Erich von Manstein

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Erich von Manstein, 1938

Fritz Erich von Lewinski called von Manstein (born November 24, 1887 in Berlin , † June 10, 1973 in Irschenhausen ) was a German professional officer , from 1942 in the rank of field marshal .

During the Second World War , von Manstein commanded various army and army groups before he was transferred to the Führerreserve in 1944 . In 1945 he was first treated as a prisoner of war, then imprisoned and convicted as a war criminal in 1949 . After his release from prison in 1953, von Manstein was the only former field marshal until 1960, unofficial advisor to the federal government on the new formation of an army.

Origin and early years

Fritz Erich Georg Eduard von Lewinski was born on November 24, 1887 in Berlin . He was the tenth and youngest child of the future general of the artillery Eduard von Lewinski with his wife Helene, née von Sperling . Since the marriage of his aunt Hedwig, his mother's younger sister, to Major Georg von Manstein had remained childless, the newborn was handed over to her after his baptism as agreed. After the adoption he took the given name of Manstein . Another aunt, Gertrud , was married to the future General Field Marshal and Reich President Paul von Hindenburg .

Manstein's former orderly officer Alexander Stahlberg writes in his memoirs that his boss claimed to him during the war that he was descended from a "great-great-ancestor Lewi", which the Manstein biographer Oliver von Wrochem said in his dissertation as Stahlberg's speculation about "none serious statement ”of the general. In addition, there is no evidence of a “Jewish origin of the name”.

As a descendant of an old family of officers - sixteen direct ancestors of the von Lewinski line and von Mansteins had served as officers in the Prussian-German or Tsarist-Russian service - a military career became apparent early on. While his adoptive father was stationed in Strasbourg , Manstein attended the Imperial Lyceum there between 1894 and 1899, a Catholic grammar school . In 1900 he entered the military academy Ploen one, moved on April 1, 1902 Manstein to the Prussian Hauptkadettenanstalt by large light field . The cadets received a military-style training that corresponded to the traditions of the Prussian officer corps and was characterized by obedience, discipline, performance of duty and camaraderie. In June 1905 Manstein was one of the selected cadets who did their service in the page corps during the wedding celebrations of Crown Prince Wilhelm with Cecilie zu Mecklenburg .

After graduating from high school , Manstein joined the 3rd Guards Regiment on foot in the Prussian Army on March 6, 1906 as an ensign . The appointment to lieutenant took place after passing officer training on January 27, 1907 and he spent the next few years in the troop service . At times Manstein served in the guard regiment at the side of his cousin Oskar von Hindenburg and the later Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher . The promotion to first lieutenant and battalion adjutant took place on June 19, 1912. Due to better opportunities for advancement Manstein applied to the War Academy and was assigned to this on October 1, 1913 after the entrance examination.

First World War

After the outbreak of World War I , Manstein had to break off the training to become a general staff officer that had begun in the previous year , as the students of the War Academy were called up for service at the front. Manstein was assigned as adjutant to the 2nd Guard Reserve Infantry Regiment , which marched into Belgium as part of the Guard Reserve Corps . In the Battle of Namur (21-23 August 1914) Manstein was first used in active combat use. Then the corps was relocated to East Prussia to reinforce the 8th Army (under General von Hindenburg) . On the Eastern Front he fought in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes , then on the Vistula and in Russian Poland . On November 16, 1914, Manstein suffered a serious wound in close combat from gunshot wounds , which is why he spent six months in the hospitals of Beuthen and Wiesbaden to recover .

After restoring his health, Manstein returned to service on June 17, 1915. Although he was not a trained staff officer, one who called Manstein in the rod Army Gallwitz (later 12th Army) and promoted him with effect from 24 July 1915 to captain . As a staff member, Manstein was first involved in the preparation and planning of strategic operations . First on the successful Narew offensive on the Eastern Front, from October 1915 on the Serbia campaign . In July 1916 Manstein left the theater of war in the Balkans and returned to the Western Front . The battle of the Somme raged there and the German army was on the defensive. Manstein received the position as orderly officer of the chief of staff of the newly formed 1st Army , Colonel Fritz von Loßberg . In the performance of his area of ​​responsibility Manstein showed a remarkable tactical talent and experienced the strategic retreat to the Siegfriedstellung ( company Alberich ). From October 1917 on, Manstein was employed as the first general staff officer (Ia) of the 4th Cavalry Division in the Baltic States , which was primarily entrusted with occupation tasks and only became offensive again in February 1918. Also as Ia, Manstein was transferred to the 213rd Infantry Division on the Western Front in May 1918 . The division was after the failed spring offensive until the Armistice of Compiègne on 11 November 1918 in the Champagne in positional and defensive struggles involved.

During the First World War, Erich von Manstein u. a. both classes of the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords.

Weimar Republic

After the end of the war, Captain Manstein remained in the army and served as a volunteer in the AOK Süd staff of the Eastern Border Guard in Wroclaw until 1919 . He was then assigned to Group Command 2 based in Kassel . As an assistant to Colonel Fritz von Loßberg, Manstein was involved in the organizational commission of this staff authority in converting the transitional army into the Reichswehr . According to the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty, this had to be reduced to a strength of just 100,000 soldiers (including 4,000 officers). Like the majority of the officers' corps , he represented a conservative - monarchical worldview and took a negative attitude towards the Weimar Republic .

With effect from January 1, 1921, Manstein was taken over into the final Reichswehr. After two years of service in the troops, as chief of the 6th Company of the 5th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Angermünde (October 1, 1921 to October 1, 1923), Manstein continued his career as a staff officer. First with the military district command II in Stettin (October 1, 1923 to October 1, 1924), then with the military district command IV in Dresden (October 1, 1924 to October 1, 1927). Here he was u. a. entrusted with the decentralized leadership training and taught tactics and military history . On February 1, 1927 Manstein was promoted to major . From October 1, 1927 to September 1, 1929 he was employed as a staff officer at Infanterieführer IV in Magdeburg , which was equivalent to a division staff.

