Erich von Manstein

Hitler's Master Strategist

Benoît Lemay

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781935149552
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

A selection of the Military Book Club: An "informative and objective" biography of a genius commander and a study of his loyalty to the Nazi cause ( Library Journal ). To many close students of World War II, Erich von Manstein is considered the greatest commander of the war, if not the entire twentieth century. He devised the plan that conquered France in 1940 and led an infantry corps in that campaign. At the head of a panzer corps, he reached the gates of Leningrad in 1941, then took command of 11th Army and conquered Sevastopol and the Crimea. After destroying another Soviet army in the north, he was given command of the ad hoc Army Group Don to retrieve the German calamity at Stalingrad, whereupon he launched a counteroffensive that, against all odds, restored the German front. Afterward, he commanded Army Group South, nearly crushing the Soviets at Kursk, and then skillfully resisted their relentless attacks as he traded territory for coherence in the East. Though an undoubtedly brilliant military leader—whose achievements, considering the forces at his disposal, rivaled of Patton, Rommel, MacArthur, and Montgomery—surprisingly little is known about Manstein himself, save for his own memoir and the accolades of his contemporaries. In this book, we finally have a full portrait of the man, including his campaigns, and an analysis of what precisely kept a genius like Manstein harnessed to such a dark cause. A great military figure, but a man who lacked a sharp political sense, Manstein was very much representative of the Germano-Prussian military caste of his time. Though Hitler was uneasy about the influence he'd gained throughout the German Army, Manstein ultimately declined to join any clandestine plots against his Führer, believing they would simply cause chaos, the one thing he abhorred. Though he constantly opposed Hitler on operational details, he considered it a point of loyalty to simply stand with the German state, in whatever form. Though not bereft of personal opinions, his primary allegiances were, first, to Deutschland and, second, to the soldiers under his command, who'd been committed against an enemy many times their strength. It is thus through Manstein that the attitudes of other high-ranking officers who fought during the Second World War, particularly on the Eastern Front, can be illuminated. This book is a "well-researched, convincingly reasoned analysis of a general widely considered one of WWII's great commanders" ( Publishers Weekly ). Includes photographs.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

¹ Philippe Masson, Histoire de l’armée allemande 1939–1945 (Paris: Perrin,
1944), 474.
² Basil Henry Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill. Germany’s Generals. Their Rise and Fall. With Their Own Account of Military Events 1939–1945 (London: Cassel, 1951), 94; Liddell Hart, Histoire de la Second Guerre mondiale (Paris: Fayard, 1973), 42.
³ John Keegan, La Deuxième Guerre mondiale (Paris: Perrin, 1990), 62; Christian Schneider, “Denkmal Manstein. Psychogramm eines Befehlshabers,” in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds., Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941–1944, (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995), 402; Guido Knopp, Hitlers Krieger (Munich: Goldmann, 2000), 235; David Irving, Hitler’s War (New York: Viking, 1977), 81; Albert Seaton, The German Army 1933 –
1945 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), 215.
⁴ Liddell Hart, “Forward,”in Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories (London: Methuen, 1958),13; Richard Brett-Smith, Hitler’s Generals (London: Osprey,
1976), 221.
⁵ Brett-Smith, Hitler’s Generals, 234; Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (Washington D.C.: Zenger, 1979), 302; Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, p 98; Walther Görlitz, ed., The Memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel (London: Kimber, 1965), 53.
⁶ Samuel W. Mitcham, Hitler’s Field Marshals and their Battles (London: Grafton, 1988), 241; Lord Carver, “Manstein,”in Correlli Barnett, ed., Hitler’s Generals (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1989), 221.
⁷ Marcel Stein, Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein. Kritische Betrachtung des Soldaten und Menschen (Mayence: Hase & Koehler, 2002),
10-11.
⁸ Manfred Messerschmidt, “Das Bild der Wehrmacht in Deutschland seit
1945,” Revue de l’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande, 30, no. 2 (April—May 1998): 117-119.
⁹ The first volume of the Memoirs of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein appeared in 1955, Verlorene Siege, 16th ed. (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 2000), the second volume in 1958, Aus einem Soldatenleben 1887 – 1939 (Bonn: Athenäum, 1958).

