CHAPTER ELEVEN
MANSTEIN
Erich von Lewinski was born on 24th November, 1887 in Berlin and was the tenth child of Prussian aristocrat and artillery general, Eduard von Lewinski. Adopted after the untimely death of his parents, by his uncle General Georg von Manstein, he took the name of Erich von Manstein. His military career began in 1906, as an Ensign with the 3rd Foot Guard Regiment. In 1913, he entered the War Academy and in 1914, received the rank of Lieutenant. At the outbreak of World War One, he served on both the Western and Russian fronts. He was wounded and after recovery transferred to the staff of the Army Group commander.
Manstein rapidly rose through the ranks. In 1915, he was promoted to the rank of Captain and remained as staff officer until the 1918 armistice. Erich von Manstein then took part in the process of creating the Reichswehr and by 1927 had risen to the rank of Major. In 1932 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and received the command of Jager Battalion.
By 1936 Manstein had progressed to the rank of Major-General and became deputy Chief of Staff to General Bock. In 1938, he took part in the German take-over of the
Sudetenland as the Chief of Staff to General von Leeb. Achieving the rank of Lieutenant-General in 1939, Manstein served as Chief of Staff to General von Rundstedt, who commanded Army Group South during the Polish campaign. In preparations for the Invasion of France, he was Chief of Staff of Army Group A.
Manstein had in the meantime devised a daring plan to invade France by means of a concentrated armoured thrust through the Ardennes Forest. Though this plan was rejected by the German High Command, Manstein managed to bring it to the personal attention of Adolf Hitler on 7th February 1940, who enthusiastically endorsed it.
His plan of attack on France was based on his experiences in Poland in September 1939, where he mastered the technique of Blitzkrieg. Completely ignoring the originally intended Schlieffen Plan dating back to 1914, he devised Operation Sichelschnitt (cut of the scythe). The main idea of his plan was to attack using a concentrated Panzer force through the Ardennes to seize the bridges over the River Meuse before striking towards the Channel. This was intended to outflank the Maginot Line and cut off Allied armies in the north.
In 1940, Sichelschnitt succeeded beyond all expectations. The scythe had taken its harvest. France was beaten and Germany rejoiced. Manstein's plan had eliminated the French and British armies in continental Europe and achieved what Imperial Germany had failed to do twenty-five years before. Erich von Manstein was promoted to the rank of General and awarded the Knight's Cross.
However, quite perceptively, Manstein now posed the question. What next? It was now obvious to him that Hitler had no long-range plans, and could neither conclude peace nor invade Britain. The question of crossing twenty miles of sea had not arisen. When it did arise in June 1940 there was no answer. Herein lay the major flaw, not in what Sichelschnitt had done, but in what Hitler as supreme commander had failed to do. Especially when combined with the fatal mistake of halting the panzers outside Dunkirk; thus allowing the British to evacuate their troops back across the Channel.
What was Sichelschnitt? – Later to be referred to as the 'Manstein Plan'.
Von Manstein's plan of the 1940 German offensive required a thrust through the Ardennes, the line of least expectation. It achieved the decisive break through on the Western Front, and led to the fall of France. At this time Manstein’s tenacious arguments to change the modified First World War Schlieffen plan had become irritating to his superiors.
Consequently he was pushed out of the way to command a reserve corps of infantry. However, when the original German attack plans fell into Allied hands, Hitler flew into a rage and demanded a revision. Manstein again forwarded his proposals. On learning of Manstein's plan for the offensive, Hitler immediately grasped the idea. The new plan was adopted and succeeded spectacularly to trap the Allies on the Channel coast.
But, the next step had not been thought through. This lack of foresight was the first evidence of the manner in which Hitler would conduct his war. Decisions would be taken on the spur of the moment, with little proper planning or consideration for the implications.
When the problem of Britain became apparent in June 1940 it was already too late. The German Navy was ill prepared. Göring had insufficient aircraft of the type required. The Luftwaffe had been created primarily as an Army support-arm, not as a strategic bombing force. Even had the Luftwaffe secured the sky above the English Channel the Navy could only muster sufficient forces to protect a narrow corridor between the two coasts. Neither were there enough craft, certainly none designed specifically for this purpose. An invasion in the summer of 1940 was, therefore, never a practical possibility.
