Manstein, Field Marshal Erich von

Manstein, Field Marshal Erich von (1887–1973),arguably the ablest of Hitler's generals, the master of the mobile battle, and thought by some to be, after Hitler, Germany's most outstanding wartime personality.

The tenth child of a Prussian aristocrat, General Eduard von Lewinski, Manstein took the name of his uncle who adopted him. He served as Rundstedt's chief of staff in the Polish campaign of September– October 1939, and during the months which preceded Hitler's delayed offensive in the west he suggested an alternative to the plan which the German Army's High Command (OKH) had made for it (see FALL GELB). Discussions centred on the main effort of the German forces: Manstein wanted it shifted from the northern wing of the front to the southern wing where Rundstedt's Army Group A was to operate. Though he did not know it, some of Manstein's thoughts, which included an armoured attack through the Ardennes, coincided with Hitler's. Halder, chief of OKH, irritated by Manstein's flow of memoranda urging that FALL GELB should be altered, had him transferred to command the 38th Corps in Stettin. However, this only gave Manstein the opportunity to explain his plan (SICHELSCHNITT, or sickle-slice) to Hitler in person and the ‘convergence of Manstein's inspired concept and Hitler's ideas’ ( H.- A. Jacobsen, Fall Gelb, 1957, quoted in K. Maier et al., Germany and the Second World War, Vol. 2, Oxford, 1991, p. 247) was further developed by OKH, and resulted in the fall of France in June 1940.

Manstein soon proved himself not only an able staff officer but an outstanding commander in the field. He commanded 38th Corps during the fighting that led to the fall of France, in which his troops were first across the River Seine, and was promoted lt-general. He was equally aggressive during the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA), leading 56th Panzer Corps with such skill—from 22 to 26 June it advanced 320 km. (200 mi.)—that in September he was given command of the Eleventh Army, part of Rundstedt's Army Group South. For Hitler's offensive (BLUE) in June 1942 (see German–Soviet war, 4) Army Group South was divided into two, A and B. The Eleventh Army became part of Army Group A; and after clearing the Crimea, and defeating a major Soviet counter-attack, Manstein captured Sevastopol in July 1942 and was promoted field marshal.

In November 1942 Manstein assumed a new command, Army Group Don, which took over the Stalingrad sector. It included, apart from the Eleventh Army, Paulus's encircled Sixth Army, which even Manstein was unable to relieve. In February 1943, after Paulus had surrendered, Army Group Don and Army Group B became the reconstituted Army Group South, and with it Manstein retook Kharkov and Belgorod in March 1943, a brilliant offensive which cost the Red Army 40,000 casualties (see German–Soviet war, 6). But from that time, except for the offensive to eliminate the Kursk salient in July 1943, which failed after Hitler had fatally delayed it, Manstein was forced on to the defensive. That September he executed a withdrawal to the River Dnieper, but his situation remained precarious and though his tactics of giving ground in order to build up reserves inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army, by mid- February 1944 his forces had been forced into further withdrawals. His dismissal by Hitler followed, on 30 March, and he took no further part in the war.

In 1949 a British military court sentenced him to eighteen years' imprisonment for war crimes in the USSR but he served only four.

Bibliography

Carver, M. (ed.), The War Lords (London, 1976).
Stahlberg, A. , Bounden Duty (London, 1990).