The man known to history as Erich
von Manstein was born on the 24th of November 1887 in Berlin. His full name
was Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Manstein, a name which clearly indicated
his aristocratic background. His father was Eduard von Lewinski, a general
of the Prussian military and an aristocrat of that same state. The Prussian state was
the largest of the dozens of German states in the early nineteenth century. In 1871,
under its highly skilled political leader, Otto von Bismarck, Prussia had succeeded in
uniting the various German states into a new German Empire, one which was dominated by Prussia.
Thus, von Manstein was born into a family that was high up in the aristocracy and military of
not just Prussia, but the new German Empire. Erich’s mother was Helene von Sperling.
Erich was his parents’ tenth son and because Helene’s younger sister, Hedwig, was
unable to have children with her husband, Georg von Manstein, they allowed the
couple to adopt Erich. Thus, while Erich’s biological parents were Eduard and Helene
von Lewinski, his adoptive parents were Georg and Hedwig von Manstein, and it was that name
he would bear throughout his life. However, whether it was his von Lewinski relations
or his von Manstein adoptive family, nearly all of them were involved in the
Prussian military. In total nearly two dozen members of Erich’s immediate or close
family were members of the Prussian military, and as scions of the Prussian aristocracy a huge
number of them were also of the officer class. Thus, there was little doubt as to what career
young Erich would be encouraged to enter into. Erich grew up surrounded by military icons,
although the new German state was largely at peace in the 1890s when he was growing up. It had not
always been so. Back in the 1860s and early 1870s, when Prussia was still one of many German states,
it had engaged in a series of wars with Denmark, Austria and then France. In the course of
these it had succeeded not just in acquiring new territories from these three countries in
regions like Schleswig-Holstein in the north and Alsace and Lorraine in the west, but it had also
brought the thirty or so other German states such as Bavaria into a pan-German alliance. Eventually,
following a speedy victory in the Franco-Prussian War which Prussia initiated in 1870, a new
German Empire was declared in 1871. This united the German states into one country, but
it was dominated from its inception by Prussia, which had already controlled vast parts of
northern and eastern Germany, as well as parts of what is now north-western Poland. As such,
even as a new German state came into existence its military was dominated by Prussian military
families such as the von Mansteins. This would remain the case well into the twentieth century
and would shape the course of Erich’s life. In line with his family’s background young
Erich was sent to the Lyzeum, a pre-military training school in Strasbourg in 1894 when he
was just seven years of age. The German state had established a major military presence here
in the foremost city of the region of Alsace and Lorraine which it had conquered from France
twenty years earlier. This was a provocative act, one which was indicative of the rising tensions
across Europe over the emergence of Germany as the foremost political, military and economic
power on the continent, one which now rivalled Britain as a European power. In Strasbourg
von Manstein began some early elements of his training to become a military officer one
day. Then in 1899 he advanced to a cadet school, where he was widely interpreted as being
an above average student during his teenage years. In the mid-1900s he began advanced
training at various locations, eventually within the Prussian War Academy in Berlin. This
would last years through to the early 1910s and as it was occurring Europe was increasingly
dividing into two armed military alliances, one headed by Germany and including the massive
Austro-Hungarian Empire, the other consisting essentially of Britain, France and Russia.
Tensions between these two armed camps would soon escalate in ways that would shape von Manstein’s
life and the history of the twentieth century. In the summer of 1914 the growing tensions between
Europe’s major powers finally spilled over into direct conflict following a regional crisis in
the Balkans involving the assassination of the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, Archduke Franz Ferdinand. In early August Austria-Hungary and Germany declared
war on Britain, France and Russia, one after another. The German military plan was to launch an
assault into northern France through Belgium with the goal of seizing Paris quickly and knocking
France out of the war, as had been done at the time of the Franco-Prussian War nearly a half
a century earlier. To this end von Manstein was quickly involved on the Western Front, notably the
significant capture of the town of Namur and the surrounding fortifications in the first weeks of
the conflict. However, he was quickly transferred thereafter to the Eastern Front in Poland where
the Germans were beginning their plans to confront the Russians. The war would soon stagnate into a
stalemate on both fronts, with extensive trench warfare in north-eastern France in particular.
What is significant about von Manstein’s transfer between the two arenas is that in 1914 and 1915
he gained experience of Germany waging war in both Western and Eastern Europe, something
which provided him with a basis for devising strategies in both theatres many years later.
