Battle of Kursk of the offensive. July and August 1943 saw the heaviest German ammunition expenditure on the Eastern Front up to that point, with 236,915 tons consumed in July and 254,648 in August. The previous peak had been 160,645 tons in September 1942. The Red Army used two Fronts for the defence of Kursk, and created a third front behind the battle area which was held as a reserve. The Central and Voronezh Fronts fielded 12 armies, with 711,575 men (510,983 combat soldiers) and 625,591 men (446,236 combat soldiers) respectively. In reserve, the Steppe Front had an additional 573,195 men (449,133). Thus
Battle of Kursk as the spring rasputitsa had subsided. On 13 March, Hitler signed Operational Order No. 5, which authorised several offensives, including one against the Kursk salient. As the last Soviet resistance in Kharkov petered out, Manstein attempted to persuade Günther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Centre, to immediately attack the Central Front, which was defending the northern face of the salient. Kluge refused, believing that his forces were too weak to launch such an attack. Further Axis advances were blocked by Soviet forces that had been shifted down from the Central Front to the area north of Belgorod. By mid-April,