Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein (November 24, 1887–June 12, 1973) was one of the most prominent commanders of German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) during World War II, attaining the rank of Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall). He was the mastermind behind the Fall Gelb, the plan for the German invasion of France that would be carried out successfully in 1940; later, he was commander of armies in Crimea and Leningrad before becoming the commander of Army Group South. In this position, Manstein achieved one of the greatest victories in modern warfare when, despite the numerical and material superiority of Soviets, he was able to halt Red Army’s offensive fresh from the victory at Stalingrad and went on to capture the city of Kharkov with his own successful counteroffensive.
Though he never questioned Hitler's final authority as commander-in-chief of the German army, he was famous for repeatedly standing up to Hitler on various issues, often with the rest of the General Staff watching. Although this would have normally led to his swift removal, Manstein was one of a very few generals who had repeatedly proved themselves in Hitler's eyes. Eventually, his differences with Hitler over matters of strategy led to his being dismissed in 1944. A British Military Tribunal sentenced him to 18 years of imprisonment in 1949; he was released after four years citing medical reasons. Subsequently, he served as a senior advisor to the West German government, helping to shape the new Bundeswehr.
Early life and career
Manstein was born Erich von Lewinski in Berlin, the tenth child of a Prussian aristocrat, artillery general Eduard von Lewinski (1829-1906), and Helene von Sperling (1847-1910). Hedwig von Sperling (1852-1925), a younger sister of Erich's mother Helene, was married to Lieutenant General Georg von Manstein (1844-1913). The couple was not able to have their own children, so it was decided that the unborn child would be adopted by his childless uncle and aunt.
Not only were Erich von Manstein's "fathers" Prussian Generals, two of his grandfathers had also been Prussian Generals (one of them leading a corps in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71), and so was his mother's brother; he was also closely related to Paul von Hindenburg, the future Generalfeldmarschall and President of Germany. Thus his career in the Prussian army was assured from birth. He attended the lycée in Straßburg (1894-1899), a city that had returned to the German Empire after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. He then spent six years in the cadet corps (1900-1906) in Plön and Groß-Lichterfelde. Manstein joined the Third Foot Guards Regiment (Garde zu Fuß) in March 1906 as an ensign. He was promoted to lieutenant in January 1907. In October 1913 he entered the War Academy.
During World War I he served both on the German Western Front (Belgium/France 1916: Attack on Verdun, 1917/18: Champagne ) and the Eastern Front (1915: North Poland, 1915/16: Serbia, 1917: Estonia). In Poland he was wounded severely in November 1914 and returned to duty in 1915, promoted to Captain and remained as staff officer until the end of the war in 1918. In 1918, he volunteered for the staff position in Frontier Defence Force in Breslau (Wroclaw) and served there until 1919.
He then took part in the process of creating the Reichswehr. He was promoted to Company commander in 1920, and Corps Commander in 1922. In 1927 he was promoted again to Major, and started serving with the General Staff, visiting other countries to learn about their military. In 1933 the Nazi party rose to power in Germany, and von Manstein was promoted to Colonel in 1935 and posted to the General Staff. Considered to be uncooperative by Hitler, in part because he wasn't a member of the Nazi party, he was later sent to Silesia as commander of the 18th Division.
World War II
On August 18, 1939, in preparation for Operation Fall Weiss, the German invasion of Poland, he was appointed the Chief of Staff to Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South. Here he worked along with Rundstedt’s Chief of Operations, Colonel Günther Blumentritt on developing the operational plan. Rundstedt accepted Manstein’s plan that called for the concentration of the majority of Army Group’s armored units into Walther von Reichenau’s 10th Army with the objective of a decisive breakthrough leading to the encirclement of Polish forces west of the River Vistula. In Manstein’s plan, two other armies comprising the Army Group South, Wilhelm List’s 14th Army and Johannes Blaskowitz’s 8th Army were to provide the support of the flanks to Reichenau’s main armored thrust towards Warsaw, the Polish capital. Privately, Manstein was lukewarm about the Polish Campaign, thinking that it was better to have Poland as a buffer between Germany and the Soviet Union; he was also worried about the Allied attack on the West Wall once the Polish Campaign started, thus drawing Germany into a two front war.
Launched on September 1, the invasion started successfully. In Army Group South’s area of responsibility, armored units of the 10th Army perused the retreating Poles, giving them no time to set up a defense, while the 8th army on its flanks, prevented the unconnected Polish troop concentrations in Lódz, Radom and Poznan from merging into a more coherent force. Digressing from the original plan that called for heading straight for Vistula and then proceeding to Warsaw, Manstein swayed Rundstedt into encircling the Polish units in the Radom area. The encirclement succeeded, clearing the bulk of Polish resistance from the southern approach to Warsaw.
In late 1939 Manstein worked with Blumentritt and von Tresckow to develop the plan to invade France. He suggested that the tank troops should decisively attack through the wooded hills of the Ardennes, where no one would expect them, seize bridges on the Meuse River and drive to the English Channel before redeploying and striking eastwards, thus outflanking the Maginot Line and cutting off strong French and Allied Armies in the Belgium and Flanders from the French mainland, the plan was nicknamed sichelschnitt (sickle cut).