Von Manstein was shot and injured late in 1914 and spent six months back in Germany recuperating,
however thereafter he was redeployed to both the Eastern Front against the Russians and in the
Balkans where a complex war was being fought with both alliances having acquired allies
amongst countries such as Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Then in 1916 he was sent back to
France to play the role of a junior officer in the planning of offensive operations around the
town of Verdun in what would become one of the most significant engagements of the entire war on
the Western Front. Thereafter he was returned to the Eastern Front and then to the Western Front
again in 1918. All of this was vital training for the young von Manstein, who would not see a
major war again until 1939. As a result, like many of the German officer class of the Second World
War, his experiences of combat and command were shaped as a much younger man during the First
World War. But it was ultimately an experience of defeat. In 1917 the United States entered the
war on the side of Britain and France and with the increased resources available to the Atlantic
allies filtering into France Germany found itself on the back-foot militarily. This, combined with
Germans being starved of basic resources at home, led to serious unrest in the country, which
eventually spilled into violent disturbances. In early November 1918 the ruler of Germany, Kaiser
Wilhelm II, abdicated and just days later German surrender to Britain, France and the Americans
was agreed. The First World War was over. The terms under which the war was brought to an
end were highly unfavourable to Germany. Although the country had gained massive tracts of land from
Russia in a separate treaty in 1917, Britain and France forced the new Weimar Republic which had
taken control of Germany to renounce this land and much more besides on Germany’s eastern
flank in order to create a new Polish state. Austria-Hungary also suffered a similar truncation
and entirely new countries came into existence in Central Europe such as Czechoslovakia, formed out
of lands which had been formerly held by Germany and Austria-Hungary. On top of this Germany
was obliged under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which brought the war officially to an
end, to accept unequivocal guilt for having caused the war and to pay major war reparations for years
to come in order to reimburse France and Belgium in particular for the devastation inflicted on
their countries. In order to ensure this money was paid the French and Belgians were allowed to
occupy parts of western industrial Germany for years to come. Finally, as a guarantee that
Germany would not upset the future peace of Europe a clause of the Treaty also required the
German imperial army to be disbanded entirely and replaced with a trimmed down Reichswehr,
which was not to exceed the size of 100,000 men. Furthermore, the country was completely
prohibited from having its own air-force. For the majority of German soldiers and
officers the Treaty of Versailles meant they lost their positions within the army.
Not so for von Manstein, who had garnered a reputation as an effective strategist and
logistician during the war. Accordingly, he was one of the chosen few who were retained as
part of the Reichswehr into the 1920s. This was a period of immense unrest in Germany as localised
revolts in cities like Berlin and Munich broke out across the country in 1919 and 1920. The limited
German military was consequently stretched thin trying to control the situation and there were
extensive opportunities for von Manstein to rise within the ranks. By 1921 he had been appointed
as a company commander and in the years that followed he began teaching military history and
tactics, before finally being promoted to the rank of Major in 1927 and gaining appointment
to the General Staff of the Reichswehr, the organisational command of the German
military. Eventually he would be appointed as a lieutenant colonel in the Reichswehr.
He also became a family man during the 1920s, marrying Jutta Sibylle von Loesch in 1920
after a courtship of three days. They had three children in the years that followed, Gisela
in 1921, Gero in 1922 and Rudiger in 1929. These were not just formative years in von
Manstein’s military career and family life. The 1920s and early 1930s also saw the rise
to power of an extremist group in Germany. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party
or Nazi Party had emerged from the fractured politics of Bavaria and the city of Munich
in particular in the early 1920s. Led by an Austrian demagogue named Adolf Hitler,
they were a fringe group who wanted to overturn the Versailles Treaty and impose an
extreme form of racial politics on Germany, one which blamed groups such as the Jews for all
of Germany’s woes and argued that new wars should be launched by a revitalised Germany to conquer
vast territory from groups such as the Slavs of Eastern Europe whom they viewed to be racially
inferior. For much of the 1920s they remained nothing more than a small party in Bavaria with
a following amongst the profoundly disaffected, but when the economies of the Americas and
Europe were hit by the Wall Street Crash and then the Great Depression from 1929 onwards
their message of anger and revenge began to resonate with German voters. They made major
gains in the Reichstag elections of 1930 and became the largest party in the country in 1932.
Thus, after a brief period in which the centrist parties had attempted to block their path to
power, Hitler was able to ascend as German Chancellor early in 1933. He and his followers
quickly dismantled the Weimar Republic and created a one-party state. This would all have enormous
consequences for von Manstein’s future years. One of the first issues at hand for the Nazis upon
seizing power in 1933 was to begin overturning the provisions within the Treaty of Versailles
for Germany to remain largely demilitarised. A reorganisation of the military saw von Manstein
quickly promoted to the position of a full colonel in the spring of 1934, but the real shift
began early in 1935 when Hitler announced to Britain and France that Germany intended to begin
rebuilding its military to a strength of nearly half a million men in direct violation of the
Versailles agreement. In tandem a new air-force named the Luftwaffe was to be established. As part
of these measures the administrative organisation of the German military, renamed the Wehrmacht,
was reformed in the months that followed. Von Manstein’s talents were recognised when on the 1st
of July 1935 he was promoted to the position of Head of the Operations Branch of the Army General
Staff. This was effectively one of the most senior administrative and operational positions within
the beating heart of the German military command in Berlin. And it was soon followed with an
additional promotion to the rank of General Major, making von Manstein a senior military