On September 1, 1929 Manstein was appointed to the troop office of the Reichswehr Ministry and entrusted with the management of Group I in Department T1, which dealt with deployment and operational plans. Thus Manstein belonged to the General Staff, which was actually forbidden under the Treaty of Versailles and was designated as a "troop office" only for camouflage reasons . In his new role Manstein was able to develop his talent as an operational strategist and army planner and increasingly establish himself in the leadership circles of the later Wehrmacht . He checked the mobilization plans of the organization department and worked out counter-proposals, which were accepted. Furthermore Manstein was responsible for the organization of military simulation games ( war games ) for operational training. His self-confident demeanor, which Manstein also displayed towards superiors , and his interference in matters of other departments of the military office clouded his relationship with other officers. The secret armaments cooperation between the Reichswehr and the Red Army led Manstein, as the companion of the head of the troop office, Major General Wilhelm Adam , to two visits to the Kama tank school in the Soviet Union (1931 and 1932). On April 1, 1931, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel .

On October 1, 1932, Manstein returned to active command of the troops and commanded the 2nd Jäger Battalion of the 4th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Kolberg . As battalion chief he was promoted to colonel on October 1, 1933 .

time of the nationalsocialism

Manstein as major general (1938)

On February 1, 1934, Manstein was appointed chief of staff at Military District Command III in Berlin. His task was to expand the 3rd Infantry Division stationed in this military district to III. Army Corps and in the support of his superior Erwin von Witzleben in the exercise of military territorial sovereignty. This required cooperation with civil and party offices of the NSDAP . With that he came directly into the environment of politics, which had been determined since the seizure of power by the National Socialists.

Like the majority of his comrades in the officer corps, Manstein had welcomed the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Reich Chancellor, the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship and the end of the Weimar Republic. However, when the provisions of the so-called Aryan Paragraph were extended to the Reichswehr (February 28, 1934), this resulted in the dismissal of army officers of Jewish origin and Manstein wrote a memorandum to the head of the troop office, Lieutenant General Ludwig Beck . Manstein viewed the decree as contradicting the “ comradeship in the troops” and emphasized that the “soldier's honor” forbade the dismissal of active officers, but at the same time welcomed the correctness of the decree with regard to its future application ( “That we all completely affirm National Socialism and racial ideas , is beyond doubt ” ).

On July 1, 1935, Manstein became chief of the operations department in the Army General Staff . In this function he wrote a memorandum on the creation of an accompanying artillery on self-propelled guns for infantry support, from which the assault artillery should eventually emerge. On October 1, 1936, he was appointed Major General Oberquartiermeister I , thus representing Chief of Staff Beck and traditionally as his designated successor.

In the course of the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis , however, Manstein was surprisingly transferred to the post of commander of the 18th Infantry Division in Liegnitz (Silesia) on February 4, 1938 . In March he was still on behalf of the Wehrmacht High Command in preparing for the invasion of German troops in Austria and the integration of the Austrian army into the Wehrmacht . As a result of the Munich Agreement , Manstein led the 18th Infantry Division in the Sudetenland.

Second World War

1939/40 attack on Poland and strategic plan for the western campaign

In 1939 Manstein took part in the attack on Poland with the rank of lieutenant general as chief of the general staff of Army Group South .

In October 1939 the OKH worked out a plan for the western offensive ordered by Hitler, which, with a swing of the strong right wing through Flanders, reminded of the Schlieffen Plan , which had already failed in the First World War . Manstein, Chief of Staff of Army Group A , based in Koblenz , saw the risk that a lengthy, front-run from trench warfare would develop. Since the Wehrmacht had to make a quick decision due to limited resources, Manstein submitted a counter-proposal to his superior Colonel General von Rundstedt on October 31, 1939. Manstein called for a reinforcement of Army Group A by subtracting troops of Army Group B . His intention was to counter-attack the flank of the enemy front rather than stopping the Allied counter-attack. That was not yet "Operation Sedan", the lightning-fast advance across the Meuse to the coast. Manstein wrote several memoranda to the OKH, on November 21 and 30, on December 6 and 18, 1939 and finally on January 12, 1940, which called for an alternative attack operation in the west. A breakthrough in the center seemed to him increasingly necessary. A special tactical surprise offered a concentrated advance by the armored units mainly deployed in Army Group A across the Ardennes . On the French side, this wooded mountain range was viewed as an insurmountable obstacle for tanks. Manstein saw more and more clearly that it was possible to reach the Somme Bay in one go and encircle the main Allied forces in the north . The OKH rejected Manstein's submissions as too risky, as the plan required the Allied troops to advance north. And since the German advance on the Ardennes, which had only a few roads through it, had to be spread out in columns, had it been discovered early it could have been stopped and the Wehrmacht units destroyed.

Within the generals, Manstein was not considered to be particularly popular, because he also let the outside world feel that he considered himself very intelligent and extraordinarily capable. The Army Chief of Staff, Franz Halder, feared that Colonel General Rundstedt, as Commander in Chief of Army Group A, would support the risky plan. Therefore, he removed the author, who was seen as an inconvenient admonisher, from his position. On January 27, 1940, he surprisingly appointed Manstein commander of the newly established XXXVIII. Army Corps in Stettin and commissioned him with the formation of new divisions.

The original campaign plan of the OKH had meanwhile become known to the Allies through the Mechelen incident and Rudolf Schmundt, Hitler's adjutant, had learned of Manstein's operational plans during a visit to the headquarters of Army Group A in Koblenz and then arranged a meeting with Hitler. On February 17, 1940, Manstein and the newly appointed commanding generals met at the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin and met Adolf Hitler personally for the first time. After breakfast, Hitler retired to his study with Manstein and asked him about his views on an offensive against France. In his book Lost Victories , he writes about this conversation: “It is not clear to me whether and to what extent Hitler had already learned of our plan through his chief adjutant. In any case, I found that he was surprisingly quick to empathize with the points of view the Army Group had been advocating for months. ”Hitler finally decided to establish the sickle cut as the basis of operations in the West and ordered a corresponding change in plans.

Western campaign

It was only after the German offensive to the west , on May 13, 1940, that Manstein's corps received the order to mobilize. Thus, the increasingly impatient creator of the sickle-cut plan, which ultimately laid the decisive cornerstone for the surprising victory of the Wehrmacht, did not arrive on the western front until May 16. Manstein's XXXVIII. Army Corps was subordinated to the 12th Army and was entrusted with defensive tasks: initially with the flank protection of the armored troops advancing at breathtaking speed between the Maas and Oise , from May 27th with the securing of the bridgeheads between Amiens and Abbeville .

