the Donbass, closing the line all the way to Taganrog.”

Hitler frowned.

“A panzer army on the defensive...?” he said, spitting out the word as if it tasted of rust.

“A defense that breathes,” replied Manstein. “Hoth will have the armored mass to turn that front into something other than a continuous trench. Infantry in the lines, yes, but with 4th Panzer Army behind them as elastic muscle: it pulls back when pressure demands it, then tightens and strikes when the enemy has overextended.”

He ran his fingernail over a point on the map.

“Inside that arrangement we slot in the entire II SS Panzer Corps. All its divisions. But from today on it answers to the Heer, not to party whims. Hausser retains tactical command, because he knows how to handle those men, but his chain of orders runs through OKH. No Himmler, no fantasies of a ‘personal guard of the Führer’ when it comes to deciding where those tanks die.”

I spoke up, pointing to the stretch I knew by heart: the Kupyansk–Slavyansk–Yama axis, that corridor of rolling ground and minor rivers climbing from the Donets northwards.

“In this area,” I said, “the terrain kills us if we insist on a rigid defense. There are too many approaches: the Oskol and Donets valleys, railway junctions like Kupyansk, roads that let the enemy deploy wide. Given the lay of the land, if I were Zhukov I would try to come right through here: push between Kupyansk and Yama, break the line and then turn, either south to cut off the Donbass, or west to take our positions around Kharkov in flank.”

Zeitzler nodded.

“That is why Hoth and Hausser are not going to sit on the front line,” he added. “The first line will be held by the infantry, with the entrenchments that already exist, with their minefields and artillery positions. The task of 4th Panzer Army will be something else: let them in, wear the enemy down and counterattack when he is stretched and his supply columns are hanging in the air.”

Manstein translated it into something even a politician could understand:

“Think of a steel spring, my Führer. If you weld it to the floor, the first heavy blow snaps it. If you anchor it but let it travel, it absorbs the impact and then gives some of the force back. Our defense in the south will be that spring. Not holding every village as if it were a cathedral, but yielding ground when it makes sense, in exchange for preserving whole divisions to keep fighting.”

Hitler pressed his lips together.

“And the rest of the front?” he asked. “Are you going to dismantle half the Army to play at elasticity?”

Zeitzler moved his pencil toward the center of the map, around Smolensk.

“No,” he replied. “We’re going to impose order for the first time in two years. The units we don’t fit into 4th Panzer Army will be grouped under Walter Model’s 9th Army. He will cover the central sector, around Smolensk, Roslavl, Yelnya. It is the natural corridor toward Moscow and one of the few areas where we still have some depth of positions. Model knows how to defend, and he knows how to make every meter cost the enemy a regiment.”

He paused, then underlined with his nail the area north of Smolensk, toward Vitebsk.

“His task will be simple: hold that center like a pivot. While the south breathes and pulls back when it must, the center holds, anchors, and buys time for our reserves to move. If the center breaks, the entire game of elastic defense in the south collapses, because there will be nothing to fall back on.”

Von Kluge leaned over the Velikiye Luki sector, north of Smolensk, almost at the edge of the map.

“And up here,” he said, “is where the new panzer reserves still coming from Germany will go in. We’ll organize them under XIV Panzer Corps, with Walther Nehring in command. And we’ll place them around Velikiye Luki.”

Hitler frowned.

“Velikiye Luki? Why there? It’s a secondary point.”

“Secondary in speeches, vital on the rails,” Kluge shot back. “That zone is a stopper poor in natural defenses. No great river to serve as a moat, no mountain range, no endless swamp. It’s an awkward plain. If the Soviets break through here, they wake up sitting on top of the railway line that runs from the Daugava to Pskov and then to Leningrad. If they break that axis, Army Group North gets fed by the spoonful.”

I finished the thought:

“Nehring will have his tanks concentrated to act like a short gate: if the Russians push toward Velikiye Luki, we’re not going to put a concrete wall there, because we don’t have one. We’re going to put a hinge. You let the attack open the door a little and, when the enemy is halfway through, you slam the leaf on him with the panzers in a flank counterattack. If the door holds, we still have trains reaching Pskov. If we fail there, the North is a patient without a drip.”

