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.

Tuesday, July 13, 1943. Operation Citadel ends due to Operation Husky

I don't put up German posters often (I really ought to, to demonstrate what they looked like) as I don't want to give any mistaken impression that there's any admiration for the Germans in World War Two in this quarter.  Indeed, it's been a real mystery to me and others as to how a cultured people could go so far astray as to elect the Nazis into power.  Having said that, events since 2020 have been a real illustration as to exactly how a country descends into fascism.  Anyhow, this is a poster for the Herman Goering Division which, at that time, was one of the two German units fighting in Sicily.  Oddly, the division was technically part of the Luftwaffe, not the Herr, in order to honor its namesake.  The cap device on the flat cap depicted in this poster demonstrates that.  This poster is from 1943 and reads, roughly; "Come to us! Herman Goering Division. Taking volunteers!"  The division stands as an example of German military inefficiency, in a way, in that it meant that there were three ground forces all fulfilling the role that the army would have normally, the army, the airforce and the SS, although the Luftwaffe ground forces were only seriously an air arm in the case of paratroopers.

Today in World War II History—July 13, 1943: Battle of Kolombangara: in the Solomon Islands, US & New Zealand ships sink Japanese light cruiser Jintsu, but fail to prevent reinforcement of Kolombangara.

We covered what Sarah Sundin notes here yesterday, as this was a nocturnal battle, but this entry noted above is correct.

What Sundin also notes, and what is a more significant event, is that Hitler ordered a halt to Operation Citadel due to Operation Husky in order to redeploy troops from the Kursk offensive to Sicily.

That actually occured the evening of July 12, when Hitler summoned Kluge and Manstein to is Rastenburg headquarters.  Kluge, aware of a coming Soviet counteroffensive, was relieved to receive the order, fearing what that would mean, but Manstein opposed it given that his troops had spent a week of hard fighting and, he believed, were on the verge of breaking through.  Manstein argued, "On no account should we let go of the enemy until the mobile reserves he [has] committed [and is] completely beaten."

Manstein may have been overestimating the extent of Red Army losses, but the Red Army had sustained huge losses, including massive losses the day prior.  At any rate, Hitler relented to the extent that he agreed to allow the offensive to temporarily continue in the south.  However, on this day, the 13th, he ordered Manstein's reserve, the XXIV Panzer Corps, to move south to support the 1st Panzer Army, removing from Manstein the forces he actually needed to continue.

Therefore, it was the American, Canadian, and British armies that brought about the end of Operation Citadel, and one day after a German tactical victory in that offensive that had resulted in huge Soviet losses.

Could Citadel have achieved its objectives?  That's much more difficult to say.  The Germans and the Soviets were still fighting at Prokhorovka, although the Germans had arrested the Red Army attack the day prior, with large losses being sustained by the Soviets in a battle that is still so murky that partisan historians, professional and amateur, declare victory for each side. Model, however, had completely committed his reserves and the Soviets, while sustaining huge casualties, had not yet broken.  Given this, it seems unlikely that the Germans would have reduced the Kursk salient, but they would have taken enormous losses attempting to do so.  

This provides one of the uncomfortable facts about the Germans during the Second World War, that being that quite frankly Hitler's estimation of the battlefield situation was often better than that of his generals.  People like to repeat the "Hitler is the best general we've got" quote that some Allied commander said during the war, but in terms of tactical decisions, he was often better at calculating them than generals in his army were.  The decision to call off Citadel was probably correct, Manstein notwithstanding, as the Germans had committed very good armored forces with large amounts of armor and had not broken through.  Ignoring Husky early on stood a very good chance of resulting in a rapid Allied victory in Sicily which could possibly have taken an already teetering Italy out of the war.

The American League won the All Star Game.

Luz Long, age 30, 1936 Olympic medalist, died of wounds sustained in fighting in the Germany Army in Sicily.  His death came in a British hospital.  Long had been friends with Jesse Owens and was, prior to entering the German army, a lawyer.

