Was Monty Right?

[oi_you_nutter]

great thread, lots of lively thought provoking discussion.

the comment by HansBolter that Ike is also at fault is spot on. Ike had the power to veto Monty and concentrate the support elsewhere.

Monty is an easy target, part of it is myth and part hollywood with the Patton - Monty friction acting as a great military soap opera plot.

[MrBoats]

I, as a Native American (born here and descended from generations of Americans), must agree with Hartford688. Martin Blumenson and Carlo D' Este, both distinguished historians, have praised Monty according to his accomplishments. I believe that they both have described the extent to which Patton and Montgomery cooperated throughout the war. Both of the generals had enormous egos, and I would take their in-war comments about each other with a large grain of salt. I think Patton, in particular, suffered from extreme emotional swings and bitterness toward the end of the war.

Monty (again, as with Patton) was probably his own worst enemy. He seems not to have had very much tact at all and his criticisms of the American military created powerful enemies. But his military genius is apparent. He may not have bagged Rommel's forces after Alamein, but he sure as hell kept Rommel from baaging the British forces in the summer of '42. The capture of a quarter million Axis troops in the Spring of '43 would not have been possible without the earlier British victories. I am reminded of the criticisms of General Grant after the 1864 campaign settled down to a siege. Grant MIGHT have destroyed the Army of Northern Virginia sooner, but he did pin Lee down for a year and bring about the end of the war in cooperation with the other Northern armies. Monty might have beaten Rommel sooner, but he did achieve the ultimate goal of evicting the Axis troops from North Africa, in cooperation with the other Allied armies.

As for Monty's plan for Normandy -- I think he fully intended to break out at the east end right away. His contention that events went according to his plan all along was an unnecessary lie. Monty had plenty to be proud of, but also had the determination always to be right.

Americans glorify the common man too much when it comes to warfare. I respect GI Joe as much as anyone, but leaders like Patton knew how to harness the power of the US Army and direct that power against the enemy. We did not win the war by asking Sgt. X what the strategic objectives ought to be. We won because Sgt. X and his squad fought like hell for the objectives assigned to them by their leaders. Ike and Bradley wasted far too many men by bulling forward all along the line, dispersing our power over too broad an area. But they had an army of Andy Rooneys writing glowing praise for public consumption. Rooney's comments about the U.S. winning the war in spite of Patton were ridiculous.

Sorry to vent so much, but I believe that the war could and should have been over much sooner.

[Panzeh]

Monty's only huge mistake at market garden(I am going to ignore 20/20 hindsight) was that he used his weakest and least experienced airborne division to take Arnhem.  It's not that the british paras sucked, but that the US paras had more experience and more men available.  I think the operation would have been successful had the 101st AB and 1st AB been switched.

[Joram]

This is of course going off-topic but I'd disagree with that.  The 1st AB supplemented by the 1st Polish AB Brigade did a heroic job given the short end of the stick they were dealt.  Indeed they made a couple key mistakes in selecting their drop zones but once on the ground, they did superb.  Also keep in mind that the head of the 1st Allied Airborne Army was lead by an American.  
 
For Market-Garden at least, there were failures all across the board so you can't really pin that one just on Monty.

[HansBolter]

I did indeed list only the negative aspects of other commanders relations with Monty.

While I pointed out how Gavin chafed at the bit at being held to Monty's phase lines I neglected to point out that Gavin thought very highly of Monty and was honored to serve under him.

He was particularly impressed with the techinque Monty used to keep his finger on the pulse of operations. Instead of waiting for the reports to come through the chain of command from operational staffs, he positioned his own "observers" (spies if you will) with the various subordinate commands to report directly back to him with timely updates.

Monty wasn't all bad and I apologize that my rant made it seem I believed so. I just get so incensed over how spineless Ike was in not standing up to the pressure from Monty and Churchill. Now don't get me wrong, while I don't think particularly highly of Monty, I practically worship the ground Churchill walked on. Churchill had such amazing geoplolitcal savvy, while Roosevelt was so geoplolitically naive. Roosevelt had his head in the colonial era, more concerned over his impression that all Churchill wanted was the reestablishmment of the British colonial empire, when what Churchill was really trying to do was keep the coming Iron Curtain as far to the east as possible.

