Saturday, July 17, 1943. Hitler orders the battle to stop.

Hitler ordered his commanders to withdraw and take defense positions at Kursk, following up on his July 13 order to end the offensive.  Von Manstein and others urged Hitler to continue on, but he overruled them.  At this point in the battle, the Germans had lost 252 tanks and sustained 64,000 casualties, whereas the Soviets had lost over 2,000 and had sustained 320,000 casualties, so Von Manstein's arguments were not without merit.

Erich von Manstein. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H01758 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5363524

It would soon prove to be the case that the Red Army had not been as damaged as Von Manstein believed, but a person can ponder what carrying on in Operation Citadel would have meant, keeping in mind that there was no reversing German fortunes, only delaying them, at this point.

We've dealt with Von Manstein's post-war fate a bit here:

Von Manstein, who would lose a son in the war, was an excellent German general who was known to openly clash with Hitler. However, that fact and his post-war writings have glossed over his culpability for horrific German actions during the war, something that was not uncommon with surviving officers of the German army who operated to create the "clean army" myth.  Von Manstein was one of those German figures who regarded Communism and Judaism as part and parcel of each other.

Von Manstein served a prison term post war for war crimes and did not rejoin the West German Army when it was formed, but did receive a secret veto over which German officers could be members of it.  He died at age 85 in 1973.

We didn't note in that entry that when he died, he was buried with full military honors.

The Krasnodara Trial, the first war crimes trial, concluded in the Soviet Union with all 20 Soviet citizens, collaborators with the Germans, convicted and 18 of them to receive the death penalty.

The Polish Uderzeniowe Bataliony Kadrowe (Striking Cadre Battalions, UBK), attacked East Prussian villages in the area of Johannisburg (Pisz) in retaliation for German atrocities in Bezirk Bialystok.  Oddly, Pisz is now in Poland and Bezirk Bialystok in Belarus.

The U.S. offensive at Munda Point in New Georgia concluded with limited tactical success. This was in part because the US troops and their leadership were green, which was recognized by the U.S. and resulted in reorganization of the command structure.  On the same day, the Japanese launched a counteroffensive, which would prove to be costly and unsuccessful.