commander within the new German Wehrmacht. One might ask at this point exactly how close to
the Nazi leadership von Manstein was. Was he an adherent of their political positions or was he
simply an army commander who fortuitously gained promotion as Hitler and the Nazis began rapidly
expanding the German military in the 1930s. The answer is that there is extensive evidence
to suggest that von Manstein’s politics were very much in line with Nazi ideology. There
is significant documentary evidence extant today which testifies to his belief that
the twin forces of the Bolshevik Communists of Soviet Russia and the Jews of Europe were
joined in some imaginary plot to destroy the German people. As such he perceived Germany’s
mission as being to prevent the rise to power of the Bolsheviks throughout Europe backed by a
Jewish conspiracy. There is also contradictory evidence which suggests that he was willing
to oppose the Nazis on occasion. For instance, in 1934 he was one of the few German military
officers who opposed the introduction of the so-called ‘Aryan Paragraph’, a stipulation
which was introduced into military doctrine that individuals had to have Aryan
blood, which was code for German blood, in order to serve. However, overriding this
again is von Manstein’s speech at Hitler’s 50th birthday in April 1939 in which he whole-heartedly
endorsed the Nazi Party’s racial and political ideologies and claimed that he would welcome
a world war to see their vision implemented. He would not have long to wait. German
remilitarisation in 1935 had been just the first step in the country’s advance to
war. Originally the Nazis had intended on waiting until 1941 or 1942 to go to war, but
in the late 1930s they realised that Britain and France’s remilitarisation was slow enough that
they would be best to strike quickly. As a result, in 1938 Germany’s foreign policy became more
aggressive, annexing Austria into a greater Germany in a quasi-military diplomatic coup
in March of that year. Further land grabs on Czechoslovakia occurred in the autumn, but this
simply prefigured the wholesale annexation of the country in the spring as well as the seizure of
some territory in the Baltic states region at the same time. By now the British and French were
declaring that they had had enough. If Hitler proceeded to try and make good on his claims to
land in Poland, they informed Berlin, they would have no option but to declare war in defence
of Polish independence. This is exactly what happened in early September 1939 after Germany
invaded the country. It was the beginning of the Second World War, which von Manstein had spoken
of just months earlier at Hitler’s birthday. Von Manstein was immediately involved in the
war. Prior to the invasion of Poland he had been promoted as the Chief of Staff to General Gerd
von Rundstedt, the commander of Army Group South who was to oversee the military incursion into
Germany’s eastern neighbour. In this new capacity he played a significant role in developing
the operation plan for the invasion. Here one of his favoured approaches, which he would
advise Hitler to deploy in multiple theatres, was on display. It was von Manstein who advised
that the 10th Army under Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau should attack in force to break through
the Polish lines and then surround much of their forces west of the River Vistula. A thrust could
then be made to seize the Polish capital, Warsaw, quickly. This approach of von Manstein’s
was partially integrated into the plan for the invasion. It proved effective and was
one of the reasons why the campaign was so successful. Within five weeks of invading
Poland on the 1st of September 1939 the Germans were victorious with the last remnants
of resistance surrendering on the 6th of October. The occupation of Poland also provided the first
opportunity for the Nazis to put their racial policies into operation on a major scale.
Poland was home to over three million Jews, a figure which dwarfed the 500,000 or so
who lived in Germany when they seized power there. Germany’s Jews had already experienced
increasing persecution since 1933 and many had decided to flee the country, but this would pale
by comparison with what developed in Poland in the years that followed as the Jewish people were
rounded up into ghettos where a systematic policy of starvation was implemented. More immediately
von Manstein and his fellow commanders would have been aware of the first actions of
the Einsatzgruppen. These were brigades of members of the SS, a paramilitary wing of the
Nazis comprising only the most ideologically committed members of the military. They were
first deployed in Poland, travelling in the rear of the German army itself and effectively mass
murdering thousands of individuals who had been identified as potential leaders of any Polish
resistance to German occupation. By early 1940 Operation Tannenberg, as it was codenamed,
had led to the mass murder of over 100,000 Polish politicians, intellectuals and other
figures. These atrocities would become all too prevalent in Eastern Europe in years to
come and despite claims which von Manstein would later make that the commanders within
the military did not approve of such actions there was little to any resistance offered
to the actions of the Einsatzgruppen by the commanders of the German army in Poland
during the invasion and initial occupation. Von Manstein’s contributions to the eastwards
campaign into Poland had gained him greater respect not just within the high command of the
Wehrmacht, but also within the Nazi leadership. Accordingly, when the planning process got
underway for a westwards drive into France to be launched in 1940 von Manstein’s advice was
listened to. There were competing theories as to how this offensive should be undertaken.
The initial plan, codenamed ‘Case Yellow’, had largely been devised by Colonel
General Walther von Brauchitsch and General Franz Halder of the Army High Command,
in conjunction with their staff. This called for an approach similar to that which
the Germans had attempted back in 1914, of skirting the main fortifications erected
by the French in western France and instead invading through the Netherlands and Belgium.
Von Manstein felt this would lack surprise and instead counselled Hitler that the attack should
also have a wing move in strength along a more southerly line through the Ardennes Forest region
of Luxembourg, southern Belgium and north-eastern France. This would largely outflank the Maginot
Line of defensive fortifications to the south, but would also allow the Germans to make a
second pincer movement towards the coast, trapping the French and the British expeditionary
force in between it and the more northerly force. Although many within the Army High Command
were unconvinced of the merit of von Manstein’s proposal, Hitler was won over by it and ordered
the generals and their staff to incorporate elements of it into the wider plan for the
invasion of France. This invasion ultimately came later than the Western Allies expected.