[MikeBrough]

ORIGINAL: MrBoats

Sorry to vent so much, but I believe that the war could and should have been over much sooner.

Agreed, MrBoats, and that's what Monty was trying to achieve. Market-Garden was his big gamble. He believed that, if successful, it would finish the war before Christmas (very debatable). He also knew that, if the gamble failed, the war wasn't lost.

In all, Allied forces lost fewer than 18,000 men during MG. Admittedly, the majority of these were the cream of the British forces but there was unlikely to be another oportunity to use them before the war ended. Further, Eisenhower had been under considerable pressure from all quarters to use the airborne forces since they were withdrawn after D-Day.

Callous reasoning on Montgomery's part but c'est la guerre.

[Bazooka Bob]

One of Monty's biggest failure is the fact after capturing Antwerp, he failed to order that the seaward approaches be secured to open the harbor up as a major supply point.  This is related to MG.  The approaches were not secured until some time in October leading to major supply issues in November forcing the Allies to stop at the German border leaving them open for the counteroffensive.  Hindsight, I think, proves that the narrow thrust would have been vunerable to counterattack for the long flank. 
 
I strongly recommend reading A Soldier's Story by Omar Bradley.  He talks of his relationships with Patton and Montgomery.  He states that he would have preferred Harold Alexander instead of Montgomery.  Most of the issues with Monty is the fact that he failed to stop most of the PR controversies that popped up around him.
 
Just my comments and opinions.  Enjoy

[sullafelix]

Leaving the Monty ?'s aside. I don't think a narrow thrust was ever even thought of because of politics. There was no " Rush for Berlin " because FDR had sold out middle and eastern europe to the Soviets. Patton's repeated efforts for a single thrust were based on the assumption that we had to grab as much territory as possible before we went to war with Russia. He was not thinking of a political separation of Europe.
 
I've always thought this was so strange on FDR's part because he went out of his way to let the British know that we were not fighting to reconquer their empire in the Pacific, or at least dominant role in the pacific.
 
El Alamein is a very bad example to use on good generalship. Even a mediocre genaral could have won with the preponderance of men, tanks and complete air cover.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: Joram

For Market-Garden at least, there were failures all across the board so you can't really pin that one just on Monty.

Why ?

His planning of Market Garden was pretty pathetic , Monty and his staff worked from conception to implementing the ABN operation with in weeks .Virtually zero training was done leading up to D-day for the Airborne and Transports actually leading the way.

I see hindsight and 20/20 in attempts to sugar coat Montys incompetence in the planning phase . Its only hindsight if Monty was looking at zero or bogus intel not to mention his outright dismissal of the red flags being brought to his attention .
He may have been cautious in many aspects , but in MG his lack of planning skills can only be viewed as reckless.

[Joram]

Well, the buck certainly can stop there for the poor planning but it wasn't Monty doing all the tactical planning it was his staff.  Just as he's culpable for their actions, Eisenhower would be culpable for Monty's.  That's what I'm saying.  It was a failure in leadership at many levels and would be unfair to pin it just on Monty.  With that said, I don't disagree with a lot of criticism of his abilities, but I also don't care for laying all the blame on one guy when there's plenty of blame to spread around.

[gunny]

Look at Monty's contribution to Dieppe. The raid originally planned for the first wave being all infantry. Once they secured the beach a second wave would follow up composed of all the armour and support elements. Monty came along and said " that dieppe plan is farged up" you better land all your forces at once and hope for the best. Well instead of losing just the first wave and having the second wave abort and go home. Which it would have. We ended up having one big wave of everbody assault the beach and get slaughtered. Gee thanks.
 
But lets not forget Monty was not as bad as Bradley, after all, Bradley was sacked and replaced by Monty who did a competent job countering the Battle of the Bulge.

