In Hamburg, in August 1949
while lawyers debated his crimes, a worn-out, nearly blind German general was sitting in a converted concert hall. Erich von Manstein was his given name. He was a top-notch military strategist for Hitler during the Second World War, when his brutal armies invaded Europe.
He faced numerous charges of committing war crimes and mass murder. Even some high-ranking British officials, such as Winston Churchill, had paid money to defend him in court. There was ample evidence to suggest that his army used death squads, executed prisoners, and enslaved thousands of people. He claimed that he was just a soldier who served on the front lines, and he did not know about all the mass murders taking place in the back, saying that an employer cannot see everything his employees are doing.
However, the judges
rejected his justifications. He was sentenced to eighteen years in jail.
However, he never
visited that location. By 1953, when the Cold War had intensified, Western
nations realized that they needed West Germany as their ally against the Soviet
Union. Manstein was secretly let go, and
the leader of West Germany hired him to help build a new NATO army.

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