English source-aligned edition
Erich von Manstein
Erich von Manstein served as field marshal; commander of the Eleventh Army and later army groups on the eastern front. The profile reconstructs the person’s function in Crimea and the southern sector of the eastern front through documented office, decisions, supervision or operational conduct. It does not assign every crime committed by an institution or region to one individual.
Confirmed findings
- Manstein commanded the Eleventh Army in Ukraine and Crimea from September 1941 and later commanded army groups on the eastern front.
- On 20 November 1941 he issued an order endorsing the ideological destruction of the so-called Jewish-Bolshevik system.
- A British military court convicted him on nine charges involving the treatment of civilians and prisoners and failures of command responsibility.
Place in the chain of responsibility
Manstein's responsibility derives from his orders, the conduct of troops within his command and cooperation with Einsatzgruppe D. This is command responsibility, not a claim that he personally performed or exclusively controlled every killing in the army's operational area.
Key events and mechanisms
- In September 1941 he assumed command of the Eleventh Army.
- On 20 November 1941 he circulated an order that gave ideological sanction to persecution on the eastern front.
- On 19 December 1949 the British court sentenced him to eighteen years' imprisonment.
The circle records authority, function and agency. Several profiles may describe different parts of the same persecution chain, so profile-level totals must not be added together.
Postwar accountability
The sentence was reduced to twelve years, and Manstein was released for health reasons in 1953. He later advised the West German defence establishment and contributed to the postwar image of a supposedly apolitical Wehrmacht.
Limits of the evidence
Estimates for crimes across the Eleventh Army's area combine the actions of military, SS, police and auxiliary formations and cannot be treated as Manstein's personal victim total. Sources also differ by a day on the date recorded for his death in June 1973.
Sources
The source set combines institutional, archival, trial or scholarly material from at least two independent publishers.