After the quick conquest of Poland in the autumn of 1939 a period of unusual stability was seen
as Germany prepared for its next move and the British and French desperately tried to rearm and
conscript hundreds of thousands of troops. When hostilities did resume in the spring of 1940 it
was only for the purposes of a brief campaign in which Denmark and Norway were quickly occupied
by the Nazis. Thus, it was not until the early summer of 1940 that the long-awaited invasion
of France was initiated. On the 10th of May the Germans made their initial move into Belgium
and the Netherlands, as planned originally. Then as the French and the British Expeditionary
Force moved north-east to engage them in Belgium, a second pincer attack was launched through the
Ardennes into north-eastern France as von Manstein had counselled. The weeks that followed would
prove exactly how effective this strategy was. The British and the French were not able to deal
with the ferocity of the German onslaught in mid-May 1940. Divisions of German troops, led by
groups of Panzer tanks which never seemed to stop moving day or night, charged westwards at their
lines. Within a week or so the German front lines were nearing the English Channel. Even back in
Berlin Hitler was astonished by the speed of the army’s advance. As a result of it von Manstein’s
plan had largely worked. The British Expeditionary Force and much of the French army now found
themselves trapped between two separate German armies, one in Belgium and one in north-eastern
France, which had proceeded into the country following the Ardennes strategy von Manstein had
championed. Faced with this impossible situation the British began retreating to the port town
of Dunkirk which they still held, desperate to remove their forces from France back to Britain,
a feat that was achieved in the space of a week in late May and early June. Over 330,000 British
soldiers were evacuated, a feat made possible by a combination of the desire of Hermann Goering,
one of the senior Nazi leaders, to claim the glory for himself by having his Luftwaffe effectively
bomb the expedition into oblivion while trapped in Dunkirk, along with distractions created by
the remnants of the French army elsewhere in north-east France and the sheer daring of the
British rescue operation, one which involved hundreds of merchant ships and fishing boats.
It was only for this reason that von Manstein’s plan had not achieved total success in capturing
the British Expeditionary Force in its entirety. The Germans entered Paris on the 14th of June
1940. The French government had fled into exile days earlier and the city was taken unopposed.
Thereafter France was divided into an occupied zone in the north and west and a region in
the south and east which was handed over to a collaborationist French regime based
out of the town of Vichy. No sooner were they ensconced in Paris than German attentions
turned towards defeating Britain. As an island, with a more substantial navy than Germany’s,
this would prove altogether more difficult. There were competing arguments as to how Germany
should proceed within the Army High Command. One faction believed an extended blockade of Britain
by sea and air should be used to force the country into submission, but others favoured a brief
bombing campaign followed by an amphibious landing across the English Channel. This would
knock Britain out of the war quickly and ensure that Germany did not have to worry about a threat
in Western Europe before it turned eastwards again. Von Manstein was in favour of this latter
strategy, but he like all others who supported it were overruled in October 1940 when Hitler
ultimately took the decision to postpone the invasion of Britain and instead begin preparing
for an invasion of the Soviet Union to the east. By this time von Manstein had been promoted to the
rank of a full general and had been awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross in recognition
of his contribution to the invasion of France. He was also appointed as the commander of 56th
Panzer Group in March 1941 as part of the planning for what would eventually be termed Operation
Barbarossa, named after a medieval German emperor. This was the tactical plan for the invasion of the
Soviet Union, the largest land military operation ever undertaken. It would involve over three and
a half million German army personnel and over 600,000 motorized vehicles. By now Hitler and his
generals were convinced of the merits of short, fast campaigns where they quickly overwhelmed
their enemies. As such the plan for Operation Barbarossa was to invade the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1941, proceeding east and north-east, taking cities like Kyiv along the way, and
ultimately seizing Leningrad and Moscow before the winter set in. With this done the
Russians would almost certainly capitulate like the French before them. Von Manstein was
assigned to the northern wing, Army Group North, which was to thrust through the Baltic States
before ultimately moving to capture Leningrad. Operation Barbarossa was an enormous success
to begin with. From its first launching on the 22nd of June 1941 through to September 1941 the
Germans advanced rapidly, taking huge tracts of land in eastern Poland, the Baltic States and
Ukraine and capturing hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war and thousands of tanks and
armoured vehicles as they went. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, even considered negotiating a
peace whereby his government would acknowledge Germany in its possession of these regions.
Von Manstein’s army group covered less land owing to its operational objective to move towards
Leningrad. Nevertheless, this was a region where some of the densest Russian troop presence was
found and it was not unusual that they encountered stiff resistance. By the late summer his unit
was preparing for a descent on Leningrad, but met with counterattacks by the Russian Red Army.
There were victories in this for von Manstein, notably the encirclement and capture of a
unit of some 12,000 Soviets and 140 tanks in Staraya Russia in mid-August, but also some
setbacks. Ultimately, as the Russian positions were increasingly reinforced, the German advance
slowed in the autumn. Von Manstein’s forces were in Novgorod, just south of Leningrad, when he
received news on the 12th of September that he had been promoted to the command of the German
11th Army hundreds of kilometres away in Ukraine. Von Manstein had been promoted to oversee
the 11th Army after its previous commander, Colonel-General Eugen Ritter von Schobert, was
killed in a plane crash. Von Schobert had been preparing for an assault on the Crimean Peninsula
in south-eastern Ukraine, in particular by seizing the major port city of Sevastopol. This region was
strategically important as it guarded the route from Russia to Romania, a key ally of the Nazis
from which Germany received a huge proportion of its oil supplies. The Crimea needed to be
secured in order to prevent any effort by the Russians to launch a counterattack into Romania.
This task was now handed over to von Manstein who quickly sent his forces, numbering approximately
200,000 strong and a major division of Romanian troops into the peninsula. Crucially, though, they
lacked major air support. Despite this impediment, the Russians fell back speedily on Sevastopol
itself and by the early winter nearly all of the Crimean Peninsula was in German hands.
