Kursk: Burning Tigers
Scenario Preview, Part Eight
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2023

We wrap up Panzer Grenadier: Kursk Burning Tigers with the actions of the German Regular Army’s elite mechanized force, Panzer Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland. This division had as many advantages as the Armed SS militia at Kursk, and achieved just as little. But for a while, they made the Red Army’s commanders sweat.

The Grossdeutschland Division also had all of the brand-new Panther tanks, 200 of them, assigned to the offensive. Any chance of these machines bringing about a change in German fortunes on the Eastern Front was lost by their rushed introduction. Between mechanical problems and green crews, they failed to live up to their promise. You get to use them in these scenarios, and see if you can change that outcome through better generalship.

So let’s wind up our scenario preview with the German Army’s elite.

Chapter Eight
Panzer Grenadier Division Grossdeutschland
The German command expected a great deal from the Grossdeutschland Division. From its start as a motorized infantry regiment, it had expanded steadily until becoming an oversized panzer grenadier division in the spring of 1943. From additional weapons, like machine guns, to Tiger heavy tanks and additional supporting arms (like assault guns), the division had enormous firepower. It fielded more tanks at the start of the offensive than any of the Army panzer divisions. Add to that an enormous amount of combat experience and unit cohesion (thanks to special perks for Grossdeutschland soldiers – who, for example, could not be sent to a different unit after a hospital stay, or seized by military police to join an “emergency” unit).

That fit well with fascist ideas of an “elite” vanguard. The Red Army had no similar formations; socialist ideology emphasized the achievements of entire units that received Guards status. These divisions awaited the Nazi state’s elite soldiers in well-prepared, deep positions.

Scenario Thirty-Four
First Night
4 July 1943
German offensive doctrine called for small-scale attacks in the hours before the main assault, to secure jumping-off points and to eliminate enemy forward positions that might hamper the advance. Grossdeutschland’s Fusilier Regiment would seize Gertsovka to provide the assault troops an assembly area for the morning’s main attack.

Conclusion
The Fusiliers lost both their commander and his replacement, both badly wounded, before the offensive proper had even begun. The troops tasked with taking Gertsovka lost one-third of their number but finally secured the village; the heavy fighting alerted the Soviets to the Germans’ presence. After allowing the German assault troops to settle in, they unleashed a terrific bombardment on them in the hours before the German offensive began.

Notes
A little change of pace, with a one-board scenario featuring only a few units on each side. The Soviet defense is pretty tough, and the German bar for victory is set pretty high, so this one’s going to get pretty intense. The Germans can afford to take any number of losses if they take their objectives (and don’t ask the troops’ opinion).

Scenario Thirty-Five
Burning Panthers
5 July 1943
The Citadel Offensive had been delayed repeatedly to allow 200 new Panther tanks to join the attack. Armored Troops Inspector General Heinz Guderian had managed to get all of them assigned to the Grossdeutschland Division, with none going to the Armed SS. That assignment, made just a week before the offensive, added 200 more tanks to the division’s three-kilometers attack front and scrambled the division’s logistics and command organization at the last minute. But surely all that additional firepower would be worth it.

Conclusion
The much-ballyhooed debut of the Panther tank was an unmitigated disaster. The Army mishandled it from the beginning by assigning green crews to the unit instead of veteran tankers who would have recognized and worked through most of the mechanical and unique operating challenges. The lack of large-scale training meant that the unit promptly drove nose-to-tail into a muddy ravine and became stuck. Both the tankers and engineers trying to extricate them suffered serious casualties before they freed the Panthers.

Notes
Tigers and Panthers and even more other Germans tanks come swarming at a well-fortified Soviet position manned by Soviet Guards. It’s another tough fight with the Germans yet again facing tough victory conditions but lots of troops and tanks with which to achieve them.

Scenario Thirty-Six
Second Line
6 July 1943
The Grossdeutschland Division spent the morning marching past the Soviet III Mechanized Corps to assemble for the next stage of its advance. The Soviet tanks, with no artillery of their own beyond 120mm mortars, could do little but make rude gestures. In this sector, Sixth Guards Army had left a large gap between its first and second lines, leaving the Germans room to re-deploy for their assault on Alekseevka and Lukhanino.

Conclusion
The Soviets held firm, rebuffing eight German assaults on Alekseevka and Lukhanino. As a result of this resistance, the panzer regiment slid east towards Dubrova where they mounted another unsuccessful attack. The only German triumph of the day came when the recon battalion infiltrated the Soviet lines and created a small bridgehead over the Pena River. The stubborn Soviets probably would have prevented even this small victory had the 3rd Mechanized Corps’ two tank brigades been present rather than detached elsewhere for the day. Unlike the easy German successes of years past, a single Red Army mechanized corps (a division-sized) met the German Army’s double-sized elite division and prevailed.

Notes
Tank battle! The Germans have their best division on the attack, with huge numbers of tanks on hand including Panthers and Tigers. But this time the Soviet line has armor support of its own to go with the entrenchments and anti-tank guns. The Germans are going to need all of their firepower and morale to achieve another very tough set of victory conditions.