Hitler looked at the northern edge of the map, where Leningrad showed like a frozen scar.

“And Leningrad?” he asked, with a mix of pride and obsession. “You plan to abandon the siege just when we almost...”

Manstein cut him off with undisguised coldness.

“Leningrad is a luxury we can no longer pay for in divisions,” he said. “16th and 18th Army are buried there, holding a city we can no longer take and the enemy will not lose. The only thing that pincer does now is fix troops in place. We’re going to start dismantling it bit by bit: regiments, then divisions, reserves first, then line units. We’ll send them south, where every regiment we add to the line buys one more day with the Donbass in our hands.”

Von Tresckow added, almost in a whisper:

“I’m not talking about leaving a hole, my Führer. I’m talking about thinning the siege down to the minimum acceptable. Less artillery, fewer static infantry staring at a lake, more men where it will truly be decided whether the German Army continues to exist as a coherent force. Leningrad will still be there inside. We can no longer afford to all stand outside watching.”

Hitler did not answer. His gaze wandered from the north to the south of the map as if the scale had suddenly grown immense.

I passed over the last batch of documents: sketch maps of positions, trench lines, aerial photographs.

“There is one thing that plays in our favor,” I said, “and it’s ironic. All those absurd orders of ‘not one step back’ that have tormented us these last two years have left something useful behind: layers of entrenchments. What used to be a sentence can now be a structure. We have old lines in front, intermediate lines and deep lines. If we stop insisting on dying in the first one, we can use them as steps.”

Manstein nodded.

“Exactly. In this first phase we are not going to improvise positions in the mud. We are going to use what already exists: trenches, bunkers, wire, minefields. The first line will hold as long as it makes sense. When the pressure becomes unsustainable, it will fall back to the second, leaving behind broken ground, emptied villages, blown bridges. And while the enemy advances through ruins, our panzer units behind him will be intact, ready to sink their teeth in when his spearhead has pulled too far ahead of his belly.”

He fell silent for a second, searching for the words.

“A rigid defense is a man standing still taking punches until he collapses. An elastic defense is a boxer on the ropes: he swallows punishment, yes, but he makes the opponent tire, open up, expose himself... and then he lands a single blow, placed where it hurts. In military terms: you sacrifice kilometers of map, not entire battalions.”

Zeitzler finished it off in his General Staff tone:

“In short: the south will breathe with 4th Panzer Army and II SS Panzer Corps as the mobile mass between Kursk and Taganrog; the center will anchor around Smolensk with 9th Army; the center-north will have its ‘teeth’ at Velikiye Luki under Nehring to protect the Daugava–Pskov–Leningrad artery; and the North, around Leningrad, will slim down to feed the sectors where everything will really be decided. We don’t gain ground with this. We gain time, cohesion, and the ability to keep hitting.”

There was no heroism or epic in the room. There was the bluntness of a surgeon explaining how many limbs must be amputated so that the patient does not die that same night.

Hitler looked at the map, but it was already clear that he was looking at it like a man whose language is being changed in front of his eyes. For years the war had been, for him, arrows pointing forward. Now we were talking to him about curves bending backward, springs that flex, lungs that open and close.

I, a major of 4th Panzer Army, understood in that moment what Manstein’s words at the start really implied: we would not launch Citadel. Instead, we were going to do something much harder to sell in speeches and much more honest before the graves: try to stop the army from shattering pointlessly and make it start, for the first time in a long time, to fight like a war machine and not like a cult.

Everything you are going to play out on the map—the withdrawals from the salient, the counterattacks around Kupyansk, the desperate defenses near Velikiye Luki, the divisions torn out of Leningrad and sent south—comes from this conversation, from this moment in the Berghof when the Wehrmacht decides, at last, to do something brutally simple and brutally difficult:

To stop dying for ideas
and start killing or surviving
according to military judgment.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

Really enjoyed that - very impressive writing!

Good to see an AAR from one of the later campaign dates as well.

