Manstein's Top 3 Legendary Tactical Moves | The General Who Baited Stalin

Manstein's Top 3 Legendary Tactical Moves | The General Who Baited Stalin February 1943. Two weeks after Stalingrad, the whole German southern wing looks ready to break, and Erich von Manstein gives up Kharkov on purpose. He lets the Soviet armies run west until they have nothing left behind them. Then he strikes. This is Manstein's top three tactical moves, counted down from number three to number one, map by map: #3 The Dash to Dvinsk (June 1941): LVI Panzer Corps races about 315 km in 100 hours and takes both Dvina bridges whole. #2 Trappenjagd at Kerch (May 1942): a smaller Eleventh Army breaks a larger Crimean Front at its one weak point; about 176,566 Soviet losses against 7,588 German. #1 The Backhand Blow at Kharkov (1943): he lets the enemy advance, destroys Mobile Group Popov and retakes Kharkov, with about 350 German tanks against some 210,000 Soviet troops. An honest account has to hold both sides. Manstein served a regime that waged a war of murder in the east. Einsatzgruppe D killed tens of thousands of Jews and other civilians behind his Eleventh Army in Crimea, and on 20 November 1941 he signed an order telling his soldiers the "Jewish-Bolshevik system" must be wiped out. In 1949 a British military court in Hamburg found him guilty on nine of seventeen charges and sentenced him to eighteen years; he was released in 1953. His skill was real. So was his record. AI disclosure: the commander portraits, the thumbnail and one atmosphere clip are AI-generated illustrations, not historical photographs. Narration is an AI voice. Maps are drawn in code; all other footage and photographs are archival. Checkmate Generals: the moves that cornered armies. New board every day. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:56 #3 The Dash to Dvinsk (June 1941) 9:04 #2 Trappenjagd at Kerch (May 1942) 15:09 #1 The Backhand Blow at Kharkov (1943) 22:24 Fate and verdict SOURCES Archival footage and photographs: U.S. National Archives (NARA), Universal Newsreel, Bundesarchiv (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE), Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Wikimedia Commons. Licence and archive id of every archival item: see the credits file. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL). Terrain: Mapzen Terrain Tiles / AWS Open Data (SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1). #WW2 #Manstein #MilitaryHistory 0:00 - Cold open 1:56 - #3 The Dash to Dvinsk (June 1941) 9:04 - #2 Trappenjagd at Kerch (May 1942) 15:09 - #1 The Backhand Blow at Kharkov (1943) 22:25 - Fate and verdict