[Charles2222]

I'm sure this will play with hilarity from some of you, and I don't know what to think of it myself. I'm not sure where I heard it, be it a book or documentary, only I can say that while I had never heard this idea before I heard it there, whatever else they were covering seemed the traditional view of the war, so I don't think this was too terribly far-fetched on those grounds alone.

What it is, is that Monty wanted to do the pushing along the coast not because of wanting some glory to be the encircler, but to mop up the coast. The idea was to knock out the vweapon sites. Now here's the controversy: they said that the vweapons had such an effect on Britain (a terror weapon afterall) that if the coasts had survived another 1-3 months Britain would had surrendered! Yeah, that's right, surrendered. I only say 1-3 months because I don't recall the timespan they indicated but it seemed they said 1 month. If true, for all the waste that the traditional WWII view gives to vweapons, it is interesting that if they could have had such an impact, they weren't at all wasteful. Only problem is that still wouldn't help them against the USSR.

Naturally one might suspect this theory was some attempt to make Monty look good, but I can't recall the source seeming pro-British apart from that, and even if it could be proven that Britain surrendering because of longer exposure to vweapons was a farce, it is a very good reason for wanting to attack the coast nonetheless.

[Sarge]

The idea that the Allied command let Monty go ahead with MG as a PR move is simple not true.
The concept of MG was sound , only problem was a policy of appeasement towards Monty took forefront.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: gunny

But lets not forget Monty was not as bad as Bradley, after all, Bradley was sacked and replaced by Monty who did a competent job countering the Battle of the Bulge.

Come on Gunny

Even MacArthur could have pulled that off.


edit: well maybe not MacArthur, sry got carried away [:D]

[MrBoats]

The V-weapon launch sites must have been a big consideration for the Allied planners, especially after the V-2's became operational. It's not far-fetched at all to believe that part of Monty's overall mission was to destroy the sites. After all, a few V-2 strikes against the beach-head ports and the Channel ports might have affected the Allied supply levels considerably. The terror strikes against London were bad enough.

It reminds me: has anyone heard the story of the V-1 rocket that had its rudder jammed and flew in a giant circle, only to land on Hitler's location? Apparently, the rocket -- by some extraordinary fluke -- had just the right amount of fuel to bring it back over Hitler's bunker in France. What were the odds? Of course, Hitler survived -- the man had the luck of the devil. I can't remember where I read the story.

[105mm Howitzer]

Interestingly, the Canadian commanders all thought this was gonna be one sorry operation from the onset. I guess they were proven right.[X(]

ORIGINAL: gunny

Look at Monty's contribution to Dieppe. The raid originally planned for the first wave being all infantry. Once they secured the beach a second wave would follow up composed of all the armour and support elements. Monty came along and said " that dieppe plan is farged up" you better land all your forces at once and hope for the best. Well instead of losing just the first wave and having the second wave abort and go home. Which it would have. We ended up having one big wave of everbody assault the beach and get slaughtered. Gee thanks.

But lets not forget Monty was not as bad as Bradley, after all, Bradley was sacked and replaced by Monty who did a competent job countering the Battle of the Bulge.

[IronDuke_slith]

Monty was the right man in the right place at the right time.

A master planner, he had the things every great General needs: an understanding of what his men could achieve, an understanding of the geo-political environment they fought in, and he understood his enemy.

As for the broad front, there was no other option. Had the Allies immobilised everyone else to give Patton his head on the drive through Lorraine, he would have got across the Rhine and been chopped to pieces. The broad front worked because no one thrust in isolation was going to do the trick. Patton's 3rd Army would have been handed its head on a plate in a narrow thrust across the west wall. There were not enough supplies to keep even one thrust going indefinitely and once his flanks were in the air he would have been there for the taking.

As for Monty, he was cautious because the British Manpower crisis began to bite in 1944 and he couldn't afford a heavy defeat. Partially because the reserves didn't exist to plug gaping holes in his forces, partly because he knew if Britain wanted to have a hand in the post war world, he had to keep the most powerful Commonwealth Army intact. 2nd Army being defeated would have seriously undermined Britains political as well as Military situation. He fought a dangerous foe without suffering that sort of defeat.