He held the rank of Obergefreiter in the Heer, which is a rank that's somewhat difficult to correlate to American and British enlisted rank structures.  It's roughly equivalent to the World War Two US rank of Corporal or the British Rank of Lance Corporal, which would effectively be the first NCO in a squad to command other enlisted men.

White Rose figures University of Munich student Alexander Schmorell, age 25, and Professor Karl Huber, age 49, executed by guillotine for distributing anti-Nazi literature.  Wilhelm Geyer, Manfred Eickemeyer, Josef Soehngen and Harald Dohrn were acquitted of the most serious charges and convicted for the less serious crime of failing to report treason, benefitting from the absence of the chief judge and that Judge Schwingenschlögl, the most lenient, was presiding. Soehngen received a six-month sentence, with credit for time served, while the rest were ordered to pay court costs, a truly lucky break for them.

Thursday, July 8, 1943. The execution of Jean Moulin, Looming Operation Husky, Stalled Operation Citadel, Bombing Wake, Smog in Los Angeles.

Jean Moulin.

Jean Moulin, the first President of the National Council of the Resistance, but for less than two months, was executed by the Germans.  He had been arrested due to a betrayal that's never been solved. He was one of the individuals who was tortured under Klaus Barbie.

General Eisenhower arrived in Malta in anticipation of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily.

By this point, it was obvious that an imminent invasion of Sicily was coming. The Allies were bombing it heavily.  Nonetheless, German attention was focused on the East, at Kursk, which had entered its fourth day of fighting.  In the north, Ponyri station switched hands back and forth.  The 9th Army attacked the second Soviet line, which featured defense in depth, a Soviet tactic, and failed to breach it.  The 9th Army was in turn suffering critical losses.  Model was forced to commit the last of his armored reserves.

In the south, the Germans broke through the second defense line in the Oboyansk direction, but then withdrew after a strong counterattack.

B-24s operating from Midway bombed Wake Island in the first land based strike on Wake.

The escort carrier USS Casablanca was commissioned.

Smog became a problem for LA.

Wednesday July , 1943. Slow Progress at Kursk, Progress at Mubo, Captured arms for Finns, Bishop of Iceland, Social Pressure in Oregon.*

Il-2s at Kursk. By RIA Novosti archive, image #225 / Fyodor Levshin / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15577237

It was day two for the Battle of Kursk. The Germans suffered substantial tank losses due to IL-2 action.

Ground forces highly valued the work of aviation on the battlefield. In a number of instances enemy attacks were thwarted thanks to our air operations. Thus on 7 July enemy tank attacks were disrupted in the Kashara region (13th Army). Here our assault aircraft delivered three powerful attacks in groups of 20–30, which resulted in the destruction and disabling of 34 tanks. The enemy was forced to halt further attacks and to withdraw the remnants of his force north of Kashara.

 Glantz and Orenstein 1999, p. 260.

I'd be skeptical of the number claimed in that entry, but the problem faced is an obvious one. Indeed, the Germans were attacking a salient that was defended in depth, and their air force wasn't what it had once been.  The tactical problem is similar to that which is faced by Ukraine today.

The Wehrmacht's 9th Army, commanded by Walter Model, made only small gains on the Central Front.  Hoth's 4th Panzer Army nearly broke through Voronezh Front defenses around Syrtzevo but Soviet armored counterattacks prevented this from occurring.

The Australians bombed Mubo, New Guinea and captured Observation Hill thereafter.

The Finns passed out captured Russian arms to civilians for home defense.

Jóhannes Gunnarsson, SMM was consecrated as the Catholic Bishop of Hólar, Iceland in Washington, D.C.  He had been appointed to be head of the Catholic Church in Iceland the prior February.  He occupied the position until 1967, when he resigned as he was facing ill health.

Born in Reykjavik, he had been a Catholic Priest since 1924 and was the first Icelandic Catholic Bishop since Jón Arason, who was beheaded with his two sons by King Christian III in 1550. 