However, the town would take longer to capture. A lengthy siege occurred at Sevastopol, one
which von Manstein initiated in November 1941, but which would drag on until the summer of
1942. In part this owed to the onset of the cold Russian winter. This was not harsh in the
southerly climes of the Black Sea. But further to the north the German advance was stalling
outside Leningrad and Moscow in what would prove to be the first serious setback the German
armed forces had yet experienced during the war. Von Manstein’s plans for capturing Sevastopol were
further delayed in the early winter of 1941 by the onset of severe rains which delayed the German
attack on the city. Then when an assault was finally launched on the 17th of December it was
quickly hindered by a Russian counter-offensive as an amphibious expedition landed on the
eastern side of the Crimean Peninsula, a region known as the Kerch Peninsula. Von
Manstein and his fellow officers had specific commands from Hitler not to fall back from the
Kerch Peninsula, ones which were disobeyed in the face of the heavy Russian counter-attack in the
dying days of 1941, giving the Russians control of a beachhead here in eastern Crimea. As a result
of the new front in the east of the peninsula, the major assault on Sevastopol was once again put
on hold to deal with the threat on the Germans’ eastern flank. What followed was months of bloody
conflict as the Russians heavily reinforced the Kerch beachhead and attempted to drive the 11th
Army out of the Crimean Peninsula entirely. It was ultimately a very costly failure. Von Manstein’s
men stood firm and the attrition rate amongst the Russians was catastrophic, indeed as it was all
across the Eastern Front during the war. As they launched sortie after sortie against the German
lines in the late winter and early spring of 1942 hundreds of thousands of Russian troops were lost.
Von Manstein’s 11th Army lost tens of thousands, but the number was only a percentage of
the deadly death toll on the Russian side. By the late spring the Russians were demoralised
and much reduced in number. This was also the occasion for Hitler to finally acquiesce
to von Manstein’s repeated requests to be granted substantial air support in the Crimean
Peninsula. In early May the 800 planes of the German 8th Air Corps were dispatched to
the Crimea under the command of Wolfram von Richthofen. These proved decisive in the
weeks that followed in allowing von Manstein to finally take the offensive against the
Russian 44th, 47th and 51st armies’ position on the Kerch beachhead. With von Richthofen’s
planes flying over 1,500 sorties a day and the Germans battering their position with artillery,
the Russians were effectively sitting ducks. Thus, by the time the Kerch beachhead was secured
by the Germans on the 19th of May the death toll amongst the Russians from the Kerch
offensive had topped half a million men. And with this done von Manstein was finally free
to turn his attentions back to Sevastopol. With the support of the 8th Air Corp and without any
further distractions to the east he was quickly able to seize the city after a siege of a
few weeks in the early days of July. Thus, after a gruelling eight month campaign the
Peninsula was finally fully under German control. What was perhaps most striking about von
Manstein’s command of the 11th Army during the Crimean campaign was the ratio of casualties on
both sides. Von Manstein’s men had comprehensively defeated a numerically superior enemy, losing less
than one man for every five Russians who perished. Yet there were many casualties besides. The brutal
Einsatzgruppen, whose sinister work von Manstein would have become aware of back in Poland in the
autumn of 1939, were again brought into operation in the Crimean Peninsula, as they were all across
Ukraine and Russia in 1941 and 1942 as the German army advanced. Unlike in Poland von Manstein
was actually in charge of operations here, yet there is no evidence to suggest that he tried
to obstruct these brigades of SS troops in their activities. Indeed the Einsatzgruppen involved
were supplied with vehicles, ammunition and other supplies directly by the 11th Army. There is no
doubting that von Manstein knew exactly what they were doing and that many of his own troops were
guilty of atrocities as well during the Crimean campaign. All of this is significant in terms of
claims von Manstein would later make about the German army being largely innocent of the crimes
the Nazi regime was perpetrating, such as the Holocaust of Europe’s Jews which was just being
initiated as the Crimean campaign was underway. Von Manstein’s effectiveness in overcoming
superior numbers had been noticed by Hitler and he was ordered north within days of victory in
Crimea to Leningrad, the siege of which city had stalled the previous winter and which had settled
into a stalemate. He arrived there in late August, but it would prove a short-lived sojourn in the
north. First a Russian counter-offensive limited the possibility of a quick German victory
there that autumn, but more significant were developments to the south. In the summer of
1942 Hitler and the generals had determined on a new strategy for winning the war in the
east. Codenamed Case Blue, the new plan was to strike into southern Russia in order to
secure the rich oilfields of the Caucasus, which would both provide a boon to the German war
effort and economy and also massively reduce the supply of oil available to the Russians. This,
it was imagined, could bring about the complete collapse of the Soviet war effort and ultimate
victory for Germany in the war. A daring strategy such as this was needed, as the United States had
entered the war in December 1941 on the side of Britain and the Soviet Union and the campaign
Germany was undertaking with Italy in North Africa was souring as well. It was clear that
the drift of the war was turning in the favour of the Allies and so the Nazis needed to take
measures which would tip the balance in Eastern Europe back in their favour. Case Blue was that
strategy, but it would necessitate seizing a key site in southern Russia, the city of Stalingrad.
Von Manstein was not appointed to the overall command of activities at Stalingrad. That
ultimately dubious honour fell to Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, commanding the German
6th Army. With an initial force of over quarter of a million men and 500 tanks Paulus had moved
towards Stalingrad in late August 1942 and had succeeded in securing most of the city on the
west bank of the River Volga by mid-September, however thereafter their advance on the eastern
side of the river stalled as the Russians had reinforced their position here considerably.