Scenario Thirty-Seven
Struggle for Syrtsevo
7 July 1943
Army General Nikolai Vatutin, commanding the Voronezh Front, hoped to blunt the German advance with fresh armored forces from the Soviet general reserve. On the afternoon of 6 July, Josef Stalin approved the plan and released two tank corps for immediate use and instructed the 5th Guards Tank Army to join Vatutin. The latter would arrive on the morning of the 8th; until then, Vatutin would have to hold back the masses of German armor with the forces he already had in place.

Conclusion
“North of Syrtsevo,” went one Soviet account, “in the area of Hill 230.1, the tankists of Colonel M.T. Leonov’s 112th Tank Brigade stood heroically in their defensive positions. Heavy battles raged here until late evening, during which the Hitlerites lost fifteen tanks, including six Tigers. The brigade also suffered heavy losses, losing fifteen tanks.”

“The advance proved to be slow and laborious,” the Grossdetuschland history reads. “Heavy close-quarters fighting broke out over every single position.”

Notes
The Soviet fortifications are getting thinner, but their tanks are starting to appear in numbers on the battlefield to bolster the defense – this time in equal numbers to the Germans. Another furious battle, with the Germans forced to keeping coming against a powerful defender.

Scenario Thirty-Eight
Heroes of the Soviet Union
8 July 1943
Maj. Gen. Semyon Krivoshein, a veteran of the Russian Civil War’s elite 1st Cavalry Army, had been the head of armored force training during the previous two years and was held to be one of the Red Army’s foremost experts on armored warfare. His 3rd Mechanized Corps had been shattered by the previous two days of combat, but with reinforcements racing toward his sector he exhorted his surviving men to stand for just a few more hours.

Conclusion
Third Mechanized Corps suffered 90 percent casualties at the Battle of Kursk, but held its ground – by the narrowest of margins – and would be granted Guards status at the battle’s conclusion. The Grossdeutschland Division fought off repeated counter-attacks as it ground forward, continuing to make progress at a massive cost in men and machines. Yet the breakthrough remained elusive, and the Soviet reinforcements had entered the battlefield.

Notes
Once again, the best German division is on the attack against a furiously determined defense backed by tanks and still more tanks.

Scenario Thirty-Nine
Hill 260.8
9 July 1943
The German XLVIII Panzer Corps hoped that the still-powerful Grossdeutschland Panzer Grenadier Division could eliminate the Soviet defenses in front of it in time to join the II SS Panzer Corps’ drive northward to Kursk. The first step would require the division’s recon battalion to seize Hill 260.8 and dig in in order to isolate the Soviets in Verkhopenie before the main force struck them.

Conclusion
Once the recon troops cleared the village, the division’s armored group advanced quickly. They drove off the Soviet forces blocking 3rd Panzer Division’s advance as well, allowing the XLVIII Panzer Corps to resume its forward progress – but in a direction away from II SS Panzer Corps. XLVIII Panzer Corps chief of staff W.F. von Mellenthin later dismissed the Grossdeutschland’s gains as meaningless, as they did not bring the Germans any closer to Kursk and in fact drew them farther away from their ultimate objective, and later claimed (with the unspoken benefit of hindsight) to know the battle to be lost at this point.

Notes
This is sort of a break, with light German recon forces trying to capture some lightly-held towns and then charge their way through a much more substantial Soviet line. It may be a different situation, but it’s still another tough mission for the Germans

Scenario Forty
Horseshoe Bend
10 July 1943
For days the Soviets thwarted 3rd Panzer Division’s efforts to secure Berezovka or drive them from the large horseshoe bend of the Pena River. Eventually XLVIII Panzer Corps assigned the task to the Grossdeutschland Division. But after five days of combat, only 87 of the 367 tanks with which the Grossdeutschland Division had begun the battle still ran. Meanwhile, the Soviet defenders could call on fresh reinforcements.

Conclusion
XLVIII Panzer Corps had identified the boundary between the Soviet 6th Tank and 3rd Mechanized Corps the night before. This knowledge allowed the Grossdeutschland recon battalion to isolate the 200th Tank Brigade, which the main body of the division then quickly overran. Maj. Gen. Andrei L. Getman of 6th Tank Corps, desperate to shore up his crumbling flank, committed his brigades piecemeal as they reached the German breakthrough. The Germans took full advantage to crush each brigade separately at little cost to themselves. Hill 247 fell to the Germans but the village of Kruglik remained in Soviet hands. Stalin Organs firing their rockets off special ramps (common at Kursk) used direct fire against the advancing assault guns around Kruglik. Besides tearing up the countryside, one rocket set off a German smoke candle, bathing the field in a grey cloud but causing no other damage.

Notes
A little different, as the Germans have a small flanking force coming from the south and a powerful one from the east against a Soviet line that’s probably bent to refuse its left flank (you don’t have to set up that way, but it’s probably a good idea to do so). That makes for a long line to defend, so the Soviets are going to need their armor reinforcements to help plug any holes that open up in it.

And that’s all for Burning Tigers.

You can order Burning Tigers (Playbook edition) right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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