[jonhgalt28943]

Really enjoyed that - very impressive writing!

Good to see an AAR from one of the later campaign dates as well.

Very happy to see that someone actually enjoyed it! I will be posting updates soon!

[jonhgalt28943]

Chapter 1: Maskirovka

DONETS BEND
Diary of a sergeant of 1. Kompanie, 46. Infanterie-Division
Donets Front, summer 1943

7 August 1943, Donets bend, near Izium
Twenty-five days since they cancelled Citadel.

I write the date and, underneath, the tally that has already become automatic: 25 days since they ordered us to stop. Since the great offensive towards Kursk deflated like a burst tire.

I am still a sergeant in 1. Kompanie, 46. Infanterie-Division, now stuck to XXXX Panzer Corps like a scab that is hard to peel off. For almost a month we have been nailed to the western bank of the Donets, opposite Izium, with no movements other than night patrols and guard reliefs.

The ironic thing is that, on paper, this has been our “best” month since the war began: hardly any attacks, just a few stray shots, an odd mortar round, Soviet artillery testing its aim from time to time. A month of rest at the front, they say.

But rest in the front line does not exist. Only waiting exists.

And here, waiting has become heavier than any bombardment.

Before ending up in this stretch of the Donets, the 46th had gone through almost every landscape a man can learn to hate: first the open steppes where the sun smashes the back of your neck and there is nowhere to hide; then Crimea, with that sticky heat and endless slopes; later the Kuban, with its salty mud and the positions changing hands twice a week. Always retreating, always regrouping, always burying someone we knew by name and favourite joke.

When we were ordered to march north, following the Donets line, someone said out loud in the column:

—At least there is a river here. If we die, they can throw us into the water.

No one laughed.

Now, from the trench, I see that river like a slow snake at the bottom of the slope. The far bank is low, with patches of woods and half-burned villages. The Soviets are supposed to be there, but for almost a month they have not moved in earnest. Their flares appear at night, their mortars cough from time to time, some sniper gets enthusiastic at dawn… and little more.

This has been the first month since I crossed the border in ’41 in which the infantry has something that resembles rest: same positions, same holes, no orders to attack, no orders to run out in the middle of the night. But instead of relaxing us, it is gnawing at us from the inside.

The men do not know what to do with the absence of a big battle. They use it to think. And thinking is dangerous.

The August heat falls on the Donets like a damp blanket. The black soil of the embankment cracks wherever we have not covered it with tarps. The dry mud of the trench wall gets under fingernails and between teeth. We have spent a month enlarging shelters, reinforcing parapets, moving the heavy machine guns “in case they have our coordinates.” A month of shovels, planks and sandbags.

Yet nobody really feels safer.

That morning I was sitting on an empty ammo crate, checking the section lists for the umpteenth time, when I heard Lieutenant Mertens’ boots coming along the duckboard.

—How is 1. Kompanie doing, Sergeant? —he asked, stepping down into the pit where we kept the map table, if you can call two crates together a table.

—Working, sir —I replied—. They have been digging the same hole for a month. If we go on like this, we will end up coming out on the French side of the front.

He barely smiled and leaned against the dirt wall, looking east, where the tree line marked the river’s course.

—A month —he repeated—. Who would have told us that in May.

A high-pitched drone made us look up. Three Bf 109s crossed the sky in open formation, coming from the west and following the Donets towards Izium. They carried no bombs. They flew at medium altitude, low enough for us to see the glint of the canopies, high enough not to be bothered by rifles.

—Another reconnaissance patrol —I murmured—. We have been seeing them pass like that for weeks. Always in small groups. They look, turn and leave.

—We are not the only ones watching —said Mertens.

He sat on the ammo crate, took out cigarettes, lit one and handed me another.

—Sir —I took the chance—. We have been like this for almost a month. Since they cancelled Citadel, everyone said the Russians would fall on us as soon as they stopped us. That they would cross the Donets with everything. That south of Izium this would be hell. And look: nothing. Stray shots, some patrol attempt that our MGs stop, and little more. The men are nervous. It is as if the enemy were holding its breath. What the hell are they waiting for?