A massive build-up of troops thus commenced in September and into October as both sides
began channelling huge resources into what was increasingly viewed as the crucible in which
the fate of the war on the Eastern Front would be decided. Violent clashes occurred across the
city in the early weeks of the battle, but it was not until mid-November when the Soviets under
their commander, General Georgy Khukov, launched a huge offensive codenamed Operation Uranus that
the Battle of Stalingrad entered its most bloody stage. The Russian strategy was to encircle
Paulus’s 6th Army in Stalingrad by moving north and south of the city and then circling
back to strike at the German rear, which was largely held by the near 200,000 Romanian allies
who were fighting with the Germans at Stalingrad by this time. These were weaker troops who were
more vulnerable to a Russian offensive and there was now a possibility that Paulus would
be surrounded and cut off within the city. In response to these developments Hitler
ordered the creation of a new army group, Army Group Don. Von Manstein, who by now held the
title of a full Field Marshal, the highest general rank within the German military command, was
appointed to command it on the 21st of November 1942. In the weeks that followed, as he planned
a counter-offensive codenamed Operation Winter Storm, the Russians completed the encirclement
of Paulus’ 6th Army in Stalingrad. They were now cut off from the German lines by land
but Hitler and the head of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering, were convinced that Paulus could
be supplied by air for months to come. Stalingrad, the Fuhrer commanded, was not to be abandoned,
and no break out through the Russian lines should be attempted. Thus, von Manstein’s effort to
break through the Russian lines from without and end the encirclement of Paulus’s men was
launched on the 12th of December 1942. However, despite some initial successes in the first days
of the initiative, by the end of the first week of the counter-attack it was clear that the Russian
perimeter was too strong for von Manstein’s Army Group Don to break through. Accordingly, on
the 18th of December he sent a request to Hitler than Paulus should be allowed to attempt a
breakout and abandon Stalingrad. Hitler refused. After the initial onslaught in mid-December
and the failure of it there was little that von Manstein’s forces could do as the Russians
continued to pump ever greater numbers of men into the lines surrounding Stalingrad. And as they were
reinforced the possibility of Paulus attempting any breakout with the nearly quarter of a million
troops he had under his control in the city itself became ever more remote. Moreover, additional
Russian counter-offensives were now being mounted to capture cities such as Rostov. In response to
these and the futile situation which now obtained in Stalingrad, von Manstein was placed in charge
of a new Army Group South made up of Army Group Don and the remnants of other divisions in
early February 1943. This was just as Paulus and his men, over 200,000 of them, starving and
disease-ridden by now, surrendered in Stalingrad to the Russians who surrounded them on all sides.
It was the first time a German field army was entirely defeated in the war and was a symbol of
how the Germans were now hurtling towards defeat. The war for the remainder of 1943 was a mixed
affair. For instance, in the north the siege of Leningrad continued and was not fully broken
until January 1944. However, to the south the Russians were advancing westwards, but without a
second front open anywhere in Europe as of yet, the Germans still had reserves with which to
launch a new counter-offensive themselves. This would be aimed at securing the Kursk salient,
a few hundred kilometres to the south-west of Moscow. Von Manstein was given one of the
senior-most roles in this initiative on which the last desperate German hope of victory in the
east now rested, in part because he had yet again secured a quick, but significant victory after
being placed in charge of Army Group South in recapturing Kharkov in a four week battle there
in February and March 1943, at the end of which the casualty rate was eight times greater
on the Russian side than on von Manstein’s side. In its aftermath Hitler began committing
much of Germany’s remaining resources to von Manstein’s efforts to counter-attack into Kursk
in what would become known as Operation Citadel. In retrospect the strategic thinking behind
the counter-attack on the Kursk salient seems baffling. Hitler was informed by his generals
that he would be much better off pulling back from Russia and engaging in a strategic defence
of Poland and Ukraine, but he nevertheless went ahead with the strategy, hoping for some miracle
breakthrough. When Operation Citadel was launched on the 5th of July von Manstein commanded the
southern wing, with Field Marshal Walter Model commanding the north. Despite committing
over three-quarters of a million men, nearly 3,000 tanks and over 9,000 artillery
units to it, the Germans were outnumbered by Russian forces numbering over one and a half
million troops and over 5,000 tanks. Moreover, the Russians had ample advance warning of what the
German plan was and had dug trenches and planted mines all across the Kursk salient in advance of
the attack. This was owing to the British having intercepted intelligence of the operation which
they passed on to their Russian allies. Thus, when the offensive began it soon ran into a
quagmire, difficulties which were compounded by the arrival of news that the Western Allies had
initiated the opening of a second front in Europe by invading Sicily on the 9th of July. Thus,
Hitler called off the offensive just days later, but it would take weeks before von Manstein
could fully extricate his forces from the vicious fighting across the salient. Kursk
remains the largest tank battle in history. With defeat at Kursk, and with any free troops
being funnelled towards Italy to deal with the invasion of the peninsula there, von Manstein
and the other commanders in Eastern Europe were effectively fighting a rear-guard action in
the months that followed, desperately trying to stop the Russian advance with dwindling
resources. By mid-autumn this consisted of a steady retreat to the River Dnieper during which
war atrocities were again evidently committed by von Manstein’s troops with the destruction of
the countryside to induce famine conditions. Here a line was held through the early winter of
1943, but von Manstein’s pleas for reinforcements were falling on deaf ears with Hitler, as the
Nazis prepared for the inevitable opening of a third front somewhere in Western Europe, one
which would eclipse the Southern Front in Italy in scale. As a result Kyiv, the capital of
Ukraine lying on the Dnieper, fell to the Soviets in mid-November after a brief siege of
less than two weeks. Inevitably, by January 1944 von Manstein was forced to completely abandon
the defensive line which had been established along the course of the river. Moreover, with
the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad to the north new Russian forces were now available
to commence a westward drive into Poland. The war from early 1944 onwards was one of
attrition as the Russians advanced from the east and the Western Allies advanced north through
Italy and from the summer of that year from France where the third front was opened. There was no
escaping the reality of German defeat by then. However, von Manstein did not spend it in service.
