Manstein Plan - A masterpiece!!!

"We are defeated. We have lost the battle"

Prime minister Winston Churchill could hardly believe in these words. It was a cloudy morning in London. Churchill was just out of his bed, when he had to receive a call from his French counterpart, Paul Renaud. Churchill already had nightmare of failure in Norway campaign, and then he was shocked, when on 10th of May, German forces broke through Luxembourg to make their way to British channel. Renaud's above statement was worse than any previous calamity.

"How is that possible? We just had a talk with general Georges and he told me that he will......"

"No...no we have been defeated...there is nothing left for us"

It was a Miracle. The french stronghold was outsmarted by a beautifully executed plan which was never dreamt of before by any General. Erich Von Manstein was going to be remembered in the history of war strategies for a long period.

Any battle between Germany/Prussia and France had something common in between them....a battlefield of Luxembourg/Netherlands/Belgium. Same was repeated in first world war and same was what Anglo-french were expecting. And also there was no harm in doing so. Allies had all the resources to stop German forces. Dutch were planning to open all of their dams to stop German tanks and Belgium were banking on the line of strong forts to fight against German troops.
Manstein was working under Panzer marshal Heinz Guderian. He was the first to realize this fact. Thinking all possibilities he fixed up a plan, which at the end found out to be super useful for Axis powers.


Plan was like this - German forces will start up with attacking Benelux region, destroying main static defenses of Allies. Allies will then gather for counter attack in that region as they were planning to. Once enough of opposition forces gathered in the north, a huge number of German divisions will break through the dense jungle of Ardennes, just north of Maginot fortifications of France. These forces, including specialized panzer divisions, will reach to British channel without any halt and then attack the back of gathered allies forces.

It was executed superbly. When allies were defending Belgium, they heard that there is a major breakthrough in Sedan, they completely lost their morale to win the battle and instead started running towards British channel for their lives. It ended up in narrowing the gap and accumulation of allies troops near Dunkirk.

With this victory, Hitler got the mastery over half of the Europe. Similarly, a threat was created in the minds of Anglo-french that Hitler has a secret weapon for victory. The only secret weapon he had was fantastic Generals like Gerd Von Rundstedt and Heinz Guderian with sharp minded planners like Manstein & Schlieffen. Germans were victorious in the first half of this breath-taking theater of WWII.