Word: manstein
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...original German plan was to launch a frontal assault by Army Group B on the Low Countries, just as in 1914, with a secondary attack in the Ardennes by Army Group A. But General Erich von Manstein, chief of staff for Army Group A, passionately argued that this would only lead to stalemate in northern France, again just as in 1914. By contrast, a strong armored offensive right through the supposedly impenetrable Ardennes could lead to a breakthrough all the way to the English Channel. The Allied armies would be encircled and cut off; all France would lie open. Manstein...
Died. Fritz Erich von Lewinski von Manstein, 85, the armored-warfare strategist who masterminded Germany's blitzkrieg against France in 1940; of a heart attack; in Irschenhausen, West Germany. Von Manstein was named a field marshal by Hitler in 1942 for his victories in the Crimean campaign against the Soviets and dismissed two years later for advocating a strategy of retreat from Stalingrad. Tried by the British, he was imprisoned for war crimes. Upon his release, he became a consultant to the West German government, advocating a citizens' army with universal conscription for his country in the postwar...
...Italians," says Field Marshal Erich von Manstein in his memoirs of Stalingrad, simply "disappeared from the battlefield." In the most decisive battle of World War II, the Russians, breaking through west of the city on the front held by 220,000 men of Mussolini's Italian Expeditionary Force among others, hurtled on across the Don steppes and never finally stopped till they got to Berlin. In six weeks of catastrophic rout and retreat, the Italians' ten divisions suffered casualties officially estimated at 115,000 men. Of these, they evacuated 30,000 wounded and listed 11,000 as dead...
...imprisonment." On hearing the news, Allmendingen's Bu germeister promptly closed the village school and marched the children, town councilors and teachers up to the castle for an official "Welcome Home" for the old (65) soldier. As a band oompahed Im Schdnsten Wiesengrnmde (In the Beautiful Meadow), Manstein, sallow and strained, took a bouquet of lilacs and tulips from the kiddies and said: "We hope for the reconciliation of all peoples and for unification of Europe." It was the eighth anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender...
...With Manstein's release, only one prominent German general still remains in an Allied jail for war crimes: General Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, ex-chief of the Nazi occupation forces in Norway...