point of the war. Hitler’s intention there was literally to smash the Red Army. The battle
was not about the Kursk Salient or any other geographical asset; rather, it was truly the
greatest trial of strength between the two armies. Had Citadel succeeded in destroying
the best formations in the Red Army, 20 per cent of which was committed to the Kursk
battle, Germany might have been able to erect a military ‘Eastern Wall’ to all but close
down the Eastern Front. That would have enabled Berlin to shift forces on a large scale
from Russia to the West, where they should have been more than capable of either
deterring or defeating Anglo-American invasions. Kursk was Germany’s last real oppor-
tunity to reverse its strategic fortunes, and the last time in the war that Hitler was able to
dictate the terms of engagement.
For reasons known only to himself, Hitler, whose strategic interest in North Africa
had only ever been reluctant, episodic and marginal, also elected to stage a major
campaign of forlorn resistance to the Anglo-American armies in Tunisia. Since Germany
and Italy did not command air or sea communications between Africa and Sicily, this was
a most unwise decision. The fully predictable result was that the initially inexperienced
Americans, and the British Eighth Army, managed to inflict more casualties on the
Germans in Tunisia than they had suffered at Stalingrad. Strangely and foolishly, purport-
edly for reasons of prestige and morale, Hitler refused to permit the evacuation from
Tunisia of experienced but tank-less panzer crews. The Allies took 130,000 Germans and
120,000 Italians prisoner. Tunis finally fell to the Allies on 11 May, and they followed
up this triumph, despite American strategic unhappiness, by invading first Sicily on
9–10 July and then Italy proper on 9 September.
So, the strategic picture towards the close of 1943 had the following prime features.
In Russia, Germany had lost the initiative and, after its irreplaceable losses of armour
and men at Kursk, in addition to the losses at Stalingrad and Tunis, that initiative could
not be recovered. But the German Army was still very much in the field and it remained
a formidable fighting machine. Indeed, as its military context grew ever more desperate,
so its resistance became even more fanatical, especially when conducted by the expand-
ing number of Waffen SS divisions, of which thirty-six in total were raised. The war in
the Mediterranean went badly, but given the geography of that theatre, the strategic
consequences of defeat were distinctly tolerable, as was the defection of the erstwhile,
much despised, Italian ally.
The air war over Germany was bad news for the civilians of the Reich, but the Anglo-
American Combined Bomber Offensive (CBO), announced to be such at the Casablanca
Conference on 30–31 January 1943, was not wreaking fatal damage on either civilian
morale or Germany’s defence industries. On balance, in fact, in 1943 Germany’s multi-
layered air defence system defeated both arms of the Allied CBO: the Americans by day
and the British by night.
The picture was less agreeable for Germany at sea. Thanks to a combination of Allied
code-breaking, very long-range patrol aircraft, airborne centimetric radar for detection
of U-boats on the surface and much improved convoy escort tactics, the submarine
offensive was defeated in May. As for Germany’s Japanese ally, it was reading the
strategic runes without benefit of reliable insight into Hitler’s vision of world conquest.
As a consequence, Tokyo urged Hitler to come to terms with the Russians while
acceptable terms might still be negotiable.
Overall, then, the close of 1943 did not present a pretty strategic picture for Germany.
World War II in Europe, I 137