MengJiao
Posts: 232
Joined: 12/18/2010 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: map66 quote:
ORIGINAL: MengJiao quote:
ORIGINAL: sulla05 The next one from Kursk is that he says the Soviets forced the Germans to attack toward Prokhorovka but other books have Hoth's writings from before the battle and he mentions that he will be going that direction. I don't doubt that Glantz often dismisses German sources (the particular aircraft numbers probably are suspect since Russian aircraft steadily gained in strength and coordination over the Kursk battlefield). But he may often be right to do so. For example, why would Hoth want to take a detour to Prokhorovka when the high road to Kursk is 20-30km WNW of there? Hoth may have thought before the battle that he might have to take a detour, but then that makes you wonder if Hoth thought the whole plan to get to Kursk at all was just not going to work at all. Actually, you're exactly right in your thinking. According to Zamulin's recent excellent book on Kursk, Hoth realized by May that the overall plan for Kursk would never work. He therefore anticipated that the best he could hope for was to engage and destroy the Soviet mobile reserves and thereby weaken the Red Army's summer offensive, and decided that the most likely and favorable place to do so was around Prokhorovka in the gap between the Psel and the northern Donets. He cites Hoth's contemporary diary and field orders the Prokhorovka diversion, so it's highly unlikely there's any post-war self-justification there. Wow! That's a brilliant bit of analytic work by Hoth. Prokhorovka is not only in the gap, but exactly where Russian reserves would be (and did) move up and they were almost caught before they could deploy. In effect, Hoth played out the battle in his mind and foresaw the Russian moves to block the high road, so Glantz isn't exactly wrong since anticipated Russian moves forced Hoth to undertake plan B, whereupon the Russian Plan A reserves turned up as expected by Hoth, but they switched to their own plan B very quickly and Plan A blocked plan A and plan B blocked plan B.
< Message edited by MengJiao -- 8/9/2012 7:40:04 PM >
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