Did Hitler regret having agreed to Man-stein’s suggestions, or did he think him less capable than General Model of lessening the damage that his own stubbornness had caused in the first place? Whatever the reason, on March 30, Manstein, the victor of Sevastopol’ and Khar’kov, took the plane to Obersalz-berg, where at one and the same time, he was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross and relieved of the command which he had assumed in such grim circumstances on November 24, 1942.
"For a long time Goring and Himmler had been conspiring towards my downfall,” wrote Manstein. "1 knew this. But the main reason was that on March 25 Hitler had been obliged to grant me what he had previously, and in public, refused me. On shaking hands to take leave of him, I said 'I hope your decision today will not turn out to be mistaken.’
"Kleist was received after me and dismissed in like fashion. As we left the Berghof, we saw our successors, Colonel-General Model, who was going to take over my army group which would now be called Army Group 'North Ukraine’ and General Schorner, Kleist’s replacement, already waiting at the door!”
And so, on April 2, Colonel-General Walther Model, in whom Hitler recognised the best repairer of his own mistakes, took command of what a few days later was rather pompously re-christened Army Group "North Ukraine”.
Major-General Mellenthin who, as chief-of-staff of XLVIII Panzer Corps, got to know Model well, describes him as a "small thin man, jovial and lively, whom one could never have imagined separated from his monocle. But, however great his single-mindedness, his energy or his courage, he was very different from Manstein. In particular. Model was only too prone to busy himself with every tiniest detail, and to tell his army commanders, and even his corps commanders, where and how they were to draw up their troops. General Balck, for example, the commander of XLVIII Panzer Corps, considered this tendency in his new chief to be most irritating.”
World History
