Born in Hamburg on 15 August 1905 into an old German military family — his uncle was the Wehrmacht field marshal Walther von Brauchitsch — Manfred joined the Reichswehr after the First World War but was invalided out in 1928 following a serious accident. That injury paradoxically set him on the path to motor racing, and he soon attracted the attention of Mercedes-Benz, joining the factory team at the dawn of the Grand Prix Silver Arrows era.
Brauchitsch's most productive seasons came at the height of the state-backed German motorsport programme. He claimed his first victory at the 1934 ADAC Eifelrennen on the Nürburgring, the very race in which the newly painted silver Mercedes-Benz W25 made its competition debut — marking the legendary Silver Arrows name. Three years later he took what is regarded as his greatest triumph at the 1937 Monaco Grand Prix, setting a fastest lap of 1 minute 46.5 seconds, a full 11.9 seconds quicker than the previous lap record, a mark that would endure for eighteen years. His third and final Grand Prix win came at the 1938 French Grand Prix.
He was twice runner-up in the European Championship — the era's de facto world title — in 1937 and 1938, and finished third in 1935. Despite this consistency, Brauchitsch accumulated a parallel reputation for misfortune. By some counts, he lost no fewer than five Grands Prix when victory seemed certain. The most iconic of these near-misses came at the 1935 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. Leading on the final lap with the race seemingly won, a tyre blew and handed victory to Tazio Nuvolari in an Alfa Romeo — one of the very rare occasions during the Silver Arrows period when neither a Mercedes-Benz nor an Auto Union crossed the line first. Brauchitsch's distinctive red helmet became a symbol of a driver capable of brilliance and cursed by fate in equal measure.
Due to his many racing injuries, Brauchitsch was rejected for military service in the Second World War. He became a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps, holding the rank of Sturmführer. After the war, being the son and nephew of senior German officers held little practical value in West Germany. Several business ventures failed, and he spent time in South America before returning embittered. He became a target for East German intelligence, and in 1951 was arrested in West Germany and charged with espionage, subsequently jailed and then released on bail.
During a bail period in 1955, following the suicide of his first wife Gisela the year before, Brauchitsch defected to East Germany. There he was appointed to lead the East German national motor sport organisation and became president of its movement to promote the Olympic ideal, work that led the International Olympic Committee to award him the Olympic Order in 1988. He later remarried, to Lieselotte, and the couple were permitted occasional visits to West Germany.
Following the death of Hermann Lang in 1987, Brauchitsch was recognised as the last surviving member of the pre-war Silver Arrows driver corps. He died at Gräfenwarth on 5 February 2003, aged 97. His career encapsulates the glamour and the geopolitical shadow of 1930s Grand Prix motor racing: a gifted driver at the wheel of the most dominant machinery of his era, whose legacy is inseparable from both his victories and the dramatic misfortunes that denied him more.