Overview
Among students of military history, the genius of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (1887–1973) is respected perhaps more than that of any other World War II soldier. He displayed his strategic brilliance in such campaigns as the invasion of Poland, the Blitzkrieg of France, the sieges of Sevastopol, Leningrad, and Stalingrad, and the battles of Kharkov and Kursk.
Manstein also stands as one of the war’s most enigmatic and controversial figures. To some, he was a leading proponent of the Nazi regime and a symbol of the moral corruption of the Wehrmacht. Yet he also disobeyed Hitler, who dismissed his leading Field Marshal over this incident, and has been suspected by some of conspiring against the Führer. Sentenced to eighteen years by a British war tribunal at Hamburg in 1949, Manstein was released in 1953 and went on to advise the West German government in founding its new army within NATO.
Military historian and strategist Mungo Melvin combines his research in German military archives and battlefield records with unprecedented access to family archives to get to the truth of Manstein’s life and deliver this definitive biography of the man and his career.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Forget Rommel: Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, largely unknown to Americans because he served mainly on the Eastern Front, was the exemplar of Germany’s military genius and self-delusion in WWII, according to this sweeping biography. Melvin, senior directing staff (Army) of the Royal College of Defense Studies in London, styles Manstein as a foresighted military intellectual and gifted improviser whose feats, from authoring the armored thrust through the Ardennes that defeated France in 1940 to his dogged parrying of vastly stronger Soviet forces, were the high points of German generalship. His main struggle, though, was with Hitler, whose stand-fast orders stymied the audacious mobile ripostes Manstein conceived to stem the Red Army’s advance; their wrangling over strategy form a tragicomic thread running through the narrative. Melvin gives a lucid and well-paced, if somewhat bloodless, account of Manstein’s campaigns. For all his brilliance, Melvin’s Manstein emerges as a study in futility and self-deception, able only to delay the inevitable with his maneuvers, evasive about war crimes committed under his command—at best willfully ignorant, perhaps actively complicit. A searching portrait of soldierly prowess in a disastrous cause, Melvin’s comprehensive, judicious account will become the standard biography of Manstein in English. 16 pages of color photos, 16 pages of b&w photos. (June)Kirkus Reviews
The victorious siege commander of Sevastopol garners a formal, meticulous new study.
Melvin, a British major general (Royal College of Defense Studies, London), emphasizes Erich von Manstein's (1887–1973) operational skill as well as his problematic ethical decisions while commanding assaults on the Eastern Front during World War II. Born to an aristocratic East Prussian family with a strong military tradition, Manstein was schooled at the Royal Prussian Cadet Corps, trained as an officer in Berlin's War Academy and wounded during World War I. He amply absorbed the "twin punch of defeat and deprivation" suffered by the Germans after the armistice, believing as many did that the Versailles Treaty was a "shamefulDiktat." Manstein became one of the rising stars in the quietly expanding Reichswehr between the wars, and was swept up into the general euphoria of Hitler's rise to power, though he did reveal contradictory positions by composing a letter in 1934 protesting the ban on the employment of Jewish officers. A member of Hitler's General Staff during the years of 1935–38, when Germany undertook breathtaking modernization and plans to build a "storm artillery," Manstein was posted to command in Silesia, then enlisted in the invasion of Poland. He was key in forming the "triumphant invasion plan in the West," though he claimed in his considerable late-life memoirs that he was not consulted in planning the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa. Nonetheless, he spearheaded the siege attacks on Sevastopol, Stalingrad and Kursk, to ferocious Russian resistance, and his mounting frustration with Hitler's leadership prompted him to tender his resignation several times. The "scorched earth" policy he implemented upon retreat and other crimes committed by the Nazi leadership gained him conviction at trials in Nuremberg and later Hamburg; he served eight years but was largely rehabilitated by his memoirs and work in bolstering the Bundeswehr during the Cold War.
Too thick for casual readers lacking a strong interest in European history, but Melvin provides a fair, thorough reappraisal that carefully considers Manstein's military prowess while challenging his moral amnesia.