Eric von manstien planned to pull his forces back to the dnepeir than use a pinser move to destroy the Soviets when they over stretched their supply lines. Hitler ordered to hold the Donets basin. After three days Von Manstien got his way
Wonder if that would have worked. If the rivers could have been fortified earlier and in a better state of depth, could they have stopped the Soviets there for a good while?
*sigh*
Manstein never proposed a full withdrawal behind the D'niepr. What he proposed was a partial withdrawal behind the D'niepr in the southern extremity of the front while holding more firmly around Kharkov, thereby allowing a Soviet advance towards the lower Dnieper. This would be followed by launching a counter attack by massed German armour against the northern flank of this Soviet assault, followed by a drive south all the way to the Sea of Azov to create a vast encirclement around the attacking Red armies.
While this idea was popular during the Cold War, particularly among the wargaming community, the opening of Soviet archives have exposed it's flaws. Firstly, at the time in 1943 and even when he wrote his memoirs in 1958, von Manstein had a poor picture of actual Soviet dispositions and strengths. In particular he grossly underestimated the total forces he was actually facing. When Voronezh Front (whose strength von Manstein also underestimated) finally attacked in Kharkov in August of 1943, there was an entire second Front following behind. Secondly, he underestimated the growing skill and aggressiveness of Soviet tank commanders. When the SS divisions hit 1st Guards Tank Army west of Kharkov in August of1943, the Army did not disintegrate into chaos as had always happened against previous German counter-attacks. Instead, 1 GTA absorbed the blow and threw itself back into the fight, fighting on for several days during which it suffered 200% tanklosses. In the end 1 GTA lost the tactical fight, but on the operational-level these battles rendered the Germans were unable to get any offensivemomentum of their own going and they continued to be overwhelmed by Voronezh Front's other armies, which were subsequently reinforced bythose of the Steppe Front. Similar trends had been seen in Citadel the month before, where Soviet formations continually maneuvered and attacked against the flanks of the German penetration, incontrast to their often passive nature in previous attacks.
Given these realities, it is
very hard to see how Von Manstein could have accomplished his proposed successful counter attack at Kharkov and subsequent sweeping advance of some 350kmdown to the Sea of Azov in the face of furious counter-
counter-attacks by tank armies that would no longer collapse in panic when faced with theunexpected and with an entire second front advancing behind the first (about whose presence it appears he was unaware) to smash into the flank of his penetration... to say nothing about the additional forces of the Southwestern and Southern Fronts south of Kharkov in the Donetsk region. The most likely result of such a plan wouldhave been a massive tank brawl around Kharkov akin to OTL's 4th Kharkov and the early collapse of the German counter-attack as Voronezh Front refused to break and then the Steppe Front plowed into it from the east. Even if the Soviets fucked up at Kharkov and the Germans actually managed to penetrate deeply it is very hard to see how they could have protected the flanks of a 350km long salient when they could not even protect the flanks of a 35km long one during Citadel. The Panzers could not protect the flanks AND push the advance, and German infantry divisions would repeatedly prove woefully incapable of stopping Soviet tank attacks on their own. Only if all the Soviet mobile forces were somehow trapped deep within the pocket could the Germans have done it but, again, with entire Fronts held in the second echelon it is inevitable that the German penetration would have been cut off long before it reached the sea and we would now be talking about the disastrous encirclement and destruction of the German panzer armies at Izyum or Sloviansk or suchlike.
Fundamentally Manstein's backhand blow proposal (and indeed all strategic thinking by the Germanhigh command on the Eastern Front during 1943) was a function of him (and them) thinking that the Red Army he (and they) faced was weaker both quantitatively and qualitatively then it actually was.
In any case, Manstein did not actually make this proposal until late-July, after Citadel, and not in late-March. Cintemporary records from late-March 1943 show that the proposal he was advocating most vicariously for was an immediate resumption of the offensive the moment the mud cleared, something he still claimed would have worked out in 1958 in his memoirs. However, as Glantz pointsout, Manstein was completely unaware that his brilliant success at Third Kharkov prompted the Soviets to rush massive reinforcements to the Kursk region. Hence the ratio of forces at Kursk in late-March of 1943 was staggeringly against the Germans and was actually redressed somewhat by the delay into July, which allowed the Germans to bring up more troops and reconstruct their battered Panzer divisions. The concept of such a mobile defense was still in its infancy at Kursk and had not yet gained much credence with the military leadership and to suggest that Hitler was responsible for not being followed in early 1943 is inaccurate. The professional debate among German generals in the summer of 1943 was not on what type of defense to adopt but what type of attack. At that point the German military leaders were still playing to win, not delay their defeat.