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Defeat was a gangrenous infection which grew and spread, and with each hour became more dangerous. Not even Manstein, with all his genius for war, knew how to end the infection. All he could do now was to retreat with all speed, and hope that the pursuer would wear himself out in the steadily widening belt of devastated land.
Battle For Survival. The retreat was not yet a rout: the Teutonic habit of obedience was still firm, the armies' strength was still great, the commanders still able. But, however masterly, it was a retreat. Momentary survival, a postponement of utter defeat, might lie somewhere in the rear. But victory could not lie there. Victory lay in the opposite direction.
In effect, the battle for the Ukraine was Manstein's last stand. For unless this battle was won—or even stalemated—it would soon be too late. Other armies would be gnawing at Europe's western and southern crusts. If, by then, the Red Army was at or near the gates of the Reich itself, or tearing at the Nazi structure in southeast Europe, Germany's end would be very near.
Manstein's was a battle for Germany, her government, her army. It was also a battle for his caste—the Junkers—who were the army's heart, mind and will power. By a subterfuge, the caste escaped the ignominy of defeat in World War I ("We were stabbed in the back," the Junkers said). But now no subterfuge would help. For the Allied intent was clear: "The twin roots of all our evils—Nazi tyranny and Prussian militarism—must be extirpated. Until this is achieved there are no sacrifices that we will not make, no length in violence to which we will not go."*
Men of Ostelbien. Extirpation of the Junkers—the Mansteins, Kleists, Külers of the Wehrmacht—would end a long, bloody, turbulent German chapter.
The Junkers are more than a caste. To the Junkers their Ostelbien (east of the Elbe) is the heart of Germany; and Germany was the world's heart. They are a social system, a way of life, a thought pattern, a cancer on Europe's uneasy breast. Century after century, their dreams have become blueprints, their blueprints war. Even under Hitler the German army is in a sense their private weapon. (Between Versailles and Hitler, 60% of the Wehrmacht's officers came from Ostelbien's Junkers.)
Hitler and the Junkers bear no love for each other. But Ostelbien's generals and the Austrian ex-corporal have made a fine team.
When, on the wrinkled steppe before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht met defeat, Hitler did not turn for help to one of his Nazi henchmen—Jodl, List, Guderian; he turned to Junker von Manstein. In December 1942, in the marshlands hugging the Caspian Sea, Manstein met in combat the Russian ex-private, Rodion Malinovsky. Manstein's first punch—with massed tanks—sent the Russian reeling back. But soon Malinovsky received help, counterattacked, made the marshes a cemetery for Manstein's men, tanks, hopes.