Orel salient

Orel salient. In March 1943, during the German–Soviet war, just before the spring thaw brought movement to a temporary halt, a pair of adjacent bulges forming an inverted ‘S’ developed in the Soviet–German front. One, on the north around Orel, was in German hands. The other, around Kursk, was Soviet-held. The two immediately attracted attention on both sides. Hitler, looking towards an otherwise unpromising summer, devised Operation CITADEL to convert the Kursk bulge into a massive encirclement and deployed General Walter Model's Ninth Army south of Orel as the northern striking force. Stalin's deputy, Marshal G. K. Zhukov, planned a similar operation (KUTUZOV) against the Orel salient; and by 5 July, when CITADEL began, he had three army groups deployed there, from north to south, the West, Briansk, and Central fronts with a total of fourteen armies arrayed against the German Ninth and First Panzer Armies.

Zhukov began KUTUZOV with three strikes against the north face of the Orel salient on 12 July. Those no doubt figured in Hitler's decision to call off CITADEL on that day, but they were raggedly executed. On 15 July, Hitler gave command in the salient to Model who ordered work begun on a line, the HAGEN position, across its base. Model, whose speciality was defence, had the front almost stabilized at the end of the month, but then Hitler needed to withdraw 24 divisions for transfer to Italy. In a phased withdrawal begun on 1 August, Model manoeuvered his troops back to the HAGEN position, where the last settled in seventeen days later. Zhukov had apparently by then decided the Soviet prospects were better further south.

Earl Ziemke