Christianity had come to Iceland in the form of the Latin Rite with Irish monks, who inhabited the island prior to Scandinavian conquest, and then with Irish slaves held there, although it seems some early missionary activity may have occured well before the Althing adopted it for the island in 1000. It remained a Catholic country until King Christian III of Denmark and Norway forced it on those countries following a civil war in Denmark.  A civil war over the issue occured in Iceland, where Catholic opposition to Lutheranism was put down by royalist forces.  Catholicism was outlawed after that and the formerly Catholic island became a Lutheran one, with those refusing to convert forced into exile.  Oddly, Latin remained the language of the Church of Iceland, however, until 1686.

The Catholic Church reappeared officially in 1855.  The Church has grown quite a bit in recent years, but remains small.  The Lutheran Church on the island had been in the very conservative branch until after World War Two, when it went over to the liberal branch thereafter.

Women in Oregon applied social pressure to war work:

"No work, no woo" pledge, 1943

Rudolph Foster, age 70, Chief Clerk of the White House Executive Offices since 1897, passed away.

*This was mistakenly run as the July 6 series of events for 1943.  Nope, this all happened on July 7.

July 5, 1943. The Battle of Kursk commences, as does the Battle of Kula Gulf. Betty Grable marries.

 Shrouded and myth and legend, not all of it true, the Battle of Kursk, the largest armored battle in history. . . so far. . .  began when the Germans launched an attack on the city with 20 infantry divisions and 3,000 tanks.   The attack was part of the German summer offensive, Operation Citadel.

The battle would go on for nearly two months.  Seemingly like a lot of big battles in the middle of World War Two which the Axis lost, it is considered by some a turning point in the war.

In real terms, it is not impossible, although it is unlikely, that those alive today shall see a yet greater armored battle.

The battle is important for numerous reasons, not the least of which was that it is stunning to think that at this stage of the war the Germans would be capable of launching such a massive effort on the Eastern Font, and yet they were.  Indeed, that was part of the point, as the Germans hoped that a successful operation would bolster the wavering attitudes of Germany's allies, which were known to be considering pulling out of the war.

Operation Citadel itself, in spite of its massive scale, had surprisingly limited objectives, and perhaps is reflective of a growing sense of realism, somewhat, in some German quarters. The Germans did not hope for a breakthrough, but mostly to disrupt the Red Army's plans for the summer and to take large numbers of Soviet POWs, which in turn it would have employed as slave labor.

While this battle shall of course feature in the next month or so, in reality the turning point of the war had already come.  The Germans had already lost the Battle of Stalingrad, North Africa, and the Battle of the Atlantic, all within the prior several months.  This battle was an enormous effort, but the Germans were not capable of reversing the tide of the war at this point.

The Battle of Kula Gulf off Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands. between the U.S. and Japanese navies, commenced as the US Navy deployed to disrupt the landing of Japanese reinforcements.  The battle was a nighttime battle, and the Japanese succeeded in landing 1600 troops at Vila and 90 tons of supplies, to the loss of four ships. The US lost a light cruiser.

A B-17 dropped four inert bombs on Boise, Idaho, which it mistook for its practice target.  The event is memorialized by a park in Boise today.

Betty Grable married bandleader Harry James.

Monday, May 10, 1943. Not even bothering with the Reichstag.

Texaco Company advertisement; "Just eleven hours on earth...with Hitler!".  Time, May 10, 1943.

Hitler extended the Enabling Act of 1933, the organic act of his dictatorship, indefinitely, not even bothering to cal the Reichstag into session to do it.

300 large U.S. libraries flew their flags at half-mast on the same day to mark the book burnings that had occurred in Nazi Germany.

On the same day, he approved the plans for Operation Citadel, a giant planned attack on the Kursk Citadel, while, at the same time, as Sarah Sundin notes, Axis efforts were collapsing in North Africa:

Today in World War II History—May 10, 1943: 80 Years Ago—May 10, 1943: In Tunisia, British First Army takes Hammamet, cutting off Cap Bon Peninsula.

Time magazine issued one of its classic covers of World War Two, depicting a stone faced German Admiral Doenitz as a periscope, accompanied by other periscopes depicted as snake heads.