The lieutenant took a second before answering, as if arranging the words in his head.

—It is not only about what they are waiting for —he said at last—. It is also about what each side prepares for the other to see… or not see.

I looked at him sideways.

—That sounds like staff talk, sir. Down here all we see is that nothing is happening and that it makes us tenser every day. It is the first time since ’41 that we have almost a month with the same trench, the same sector and no serious attack. Some of them shake more now than when we charged Soviet positions.

Mertens blew a puff of smoke towards the log roof.

—And I am not surprised. The body is used to noise. When everything is booming, you only think of moving, shooting, not dying in that minute. But this… —he pointed at the silence, broken only by a distant shot— …this leaves you too much room in your head.

He leaned towards the trench opening, from which you could see the gentle slope down to the Donets. In the distance, the far bank looked asleep.

—Look to the left —he told me—. Have you been recently to the neighbouring battalion’s sector?

I nodded.

—I was there last night. Their trenches are a joke. No depth, barely any shelters, two anti-tank guns that look like they were taken from a museum, and half the men are new, with boots still stiff. If I were Russian, I would cross the river right there.

—They have seen it too —Mertens replied—. I am sure their observers have that sector circled in red on their maps. And that is the point: is it really a weak spot… or do we want it to look like a weak spot?

I frowned.

—Are you telling me that is bait?

—I am telling you that, at this point in the war, everyone is trying to fool everyone —he shot back—. Us, them, High Command, even those who write the reports for the radio. Maskirovka, the Russians call it. Deception. Disguise. They have been doing it to us for a year, and they are getting better.

Upstream, far away, there was a dull rumble of artillery that was not aimed at us. Another sector was bleeding today.

—I thought the Soviets solved everything with mass —I admitted—. Tanks, infantry, more tanks. That they hit us everywhere and one blow would break through.

—That was at the beginning —said Mertens—. But they learn. Now they hide their concentrations in woods by the Donets, move artillery only at night, camouflage their makeshift bridges with branches… And, most unsettling of all: they also know how to wait.

He looked straight at me.

—Put yourself in their place, Sergeant. You are the general on the other side of the river. You know we have exhausted our best divisions in Citadel. You know there are sectors, like ours, plugged with worn-out infantry that has gone three years without rest. And, for the first time, you have time to choose where and when to hit. Do you strike now, improvising, or do you take a month to concentrate everything you can in an area where our planes and observers see little?

I lowered my gaze to the Donets. The surface of the water shone like dirty pewter.

—An area… with woods, big villages, river bends, natural smoke —I followed his idea—. Where, from the air, you cannot easily count how many tanks and guns there are.

—Exactly —he nodded—. Here, in our sector, the terrain is open. Good field of fire, relatively easy to watch. Further north, towards Izium, things get tangled. More bridges, more woods, more hills that block the view. If I were them, I would concentrate my armies there, and in the meantime I would keep some activity here so that you keep digging, tiring yourselves… and wondering when the blow will fall.

I sighed.

—And the men interpret this “rest” as a strange calm, as if a storm were gathering.

—Because it is —Mertens said plainly—. Being still for a month does not mean the danger is smaller. It means something bigger is being cooked up. That month without movement is part of the attack. It wears us down in a different way.

A corporal appeared at the top of the wooden ladder.

—Herr Leutnant, replacements have arrived at battalion headquarters. They say they have come from Kharkov. One of them swears he saw Großdeutschland cuff titles on the platform.

Mertens raised an eyebrow.

—We are coming —he replied, and the corporal disappeared.

I looked at him.

—We have been hearing the same thing for weeks —I said—. That Großdeutschland is behind us reorganising, that it will plug the gaps on the Donets, that they have sent it to Italy… Now these new ones say they saw its standards from the train, in the distance.

The lieutenant shrugged.

—Großdeutschland is perfect for rumours —he remarked—. Everyone wants to believe it is behind us, that it will come to save the sector just when the Russians attack. It is a way of calming themselves. Another kind of maskirovka, this time turned inward.

He smiled, wearily.

