Looking back at the history of World War II, the Battle of Stalingrad, which took place in the summer and autumn of 1942, was of great significance to the Eastern Front, not only allowing the Soviet army to gain the initiative on the battlefield, but also accelerating the progress of the Allied victory over the Axis powers. However, for Manstein, who participated in this campaign, he believed that the turning point of the Eastern Front was not the Battle of Stalingrad, but the battle for strategic resources on the Southern Front, and that the retreat of the German army in the Caucasus affected the entire battlefield.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" >01 Insufficient resources were the biggest shortcoming of the German army in the Eastern Front, and the success of the initial battle was only a flash in the pan. </h1>
Many people thought that the Barbarossa Plan formulated by the German high command was an embroidered pillow that was not useful, because it only focused on rapid strikes, but ignored the logistics and resources of the German army. It was also true that when the German High Command issued Operational Order No. 21 on December 18, 1940, the Germans were not only underprepared for tanks, but also lacked the necessary pertinence for Soviet intelligence reconnaissance.
From relevant information and Guderian's memoirs, it is known that after the 21st Operational Order was issued, without the more than 3,000 tanks provided by France as a supplement, the German army did not have enough tanks to meet the needs of the 4 armored groups, and Manstein commanded the 56th Panzer Army to fall into the primeval forests and swamps of the three Baltic countries, which was also caused by the lack of preliminary intelligence work.
It can be said that when the war broke out, the German army won the encirclement of Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev in three months, in addition to the Soviet army's negligence and tactical command errors, the surprise attack of the German armored strike accounted for a large part of the advantage.
In this sense, after the German army won the two encirclement battles of Vyazma and Bryansk, there was no decent rapid mobile operation, indicating that the reason for the decline of the German army was not how much error in command, but the shortcomings of the armored forces began to appear, and the shortage of resources had seriously restricted the forward speed of the armored forces.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="17" >02 Manstein said that the turning point of the Eastern Front operation was the resource scramble on the Southern Front, which confirmed the important role of the Kharkov counterattack from the side. </h1>
In Manstein's view, the German high command made two fatal mistakes in 1942, one was not to allow the 6th Army to withdraw from Stalingrad, and the other was to disperse the strength of Army Group South, and there was a 390 km long undefended loophole between the two battle groups A and B.
In fact, the reason why Manstein focused on the resource competition on the southern front is also to show the importance of his winning the Kharkov counterattack. However, it is also believed that the Third Battle of Kharkov, which took place in March 1943, although Manstein recaptured the city with fewer victories and more victories, also laid the groundwork for the Germans to attack in the Ensuing Kursk Tank Battle, because Manstein exposed the German family background, so that the Soviet army in the Kursk salient was fearless, and spent several months waiting for the Germans to attack.
So, when everyone thinks that the Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point of the Eastern Front, why should Manstein say that the resources of the Southern Front are the turning point? To a certain extent, he is not wrong, in fact, if Manstein had been entangled in the battlefield of Stalingrad and made the rescue of Paulus's 6th Army Group the central task of the Don Army Group, the process of operations on the Eastern Front would probably have ended prematurely, because the reserves of the 6 army groups assembled by Zhukov had begun to move to the junction of the two battle groups A and B, and to occupy Kharkov and Rostov, cutting off the rear road of the 1st Panzer Army of Kleist, the consequences would be unimaginable.
In this sense, Manstein's perspective seems to be a higher level than that of the German high command, and winning the Kharkov counterattack to win the title of great commander-in-chief is well deserved.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="18" >03 Which of the more important effects was the Battle of Stalingrad or the Kharkov Counterattack? </h1>
In fact, from the perspective of the post-summary, the Battle of Stalingrad is certainly much more important than the Kharkov Counterattack, because this battle contained one-third of the Strength of the German Army in the Eastern Front, although the 6th Army only had 300,000 people, but the two sides invested in this battle was several times more peripheral troops, and the Soviets won this battle, which had an extremely important impact on the subsequent change of the battlefield situation.
For Manstein, although he commanded the Don Army Group to rescue the failed winter storm operation, part of which was the responsibility of the German high command, as the direct leader of the formulation and implementation of the plan, Manstein still had to bear the main responsibility. To a certain extent, if the Kharkov counterattack had not been won, Manstein's commanding talent would have been greatly reduced, and it was the latter's victory that masked the former's lack of rescue failure.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the Kharkov counterattack seems to be of greater significance to Manstein's personal glory than to the entire Eastern Front, while the Battle of Stalingrad is different, which is another defeat after the defeat of the German army in the Moscow offensive, and there is no longer any intention of attacking the city, and it can be regarded as a desperate decisive battle to stop operation Barbarossa.
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