Word: tankful
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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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...
...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...
...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...
...Stalingrad, the Russians mastered the defensive weapons: the anti-tank rifle, the mine, the Molotov cocktail. In the winter drive which followed, they mastered the weapons of attack-artillery, tanks, cavalry...