—But what I do know is that, even if there were a whole guard division behind us, up here in front it is just us, your 1. Kompanie, and a month of ditches.

I stayed silent for a moment, listening to the drip of a badly closed canteen in the shelter next door.

—Then, sir —I asked—, why do they not attack already? If they were ready, with their reserves in place, what else would they be waiting for?

—They could be finishing off the details —he replied—. Adjusting bridges over the Donets, moving wagons of ammunition to stations our planes have not located, redistributing their tank brigades. Or they could simply be waiting for the moment when we, after a month of calm, loosen up. A guard less attentive, a sector that stops digging, a mortar that remains without camouflage… In the end, an offensive does not begin on the day of the bombardment. It begins in weeks like this, when they anaesthetise us.

In the afternoon, the fighters returned. This time they were accompanied by a higher, solitary aircraft, perhaps a long-range reconnaissance machine. They followed the Donets, traced a circle over some point towards Izium and disappeared to the west.

A soldier from my section, Meyer, later came looking for me, sweaty and with bright eyes.

—Herr Feldwebel, the new men say the train was full of elite units. That they saw black and white standards on another platform. That this sector will soon be reinforced.

—Let them talk, Meyer —I told him—. As long as they talk, they keep digging, don’t they?

He nodded and left, a little calmer.

When the sun began to set, the Donets turned the colour of old steel. The shadows of the trees on the far bank seemed denser, as if they were hiding something that had not been there before.

I thought about what the lieutenant had said: a month of almost total “rest” at the front is not a gift, it is a phase of the fight. The body rests a little, yes, but the mind tightens more each day. Every night without an attack makes the next night more frightening. Every day without an enemy offensive makes the imagination fill the silence with invisible tank columns.

Twenty-five days since the cancellation of Citadel.

We have not

[jonhgalt28943]

Chapter 3: Orel
Chronicle of a General Staff officer of the 9th Army
Headquarters of the Ninth Army, summer of 1943

9 August 1943, Headquarters of the 9th Army, Orel
Localized Soviet offensives on the flanks of the Kursk salient.

The map covered the entire wall, from floor to ceiling, studded with colored pins, little flags, and narrow strips of paper with figures. At that hour of the night, the operations room smelled of stale coffee, cigarette smoke, and hot teleprinter paper.

Major Ernst Heller went over the same stretch of front for the umpteenth time when the transmitter tape spat out signs again.

The signals NCO tore off the strip, skimmed it, and handed it to him.

— Sector of the 9th Army, northern part of the salient, my major.

Heller read it standing, without sitting, his back taut.

Breach of the first defensive line across a front of thirty kilometers within the sector of the 9th Army, north of the Kursk salient. The line infantry, supported by elements of the 25th Panzergrenadier Division, has offered strong resistance but has been forced to fall back. The 25th Panzergrenadier retains cohesion and establishes a second defensive line in depth. Additional elements of the 41st Panzer Corps can be committed to close the gaps. Situation assessed as containable by Corps means.

Containable.

It was not the comfortable “under control” that had appeared in reports for a month to describe minor infiltrations or probing attacks. This time, the line had truly broken, even if there were still hands to hold it.

He raised his eyes to the map. In the northern part of the salient, above the band marked IX Army, there was now an entire strip of red pins, spaced along nearly thirty kilometers, in front of the blue pencil line indicating the German position at the beginning of July. In the middle of that red curve, only a small blue rectangle, labeled 25th PzGren Div., sat slightly back from the breach, like a head refusing to sink completely while retreating toward a second trace drawn in pencil.

It was not a deep stab. Not yet.

But it was wide. And it was his front.

The door of the operations room opened without a knock. General Model crossed the threshold at a quick pace, looking at no one in particular, binoculars hanging from his neck though outside it had been full night for hours.

— What have we got? — he asked, no chair, no greeting.

Heller handed him the sheet.

— A breach of the first line in the northern sector of the 9th Army, Herr General. A front of roughly thirty kilometers. The line infantry resisted strongly but was forced to fall back to a second position, despite support from the 25th Panzergrenadier Division. The 25th has managed to withdraw in good order and is organizing a new, echeloned defensive line. The 41st Panzer Corps can provide reinforcements without disorganizing the rest of the disposition. The situation is described as “containable by Corps means.”