OKW originally rejected the proposal, but Hitler, looking for a innovative new methods of waging war, approved of a modified version, Fall Gelb, that later became known as the Manstein Plan. Manstein was then sent back to Silesia and did not take part in the operation until the final stages when he served under Günther von Kluge. The plan was so successful that Manstein was awarded the Knight's Cross for planning it and made into a General.
In February 1941, Manstein was appointed commander of the 56th Panzer Corps. He was involved in Operation Barbarossa where he served under General Erich Hoepner. Attacking on 22nd June 1941, Manstein advanced more than 100 miles in only two days and was able to seize two vital bridges over the Dvina River at Dvinsk. The following month he captured Demyansk and Torzhok. Manstein was appointed commander of 11th Army in September 1941, and was given the task of conquering the Crimea. The Red Army defended Sevastopol and this important Black Sea naval base was not taken until late June 1942.
Promoted to Field Marshal on July 1, Manstein was sent to the Leningrad front and assigned to lead Operation Northern Lights. Set to launch on September 15, Hitler was confident that with considerable amounts of artillery and the new Tiger tank this push would finally break the determined Soviet defense, but Manstein was more pessimistic about its outcome, arguing that for a victory, a simultaneous attack in the north by the Finns would be needed. However, on August 27, the Soviets launched a spoiling attack on Georg Lindemann’s 18th Army in the narrow German salient west of Lake Ladoga, Manstein was now forced to divert his forces in order to avoid catastrophe. What ensued was a series of bitter battles where Manstein's smaller forces managed to outmaneuver the larger Soviet forces, and the loss of over 60,000 men over the next few months.
On November 21, 1942; during the Battle of Stalingrad, Adolf Hitler appointed Manstein the commander of the a newly created Army Group Don (Heeresgruppe Don), comprised of a hastily assembled group of tired men and machines, and ordered him to lead Operation Wintergewitter (Winter Storm), the rescue effort composed of Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and auxiliary Romanian troops, to relieve the 6th Army of Friedrich Paulus that was encircled inside the city. Wintergewitter, launched on December 12, achieved some initial success and von Manstein got his three panzer divisions and supporting units of the 57th Panzer Corps to within 30 miles of the city by December 20. At this point Manstein pleaded that the 6th Army attempt a break out, but Paulus refused, since Hitler flatly refused to issue such an order, and instead ordered the 6th Army to stay in the besieged city.
Operation Saturn, a massive Red Army offensive in the most southern part of the front, aimed at capturing Rostov and thus cutting off the German Army Group A still withdrawing from the Caucasus, forced Manstein to divert his forces to help hard-pressed Army Group A in its retreat to the Ukraine, thus avoiding the complete collapse of the entire front.
Manstein regrouped and on February 21 launched a counteroffensive into the overextended Soviet flank. The assault proved a major success: von Manstein's troops advanced rapidly into the Soviet territory, forcing the Red Army to halt most of its offensive operations; by March 2, tank spearheads from Hoth's 4th Panzer Army and Army Detachment Kempf meet, cutting off large portions of the Soviet Southwest Front, and by March 9 the Wehrmacht inflicted a heavy defeat on the Soviets at Krasnograd and Barvenkovo. An estimated 23,000 Soviet soldiers were killed and a further 9,000 were captured. Additionally, 615 Soviet tanks and 354 guns were also captured.
Manstein now went on and pushed onward, his effort spearheaded by Paul Hausser's 2nd SS Panzer Corps, capturing Kharkov on March 14, after the bloody street-fighting of what is known the Third Battle of Kharkov; the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, then drove on to capture Belgorod. In recognition for this action, he received the Oak Leaves for the Knight's Cross in March 1943. Manstein then proposed a daring action for the summer nicknamed the "backhand blow", which was intended to outflank the Red Army into the Sea of Azov at Rostov, but Hitler instead chose to back the more conventional Operation Citadel aimed at crushing the Kursk salient.
During the Citadel Manstein led the southern pincer, and despite losses he managed to complete most of his initial goals, inflicting far more casualties on the Soviet defending force that his attacking force sustained. In his memoirs, Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who led the Soviet defense at Kursk, praised Manstein by recalling that as the German Commander of the southern sector he displayed considerable talents in using his troops. But due to the almost complete failure of the northern sector's pincer led by Günther von Kluge and Walther Model, chronic lack of infantry support, as well as the Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Italy, Hitler decided to call off the offensive. Manstein protested, asserting that the victory was almost at hand. After the failure of Citadel the Soviets launched a massive counterattack on the exhausted German forces.
