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The Road Back. In that winter of disaster, the Germans retreated some 400 miles, lost (according to Moscow) 1,200,000 men and 5,000 planes, gave up Vyazma, Rzhev, Kharkov, Belgorod, Rostov, a foothold in Voronezh. Manstein, retreating along the southern fringe of Russia, shrewdly caught advanced Russian tank columns in the March mud and out of fuel, recaptured Belgorod and Kharkov, subsequently wrote a sometimes brilliant, sometimes mistaken, always futile chapter in the tactics of retreat.
Sick with "armor fever," Manstein and his teammates brought up huge 60-ton "Tiger" tanks (Mark VI) and 70-ton "Ferdinand" self-propelled guns. Smaller tanks were given an extra skin of armor. In all, 17 tank and 18 infantry divisions were massed for the summer drive, Russians said this was history's highest ratio of tanks to infantry.
With this tremendous force Hitler made his last great bid for Russia. On July 5, 1943, huge columns of tanks, spearheaded by Tigers, rumbled forward. But the Russian lines did not snap; they merely moved back. By month's end, the Germans again were in general retreat.
For Manstein, retirement behind the Dnieper was inevitable. But he had to hold on until the Dnieper Line was ready, until his men had pulled out of the dangerous southern pocket. To achieve this he used hedgehogs—well-placed, well-fortified strongholds. The hedgehog at Stalino held until Manstein's units withdrew from the Don. The Poltava hedgehog held until the Germans reached the Dnieper.
The retreat was costly; all retreats are. But none of Manstein's units was trapped; the army was battered, but it was still an army. Now Manstein wanted to fatten and rest it behind the Dnieper, build defenses, perhaps prepare a new counteroffensive.
The Red command would give him no respite. At high cost, Russian troops pressed across the river, struck blows so well dispersed that Manstein's thin reserves could not plug all holes. Zhitomir and Korosten fell. It was then that Manstein again displayed his tactical brilliance.
Behind Zhitomir he had been hoarding vast masses of tanks. When Vatutin's mobile columns outraced their artillery and infantry support, Manstein struck. With more than 1,600 tanks in pursuit, the Russians abandoned Zhitomir, fled across the flat, muddy terrain. Kiev itself was in peril.
But in December 1943 Manstein repeated the mistake he made in July. He let the Russians whittle down his tank force, had no reserves when Vatutin struck again with tanks. After that, there was no alternative to flight.
Junker's Errors. But to the Russian Manstein was less a riddle than they were to him. His was the Junker's orderly, one-track mind whose processes could often be foretold—and thwarted. He had learned much since the easy conquests in Poland and France. But, like other Junkers, he still held abiding faith in the tank-airplane team. When it failed—as it did at Kursk —the solution was simple: more tanks, more planes.
Von Manstein thus turned to what the Russians called "buffalo strategy." But this strategy of massed-force-cum-surprise had two flaws: it overestimated the value of the tank-plane team; it underestimated the value of the grey, sturdy, patient Russian mujik as a military weapon.