Background
Erich von Manstein (Lewinski) was born in Berlin on 24 November 1887, the son of a General of Artillery. After the death of his parents he was adopted by the wealthy, landowning family whose name he subsequently bore.
Erich von Manstein (Lewinski) was born in Berlin on 24 November 1887, the son of a General of Artillery. After the death of his parents he was adopted by the wealthy, landowning family whose name he subsequently bore.
Erich von Manstein attended the Imperial Lyzeum, a Catholic Gymnasium in Strasbourg, from 1894 to 1899. In March 1906, after six years in the cadet corps in Plön and Groß-Lichterfelde, he was commissioned into the Third Foot Guards Regiment (Garde zu Fuß) as an ensign. Erich von Manstein was promoted to lieutenant in January 1907 and in October 1913 began the three-year officer training programme at the Prussian War Academy. However, Manstein only completed the first year of the programme, as when the First World War began in August 1914 all students of the Academy were ordered to report for active service. He never completed the remainder of his general staff officer training.
A professional soldier, Erich von Manstein became an active officer in 1906 and served in World War I on the eastern and western fronts. After holding various troop and staff appointments between 1919 and 1927, he was transferred to the Reichswehr Ministry. By 1933 a Colonel and Department Chief in the General Staff, Erich von Manstein was promoted to Major General three years later and to Lieutenant-General in 1938. From 1935 to 1938 Erich von Manstein was head of the Operations Section in the Army General Staff and for a time he was deputy to Chief of Staff General Beck. After Beck’s dismissal, von Manstein was sent to command a division in Silesia, but just before the outbreak of World War II he was appointed Chief of Staff to General von Rundstedt during the Polish invasion.
Despatched in January 1940 to command the Thirty-eighth Infantry Corps which broke through the French lines along the Somme, Erich von Manstein's force was the first to cross the Seine on 10 June 1940. In reward for these achievements he was made General of Infantry in June 1940, received the Knight's Cross and was promoted to General Field Marshal.
After the invasion of the Great Britain was called off (Erich von Manstein had been designated to command landing forces in this eventuality), he was placed in command of the Fifty-sixth Panzer Corps in East Prussia and participated with conspicuous success in the operations on the Russian front between June and September 1941. After the invasion of the USSR, Erich von Manstein pushed his forces 2(H) miles in four days to reach the Dvina and advanced on Leningrad in late July. Held up from taking Leningrad, he mounted a spectacular drive to take Ilmen. On 2 September 1941 vErich von Manstein was promoted to command the Eleventh Army on the south-eastern front and from 1942 to 1944 was Chief of Command throughout this sector. During the first ten months of his command Erich von Manstein defeated the Red Army in the Crimea, in spite of numerically inferior forces, and succeeded in taking 430,0 Russian prisoners. His forces maintained their positions during the severe Crimean winter, storming Perekop, Parpatsch and capturing Sebastopol in July 1942 after a 250-day siege.
Put in command of Army Group Don with the near impossible task of rescuing the beleaguered Sixth Army under General von Paulus, Erich von Manstein arrived too late but managed to organize the retreating German forces, preventing the Russians from crossing the Dnieper. The defeat at Stalingrad, in spite of the hopes of the German Resistance and the efforts of General Beck and General von Tresckow in particular, failed to convince von Manstein to abrogate his loyalty to Hitler, despite their differences on matters of strategy. Though indifferent to National Socialist aims and theories (he had long been Himmler's bete noire), von Manstein's professionalism led him to see matters from a narrowly military point of view. Brilliantly successful in throwing back the Russians to the Donetz and capturing Kharkov in February/March 1943, von Manstein was still convinced that the war in the East could be won by avoiding costly, unyielding resistance and allowing deep penetration by the enemy which could be cut off with flank attacks by his Panzer forces. Through a series of personal interviews he was able for a time to persuade Hitler that retreat was necessary to consolidate and fight offensive actions, but the Fiihrer rejected his suggestions for defeating the Russians in the summer of 1943 as too risky. The Russians were given time to reorganize and subsequently inflicted heavy defeats on the German forces.
Although von Manstein conducted a skilful retreat to the Polish frontier, Hitler lost patience with his sophisticated manoeuvring and argumentative¬ness. When von Manstein again sought permission to retreat on 25 March 1944, he was dismissed from his command of Army Group South and retired to his estate for the rest of the war. Captured by the British, he was brought to trial before a British military court in Hamburg. Cleared of two indictments concerning massacres of Jews, he was found guilty of neglecting to protect civilian life. In his order of the day of 20 November 1941 von Manstein had told the troops of the Eleventh Army that ‘the Jews are the mediators between the enemy in our rear and the still fighting remnants of the Red Army and the Red leaders.
On 19 December 1949 von Manstein was sentenced by the British court to eighteen years’ imprisonment, which was later commuted to twelve years. On medical parole from August 1952, he was released in May 1953. He worked for a time as a military adviser to the Federal government and died in Irschenhausen on 12 June 1973.