In mid-March 1944, while he was still commanding the retreat across western Ukraine, Hitler had
issued a command that all divisions everywhere were to fight to the death. There was to be no
surrender. Von Manstein objected to this directive and was commanded to fly to meet Hitler in person.
This he duly did at the Fuhrer’s mountain retreat, the Berghof, in Bavaria on the 30th of March
1944. There the Nazi leader awarded von Manstein the Swords of the Knight’s Cross, one of the
highest honours bestowed on any member of the German military, before promptly dismissing
him from his command. This was not in itself a highly unusual development and Hitler had
become highly volatile in his attitudes towards his military commanders in the final years of
the war. Although he was not informed of it at the time, von Manstein was not to be reassigned to
another command for the remainder of the conflict. Von Manstein spent the last year of the Second
World War largely dealing with health concerns. He had developed a serious cataract problem in
his eyes while serving on the Eastern Front, which he now had operated on. However, this
led to an infection and for a time there was a possibility that he would lose his vision. It
was while he was recuperating back in Germany in the months that followed that the war entered
its terminal stage. The Russians began to overrun Poland in the autumn of 1944, while at the same
time the Western Allies advanced quickly through Western Europe, seizing Paris within weeks
of landing in the north of the country that summer. By the end of the year the situation was
dire, with the Western Allies building up their forces in eastern France for an offensive into
western Germany early in 1945 and the Russians preparing to do the same in eastern Germany.
Not even one last belated counter-offensive by the Germans through the Ardennes Forest,
where von Manstein had advised Hitler to send part of the German army five years
previously, before the invasion of France, could yield much by way of results. Thus, in
the spring of 1945 the noose began to tighten. In January 1945 von Manstein and his family,
who had lost his son Gero in October 1942 on the Eastern Front, were forced to leave their home at
Liegnitz as the Russian army advanced. They took refuge in Berlin, though it was only a temporary
reprieve as the German capital was the ultimate goal for both the Russians and the Western Allies.
When he reached the capital von Manstein attempted to arrange a personal meeting with Hitler to
offer him his services as a military commander, but the Nazi leader, who was an increasingly
drug-addled shell of a man confined to the chancellery bunker in the centre of the city,
refused to grant him an audience. As a result the von Mansteins continued to move west to
avoid being entangled in the Battle of Berlin which commenced in mid-April 1945. They eventually
settled, like many other high-ranking members of the Nazi Party and German military near the Danish
border, well out of harm’s way. It was here, while again receiving medical treatment, that von
Manstein would have received news that Hitler had killed himself in Berlin on the 30th of April
1945. Just over a week later, on the 8th of May, hostilities ceased in Europe. In the weeks
that followed people who were connected with the regime from all over Germany were identified
and arrested. Von Manstein was somewhat belatedly interred in August 1945, a result of his having
been receiving medical treatment at the time. Long before the war ended the Western Allies had
begun preparing for its aftermath. In particular they were concerned with the prosecution of those
who were responsible for the war crimes committed by the regime. By 1945 the casualties of
these war crimes numbered well in excess of ten million people, some six million being
Europe’s Jews, while millions of Romani, Poles, Russians and other groups had also been mass
murdered as slave labourers and prisoners of war who were not afforded proper treatment
under the terms of the Geneva Convention. When one considers that the war had been
caused almost exclusively by Germany, then the Nazi regime was culpable for the
deaths of tens of millions of people. However, the Western Allies had determined that not
all Germans would be held responsible for the country’s crimes. A great proportion of Germans
had never voted for the Nazi Party during its rise to power or supported it after 1933.
Moreover, the collective war guilt which had been imposed on Germany’s population following
the First World War had partly facilitated the rise of the Nazis. Consequently, by the time the
war ended it had been concluded that only those who were directly responsible for fomenting the
war and committing crimes against humanity and war crimes would be prosecuted. This would include
as a matter of course the surviving senior members of the Nazi regime and the Waffen SS who had
run the concentration camps and made up much of the Einsatzgruppen. Within weeks of the war
ending trials were being organised to be held at the city of Nuremburg, where the Nazis had
held their vast annual rallies when in power. From the inception of the International
Military Tribunal at Nuremburg von Manstein, who was initially detained, but whom it was
quickly determined would not stand trial, was committed to defending the reputation of
himself and the wider German army. In time he would become the foremost proponent of what has
become known as the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. This holds that the leaders of the German military
were either unaware of the crimes being committed by the Nazis and the SS in the concentration camps
and elsewhere across Europe between 1939 and 1945, or were not in any position to prevent what
was happening. As part of his efforts in this regard von Manstein appeared at the first trial at
Nuremburg, that of the leaders of the regime such as Goering, the war armaments minister, Albert
Speer, and the Deputy Fuhrer of the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1941, Rudolf Hess. There he
testified against his former masters and also helped draft a 132 page document which tried to
exonerate the Wehrmacht and attribute all of the guilt for the war to the Nazi Party and the SS.
In this light von Manstein and his co-author, Siegfried Westphal, presented the German high
command as being military officers who were following the chain of command. Von Manstein
and Westphal claimed that it was the Nazis, not the German military who were responsible
for the Holocaust and the mass murder of millions of civilians and prisoners of war on
the Eastern Front, acts which were perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen and other elements. Indeed
von Manstein even stated that he had disobeyed many orders where they contravened the accepted
rules of war. Thus was born the myth of the clean Wehrmacht, one which was augmented and added
to by many other senior military commanders. The myth did not last fully intact for long.
Von Manstein left Nuremburg in 1946 feeling as though he had rescued his own reputation and
that of many of his fellow officers from ignominy, but no sooner had the trials of the Nazi
leadership and heads of the SS concluded than many people began reconsidering the role of
the Wehrmacht in the horrors of the war. Archival evidence which clearly showed generals such as
von Manstein receiving orders which contravened the accepted rules of war and then acting on them
were uncovered and the military’s complicity in the murder of millions of people on the Eastern
Front was revealed. It was, for instance, clear that von Manstein had been perfectly
aware of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in the regions where he was commanding on the
Eastern Front throughout the war. Accordingly, in 1948 the British arrested von Manstein, having
been pressured to do so by the Soviets. He was placed on trial along with several other
senior commanders of the Wehrmacht in the autumn of 1949. There he faced nearly twenty
different charges, all relating to his conduct as a commander on the Eastern Front, notably
following the invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. At this trial it was clearly
demonstrated using documentary evidence and the testimonies of those who had served with von
Manstein between 1941 and 1944 that he had agreed in principle with the Nazi high command in
its desire to exterminate both the Jews and many groups of Eastern Europeans. Accordingly, after
a trial which lasted several months von Manstein was found guilty of nine different crimes
and sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Despite the length of his sentence von Manstein
would only ever serve just over three years in prison. His term was first commuted to twelve
years early in 1950 and then he was released early in May 1953. There were many reasons
why his sentence was drastically reduced in this way. For one his defence counsel during his
trial, the British lawyer Reginald Thomas Paget, published a book in 1951 defending his now
convicted client and his record, while there was a general policy in the early 1950s of releasing
German war criminals early as West Germany became a key western ally in the intensifying Cold War
between the US and its allies on one hand and the Soviet Union on the other. Thus, von Manstein
was released after serving only a fraction of his sentence. Thereafter he was quickly brought on as
a military advisor to the West German government in its creation of a new army to stave off
the threat from Communist East Germany. In 1955 he also published a memoir in which he yet
again attempted to exonerate himself and the Wehrmacht from the crimes of the Nazi regime.
He did not die until the 9th of June 1973, from a stroke at the age of 85. When he did he was
buried with full military honours in West Germany. Erich von Manstein is one of the most intensely
debated figures within the German military command during the Second World War. There is
no doubting his military capabilities. These were recognised early on and he was one of the
small number of German military officers who were retained when the much reduced Reichswehr
was formed in the aftermath of the First World War. He rose steadily through the ranks and when
the Second World War was eventually entered into in 1939 he was in a position to offer his advice
to the central planning offices. As a result he was able to profoundly influence the strategy
used in invading France in the summer of 1940, by advancing through the Ardennes region,
rather than along a more northerly route in Belgium. Consequently von Manstein was perhaps
responsible more than any other individual, with the exception of the German tank commander,
Heinz Guderian, for the astonishing military victory which the Germans won over the French
in May and June 1940. Thereafter he was promoted and served in many senior capacities on the
Eastern Front, leading the Crimean campaign, playing a major role at Stalingrad and throughout
the German retreat across Eastern Europe in 1943. While his major successes were largely confined to
his role in the invasion of France and the victory in the Crimean Campaign, there is no doubting
von Manstein’s abilities as a military commander. However, it is not his ability as a commander
that has been the source of debate concerning him. Rather von Manstein’s career has been
widely contested owing to his central role in the formation of the myth of the clean Wehrmacht. No
sooner was the war over in the summer of 1945 than the general began co-operating with the Allies and
producing reports which all aimed to alleviate the guilt of the German military high command and
place the blame for the Nazis’ atrocities firmly on the shoulders of the Nazi Party leadership
itself and groups such as the Waffen SS. He was initially quite successful in this and escaped
prosecution himself for several years. And even when he was finally convicted and sentenced von
Manstein served only a fraction of this time and was quickly rehabilitated afterwards. Moreover,
the myth of the clean Wehrmacht remains a powerful feature in assessing the German military during
the war down to this day. It may well be that aspects of it apply to some of the main German
commanders, several of whom resigned their positions or did their level best to obstruct Nazi
policy in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. But that is hardly the case with von Manstein. His views
were, broadly speaking, in line with those of the Nazis in being rabidly Anti-Semitic and perceiving
the peoples of Eastern Europe from the perspective of German racial superiority. It is hardly
surprising then to find that he was responsible for committing widespread atrocities himself
in Poland, Ukraine and Russia between 1939 and 1944. Thus, for all that von Manstein attempted
to exonerate himself and his fellow generals, he was just as complicit in the crimes of
the Third Reich as many of the Nazi leaders. What do you think of Erich von Manstein?
Were his claims of the supposedly ‘clean Wehrmacht’ who were not responsible for the worst
crimes of the Nazi regime somewhat plausible, or was he just as culpable in conquering
parts of Europe which the Nazis and SS then unleashed their genocidal policies on?
Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank
you very much for watching.
