Manstein's Top 3 Legendary Tactical Moves at Kharkov | The Master of Counterattacks

February 1943. Stalingrad has just surrendered, Kharkov is lost, and the German southern front in Russia looks ready to fall apart. Four weeks later, Field Marshal Erich von Manstein has turned the whole situation around. This documentary covers the Third Battle of Kharkov through the three moves that made it Manstein’s best-known campaign. First is the hours-long argument with Hitler that won him permission to pull back to the Mius River, followed by the shift of Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army across the rear to the western flank. Second is the “backhand blow,” the counterattack that caught Vatutin’s Southwestern Front and Mobile Group Popov stretched thin, short on fuel, and still convinced the Germans were running for the Dnieper. Third is the race against the spring thaw to retake Kharkov and Belgorod before the mud stopped everything, and how Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps pulled the fight into the city streets Manstein had hoped to avoid. The front that froze in place that March left a huge Soviet bulge around Kursk and set the stage for the summer’s decisive battle on the Eastern Front. We don’t stop at the tactics. You’ll also hear why Hitler dismissed Manstein in March 1944, what Kharkov’s civilians went through, Manstein’s 1941 order targeting Jews in occupied territory, his 1949 war crimes conviction by a British military court, and why historians read his memoir Lost Victories with real caution. So which side do you take? Was Manstein a brilliant commander held back by Hitler, or a general whose victories only prolonged a criminal regime’s war? Let us know in the comments.