In September he withdrew to the west bank of the Dnieper River, while inflicting heavy casualties on the Red Army. From October to mid-January of 1944, von Manstein "stabilized" the situation but in late January was forced to retreat further westwards by the Soviet offensive. In mid-February of 1944, von Manstein disobeyed Hitler's order and ordered 11th and 42nd Corps (consisting of 56,000 men in six divisions) of Army Group South (Heeresegruppe Süd) to break out from the "Korsun Pocket", which occurred on February 16/17th. Eventually, Hitler accepted this action and ordered the breakout after it already took place.
Manstein continued to argue with Hitler about overall strategy on the Eastern Front; while he advocated an elastic, mobile defense, Hitler instead insisted on static, attritional total war. As a result, in March 1944 he was relieved of his command. On 2 April 1944 Colonel-General (later Field Marshal) Walther Model replaced him as commander of Southern Army Group. Nevertheless Manstein received the Swords for his Knight's Cross, the highest German military honour. After his dismissal he entered an eye clinic in Breslau, recuperated near Dresden, and then retired. Although he did not take part in the attempt to kill Hitler in July 1944, he was aware of it. In late January of 1945 he collected his family from their homes in Liegnitz and evacuated them to western Germany.
Post War
During the Nuremberg trials in 1946, he was only called as a witness for the defense, testifying in the indictment against the General Staff of the Army and High Command of the German Armed Forces. Later, because of the Soviet pressure, who wanted him extradited to stand trial in the USSR, the British accepted their indictments and charged him of war crimes, putting him on trial before a Britsh Military Tribunal in Hamburg during the summer of 1949. In part because of the Soviet demands in the Cold War environment, and respect for his military exploits, many in the British military establishment, such as the Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery and the renowned military strategist B. H. Liddell Hart, openly expressed sympathy for von Manstein's plight and along with the likes of Sir Winston Churchill donated money to help set up the defense. Churchill saw the trial as yet another effort of the then ruling Attlee government aimed at appeasing the Soviets.
In court, Manstein's defense, led by distinguished lawyer Reginald Thomas Paget, argued that he was unaware that genocide was taking place in territory under his control. However, evidence was produced that Manstein had accepted and signed Hitler's Commissar order that had stated "the Jewish Bolshevik system be wiped out once and for all and should never be again be allowed to invade our European Lebensraum" (Field Marshal Carver in Barnett (1989/2003), p. 231), but Manstein did not allow the order to be passed on without adding his supplement which stated: "severe steps will be taken against arbitrary action and self-interest, against savagery and indiscipline, against any violation of the honor of the soldier" (ibid.). Manstein stated in his memoirs that, with the approval of his commanding general, he verbally directed his subordinates not to carry out the order.
While Paget successfully acquitted Manstein of many of the seventeen charges, he was still found guilty of two charges and accountable on seven others, mainly for employing scorched earth tactics and for failing to protect civilian population, and thus was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. This caused a massive uproar among Manstein's supporters and the sentence was subsequently reduced to 12 years. However, he was released on May 6 1953 for medical reasons.
Called on by the West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, he served as his senior defense advisor and chaired a military sub-committee appointed to advise the parliament on military organization and doctrine for the new German Army, the Bundeswehr and its incorporation into NATO. He later moved with his family to Bavaria. His war memoirs, Verlorene Siege (Lost Victories), were published in Germany in 1955, and translated into English in 1958. Erich von Manstein died in June 1973.
References
- Barnett, Correlli (ed.) (2003). Hitler's Generals (reprint ed). Grove Press. ISBN 0802139949. Original edition first published in 1989.
- Carver, Sir Michael (1976). The War Lords: Military Commanders Of The Twentieth Century. Boston: Little Brown & Co. ISBN 0316130605
- Engelmann, Joachim (1981). Manstein, Stratege und Truppenführer: ein Lebensbericht in Bildern. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag. ISBN 3790901598
- Hart, B. H. Liddell (1999). The Other Side of the Hill (2nd ed). Pan Books. ISBN 0330373242. 1st edition originally published in 1948.
- von Manstein, Erich (2002). Soldat im 20. Jahrhundert. Bernard & Graefe. ISBN 3763752145
- von Manstein, Erich; Powell, Anthony G.; Hart, B. H. Liddell; Blumenson, Martin (2004). Lost Victories: The War Memoirs of Hitler's Most Brilliant General. Zenith Press. ISBN 0760320543
- Paget, Baron Reginald Thomas (1957). Manstein: His Campaigns and His Trial. London: Collins.
- Stahlberg, Alexander (1990). Bounden Duty: The Memoirs of a German Officer, 1932-1945. London: Brassey’s. ISBN 3548331297
- The British records of the Manstein Trial are now housed in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, at King’s College, London.
External links
- Erich von Manstein – ein unpolitischer Soldat? - A critical assessment of von Manstein by Michael Schröders (in German).
- The New York Review of Books: How Wrong Was Churchill? by Noel Annan
- Erich von Manstein's Counterattack by F.W. Weatherbee, Jr. - Encompass: A Journal of Military History Vol. I No. 1; February 2004.
- The Crimean Campaign - 1942 by Victor Nitu; worldwar2.ro
- The Crimean Campaign at wehrmacht-awards.com
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