Model read the report with a furrowed brow. Then he looked up at the map, instantly found the band of red pins and the small blue rectangle in the middle, and stepped closer until his nose almost touched the paper.

— Average depth?

— Between four and six kilometers, Herr General. But the width of the breach is about thirty.

Model nodded once.

— Localized — he pronounced, almost to himself.

The adjective hung in the air with less weight than usual. Localized, yes, Heller thought, but not small. Not like the skirmishes of recent weeks.

Model turned.

— Any news from the rest of the front?

In answer, another teleprinter began to rattle. The NCO tore off the new strip and gave it to Heller before the tape had stopped moving.

— Sector of the 6th Army — he announced.

Heller read aloud.

— “Soviet attacks with heavy artillery preparation against the northern part of the sector held by the 6th Army, a few kilometers west of Voroshilovgrad. Offensive on a scale comparable to that in the sector of the 9th Army, employing T-34 tanks and rifle brigades. Initial breach of the first line, followed by immediate counteroffensive with army reserves. After hard fighting, the main line has been restored. The situation is again considered under control.”

Model exhaled through his nose.

On the southern map, near Voroshilovgrad, other red pins marked the spot where the line had buckled and then closed again around a tight blue curve. There, the Soviet offensive had been a full blow against formal defensive positions, not a mere probe, but the 6th Army had managed to throw them back with reserves.

— They’ve thrown something serious against the 6th Army, but they haven’t gotten through — Heller summed up.

Model did not answer. His eyes moved from the panel of the 9th Army to that of the 6th Army, from the continuous red patch in the north to the still-fresh scar in the south.

A third teleprinter rang a small bell.

The NCO looked at the header and frowned.

— Message from Army Group Center, encrypted, high priority.

Model gestured to Heller.

— Read it.

The major deciphered the key with quick hands, wrote out the clear text, and when he finished he felt his throat tighten.

— Herr General, reports are confirmed of a Soviet offensive in the Velikie Luki sector. These are no longer mere preparations: they have launched a full offensive against our defensive positions. The message speaks of an opening of about ten kilometers in the line, with armored and rifle forces pushing west. If it deepens, the operation may threaten the Daugava–Pskov–Leningrad railway line.

Model raised an eyebrow.

Velikie Luki lay far north of Orel. Until a few days ago it had been a name that barely appeared in the daily summaries, associated with marching columns and moving artillery. Now it figured in a high-priority encrypted message, next to the word offensive and a ten-kilometer gap.

— I recall that, at the last conference with the Army Group, Velikie Luki was discussed as a possibility, not as a fact. What was decided regarding Nehring?

Heller consulted a folder and, as he did, relived the scene from two days earlier: the packed room, corps generals bent over maps, voices measured. He, in the background, taking notes while others spoke.

— It was assessed then that the greatest observable Soviet activity was in the south, Herr General. The artillery preparations, probing attacks, and reconnaissance reports around the 6th Army were clearer than those along the Velikie Luki axis. The conclusion was that Nehring’s XIV Panzer Corps should deploy around Demidov, some seventy kilometers west of Velikie Luki, as an operational reserve able to swing either toward that sector or toward the south or center, depending on where the principal threat revealed itself.

Model stepped away from the map of Orel and crossed the room to the Army Group panel. The pin marking Nehring’s XIV Panzer Corps was stuck precisely there: Demidov, a small node in the railway network, neither too close nor too far from any of the fires beginning to flare up.

— A panzer corps placed halfway to everything — he murmured. — Close enough to Velikie Luki to promise help, close enough to the south to reassure the 6th Army… and too far from anywhere if everything burns at once.

He turned to Heller.

— Your overall assessment, Major. Not each sector separately. The entire front.

Heller knew it was a test. And that, at the same time, on some other map farther north someone would be asking the same question with less data, or with different ones.

He breathed in.

