Review Essay

Work Reviewed: von Manstein, Erich.

Lost Victories. Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company, 1958.

Course: Strategy & Policy

Instructor: Professor Thomas Keaney

Due Date: 24th October 2017

 In Lost Victories1, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (henceforth: Manstein)

provides a first-hand narrative of his experiences and personal involvement in the

military campaigns of the Third Reich in World War II. He commences his accounts

in the summer of 1938 with the lead-up to the Poland campaign and ends in the spring

of 1944 after his dismissal by Hitler.

In providing a self-proclaimed “personal narrative of a soldier” (von Manstein 1958,

17), Manstein excludes all elements of the war in which he played no active role and

furthermore aims not to concern himself with “political problems or matters with no

direct bearing on events in the military field” (von Manstein 1958, 17). Manstein

delineates initial German victories and how these achievements ultimately turned into

defeat. Manstein attributes the loss of formerly gained ground to three main aspects,

namely 1) Hitler’s incompetency as supreme commander, 2) the conflicting command

structure of the German Wehrmacht and 3) Germany’s military inferiority in numbers

and resources vis-à-vis its Allied opponents.

Manstein grew up in the tradition of Prussian militarism, which throughout the

book is reflected in his belief in duty, bravery, comradeship, and integrity, which he

attributes to the Prussian soldier.

As the author actively participated in the events described in Lost Victories, first as

Lieutenant General and eventually as Field Marshal, his accounts provide explicit

insights into the Wehrmacht’s command structure and the inner workings of the Third

Reich’s military decision-making process.

1
German original: Verlorene Siege
Adopted style guide: Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses and
Dissertations (Turabian 2007)
 Lost Victories is divided into three large parts, each concerning itself with one

of the three military campaigns that Manstein was involved in; namely, the campaign

in Poland, the campaign in the West and the war in the East. Throughout the book, a

gradual, yet very noticeable trend of heavier focus on questions of political strategy,

command structure and the persona of Hitler, is to be found.

Manstein’s use of footnotes is very limited and if utilized, mostly serves to

clarify or expand on certain circumstances. The author makes frequent use of military

maps to visualize his description of battle tactics, which adds to the book’s overall

commendable structural effectiveness. For a reader unfamiliar with the sequence and

interplay of the various battles of World War II, Manstein’s accounts are bound to

provide a fragmented and unilateral picture. However, since providing a

comprehensive overview of the military occurrences between 1939 and 1945 was

never the author’s intention, this cannot constitute structural criticism.

Even though the author identifies Germany’s inferiority in numbers and

resources as one of the three factors leading to its ultimate defeat, Manstein posits that

this disadvantage on its own was not a decisive factor, as it could have been

counterbalanced by effective military leadership in conjunction with well-defined and

unambiguous command structures. As proof of this claim, he adduces the sweeping

victory in Order White2, as well as the successful capturing of the Crimean Peninsula

by the 11th Army3. Both campaigns were conducted under the sole command of the

OKH4, with little to no interference in strategy and tactics by Hitler. Manstein

provides further proof, albeit of the opposite outcome, in his assessment of the Battle

2
Military Codename used for the Poland Campaign 1939
3
11th Army was under Manstein’s command at this time
4
OKH = “Oberkommando des Heeres” (Supreme Command of land forces)
of Stalingrad. He attributes the fact that the 6th Army found itself in such a dire

position to grave operational errors committed by a disorganized Supreme Command,

whereas in his view the culprit for the ultimate fatal outcome is to be found in Hitler

and his refusal to give up the city for reasons of prestige.

Throughout Lost Victories, Manstein’s Prussian military education becomes

apparent in his Clausewitzian understanding of war. Unlike Hitler who prioritized

targets of political or economic relevance, Manstein adheres to Clausewitz’ sequence

in war: first destroying the enemy’s army, then occupying the country and

subsequently dictating a peace treaty5.

One fundamental aspect in which Clausewitz’ and Manstein’s understandings

of war differ greatly is the separation of military and political command. Clausewitz

understands war as an extension of politics, which by its very nature requires political

objectives to drive military objectives and political leaders to direct the military in

such a way that facilitates the attainment of their political goals (von Clausewitz

1976).

In contrast, Manstein holds that only overall war policy lies in the area of

responsibility of Heads of States, whereas “a land offensive […] must depend entirely

on how, when and whether the army would be able to tackle the task. In these three

5
Compare Clausewitz: “Since of the three objectives named, it is the fighting forces
that assure the safety of the country, the natural sequence would be to destroy them
first, and then subdue the country. Having achieved these two goals and exploiting
our own position of strength, we can bring the enemy to the peace table.” (von
Clausewitz 1976, 91) and Manstein: “Now questions of a political and economic
nature are undoubtedly of great importance when it comes to fixing strategic aims.
What Hitler overlooked was that the achievement and – most important of all – the
retention of territorial objective presupposes the defeat of the enemy’s armed forces.”
(von Manstein 1958, 276)
respects the primacy of the army leadership was inalienable.” (von Manstein 1958,

73)

In this perspective, Manstein’s convictions are Jominian, believing the most

effective military strategy to be the appointment of the best military commander by

the Head of State and subsequently letting said commander wage war freely, void of

political interference (Shy 1986).

Criticism has to be given to Manstein for whitewashing elements of his past,

the three most striking of which are: 1) his claim that the German public did not

believe they were a Master race that should dominate the European continent, which

is at best a generalizing and ambiguous statement (Giordano 1987); 2) his claim that

the infamous Kommissarbefehl6 and Reichenau-Befehl7 were not executed by soldiers

under his command, which has been proven to be a historical misrepresentation (von

Wrochem 2006); 3) his belief that Germany’s war in the east could still have been

won as late as 1944 if other tactics had been adopted, which is a claim that has been

largely questioned by historians (Frieser 2007).

As Verlorene Siege was first published in 1955, a decade after the war, and

shortly after Manstein’s premature release from war captivity, the possibility of him

consciously engaging in legacy building must be considered. The fact that the three

aforementioned elements exonerate him from the ‘ugliest’ sides of the Third Reich

6
Order to immediately execute political commissars of the Red Army and not treat
them as war prisoners
7
Order delineating the ‘desirable’ behavior of German troops in Eastern Europe,
which amongst others comprised the order to facilitate the persecution and
assassination of Jews
and the circumstance that he was the only Wehrmacht general to ever advise the new

Bundeswehr lend credibility to this supposition.

Manstein’s Lost Victories, albeit clearly a biased account in places, provides

accounts rich in detail which, if not objective in their entirety, offer value by enabling

the reader to approach the battles of WWII through the lens of a high-ranking and

indisputably skillful Wehrmacht general and examine the German military

command's relation to Nazism and Hitler.

Bibliography
Frieser, Karl-Heinz. Die Ostfront 1943/44. Der Krieg im Osten und an den
Nebenfronten. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , 2007.

Giordano, Ralph. Die zweite Schuld, oder Von der Last Deutscher zu sein. Hamburg:
Rasch und Röhring, 1987.

Shy, John. „Jomini.“ In Makers of Modern Strategy, von Peter Paret, 143-185.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Turabian, L. Turabian. A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and

Dissertations: Chicago Style for students and researchers. 8. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 2007.

von Clausewitz, Carl. On War. Übersetzung: Michael Howard, & Peter Paret.
Princeton : Princeton University Press, 1976.

von Manstein, Erich. Lost Victories. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1958.

von Wrochem, Oliver. Erich von Manstein: Vernichtungskrieg und Geschichtspolitik.

Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006.
Essay by Sebastian Dannhoff
sdannho1@jhu.edu