CHAPTER 1

¹⁰ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 13-14.
¹¹ ibid., 22-23.
¹² Knopp, Hitlers Krieger, 178.
¹³ Manfred Messerschmidt, “German Staff Officers’ Education since the Beginning of the 19th Century. Innovations and Traditions,” Militärhistorik Tidskrift, 187 (1983): 9-13.
¹⁴ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 51-57.
¹⁵ Andreas Hillgruber, “In der Sicht des Kritischen Historikers,” in Nie ausser Dienst. Zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein (Cologne: Greven & Bechtold, 1967), 68.
¹⁶ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 54; Knopp, Hitlers Krieger, 182.
¹⁷ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 77-84 (81 for the citation).
¹⁸ ibid., 46.
¹⁹ ibid., 115.
²⁰ Wolfram Wette, Die Wehrmacht, Feinbilder. Vernichtungskrieg. Legenden (Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer, 2002), 141-150 (144-145 and 150 for the citations).
²¹ Edward W. Bennett, German Rearmament and the West, 1932–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University, 1979), 506-507; Michael Geyer, Aufrüstung oder Sicherheit. Die Reichswehr in die Krise der Machtpolitik 1924–1936 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1980), 41; Geoffrey P. Megargee, Inside Hitler’s High Command (Kansas City: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 12; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, “Deutsche Militär-Elite in der Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” in Martin Broszat and Klaus Schwabe, eds., Deutsche Eliten und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Beck, 1989), 246-247.
²² Carl Dirks and Karl-Heinz Janßen, Der Krieg der Generäle. Hitler als Werkzeug der Wehrmacht (Berlin: Propyläen, 1999), 11-33 (25 for the citation). See also Karle-Heinz Janßen, “Politische und militärische Zielvorstellungen der Wehrmachtführung,” in Rolf-Dieter Müller and HansErich Volkmann, eds., Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: Oldenburg, 1999), 75-84.
²³ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 159.

CHAPTER 2

²⁴ Knopp, Hitlers Krieger, 182. ²⁵ Jean Solchany, “La lente dissipation d’une légende: La ‘Wehrmacht’ sous le regard de l’histoire,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 47, no. 2 (April-June 2000): 347.
²⁶ Klaus-Jürgen Müller, “Deutsche Militär-Elite,” 257-260; Wilhelm Deist, The Wehrmacht and German Rearmament (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1981), 26.
²⁷ Manstein, Aus einem Soldatenleben, 167-168.
²⁸ Manfred Messerschmidt, “The Wehrmacht and the Volksgemeinschaft,” Journal of Contemporary History, 18, no. 4 (October 1983): 721, 730-731. ²⁹ Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat: Zeit der Indoktrination (Hamburg: Decker, 1969), 15; Wilhelm Deist, “The Rearmament of the Wehrmacht,” in Wilhelm Deist et al., Germany and the Second World War, vol. 1, The Build-up of German Aggression (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 521; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Das Heer und Hitler: Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime 1933–1940 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1969), 67.
³⁰ Messerschmidt, “The Wehrmacht,” 730; Messerschmidt, “Forward Defense: The ‘Memorandum of the Generals’ for the Nuremberg Court,” in...

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• FROM THE IMPERIAL ARMY TO THE REICHSWEHR
• THE WEHRMACHT: ARMY OF THE THIRD REICH
• MANSTEIN AND THE MARCH TO WAR
• THE POLISH “LABORATORY”
• THE MANSTEIN PLAN
• DISGRACE AND A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS
• THE INCOMPLETE VICTORY OF THE SICKLE CUT
• BETWEEN TWO CAMPAIGNS
• THE CONQUEST OF THE CRIMEA
• THE WEHRMACHT AND THE GENOCIDAL WAR IN RUSSIA
• MANSTEIN, THE ELEVENTH ARMY IN THE CRIMEA, AND THE FINAL SOLUTION
• THE WINDS OF BEREZINA: THE STALINGRAD TRAGEDY
• FROM RETREAT TO BACKLASH
• CLASH OF TITANS: THE BATTLE OF KURSK
• MANSTEIN AND THE MILITARY RESISTANCE TO HITLER
• THE LEGEND OF AN “HONORABLE AND UPRIGHT” WEHRMACHT
• CONCLUSION: THE MAN AND THE SOLDIER
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY