The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [233]
In the purge of the Army following the dismissal of General von Fritsch in February 1938, Manstein – who was known to despise the Nazis, largely on social grounds – was relieved of his post in the Staff and given command of the 18th Infantry Division. It was as chief of staff to General von Leeb that he took part in the occupation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and as chief of staff to General Rundstedt in the invasion of Poland the following year that he first distinguished himself as a fine strategist. By then he had also, much to Beck’s chagrin and contempt, stopped criticizing the Nazis, arguing that soldiers should stay out of politics, a stance that was to serve his promotion prospects well.
As has already been seen in Chapter 2, it was Manstein who, as chief of staff of Rundstedt’s Army Group A, in May 1940 masterminded the Sichelschnitt manoeuvre, also known as the Manstein Plan, which, by concentrating on attacking through the Ardennes, crossing the Meuse and fighting in the ideal tank country of the rolling plains of northern France, brought such a rapid victory in the west. Hitler showed his gratitude by promoting him to full general and awarding him the Knight’s Cross. In March 1941 Manstein was given the command of LVI Panzer Corps for Operation Barbarossa, in which he led the advance on Leningrad, advancing more than 50 miles a day and capturing vital bridgeheads. When in September 1941 a vacancy occurred for the command of the Eleventh Army in the Crimea – the previous occupant’s plane having crashed in a Russian minefield – Manstein was the obvious choice, and he captured Sevastopol on 4 July 1942 after a long and gruelling siege. Hitler telephoned ‘The Conqueror of Sevastopol’, as he called him, to announce his promotion to Generalfeldmarschall (field marshal).
It was as commander of Army Group Don in November and December 1942 that Manstein tried but failed to relieve Stalingrad, but he was appointed to command Army Group South nonetheless. ‘He was arrogant and intolerant at times, and something of a martinet,’ wrote the British field marshal Michael Carver, ‘but he was highly intelligent, with a clear, quick brain. Beneath a cold, reserved exterior, he was an emotional man, who kept his feelings under strict control… He was respected for the speed and sharpness with which he analysed the essentials of a problem, for the brevity and clarity of his orders, and for the calm, cool calculation by which he arrived at his decisions.’3 The greatest of all the strategists of the Third Reich, Manstein had a better understanding of mechanized weaponry than any of the German generals outside the tank school itself, and Keitel thrice urged Hitler to give Manstein his own job as chief of staff of OKW.4 This was ignored, but was one of the best pieces of advice the Führer ever received.
The city of Kursk lies 315 miles south of Moscow and straddles the main Moscow–Rostov railway line. By the spring of 1943 it was the centre of a Russian-held protuberance, or salient, jutting 120 miles wide and 90 miles deep into the German lines. Kursk had once been famed for its nightingales; bird-singing competitions had been hosted there since the nineteenth century. In July 1943, however, all that could be heard in the city were the decibels of war. Kursk had been captured by the Germans on 2 November 1941, after which the Wehrmacht shot 15,000 people, transported 30,000 for slave labour in Germany, destroyed 2,000 buildings and generally stripped the region bare, even transporting back to Germany thousands of tons of the region’s sticky, jet-black, highly fertile soil. Kursk was recaptured by the Russians soon after Paulus’ surrender.
After Stalingrad, Manstein had stabilized Army Group South’s front, and Army Group Centre under