The Other Side of Dunkirk TV - Eric von Manstein - Gunther Blumentritt - B H Liddell-Hart - Hitler's Generals TV -
The Manstein Plan (The Scythe): this Plan would see the Germans cut through the forests of the Ardennes in Belgium and Luxembourg and into France. Tim Pigott-Smith, The Other Side of Dunkirk, BBC 2020
Jewish Bolshevik system must be wiped out once and for all and should never again be allowed to invade our European living space … It is the same Jewish class of beings who have done so much damage to our own Fatherland by virtue of their activities against the nation and civilisation, and who promote anti-German tendencies throughout the world, and who will be the harbingers of revenge. Their extermination is a dictate of our own survival. Manstein, Erich von, order 20 November 1941
He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense. Gunther Blumentritt
The general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal Von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius. B H Liddell-Hart
A Prussian Field Marshal obsessed with duty, discerning, obedient. Why did he wage war for a criminal? Why was he obedient to the very end? Hitler’s Generals: Manstein
He didn’t want to see the crimes. ibid.
Hitler’s rise to power was no bad thing in Manstein’s eyes. ibid.
He was considered a brilliant strategist. ibid.
The Crimea was a theatre of war and murder. ibid.
After Stalingrad Manstein’s troops were facing annihilation. ibid.
The Field Marshal was put in prison as a war criminal. ibid.
A military genius but a moral failure. ibid.