![]() During World War I, he served in a variety of staff and field positions, and was wounded. Both his biological and adoptive fathers were Prussian generals, making Manstein the scion of two aristocratic families. Born as Erich von Lewinski in 1887, he was adopted as a boy by a childless aunt and uncle. It is not bragging if one can back it up, however, and Manstein could. (Bundesarchiv Bild)įield Marshal Erich von Manstein was a genius, and happily said so himself. Grenadiers perched atop German tanks in Kharkov wield their arms with confidence as they head to the center of the city. A call went out from the Führer’s headquarters to the man fellow officers regarded as the most gifted commander in the entire Wehrmacht. Far from finished, “the Russian” was on a rampage. At the start of Operation Blue, Hitler had reassured his jittery staff that “the Russian is finished,” but those words now sounded hollow. By the end of 1942 the entire German front in the south was on the verge of collapse, and Adolf Hitler and his chief of staff, General Kurt Zeitzler, were flailing. The Soviets made a gritty stand in the ruins of Stalingrad, then counterattacked north and south of that city, encircling the German 6th Army. The Germans tried again in June 1942 with Operation Blue, another great offensive on the southern front, heading toward Stalingrad and the oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains. A vast counterattack, spearheaded by winter-hardened troops of the Siberian Reserve, soon had the remnants of Hitler’s armies in full flight from the Soviet capital. But by December a number of factors-heavy German losses, weather, and stiff Soviet resistance-conspired to halt the German drive outside Moscow. The German invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, had begun in June 1941 as a staggering success, with one Soviet army after another encircled and destroyed. If ever the German army needed a genius, it was during the winter of 1942–43. No matter how dire the odds, however, the genius of an individual commander (“the man”) can still triumph. War, the poet Virgil once wrote, is a tale of “arms and the man.” The outcome of battle hinges on numbers, technology, training, and other impersonal factors, not to mention weather and terrain (“arms”). Kharkov 1943: The Wehrmacht's Last Victory | HistoryNet Close
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