On June 1, 1940, Manstein was promoted to General of the Infantry . After the successful completion of the sickle cut, the German armed forces were reorganized before the attack on the French heartland ( Fall Rot ) and Manstein's units were assigned to the 4th Army . The offensive began on June 5th and Manstein was able to prove his tactical skills as commander and demonstrated the high mobility of his infantry corps. He crossed the Somme at Picquigny and reached the Seine by June 9th . The 6th Infantry Division was the first front-line unit of the Wehrmacht to cross the river between Les Andelys and Vernon . On June 16, 1940, Manstein received orders to bypass Paris in a south-westerly direction and to advance to Le Mans . On the day of the Franco-German armistice at Compiègne , Manstein and his corps stood in the Angers area on the south bank of the Loire and had advanced 400 kilometers.

In the course of the wave of promotion after the victory over France, Manstein received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on July 19, 1940 . The XXXVIII. Army Corps moved to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage on the English Channel in July and was scheduled as part of the 16th Army for the first wave of landings in Great Britain ( Operation Sea Lion ). This was postponed indefinitely in the autumn of 1940 as a result of the Battle of Britain .

1941/42 Eastern campaign until the conquest of the Crimea

In February 1941 he was given command of the LVI, which was also to be newly established . Army Corps (motorized) - as the later tank corps were called until 1942 - transferred. In this function he had no knowledge and no influence on the strategic planning of the war against the Soviet Union . A few days before the start of the attack on the Soviet Union, he received the so-called commissar order , which said that all political commissars of the Red Army who were captured should be shot immediately. Contrary to Manstein's assertions in his memoirs that “he rejected the commissar's order and his troops did not carry it out,” there were “shootings of commissars and anti-Jewish actions in Manstein's area of ​​command” within the first few weeks after the Barbarossa operation began.

Manstein with Major General Erich Brandenberger , June 1941

On June 22, 1941 at 3 a.m. the LVI began. AK the invasion of the Soviet Union put, within five days of 240 km back and captured on June 27, Daugavpils . On September 12, Manstein was given command of the 11th Army , whose Commander-in-Chief Colonel-General Eugen von Schobert had fallen on the same day. A little later, in cooperation with Ewald von Kleist's 1st Panzer Army and Romanian units , he defeated the troops of the Soviet southern front in the Battle of the Sea of ​​Azov . Standing on the right wing of Army Group South, the next goal was the conquest of Crimea . After the 11th Army broke through the Isthmus of Perekop , Simferopol , Feodosiya and Kerch were occupied in quick succession in November 1941 and a first attempt to conquer Sevastopol was made; after its failure, the eight-month siege of the fortress began . In December 1941, the infamous Simferopol massacre took place in Simferopol , in which almost 14,000 Jews were murdered within a few days by SS men and members of the military police department 683. On November 20, 1941, von Manstein had issued an order that corresponded to the Reichenau order praised by Hitler . Von Manstein affirmed that the “Jewish-Bolshevik system” had to be exterminated once and for all, and demanded that his troops nip in the bud all uprisings, which were mostly instigated by Jews.

Manstein after his promotion to Colonel General, March 1942

In May 1942, the previously succeeded to Colonel-General conveyed Manstein in companies Trappenjagd the destruction of on the Kerch Peninsula in eastern Crimea landed Soviet troops and a little later in a second, this time successful start the conquest of Sevastopol. For this he was appointed Field Marshal General on July 1st . In late summer, the 11th Army prepared for its mission to conquer the besieged Leningrad in the planned operation Northern Lights and began to move there.

1942/43 Stalingrad and recapture of Kharkov

In the course of the encirclement of the 6th Army in Stalingrad , however, Manstein was appointed commander in chief of the newly formed Don Army Group on November 24th . In addition to the 6th Army and two Romanian armies, this included the 4th Panzer Army under Colonel General Hermann Hoth . The latter was to fight with initially only two armored divisions from the southwest up to about 30 kilometers to the boiler (Operation Wintergewitter ) and there unite with broken parts of the 6th Army (Operation "Donnerschlag"), which would have created a corridor. The order to “Thunderbolt” was refused by Hitler despite the strongest pressure from Manstein , and Hoth's troops got stuck 48 kilometers from the cauldron. This sealed the fate of the 6th Army. Manstein then played a decisive role in preventing the complete collapse of the entire German southern wing of the Eastern Front as a result of the Stalingrad defeat.

Manstein greets Hitler during a troop visit to the east on the occasion of the reconquest of Kharkov, March 1943. On the right, General der Flieger Wolfram von Richthofen .

In March 1943 he managed to retake Kharkov and Belgorod as part of a counter-offensive ( Battle of Kharkov ) , for which he received the Knight's Cross. During and after the Stalingrad crisis a growing rift became apparent between Manstein and Hitler.

1943 Battle of Kursk

Manstein with Major General Hans Speidel in the Ukraine, September 1943

In the summer of 1943, the Wehrmacht was preparing for a major offensive in the front arc near Kursk , in which the enemy troops were cut off and then destroyed by Manstein's Army Group South and Army Group Center under General Field Marshal Günther von Kluge ( Operation Citadel ). Manstein's demand for an early start of his own attack operations - against the still weakened Soviet units - was rejected by Hitler, because he wanted to wait for his own divisions to be refreshed and, in particular, for new weapons ( panthers and elephants ) to be supplied. The Soviet defenders used the time gained as a result to build up deeply tiered defense systems and also to replenish their troubled units, with the result that the last major offensive of the Wehrmacht in the east failed.

