Word: mansteins
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These men and these weapons thrice beat Manstein: at Stalingrad, Kursk, Zhitomir. But, thrice beaten, he still failed to understand the lesson. For understanding meant loss of hope and faith: the Slav commoner had negated the Junkers' wondrous Blitzkrieg...
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...
...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...
...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...