Right away a pincer movement began to form, threatening to close in on the defenders of the salient. So Field-Marshal von Kluge relieved Model of the majority of his motorised divisions in order to keep gaps plugged. This sufficed for the immediate danger, but did not halt the Red Army’s advance. Furthermore, the armies on the Central Front moved forward and threatened Model’s already weakened position. Alexander Werth has left an account of what this gigantic battle was like between not only men determined on victory but also weapons of terrifying power:
"By July 15, after three days’ heavy fighting, the Russians had broken through the main lines of the German defences round the Orel salient. There had never been [said General Sobennikov, commander of the garrison of Orel] such a heavy concentration of Russian guns as against these defences; in many places the fire power was ten times heavier than at Verdun. The German minefields were so thick and widespread that as many mines as possible had to be blown up by the super-barrage, in order to reduce Russian casualties in the subsequent breakthrough. By July 20, the Germans tried to stop the Russian advance by throwing in hundreds of planes; and it was a job for the Russian anti-aircraft guns and fighters to deal with them. In the countless air-battles there were very heavy casualties on both sides. Many French airmen were killed, too, during those days.”
The partisans, as Werth also relates, played an equally important role in these operations: "On July 14, 1943, the Soviet Supreme Command ordered the partisans to start an all-out Rail War. Preparations for this had obviously already been made, for on July 20-21 great co-ordinated blows were struck at the railways in the Bryansk, Orel, and Gomel areas, to coincide with the Russian offensive against Orel and Bryansk following the Kursk victory. During that night alone 5,800 rails were blown up. Altogether, between July 21 and September 27, the Orel and Bryansk partisans blew up over 17,000 rails. . .
"Telpukhovsky’s semi-official History claims that in three years (1941-4) the partisans in Belorussia killed 500,000 Germans including forty-seven generals and Hitler’s High-Commissioner Wilhelm Kube (who, as we know from German sources-though the Russians for some reason don’t mention this-had a partisan time-bomb put under his bed by his lovely Belorussian girl-friend).”
And so on July 29, 1943 there appears for the first time in communiques from
The Wehrmacht the expression "elastic defence” which might have been thought banned for ever from Hitlerian terminology. This was a delaying tactic which allowed Army Group "Centre” to evacuate the Orel salient, systematically burning the crops behind it, and to regroup along a front line covering Bryansk from the high ground round Karachev. This movement, completed around August 4, provided only temporary respite, as the comparative strengths of the opposing forces remained unchanged.
World History