1943/44 efforts of the resistance around Manstein

But Manstein did not want to participate in the resistance in the Wehrmacht or in a coup d'état against Hitler. Manstein was not involved in the various assassination plans before the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 . But he knew of an assassination attempt planned in 1944. In a one- on-one conversation at the end of January 1943, Stauffenberg had pointed out his dissatisfaction with Hitler's decisions, but did not clearly express the real goals. Manstein recommended that the major should be transferred to the front "so that he could clear his head," which was later interpreted as an attempt to arrest Stauffenberg. There were two further conversations between Manstein and resistance fighters: On August 8, 1943, before the Citadel operation began, Colonel i. G. Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff Manstein. In private, Gersdorff addressed the unsatisfactory situation with the top leadership of the Wehrmacht. Manstein agreed. Gersdorff further suggested that all field marshals should jointly put the pistol on Hitler's chest, to which, according to Gersdorff, Manstein is said to have replied with the controversial statement: "Prussian field marshals do not mutiny." Historians doubt the truth of this quote from Gersdorff, especially Gersdorff it was only made known in 1977, after Manstein's death. Finally, Gersdorff, on behalf of the Commander-in-Chief, Günther von Kluge , submitted to Manstein that Kluge would submit to Manstein in the event of a coup and would ask him to take on the position of Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, i.e. the combined general staffs of all three branches of service. Manstein rejected the project, citing three points: Firstly, the time for peace is politically wrong, since the enemy is convinced of victory. Second, from the perspective of the Wehrmacht, Hitler was the only person to have the trust of the population and soldiers. Thirdly, the situation with regard to the military command is undoubtedly unsatisfactory and the result of errors in the command. But it can be completely ruled out that Hitler would give up the supreme command. The request for a change of Manstein to the high command could not come from himself, since enemy propaganda had already propagated him for it. On November 25, 1943, Colonel Henning von Tresckow, a friend of Manstein, was at Manstein and tried in vain to persuade him to act against Hitler in the course of describing the impending war defeat. This was the last attempt by the opposition to win Manstein as a leading figure for their projects.

Manstein and Colonel General Hoth at a meeting on the Citadel Company, June 1943

1943/44 conflict with Hitler and dismissal

After the failure of the Citadel enterprise, Manstein continued to command Army Group South during their further defensive battles. In February 1944, Manstein made an unauthorized decision without Hitler's orders when he ordered six divisions with 56,000 soldiers to return from a threatening embrace. On March 21, 1944, the 1st Panzer Army was almost enclosed in the Kamenez-Podolski battle . Manstein gave Hitler an ultimatum on March 24 at noon that he would order the withdrawal of the army if he did not hear the contrary from Hitler by 3 p.m. Hitler's reply arrived at 4 p.m. and contained the agreement that the 1st Panzer Army should maintain their communication routes to the west while maintaining their current front position. Manstein realized that this was tantamount to repeating the situation at Stalingrad, the ban on breaking out of the cauldron with similar consequences. Another similar catastrophe was imminent. Manstein was ordered by Hitler to meet in Lemberg the next day. On the evening of March 24th, the 1st Panzer Army received instructions from Manstein to prepare for a retreat.

Under threat of resignation from his command of Hitler's chief adjutant Rudolf Schmundt on March 25, Manstein, this time in lengthy, repeated briefings in Lemberg on mutual accusations, wrested from Hitler's consent to withdraw and ordered the risky breakout of the army to the west, that of the Soviet Army leadership had been expected because of a remaining gap to the south. The enemy was deceived by Manstein's plan. The army with 220,000 soldiers, enclosed on three sides, was saved with this surprising maneuver.

The liberation of the 1st Panzer Army was Manstein's last major operation. Due to his repeated military stubbornness, it led to the irreconcilable escalation of the relationship with Hitler. The setting for the impending dismissal of Manstein was also influenced by an editorial Battle of Russia in the American magazine Time on January 10, 1944, on whose front page Manstein was also depicted. In the article, Manstein's skills were presented in an unusual way and, in addition to his loyalty to the head of state, his loyalty to the state was emphasized. The article argued: “Even the no-nonsense Manstein may accept such betrayal. Because just like other Junkers he was brought up in the spirit of the ever-valid lessons of Junker Carl von Clausewitz . ”This raised the question of treason against the head of state in the interests of a legitimate fight against a tyrant, and Manstein, through this hardly hidden invitation, with the military resistance Connected. On January 27, 1944, Manstein provoked Hitler at a meeting of field marshals in Wolfsschanze with the objection that unconditional obedience and loyalty to Hitler was a matter of course. Hitler took this as an affront and "as a deceitful accusation". On March 30, 1944, Hitler dismissed Manstein as commander-in-chief of Army Group South and transferred him to the Führer Reserve , but at the same time awarded him the swords for the oak leaves of the Knight's Cross. Another use, for example at the post of Chief of Staff of the Army, did not take place, although he would have been suitable for this. As an alternative, he waited in vain to be reassigned as Commander-in-Chief West. Manstein was interned by British troops on August 26, 1945 .

1946 witness in the Nuremberg trial

In the prison cell of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice , von Manstein worked intensively with Walther von Brauchitsch , Franz Halder , Walter Warlimont and Siegfried Westphal on the defense of the OKW and the Army General Staff, which were accused of criminal organizations . He was heard on August 10, 1946 as a witness in the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals . The court did not judge the General Staff and OKW formally as a “group” or “organization” within the meaning of the court statutes and ordered the implementation of individual proceedings. Von Manstein was released from captivity in 1948 and imprisoned immediately afterwards.

1949 convicted as a war criminal

On the background of the indictment

In October 1941 Manstein received the " Reichenau order ", which called on soldiers of the Wehrmacht to commit crimes against the Soviet - especially Jewish - population and legitimized them. Building on this, Manstein, as Commander-in-Chief of the 11th Army, issued an almost identical order on November 20, 1941, to which the indictment of his war crimes trial later referred. In it he demanded of his soldiers:

“The Jewish-Bolshevik system must be exterminated once and for all. It must never again intervene in our European living space. The German soldier therefore does not simply have the task of smashing the military power of this system. He also appears as an avenger for all atrocities that were inflicted on him and the German people. [...] The soldier must show understanding for the necessity of harsh atonement against Judaism , the spiritual bearer of Bolshevik terror. It is also necessary to nip in the bud all the surveys that are mostly instigated by Jews . "

Johannes Hürter , historian at the Munich Institute for Contemporary History , regards Manstein's order as "inspired" but "independently formulated" by Reichenau's original, with which Manstein "[agreed] to murder the Jews". Around 600 members of SS Einsatzgruppe D shot at least 33,000 Jews in the Simferopol massacre and other mass murders during the period when Manstein was in charge of AOK 11 . According to the historian and Manstein biographer Oliver von Wrochem, the army high command was “willing to cooperate and take part in the mass murders even under Manstein's leadership”. Manstein's order of November 20, 1941 made a significant contribution to this because it "supported the soldiers of the units subordinate to him in the conviction that the mass killings of Jews were a natural part of the war and that the army had to help with the massacres" . Post-war statements by Manstein, in which Manstein claimed under oath that he “knew nothing about the murders of Einsatzgruppe D [...]”, appear, according to Johannes Hürter, “completely untrustworthy” in view of the sources.

