This silent footage shows a visit to the United States by Hasso Eccard von Manteuffel, a former Wehrmacht general who went on to become a member of the West German legislature and an advisor on the formation of the new army the Bundeswehr. The film starts at National Airport with Manteuffel arriving on an American Airlines DC-6. He is then whisked to the Pentagon for meetings.
Hasso Eccard von Manteuffel (14 January 1897 – 24 September 1978) was a German general during World War II who commanded the 5th Panzer Army. He was a recipient of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds of Nazi Germany.
After the war, he was elected to the Bundestag (West German legislature) and was the spokesman for defense of the Liberal Party. A proponent of rearmament, he was responsible for coining the new name for the post-World War II German armed forces, the Bundeswehr. At first after the war, Manteuffel was interned at the British-administered Island Farm Special Camp 11 for high-ranking Wehrmacht officers. In 1946 he was handed over to the Americans and took part in the U.S. Army Historical Division project, for which he produced a monograph on the mobile warfare aspect of the Ardennes Offensive.
After his release in December 1946, he entered politics and was a representative of the Free Democratic Party of Germany (FDP) in the German Bundestag from 1953 to 1957. In 1957 he joined the German Party. In the early 1950s Manteuffel advised on the redevelopment of the Bundeswehr.
Manteuffel was charged in 1959 for having a deserter shot in 1944 (he reversed the court martial’s original verdict of imprisonment and decided for a death sentence, using the Führer Order No.7 as a basis). He was convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Alaric Searle comments that Manteuffel exceeded his powers as a divisional commander, but at the same time, “Manteuffel’s purely military arguments — that signs of disintegration had appeared on other sectors of the front, that the night before the incident a case of desertion had occurred, and that his division’s task, in a precarious situation, was to help protect a critical evacuation point—would probably have been accepted in most other Western countries as justifying his action”. Searle agrees with Hermann Balck’s comment that such a trial would be “unthinkable” for a French or British officer. His English was eloquent; in 1968 he lectured at the United States Military Academy at West Point, speaking about combat in deep snow conditions and worked as a technical adviser on war films. Manteuffel died in 1978.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
