Manstein had seen the army high command’s hopeless, unimaginative plan, for the attack on France. He’d come up with a better idea – an attack through the impenetrable Ardennes Forest in Belgium in the centre using the new, and really untested, panzer divisions.

As fate would have it, the father of Germany’s panzer forces, Heinz Guderian was in the town of Koblenz where Manstein was also based as the chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein should have been Chief of Staff of the German Army but that’s another story. That job had ended up with General Franz Halder. A remarkably capable and brilliant general but, to be honest, not in the class of Manstein.

Manstein and Guderian got together in Koblenz. Manstein revealed his plan for what would come to be known as Operation Sichelschnitt (Sickle Cut). The German Army manuals contained nothing about how to fight the war that Manstein so clearly so in his head, which he shared with Guderian. Together they were going to have to work out how to make this new way of war work. Together they ticked all of the boxes.

Selling it to the German High Command was now Manstein’s job. He needed to put a plan together on paper. That sounded like a plan!

Tag words: Erich von Manstein; Blitzkrieg; Ardennes Forest; Heinz Guderian; General Franz Halder; Operation Sichelschnitt; Operation Sickle Cut; Adolf Hitler; Karl-Heinz Frieser; Schwerpunkt; Major Helmuth Reinberger; General Gerd von Runstedt; Luftwaffe; War Directive No.6; Teilsieg; Matador’s Cloak; Sir Basil Liddell Hart; General von Brauchitsch; Leibstandarte; Grossdeutschland; Kriegsspiel; Oberst Gunther Blumentritt; Major Henning von Tresckow; Rudolf Schmundt; Major Gerhard Engel; General Alfred Jodl; Fall Gelb; Case Yellow; Rommel;