Field marshal Von Manstein was certainly the best strategist and master of the field the Germans had in WWII, no doubt.
However, Manstein was a typical megalomaniac Prussian general traumatised with Von Clausewitz's theories about war: it is brute force and violence, not resistance, the main ingredients of victory. That kind of thought was still there, the poor German economy was also there, as well as the caothic structures of a totalitarian State, the typical German disregard for logistics, the anti-utilitarian and anto-practical war objectives in Hitler's mind…
Manstein wouldn't have wasted men and matériel the way Hitler did, but maybe he would have done so in the way Ludendorff did in 1917-1918…
