Manstein and the way to Leningrad

I found this piece of article which has an interesting claim; if Manstein had continued his attack in late June 1941 over the Dvina river like the attack in west after Meuse river 1940 by Guderian things might have been different in the AGN...?

http://www.wargamesdirectory.com/html/articles/HitlersPanzersEast/4.asp

"Faced with the historical analogy suggested between the Meuse and the Dvina, it is tempting to state that, had Guderian ( replacing Manstein ) crossed the Dvina four days and five hours into the campaign with unscathed forces, he would have projected himself directly toward Leningrad, dragging a reluctant high command to a collapse of the Soviet Baltic front, or at least the severe dislocation of Soviet forces and encirclement of major forces by the German 18th Army along the Baltic Sea. The aggressive continuation of the march by Manstein's 56th Panzer Corps ( now Guderian´s ) would have forced the switch of Reinhardt's delayed 41st Panzer Corps from a side-by-side advance to the Dvina at Jakobstadt to a commitment in depth behind Manstein ( Guderian ). With that echeloning of forces, the Germans would have automatically cleared the supply and communications lines to Manstein ( Guderian) and added enough strength, with three additional mobile divisions and one attached hard-marching infantry division, to drive immediately through Dvinsk to Pskov and Leningrad."

Presented with the grand opportunity to develop the operations noted above, Hoepner opted instead for a safe, staff-college solution in the north, ordering the 41st Panzer Corps to advance on Jakobstadt, while the 56th Panzer Corps eventually spent seven days(!!) waiting for its companion corps to force a crossing of a river bridged a week previously.

This lack of initiative by Manstein stands up poorly compared with Guderian's uninterrupted exploitation of the earlier Meuse crossing, particularly since Guderian never received instructions on what to do after he crossed the Meuse. German operations were so finely tuned that had Guderian waited for instructions from another conservative commander (Kleist) in the bridgehead over the Meuse on 13 May 1940, it is doubtful that the French campaign would have been a German success. The analogy shows that Manstein realistically could have been expected to forge ahead out of the bridgehead, dragging a reluctant high command in Army Group North along the road to Pskov and Leningrad as Guderian dragged Kleist and the Fuhrer himself to the English Channel in 1940.



???

[ 30. September 2004, 12:56 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

Mansteins Koprs was almost sacked, hard to believe he could spearhead any further exceeding his supply lines another 100 km's or so.

Suggesting the 41st as second echolon to "solve the logistig" is raising further questions:

1.) What will be instead of the the 41st in the area the 41st historically operated? Vacuuum? my guess: intact Russians!

2.) If the supply situation of the 56th PzCorps on one advance line was tough enough to cause it to a halt (though not seven days), how worse would have been the supply situation with another Tank Corps sitting on the street?


Russia isn't France. And logistics in real life doesn't necessarily work like in PC wargames.
If a Tank Corps can't go on any further out of logistics and supply reasons, it can't, simple as that.

Cheers,

 

Very interesting post, Kai! Thanks.

And welcome back, Andy.

Actually, if you look in a map, the Dvina river is some 400 km from Leningrad. With or without the delay, Manstein simply couldn't have reached the city in July. Logistic, unappropriate roads, swampy terrain, growing Soviet resistance, etcera.

Besides, Manstein's corps would have been exposed to flank counterattack and without infantry support.

 

The interesting part here is that what if Schnell-Guderian was there instead of Manstein?
Guderian did not care for the 650,000 Red Army soldiers on his right flank at Kiev ( he would have pushed for Moscow ) and he didn´t care about the enemy forces in 1940.

On the Russian side the tank forces were 90% lost within 10 days of the campaign in the AGN area. ( originally some 2,000 pieces )

and from the site:

"The circumstances present several ironies, foremost among them that Hitler, through OKW on 27 June 1941, ordered Army Group North to redirect 41st Panzer Corps through Dvinsk to exploit the great opportunity created by Manstein's troops."

Anyone got this in a book to confirm?

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Manstein himself says in his memoirs that he wasn´t given any real goals on 27th June as Hoeppner (?) visited him. So actually Manstein himself might have been ready and anxious to go forward?