The process

The trial against him before a British military tribunal - it was the last allied war crimes trial - began on August 23, 1949 in the Hamburg Curiohaus , a few days before the election to the first German Bundestag . The court was composed of seven representatives, with Lieutenant General Sir Frank Simpson as chairman and Major General Douglas Wade as his deputy. The main prosecutor was Sir Arthur Comyns Carr , who had already represented the British government at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal . Manstein was defended by Reginald Paget (later Baron Paget of Northampton), who also wrote a book about the trial, with Samuel Silkin as assistants and Hans Laternser and Paul Leverkuehn .

The indictment was not crimes against humanity, but violations of war laws and co-responsibility for war crimes on a total of 17 points. Large parts of the German and British press immediately commented on this allegedly belated process. Since the German prisoners of war were forbidden to own property, a fundraising campaign was set up to finance the defense of Manstein, of which Winston Churchill was one of the first contributors with £ 25. The defense aimed to question the legality of the trial as a victorious justice and to portray the Wehrmacht as an honorable institution that was not involved in war crimes. The defense denied any individual guilt of the accused, stressed the impotence of the Field Marshal General, who was part of the command structure, alleged that Manstein had not been informed about crimes, and relativized several charges by referring to a tu quoque in the victorious powers. Paget repeatedly incurred the displeasure of the court when he uttered "National Socialist propaganda" in his plea. One example was the sentence "With the number of Jews living in Germany today, I wonder where they all came from". Paget also doubted the number of Jews killed by Einsatzgruppe D. Task Force D reported the number of their murders to the Army High Command , which Manstein was in charge of.

Manstein was acquitted on eight counts and found guilty of nine by the British Military Tribunal on December 19, 1949. He was acquitted of active involvement in SD crimes, the surrender of Jews, Sinti and Roma and communists to the SD and their shooting. He was convicted, among other things, for neglecting his duty of supervision as commander-in-chief, allowing deportations , tolerating the shooting of prisoners of war and allowing political commissars to be extradited to the SD . He was not accused of any active involvement in the crimes in Poland, but he had neglected his duty to supervise as commander-in-chief and thus supported the genocide . He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, which initially did not include the four years of imprisonment since 1945.

The defense criticized the verdict to the effect that, unlike the prosecution, they had no access to the German files in Washington; that the Hague Land Warfare Regulations of 1907, on which the prosecution relied, had an all-participation clause, but the Soviet Union and other states were not part of it, and the court circumvented this issue of invalidity by not making the Convention itself binding, but recognizing its wording; and because the prosecution did not allow an appeal by higher orders, although the Allies themselves had that appeal, but this was subsequently changed in British military criminal law.

Two months after the conviction, the sentence was reduced to twelve years when it was confirmed by the commander of the British Army of the Rhine . In 1952, his imprisonment since 1945 was fully credited to him. In 1952 Manstein was given exemption from custody due to an eye condition; officially a third of his sentence was released for good conduct, so that in May 1953, also on the initiative of Winston Churchill , his term of imprisonment officially ended. Adenauer urged Ivone Kirkpatrick for Manstein's release. He learned in early 1953 that the British had no intention of imprisoning Manstein again and that they would soon officially declare his imprisonment over on the pretext of his state of health. They avoided rehabilitation of Manstein.

Consultancy

Until 1960, Manstein advised, "albeit not in an official capacity," as the only field marshal of the former Wehrmacht to advise the federal government on the establishment of the Bundeswehr , whereby he had a certain influence on its later structure and organizational form. For example, he had proposed turning away from regiments and instead building brigades as the smallest operational units.

After his death Manstein was buried with military honors in Dorfmark near Fallingbostel , with the inspector general of the Bundeswehr , Admiral Zimmermann , speaking farewell.

Marriage and offspring

On June 10, 1920 Manstein married Jutta Sibylle von Loesch (1900–1966), the daughter of a Silesian manor owner in Lorzendorf ( Namslau district ) . The marriage resulted in three offspring:

  • Gisela (1921–2013) ⚭ Edel-Heinrich Zachariae-Lingenthal
  • Gero (* 1922; died October 29, 1942 as a lieutenant on the Eastern Front )
  • Rüdiger (1929-2019)

Book publications

After his release from prison, Manstein tried to put himself in the right light in public. In 1955 his autobiographical work Verlorene Siege appeared over the period February 1938 to April 1944. In this he attributes the military collapse solely to Hitler's military incompetence and exculpates the German generals. Profound doubts about the war of aggression and annihilation at the time, about National Socialist ideas or even feelings of guilt are not expressed in the work. Instead, Manstein claims that the war events "brought suffering and inevitable hardship to the Soviet civilian population [...] but not to be compared with what the terrorist bombing had for the civilian population in Germany", and that "all measures taken by Germany were due to the necessity of war conditional ". According to military historians Michael Epkenhans and John Zimmermann , “Manstein wrote” with this book “victories” that “never happened”, but allegedly only because Hitler had “tampered with his general art”. This thesis, rumored in Manstein's memoirs, represents “one of the bitterest ironies in memoir literature”. The book became a bestseller.

In 1958 Manstein's book From a Soldier's Life was published . His thesis that the campaigns would have proceeded fundamentally differently if the generals had had more room to maneuver is at least controversial in research: that Hitler made wrong military decisions is considered certain, but most historians assume that the Wehrmacht leadership was often his unrealistic assessments of the situation were usually willingly followed. In connection with the defensive battles of 1943 and 1944, however, Manstein still speaks of the alleged possibility at the time of smashing the attacking force of the Soviet armed forces through skillful maneuvering and at least achieving a draw peace with the Soviet Union - an assessment given the overall situation at the time is viewed critically by most historians. Manstein also influenced the portrayals of war by bestselling author Paul Carell in his World War II series for the magazine Kristall , which later found millions of readers as book publications with the titles "Enterprise Barbarossa" and "Scorched Earth".

The two books written by Manstein have been translated into several languages, including English and Russian.

historiography

View of Manstein after the war until death

In 1948 the book On the other side of the hill, written by Captain BH Liddell Hart , was published .

Manstein's defender Reginald Paget published a book on Manstein in 1951 (German 1952). Paget portrays Manstein as an honorable soldier who fought heroically on the Eastern Front and who was charged with crimes he did not commit. Paget endorsed Harts' judgment, who had finished his 1948 book with the following sentences:

"The German generals of this war were the best-finished product of their profession - anywhere. They could have been better if their outlook had been wider and their understanding deeper. But if they had become philosophers they would have ceased to be soldiers. "

Together with Manstein's own biography Lost Siege 1955, Paget's benevolent biography made a significant contribution to the Manstein cult that emerged in the early post-war period .

Press reports after Manstein's death in 1973 emphasized his military achievements, but for the first time also pointed to his lack of criticism of the political system. The Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote posthumously that the resurrecting “Manstein myth” had sent the wrong signal to the newly founded Bundeswehr. Lost victories increased misery instead of ending it. "Military skill perverted to a contribution to the continuation of inhumanity," wrote the FAZ . The world published an uncritical obituary; it said that Manstein's books "marked the honesty of the author". Der Spiegel wrote posthumously that Manstein had "lost political orientation". He embodied "nonetheless the degeneration and decline of the Prussian-German military".

Recent historical biographies

Among the military events, the failure of the 6th Army to break out in Stalingrad is one of the most discussed topics in Manstein's career. The American historians Williamson Murray and Alan Milett write that Manstein's first assessment of the situation with a report to Hitler on November 24, 1942, in which he did not advise his superior about the breakout of the 6th Army with reference to promised air force support, the fate of the 6th Army Army sealed. Historian Wrochem shares the same view of an early decision to lose 6th Army based on the November 24th report. Even Manstein's later efforts to demand Hitler's permission to break out would not change that. Historians, including Gerhard Weinberg , point out that Manstein's version of the events in Stalingrad is skewed in his memoirs and that some events are made up. Because of the sensitivity of the Stalingrad question in post-war Germany, Manstein endeavored to twist the facts on this question as well as his own role in the murder of Jews.

Oliver von Wrochem's study (2006) treats Manstein's behavior in the war of annihilation in 1942/43 and the motivation on which this action was based as a focus. Wrochem analyzes Manstein's basic position both in his memories and in his multiple utterances after the war. According to this, Manstein always invoked military obedience and loyalty to the state for acts that were attributed to the character of crimes after the war. In terms of loyalty to the state, Manstein made a distinction between "National Socialism" and "Reich". Such an “interpretative separation”, which became typical for the generals of the Wehrmacht in the post-war period, did not allow obedience to orders to extend to crimes. Therefore, after Wrochem, when dealing with the critical issue of the war of extermination in the Crimea and the Ukraine, Manstein only had the option of denying knowledge of it. According to Wrochem, he resisted the insight that "his behavior supported these crimes". Manstein therefore had to protect himself by claiming that “he did not know anything about mass crimes and did not recognize the destructive politics in the occupied territories”. This protection claim is today "radically questioned", so Wrochem. Since Manstein's knowledge of both the planned assassination attempt on Hitler and the war against the civilian population is proven by many sources today, it indicates that "it was not just the obedience to orders that determined his actions."

The conclusion that Manstein's actions were motivated by National Socialism is, according to Wrochem, inadmissible. According to Wrochem, no specific motivation or mentality of the agent can be derived from specific behavior; social or situational factors could be decisive. After getting closer to the Manstein system between 1933 and 1941, although he maintained his distance from the representatives of the NSDAP after coming to power, the distance to the National Socialist system and its leadership grew from 1943 onwards. Especially by Goebbels and Himmler , Manstein's distance to National Socialism was viewed increasingly critically when military successes failed to materialize. Himmler spoke of Manstein as a " first-class defeatist ". He made several attempts to persuade Hitler to remove Manstein from his command. In a memorandum to Goebbels, an officer close to Goebbels reported on the complete lack of political orientation of Manstein himself and his army leaders.

In the Manstein biography presented in 2010, Mungo Melvin focuses on Manstein's military career in World War II. Melvin sees the complex relationship between Manstein and Hitler as a priority. During the ongoing conflict with Hitler, Manstein made his office available several times, which the dictator always rejected. Nevertheless, Melvin sees the conflict between political will and professional military opinion as the senior officer's duty. This applies equally to a dictatorship or a democracy.

The extent to which Manstein was informed about the planned assassination attempt on Hitler remains unclear after Melvin, but if he had been asked directly what remains a much discussed topic after Melvin, then there would be little doubt that he would have refused support, so Melvin.

Melvin emphasizes on the racial occurrences in Manstein's area of ​​responsibility: While it was not certain whether Manstein explicitly ordered the murder of Jews, doubts remained that he was not aware that German occupation forces were killing Jews in Russia. According to Melvin, Manstein's fault was that he did not have the courage to prevent or mitigate crimes against Jews. In his summary, Melvin argues that Manstein's military achievements were unmatched among any German commanders in World War II. Manstein was "one of the leading soldiers of the 20th century". "Much can still be learned" from him. "His misfortune, together with many millions of Germans, was blindly serving a criminal regime, whose immanent flawed strategy and terrible crimes he only recognized afterwards."

Awards (selection)

Excerpt from the ranking list from 1932, p. 116

Source:

Fonts

  • Lost victories. Athenäum, Bonn 1955 (last in 19th edition: Bernard and Graefe in the Mönch-Verlagsgesellschaft, Bonn 2011, ISBN 978-3-7637-5253-9 ). Translated into many languages.
First published in English ( Lost Victories ) in 1958 with a foreword by Captain BH Liddell Hart .
First in French: Victoires perdues 1958 (Plon), last edition: Mémoires . 2015.
  • From a soldier's life. 1887-1939. Athenaeum, Bonn 1958.

literature

  • Michael Bertram: The image of Nazi rule in the memoirs of leading generals of the Third Reich. Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-8382-0034-7 (also dissertation University of Hannover 2009).
  • Bernd Boll : Field Marshal General Erich von Lewinski, called von Manstein. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the war to the end of the world war. Vol. 2, Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-089-1 , ISBN 3-534-12678-5 (Scientific Book Society), pp. 143-152. The contribution is also included in a later complete edition of both volumes by Primus.
  • Karl-Heinz Frieser : The retreat operations of Army Group South in Ukraine . In: The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . On behalf of the Military History Research Office, ed. by Karl-Heinz Frieser. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2007 (= The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 8), ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 339-450.
  • Johannes Hürter : Hitler's military leader. The German commanders-in-chief in the war against the Soviet Union in 1941/42. R. Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 646 f. (Short biography)
  • Ernst Klink :  Manstein, called Erich von Lewinski von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 83-85 ( digitized version ).
  • Ernst Kosthorst: Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. Exponent of an absolute soldierhood. In: The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Obedience. Germany's generals and Hitler - experiences and reflections of a front officer. Bouvier, Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-416-02755-8 , pp. 178-204.
  • Benoit Lemay: Erich von Manstein. Le stratége de Hitler. Perrin, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-262-03262-3 . English version as: Erich von Manstein - Hitler's Master Strategist. Casemate, Oxford et al. a. 2010, ISBN 978-1-61200-059-6 .
  • Paul Leverkühn , Erich von Manstein (eds.) Defense of Manstein, Hamburg 1950.
  • Mungo Melvin: Manstein. Hitler's Greatest General. Phoenix, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-7538-2853-3 ( limited preview in Google book search), (comprehensive, above all, military history).
  • Manfred Oldenburg : Ideology and military calculation. The occupation policy of the Wehrmacht in the Soviet Union in 1942. Böhlau, Cologne a. a. 2004, ISBN 3-412-14503-3 (focus: Manstein's 11th Army in the Crimea).
  • Marcel Stein: The Janus head. Field Marshal von Manstein - a reassessment. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2004, ISBN 3-7648-2387-9 - reviews November 2005 .
Stein's book Der Januskopf is a new and greatly expanded version of the following book, published in 2000, by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. Critical consideration of soldiers and people. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-7758-1387-X , which is the first biography written by a historian.
  • Enrico Syring : Erich von Manstein. The operational genius. In: Enrico Syring, Ronald Smelser (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. 27 biographical sketches. Ullstein, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-550-07080-2 , pp. 325-348.
  • Jehuda L. Wallach : Field Marshal Erich von Manstein and the German extermination of Jews in Russia. In: Yearbook of the Institute for German History. Tel-Aviv University 4 (1975), pp. 457-472.
  • Oliver von Wrochem : The confrontation with Wehrmacht crimes in the trial against Field Marshal Erich von Manstein in 1949. In: Journal for historical science. 46 (1998) Issue 4, pp. 329-353 (charges, defense, judgment, evaluation).
  • Oliver von Wrochem: An apolitical soldier? Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. In: Gerhard Hirschfeld , Tobias Jersak (Ed.): Careers in National Socialism. Functional elites between participation and distance. Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2004, ISBN 3-593-37156-1 , pp. 185-204.
  • Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, ISBN 978-3-506-72977-4 (plus dissertation, Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg 2005) - review .

Web links

Commons : Erich von Manstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernd Boll: Field Marshal General Erich von Lewinski, called von Manstein. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the war to the end of the world war. Vol. 2, Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 1998, p. 143.
  2. ↑ Alexander Stahlberg: The damned duty. Memories 1932 to 1945. Ullstein, Berlin 1987, p. 344 f.
  3. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 29.
  4. ^ Extract from the German lists of losses (Preuss. 631) of September 12, 1916, p. 14745.
  5. ^ Lemay, Benoît (2010). Erich von Manstein: Hitler's Master Strategist. Heyward, Pierce (trans.). Havertown, PA; Newbury, Berkshire: Casemate. P. 16.
  6. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Hitler's military elite. - Volume 2: From the beginning of the war to the end of the war, Darmstadt 1998, p. 143.
  7. ↑ Benoît Lemay (2010). Erich von Manstein: Hitler's Master Strategist. Heyward, Pierce (trans.). Havertown, PA; Newbury, Berkshire: Casemate. P. 22.
  8. ↑ Enrico Syring / Ronald Smelser (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. 27 biographical sketches. Berlin. Frankfurt a. M. 1995
  9. ↑ Benoît Lemay (2010). Erich von Manstein: Hitler's Master Strategist. Heyward, Pierce (trans.). Havertown, PA; Newbury, Berkshire: Casemate. P. 26.
  10. ↑ Benoît Lemay, Erich von Manstein: le stratège de Hitler, Paris, Perrin, coll. "Tempus" 2010, p. 44.
  11. ↑ Benoît Lemay, Erich von Manstein: le stratège de Hitler, Paris, Perrin, coll. "Tempus" 2010, p. 47.
  12. ↑ Enrico Syring / Ronald Smelser (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. 27 biographical sketches. Berlin. Frankfurt a. M. - Manstein - The operational genius In: Enrico Syring, Ronald Smelser (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. 27 biographical sketches. Ullstein, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-550-07080-2 , p. 329f
  13. ^ Raymond Cartier: The Second World War. Volume 1. Lingen Verlag, 1967, p. 66.
  14. ↑ Benoît Lemay (2010). Erich von Manstein: Hitler's Master Strategist. Heyward, Pierce (trans.). Havertown, PA; Newbury, Berkshire: Casemate. P. 34ff.
  15. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 53.
  16. ↑ Chronology of the Holocaust ( Memento of the original dated February 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.holocaust-chronologie.de
  17. ↑ Document VEJ 7/118.
  18. ^ Copy of the order in the collection of documents by Gerd R. Übersär, Wolfgang Wette (ed.): Enterprise Barbarossa. The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941: reports, analyzes, documents. Schöningh, Paderborn 1984, p. 343/344, and VEJ 7/118.
  19. ↑ Marcel Stein: Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. Critical consideration of soldiers and people. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2000, p. 123.
  20. ^ Antony Beevor The Second World War. Bertelsmann, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-570-10065-3 , p. 537 ff.
  21. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 100, pp. 98-101.
  22. ↑ Marcel Stein: Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. Critical consideration of soldiers and people. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2000, pp. 183-187.
  23. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 100 with reference to Gersdorff, Rudolph-Christoph von, Soldat im Untergang. Frankfurt a. M./Berlin/Wien 1977, pp. 133-137.
  24. ↑ Melvin: Hitler's Greatest General. 2010, p. 390.
  25. ^ Mungo Melvin : Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 389f. Melvin refers here to statements in the book R. von Manstein and T. Fuchs: From a soldier's life .
  26. ↑ Guido Kopp: Hitler's warriors. Goldmann 1998, p. 228.
  27. ↑ Melvin, Mungo: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 416.
  28. ↑ Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. P. 416.
  29. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser : The retreat operations of Army Group South in Ukraine. In: The Eastern Front 1943/44. The war in the east and on the secondary fronts. On behalf of the Military History Research Office, ed. by Karl-Heinz Frieser, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 2007 (= The German Reich and the Second World War, Vol. 8), ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 339–450, here pp. 438–444 ; see also Why Hitler fired the savior of an entire army . Interview with Karl-Heinz Frieser. In: Die Welt on March 28, 2014.
  30. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 97 f., Quotation p. 97.
  31. ↑ Wolfram Pyta : Hitler. The artist as politician and general. A dominance analysis. Siedler, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-8275-0058-8 , p. 513.
  32. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: The retreat operations of Army Group South in Ukraine. In: The Eastern Front 1943/44. The war in the east and on the secondary fronts. P. 447 f.
  33. ↑ Bernd Boll: Field Marshal General Erich von Lewinski, called von Manstein. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2011, p. 420.
  34. ↑ Marcel Stein: Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. Critical consideration of soldiers and people. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2000, pp. 47-48.
  35. ^ Reichenau order
  36. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär, Wolfram Wette : "Operation Barbarossa." The German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. Reports, analyzes, documents. Schöningh, Paderborn 1984, ISBN 3-506-77468-9 , p. 343 f.
  37. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader: The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42. Oldenburg, Munich 2006 (sources and representations on contemporary history, volume 66), p. 584 u. P. 590.
  38. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 58.
  39. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 62.
  40. ↑ See also Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Heerführer: The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42. Oldenburg, Munich 2006 (sources and representations on contemporary history, volume 66), p. 591.
  41. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader: The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42. Oldenburg, Munich 2006 (sources and representations on contemporary history, volume 66), p. 592.
  42. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 166.
  43. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 153.
  44. ^ Reginald Paget: Manstein: His Campaigns and His Trial. Collins, London 1951.
  45. ↑ Marcel Stein: The Janus head. Field Marshal von Manstein - a reassessment. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2004, ISBN 3-7648-2387-9 , p. 53.
  46. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, pp. 166-175.
  47. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 158 and p. 162 f.
  48. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 158.
  49. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, pp. 175-189.
  50. ↑ Marcel Stein: The Janus head. Field Marshal von Manstein - a reassessment. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 2004, ISBN 3-7648-2387-9 , p. 6 f.
  51. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 192.
  52. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, pp. 248-261.
  53. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic. Wallstein, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89244-658-X , p. 482 .
  54. ↑ Bernd Boll: Field Marshal General Erich von Lewinski, called von Manstein. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. 68 CVs. Primus Verlag, Darmstadt 2011, p. 421.
  55. ↑ Marcel Stein: Field Marshal General Erich von Manstein. Critical consideration of soldiers and people. Hase and Koehler, Mainz 2000, p. 25.
  56. ^ Lemay, Benoît (2010). Erich von Manstein: Hitler's Master Strategist. Heyward, Pierce (trans.). Havertown, PA; Newbury, Berkshire: Casemate. P. 20.
  57. ↑ Michael Bertram: The image of Nazi rule in the memoirs of leading generals of the Third Reich. Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, p. 136 f. (also dissertation University of Hannover 2009). Bertram quotes here from Manstein: Lost victories. 15th edition, Bonn 1998, p. 540.
  58. ↑ Michael Epkenhans / John Zimmermann: The Wehrmacht - War and Crime. Reclam, Ditzingen 2019, ISBN 978-3-15-011238-0 , p. 134.
  59. ↑ z. B. 1964 8th edition, 1991 12th edition ( ISBN 3763752536 ).
  60. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 90 f.
  61. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn 2006, p. 306 f.
  62. ↑ Full text , digitized version
  63. ↑ Reginald Paget. Manstein. His campaigns and his trial. Limes-Verlag 1952 Wiesbaden, 1952.
  64. ↑ a b Manstein - a master of military strategy. Die Welt June 13th 1973.
  65. ↑ (for example: ... 'they could have been even better if they had a wider horizon and a deeper understanding. But then they would have stopped being soldiers'.)
  66. ↑ Manstein's Myth and the Bundeswehr. SZ June 13, 1973.
  67. ↑ The art of sickle cut. FAZ June 13, 1973.
  68. ↑ Erich von Manstein . In: Der Spiegel . No. 25 , 1973, pp. 140 ( Online - June 18, 1973 ).
  69. ↑ Williamson Murray; Allan Reed Millett: A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass. 2000, ISBN 978-0-674-00680-5 .
  70. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 83.
  71. ^ A b Gerhard Weinberg: A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II. Cambridge University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-85316-3 . (First edition 1994) In German edition: A world in arms. DVA, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-421-05000-7 .
  72. ↑ Robert Forczyk: Manstein: Leadership - Strategy - Conflict. Osprey, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-1-84603-221-9 .
  73. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. 2009 edition (also dissertation, University of Hamburg 2005).
  74. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 22.
  75. ↑ a b Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 101.
  76. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem p. 101.
  77. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 15.
  78. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Ed. 2009, pp. 37–51.
  79. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 37.
  80. ↑ a b Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 93.
  81. ↑ Oliver von Wrochem: Erich von Manstein. War of Extermination and the Politics of History. Schöningh, Paderborn, 2nd through. Edition 2009, p. 95.
  82. ^ Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, ISBN 978-0-2978-4561-4 .
  83. ↑ a b Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 7.
  84. ↑ a b c Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Hachette UK, 2010, ISBN 978-0-297-85844-7 , p. 506 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  85. ↑ a b Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 509.
  86. ^ Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, p. 510.
  87. ^ Mungo Melvin: Manstein: Hitler's Greatest General , Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2010, appendix.
  88. ↑ last edition in English: Paperback: Zenith Press 2004, ISBN 978-0760320549 . With an additional introduction (1981) by Martin Blumenson .
  89. ^ Editions Perrin, 2015, ISBN 9782262050771 . With a foreword by Pierre Servent.
personal data
SURNAME Manstein, Erich von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lewinski, Fritz Erich von (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Field Marshal General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH November 24, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 10, 1973
Place of death Irschenhausen