Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
What Manstein was talking about was that Hitler refused to let the generals play their own game. Manstein, for example, heavily favored an elastic defense, while Hitler, for propagandistic reasons, adamantly refused to let soldiers retreat or withdraw. When Manstein was actually able to do this, like at Third Kharkov, it worked spectularly. Its no surprise that Hitler essentially ignored this Riposte because Manstein had disobeyed him.
The fact is, however, that Manstein in his memoirs could not see both sides of the field. We know from Soviet records that the deck was stacked before the battle even began. The salient was filled with layers of concentric defenses, and the troops therein fresh and fully supplied. It was quite obvious (and further helped by espionage) that the assault would come in two pincers, near the "base" of the salient. The plan was to let the Germans break against this wall, so to speak, and then hit them in their own flanks in what would then become two mini-salients. For von Kluge, this happened nearly immediately, as the entirety of the Bryansk Front immediately fell under assault when Kursk began. He hardly even made it into the salient before his drive stopped, because of the excessive demand at all other fronts, but especially around Orel, near the base of his own salient. While Manstein performed much much better (Zhukov even commented that he was surprised by Manstein's progress), he had essentially ground to a halt himself by the time Hitler ordered the operation ended. He had essentially no chance of ever uniting with von Kluge, primarily because Kluge had already folded and Orel had already fallen. Further, Zhukov had seven full Soviet armies waiting near Voronezh to begin the counteroffensive, and when these entered the battle, they proved how walloped the Germans had been during the assault.
It just occurred to me that you (or he) could also be talking about the plan for an earlier offensive. I remember that Manstein wanted to begin more than a month earlier, to keep the Soviets on their heels after Kharkov, but was told to wait for shipments of the new Panther and Tiger tanks before beginning. We know from looking at Zhukov's memoirs, however, that he did not begin building the concentric defensive works until after Manstein's originally proposed assault date. So maybe its concievable that he would have done better had he been able to hit faster. But, then, it is also true that he would not have had the force he did IRL. I don't think Tamerlane's observation about troop strength holds much weight, really, so I'm inclined to think that Manstein was wet-dreaming when he thought he could beat the Soviets by this point.
Hitler certainly fired many capable commanders in favor of unquestionably loyal ones. Ironic that most of those he fired were those who initiated (Guderian) or proposed (Manstein, Bock) retreat, or who resigned when Hitler would not let them play how they wanted to (Leeb).
Oh noes indeed. Thankfully the Jews are God's chosen people and were therefore incapable of losing.