— Taken as a whole, Herr General, I would say the Soviets are heating the line. They open breaches, test our full defenses, push where the trace is weakest—or where they believe it to be. The sector of the 9th Army, north of the Kursk salient, has given way along thirty kilometers of front despite an infantry that fought well and despite the support of the 25th Panzergrenadier. The 25th has managed to fall back in order and raise a second line, and the 41st Panzer Corps can reinforce it; here we can still close the gaps without breaking anything else.

He pointed south.

— Around the 6th Army, near Voroshilovgrad, they have launched an offensive of the same caliber against formal defensive positions. There too they broke the first line, there too we had to use army reserves to restore the situation. For now we have managed it, and with Nehring in Demidov we can still imagine throwing weight toward that sector if it opens again.

Finally, his fingers settled on the northern panel, at Velikie Luki.

— And at Velikie Luki, what a week ago were only preparatory movements is now a full offensive with a ten-kilometer breach. In theater terms it is a localized offensive, but it is no longer small: it aims to truly break the defensive position and advance toward the Daugava–Pskov–Leningrad line. There we have Nehring relatively near, in Demidov, but not on top of the gap, nor on the railway itself. If the Soviets push with solidity, they can force that point before our heavy reserve arrives in time.

He paused briefly.

— Both they and we know that this line, as it stands today, cannot hold indefinitely at every point. They are forcing us to show where our foundations are truly weak. But, that said, I am moderately optimistic: each of these offensives that we manage to contain as “localized” buys us time. Time to pull back, to reorder reserves, for the 9th Army and the 6th Army to continue to exist as coherent units. It is not a victory, but it is time, and right now time is the only thing we can still win.

There was a brief silence. The teleprinter, for the first time in a long while, made no sound.

Model lit another cigarette.

— And yet, — he said, with an almost didactic calm, — we cannot be everywhere. When the decision about Nehring was taken, Velikie Luki was a threat on paper. The south and the salient were burning for real. Now we have the panzer corps in Demidov, a promise of help to all and an absolute guarantee to no one. Behind the 9th Army we have the 41st Panzer Corps; behind the 6th Army its own offensive reserves remain; in the center something still remains. But behind Velikie Luki, today, there is only distance.

He exhaled smoke.

— For the moment, officially, everything is a localized offensive. In the 9th Army, in the 6th Army, and now at Velikie Luki. But these are no longer small blows. They are full attacks against our lines. As long as we do not see one of those breaches cease to be “local” and become a tear, the language will remain that.

Heller nodded. It was the only way not to admit, on letterhead, that the entire front was being forced at once.

Hours later, when dawn was already breaking, field telephones confirmed that the orders for Nehring still stood: the XIV Panzer Corps would remain concentrated in the Demidov area, halfway between the fires of the south and those of the north. The pin that marked it did not move again on the Army Group map.

Heller then returned to the panel of the 9th Army.

The gap in the line north of the salient remained wide. Thirty kilometers of red frontier, with the 25th Panzergrenadier Division as the only solid block in the middle, its head still above water, now braced against a second blue pencil line farther back. Around the 6th Army, the penetration west of Voroshilovgrad was, for now, scarred shut: a tense blue curve pressed against a red mole. On the Velikie Luki axis, by contrast, there were no longer only soft pencil arrows: ten kilometers of breach marked with pins… and a heavy blue triangle at Demidov, seventy kilometers behind, forced to watch too many directions at once.

Nothing was yet completely broken.

Nothing was yet, either, truly safe.

As he adjusted the small strip of paper marking the Velikie Luki sector, the major could not help thinking it with a coldness that was not theoretical.

The Germans had reserves positioned behind or near every place where the Soviets had launched their full offensives: behind the 9th Army thanks to the 41st Panzer Corps, behind the 6th Army with its own reserves, at Demidov with Nehring watching north and south. Everywhere… except directly over the point where a gap was now opening onto the Daugava–Pskov–Leningrad railway.

For now, officially, it was still a localized offensive.

And the work of the Headquarters of the 9th Army in Orel was to treat it as such… even when, for the first time in a month, no one in that room dared to say out loud that it was entirely under control.