So what was to be done about Britain? Before the war Hitler assumed that Britain would remain neutral and he made virtually no preparations for war against her. His offer of peace produced only a growl of defiance. Clearly a tiger had been taken by the tail. Hitler saw the Channel as Britain's salvation, not his own failure to plan for a protracted war. Hitler, therefore, decided that if Blitzkrieg was inapplicable to Britain, then it had to be applicable elsewhere on the European continent.
Victory in France had been so swift that Hitler was now convinced he was infallible. He did not take into consideration that France had been an ideal environment for panzer warfare. The distances were short, the roads and weather good and casualties low. Everything had gone according to plan. But not many countries had the road network or the political vulnerability that existed in France in 1940. Nevertheless Hitler decided that the Soviets were for political and economic reasons his next target.
In February of 1941, Erich von Manstein received the command of newly formed 56th Panzer Corps, which in preparation for Barbarossa was assigned to Army Group North. From June 22nd to 26th, von Manstein advanced over 320km, while capturing bridges across Duna River and almost capturing the city of Leningrad. On 13th September, 1941, von Manstein received the command of 11th Army (part of Rundstedt's Army Group South) in Southern Russia. He then successfully drove southwards into the Crimea, while taking over four hundred thousand Russian prisoners and by November 16th, secured the entire Crimea with the exception of Sevastopol. During the winter, Manstein withstood the Soviet counteroffensive and in July 1942, he captured the city of Sevastopol, and on the same day received promotion to the rank of Field Marshal. In late July, he was ordered northwards to join the Army Group North and in August 1942, Manstein was once again in charge of forces attacking Leningrad. In November, he received command of the newly formed Army Group Don, which included Paulus's 6th Army. Hitler had become obsessed with the symbolism of capturing Stalingrad named after his arch foe, regardless of its strategic value.
When the magnitude of the disaster became obvious, Manstein was sent to conduct the efforts to relieve Paulus's Sixth Army, trapped that winter at Stalingrad. The effort to relieve Stalingrad failed because Hitler refused to agree with Manstein’s insistence that Paulus should break out westward and meet the relieving forces. The relief column actually got to within thirty miles, but Paulus did not break out to meet it, unless he received direct orders from Hitler. Approval could not be obtained, mainly due to Göring’s assurance to Hitler that his Luftwaffe would supply Stalingrad. Manstein, a brilliant strategist, now perceived the obvious. He realised that the chances of bringing out 6th army intact from Stalingrad was hopeless. He was forced to abandon the rescue mission when a Russian counter stroke threatened him with encirclement. In fortress Stalingrad the conditions of the stricken army rapidly deteriorated. The exhausted troops were reduced to scavenging and eating horseflesh. Paulus bitterly complained that the Luftwaffe had left him in the lurch.
Temperatures had plunged to -30 degrees C, and due to Göring's incompetence, hardly any winter clothing had arrived. The men were suffering from frostbite, dysentery and typhus with little hope of survival. The airlift was a chronic failure. Manstein informed Hitler that due to the Stalingrad disaster the position in the Caucasus had become untenable. The German forces had to be withdrawn immediately from this position. The Wehrmacht's situation was critical. Hitler eventually relented, and gave the necessary order to withdraw from the Caucasus. Manstein, by skilful military manoeuvring, managed to evacuate the endangered German armies which Hitler had recklessly and fatally thrust south into the Caucasus. Total disintegration on the eastern front was thus avoided. Manstein, could not save the trapped 6th army, but he did rescue the armies in the Caucasus from a similar fate.
He was now experiencing how Hitler fulfilled the responsibilities of supreme military commander combined with Head of State. Previously, during the campaign in Poland Manstein had been unaware of any interference by Hitler in the military leadership. Hitler had listened sympathetically to military interpretations of the situation and made no attempt to intervene. He undoubtedly had an eye for operational openings, as had been shown by the way he opted for Sichelschnitt. In addition, Hitler possessed an astoundingly retentive memory and an imagination that made him quick to grasp all technical matters and problems of armaments.
He was amazingly familiar with the effect of the very latest enemy weapons and could reel off whole columns of figures on both German and the enemy's war production. Indeed, this was his favourite way of side-tracking any topic that was not to his liking. He prided himself with the production figures of the German armaments industry, which he had boosted to an amazing extent; preferring to overlook the fact that the enemy's armaments figures were immensely higher. His belief in his own superiority in this respect ultimately had disastrous consequences. His interference prevented the smooth and timely development of the Luftwaffe, and he hampered the development of rocket propulsion.
Hitler lacked military ability based on experience; something for which his 'intuition' was no substitute. He failed to understand that the objectives of an operation must be in direct proportion to the time and forces needed to carry it out. He did not realise that any long-range offensive operation calls for a steady build-up of reserves over and above those committed in the original assault. All this was brought out with striking clarity in the planning and execution of the 1942 summer offensive in Russia. What he lacked was experience in strategy and grand tactics. His active mind seized on almost any aim that caught his fancy, causing him to fritter away Germany's strength by taking on several objectives simultaneously. The rule that one can never be too strong at the crucial spot, to achieve a decisive aim, was something he never really grasped.
As a result, in the offensives of 1942, and 1943 he could not bring himself to stake everything on success. Neither was he able or willing to see what action would be necessary to compensate for any unfavourable events that may occur. In mid-February I943 Kharkov fell to the Red Army. The German southern wing hung limp and well-nigh shattered, but on I8th February 1943, Manstein received command of Army Group South (made up of Army Group Don and Army Group A) and recaptured the city of Kharkov on 15th March. Launching the hastily reformed Fourth Panzer Army on a limited but devastating 'backhand stroke' Manstein recaptured Kharkov and rolled back the Russians in confusion. That counterstroke was the most brilliant operational performance of Manstein's career, and one of the most masterly in military history.
Towards the end of March I943 a lull which was to prove of unusual and unaccustomed duration settled over the Soviet-German battle front. Both sides were sorely in need of respite after the ferocious winter fighting. The entire southern wing of the German army in the East, increasingly marooned in the mud brought on by the spring thaw, had barely escaped destruction. Also, the Soviets occupied a salient extending to the west of Kursk.
The front assumed a new configuration: Kharkov was in German hands, but the substantial Soviet 'Kursk salient' obtruded westwards into the German lines and jutted into the flanks of two German army groups, South and Centre. Faced with this unstable equilibrium, both sides fixed their gaze on that singular bulge formed by the Kursk salient, which offered tempting opportunities to the Soviet and German commands alike.
Even in the wake of the German defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler was determined to win back in the coming summer what had been lost during the grim winter. A resolve full of fateful implications. Manstein had already submitted his own appreciation of the situation on the Eastern Front, which pointed to the conspicuous bulge in the German front, which, in Manstein's own words, “was just begging to be sliced off”. Moreover, any major Soviet breakthrough here might again imperil the German southern wing, as well as bringing the Soviet armies to the Ukraine. It was practical to assume that the Soviet command would mount a major effort in the southern theatre, as indeed they did, and for the same reason the anticipated Soviet attack should be met by a deliberate German withdrawal, enticing the enemy to the lower Dnieper and then confounding him utterly by smashing into his flank with powerful armoured forces assembled for this purpose in the area west of Kharkov.
Though reconciled momentarily to going over to the defensive, Hitler nonetheless made it clear and expressed the view unequivocally on 13th March 1943, that a limited offensive in the East provided the most effective defence: the attack should be carried out immediately the ground dried out and before any assault on Europe could develop from the Anglo-Americans. Manstein's own victory at Kharkov contributed powerfully to his belief in an offensive. The Kursk salient, the semi-circular bulge jutting westwards for some seventy-five miles into the German lines and with a base of not less than 100 miles from north to south, suggested itself as the main target. The Red Army's men and machines would be pounded in an attack which would emasculate Soviet striking power. Slicing off the Kursk salient by mounting an enveloping attack from the north and the south would immolate that vast bulk of Soviet manpower and armament which had poured into the area west of Kursk, thus not only deeply wounding the Red Army but also restoring the German position in a rapid and spectacular victory. The outlines of "Operation Zitadel" thus loomed up in March, though in this form it was the least preferable of the solutions advanced by Manstein, but one favoured by Hitler; a 'forehand stroke' whose success depended crucially upon a certain speed of execution: the longer the German forces waited on the defensive, the greater was the possibility of the Red Army expanding their salient and rupturing the German front in its entirety.
It was mid-April 1943, before the plan took any firm shape. Early in the month Colonel-General Zeitzler, chief of staff of O.K.H., (the Army High Command), convened a conference at Rastenburg to discuss the coming offensive operations. Here Manstein's subtle 'backhand stroke', plan was formally rejected: it was to be rather an all-out set piece assault on the Kursk salient. The memorandum submitted to Hitler on 11th April by Zeitler proposed that Colonel-General Model's Ninth Army (Army Group Centre) would attack the salient from the north, out of the Orel salient held by German troops, while to the south Colonel-General Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army would strike northwards from the Kharkov salient to join up with Model moving from the northern face.
Time was of the essence and yet vacillation hung heavy in the air. On 15th April 1943, Hitler stated that “Kursk must be a victory to shine out like a signal beacon to the world”, insisting on the need for surprise. The assault armies would be equipped with the new Tiger and Panther tanks, in which Hitler placed so much faith, having already averred that one battalion of Tigers was worth a whole panzer division. The Tiger tank produced by Henschel was already in service in small numbers and the Panther exemplified the German answer to the formidable Soviet medium tank, the T-34. Meanwhile, out of a belated recognition of the plight of the panzer troops Hitler had recalled Colonel-General Guderian to service as Inspector-General of Armoured Forces: he had to grapple with the consequences of the mayhem inflicted on the once invincible panzer divisions, reduced in January 1943 to a mere 495 tanks to do battle across the length and breadth of the Eastern Front. Needless to say, Guderian became almost from the outset a vehement opponent of the attack on the Kursk salient, a stance in which he was joined before very long by Manstein. Both feared for this sacrifice in tanks.
The signs of Hitler's hesitation were already apparent, while the German High Command fell to feuding within itself. The dilemma was becoming cruelly plain: the proposed attack promised great risk and dangerous sacrifice, at least in the minds of Guderian and Manstein, yet not to attack could only expose the Germans to the threat of being assaulted by the massed and replenished ranks of the Red Army. Hitler refused to believe that Army Group South faced anything approaching mortal danger, Stalin for his part had rammed his armies forward in the belief that a German collapse was imminent, only to have Manstein's 'backhand stroke' smash into depleted Soviet divisions in his drive to recapture Kharkov. As they struggled to control the situation the iron hand of Marshal Zhukov fell on this front, as Stalin hurriedly recalled him from the north-western theatre. Zhukov moved up all available reserves, including a tank army.
The vital question at this juncture was how the Red Army should respond to the growing threat: mount a spoiling attack, or fight defensively and then strike back in full force? There is much to suggest that Stalin wanted to pre-empt any German offensive and that he was only with difficulty dissuaded from this predilection. Zhukov, however, had solidly based views on this subject. Early in April his reserves were reinforced; they mustered 1 200 tanks, a figure which was to triple within two months and thus justify Manstein's warning to Hitler over the dangers of undue delays. Zhukov made his own inspection of the front area, and on 8th April 1943, after consultation with the General Staff and front line commanders, submitted a major strategic appreciation to Stalin. He predicted a German offensive on a much narrower front than in previous campaigns: “The Germans will assemble maximum forces including up to 13-15 tank divisions supported by large numbers of aircraft. They will attack in an attempt to outflank Kursk from the north-east and south-east”. Zhukov concluded his detailed appreciation with the stipulation that “an offensive on the part of our troops in the near future aimed at forestalling the enemy I consider to be pointless”.
The Red Army continued to mass in the salient, digging in on a gigantic scale and embarking on massive fortification work. Each front built three defensive lines, with the Steppe Front forces building two additional rear lines, providing in all eight major defence lines echeloned to a depth of some 100 miles. Artillery and armour rolled into position, while Red Army engineers laid 40 000 mines.
The ominous lull continued, though the air war rapidly intensified. On 4th May Hitler convened yet another conference to discuss Zitadel: Manstein demurred cautiously, Guderian came out flatly against the folly of an offensive, and Model expressed some serious reservations, while Kluge favoured an attack but no further delay with it. Yet delay there was once more.
On the ground the Russians dug in and the Germans proceeded with their meticulous preparation. Throughout June the forces on both sides swelled prodigiously, bringing together more than two million men, 30 000 guns, over 6 000 tanks and assault guns and a little over 5 000 aircraft. Whatever misgivings the German command felt were well concealed from the men, while the Soviet command persisted with its intensive training at a well tried pace. The final array for Zitadel was by any count immense, encouraging the attacker and giving the defender pause for thought: on a front of some thirty miles. Model's Ninth Army, comprising the northern arm of the German pincer, deployed six panzer divisions, two panzer-grenadier divisions and twelve infantry divisions, while to the south Manstein mustered an even more powerful force with twenty-two divisions, with three panzer and three infantry divisions committed to a diversionary attack. There was every reason for Guderian to shudder at the extravagant commitment of precious armour, and even Hitler's faith in the new tanks could not be offset by the fact that the new models were relatively few in number, Manstein had 94 Tigers and 200 Panthers, and plagued with technical troubles which showed all too quickly on the battlefield.
Behind the minefields and the breastworks even greater masses of Soviet infantry, armour and artillery had been deployed. Central Front disposed of five rifle armies, one tank army and one air army. In all some 5 000 guns and 1 120 tanks lying across the main line of Model's assault. The Southern Front also deployed five rifle armies supported by the First Tank Army and the Second Air Army, amounting to almost 6 000 guns and 1 500 tanks. All fronts also had powerful reserves of their own, amounting to several corps, but the heaviest punch was packed by the Soviet artillery; no fewer than ninety-two artillery regiments moved into the salient, bringing the total artillery strength to just under 20 000 guns plus 900 and more 'Katyusha' rocket-launchers.
The scene was now set completely for this massive clash. It remained only to signal the final, irrevocable date (and time) for the German attack. After a final review of the attack plans between 1st and 2nd July, Hitler revealed his great secret: Zitadel would open on 5th July 1943. Stavka informed Soviet front commanders that a German attack was imminent and could be expected between 3rd and 6th July, a tribute to Stalin's intelligence apparatus, 'Lucy', while local confirmation came through a Jugoslav deserter from the Wehrmacht who intimated that the German offensive would open at 03 00 hours on 5th July. The anguish for both side of weeks of waiting was almost over and during the afternoon of 4th July the strained and sinister lull finally ended. Manstein's southern assault force moved off, with his Panzer Corps striking at the Soviets at 10 00 hours. Soviet artillery opened fire, disrupting the German assembly on the northern face. German artillery returned its own barrage. Both German army groups, Centre and South, were now committed to their main assaults, and the Soviet command was left in no further doubt.
On Monday morning, 5th July, General Model, attacking the northern face of the salient, launched his first main assault supported by formidable infantry and tank strength. After fighting off several mass attacks, the Soviets fell back to the second defensive line some five miles to the south. The power of the German blow also bludgeoned them into a limited withdrawal of three miles. German assault troops also broke into the Soviet positions in a thrust aimed at the salient, but they were finally checked. By nightfall large numbers of German tanks were marooned within the first line of Soviet defences, though assault infantry forced its way in hand-tohand fighting through most of this defensive system, clearing mines and closing on the stranded armour. The Soviet front commander had already ordered up his reserves to bolster his left flank. The Soviet tanks reached their concentration area in time, but the brief hours of darkness allowed no chance to secure passages through the minefields or to reconnoitre, and what was meant to be an effective counter-blow ended only as desperate support for the second line of defences. Model attacked at dawn on 6th July, but another day of murderous assault brought him only a few miles southwards, all at staggering cost: twenty five thousand men and some 200 armoured vehicles.
On 6th July, the Soviets were ordered to dig in and fight German heavy tanks only from the hull-down position: charging Tiger tanks head-on had proved too costly. The Soviet armour had been flung back behind the infantry lines, and only guns firing over open sights had saved the day. A counter-attack by the Soviets failed to restore the situation, but it did block the German advance and thus actually decided the fate of the German northern offensive, for the Soviet command gained time to concentrate on other threatened sectors
At dawn on 7th July, waves of German tanks, crashing through the Soviet minefields, opened a series of massed attacks, with German dive-bombers seeking out the Soviet artillery. Model committed a mass of infantry and armour supported by motorized infantry, and this was hurled against the defenders. On 8th July, a wave of fire and steel which burned and blasted away the Soviet defenders, forced them to withdraw to the top of the ridge. Battered mercilessly, they held on with only a handful of guns, and dwindling ammunition. The timely arrival of Soviet artillery and infantry reinforcement finally secured the ridge.
Neither to east nor west along this 25-mile front was there any significant German breakthrough: the maximum penetration reached only ten miles, all for the grim tally of fifty thousand German dead, 400 tanks and self-propelled guns lying shattered and 500 aircraft destroyed. But, even more ominously, Model had now to look to his rear, for there were threatening signs from the Soviets. On 11th July Model's assault on the northern face ceased, only a matter of hours before five Soviet armies rolled over the German defences east of Orel, in a massive counter-offensive stroke which opened on 12th July. On that same day the Soviets recovered their original positions and sealed the northern face of the salient
The southern face, however, saw no such speedy resolution of the struggle: on the contrary, here the 12th July brought a hideous climax all its own in the shape of the mightiest tank battle in the history of modern war, following a week of ferocious fighting which introduced German armies deeper into the Soviet defences than in the north. The reasons for this were many and various, though prominent among them were Manstein's own formidable skill in the field, and his proven ability as an armoured commander, and the effectiveness of German tactics. Manstein's attack opened in all its intensity on the southern face when his panzers attacked. Though a sudden summer deluge brought fresh floods and delayed the German armour, the Luftwaffe, having beaten off a Soviet pre-emptive strike on German airfields, used its temporary air superiority to good effect, striking hard at the massed Soviet artillery.
The German shock groups moved on relentlessly, and unlike Model, used the available armour in massive wedges rather than committing it piecemeal. These fearsome German panzer divisions struck out in the south virtually shoulder-to-shoulder, steadily crunching into the Soviet defences. The panzers made good progress on 7-8th July, with the Gross-Deutschland Division forcing Soviet armour back to the last defensive line. At midday on 8th July the Soviet command came to realise that a highly dangerous situation was building up. The S.S. Panzer Corps was now moving in its easterly drive for a major breakthrough and full freedom of movement.
On the morning of 12th July, tanks met head-on in a furious high-speed charge; the T-34"s rolling across the sloping ground and in a nightmarish mechanized re-enactment of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, passing through the entire German first echelon and throwing the battle from the outset into milling confusion. Though outgunned by the awesome Tigers, the Soviet T-34"s closed the range and used their 76-mm guns to devastating effect: tanks, literally locked together, blew up in mutual death or were separately blown apart, ripping entire tank turrets off and flinging them yards away from the mangled wrecks. Overhead Soviet and German aircraft battled among themselves for local superiority or tried to support the ground troops, though the swirling smoke from burning tanks made distinction between friend and foe difficult. Gradually, however, the Soviet air force gained the upper hand.
By nightfall more than 300 German tanks (70 of them Tigers), 88 guns and 300 wrecked vehicles littered the steppe, while more than half the Soviet tank strength lay shattered on the same ground. Though the Eastern Front had seen some appalling fighting, German troops insisted that there had been nothing like this. In the blood-bath of Kursk, the arrogant, merciless S.S. troops, whose very emblem was so often their automatic death warrant once in Soviet hands, had taken a Valkyrie ride to death and destruction. The Tiger crews splayed out beside their tanks or interred in these steel tombs; no longer men but merely remnants of bodies amidst a ghastly litter of limbs, frying pans, shell cases, playing cards and stale bread. For three more days (13-15th July) German troops stabbed at Soviet defences, with S.S. units trying to get round the Soviet strongpoints. Even if they could get round, Soviet tanks beat off attacks.
Zitadel was, nonetheless, dying on its feet, if not actually dead. On 13th July Hitler had summoned Army Group Centre and South commanders (Kluge and Manstein) to a conference at his East Prussian H.Q., the Wolfsschanze: the mauling of the German armour was bad enough, but other dire events had already imperilled the German offensive in the Kursk salient. On 10th July, 1943 an Anglo-American force had landed in Sicily, thus forcing upon Germany not merely the prospect but the reality of a two front war in Europe, while two days later, on 12th July, the Soviet counter-offensive aimed at Orel had begun and put substantial forces of Army Group Centre at grave risk. Hitler proposed at once to take panzer divisions from the Kursk front for use in Italy and the Balkans; Zitadel had to make way for this prior commitment to Germany's entire southern flank which could not be put in jeopardy. Kluge, less impressed with the turn of events in Italy, pointed in the first instance to the growing danger to Model,