Monty also understood two things. Firstly, the Germans were better than anyone else at mobile warfare. Secondly, the Allies held all the best cards and it was a case of when not if. From Alamein onwards he reverted the British Army back to the methods that had made them the most combat effective force of 1918. Bite and hold, storm forward behind a hail of high explosives and secure your objectives. Bring up the arty, start the process all over again. It was different to how his pre-decessors had done it in the desert, but they had generally lost and he generally won.

He was never going to burst out and push armoured columns deep behind enemy lines because as the Russians found on occasion, German forces would slice into the flanks and hand you a defeat that Monty simply couldn't afford. The British Army also commanded from the top down. Free wheeling mobile warfare was not something they were particularly suited or trained for, since it stretched the chain of command and made the sort of control Monty wanted difficult.

However, from Alamein to the Rhine he took the British Army forward, beating more combat efficient forces by using what he had intelligently and making the most of his own advantages and not playing to his enemy's advantages.

You can criticise Monty for not being Guderian but then that completely misunderstands the widely differing contexts the two men fought in. Generals are usually a product of a system of doctrine and training going back 30 years. In that sense, Monty was no different to Bradley. Monty drew up plans he was comfortable with and which he believed his troops could execute. He used every advantage he had and he got the job done.

He clearly had personality traits that did him no favours but then just about all Generals did.

He knew his business.

Regards,
IronDuke

[Zap]

ORIGINAL: jimi3

For what is worth, I just finished reading War as I Knew it by George Patton. It is a compilation from his diaries as well as some very interesting personal comments at the end. He didn't have much use for monty. Great book for wargamers.

George Patton was portrayed in the movie "Patton" as having a bit of a desire for glory to his name. If that was ture, it would seem Patton would want to be the sole General. No teaming with Monty.

[Twotribes]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

Monty was the right man in the right place at the right time.

A master planner, he had the things every great General needs: an understanding of what his men could achieve, an understanding of the geo-political environment they fought in, and he understood his enemy.

As for the broad front, there was no other option. Had the Allies immobilised everyone else to give Patton his head on the drive through Lorraine, he would have got across the Rhine and been chopped to pieces. The broad front worked because no one thrust in isolation was going to do the trick. Patton's 3rd Army would have been handed its head on a plate in a narrow thrust across the west wall. There were not enough supplies to keep even one thrust going indefinitely and once his flanks were in the air he would have been there for the taking.

As for Monty, he was cautious because the British Manpower crisis began to bite in 1944 and he couldn't afford a heavy defeat. Partially because the reserves didn't exist to plug gaping holes in his forces, partly because he knew if Britain wanted to have a hand in the post war world, he had to keep the most powerful Commonwealth Army intact. 2nd Army being defeated would have seriously undermined Britains political as well as Military situation. He fought a dangerous foe without suffering that sort of defeat.

Monty also understood two things. Firstly, the Germans were better than anyone else at mobile warfare. Secondly, the Allies held all the best cards and it was a case of when not if. From Alamein onwards he reverted the British Army back to the methods that had made them the most combat effective force of 1918. Bite and hold, storm forward behind a hail of high explosives and secure your objectives. Bring up the arty, start the process all over again. It was different to how his pre-decessors had done it in the desert, but they had generally lost and he generally won.

He was never going to burst out and push armoured columns deep behind enemy lines because as the Russians found on occasion, German forces would slice into the flanks and hand you a defeat that Monty simply couldn't afford. The British Army also commanded from the top down. Free wheeling mobile warfare was not something they were particularly suited or trained for, since it stretched the chain of command and made the sort of control Monty wanted difficult.

However, from Alamein to the Rhine he took the British Army forward, beating more combat efficient forces by using what he had intelligently and making the most of his own advantages and not playing to his enemy's advantages.

You can criticise Monty for not being Guderian but then that completely misunderstands the widely differing contexts the two men fought in. Generals are usually a product of a system of doctrine and training going back 30 years. In that sense, Monty was no different to Bradley. Monty drew up plans he was comfortable with and which he believed his troops could execute. He used every advantage he had and he got the job done.

He clearly had personality traits that did him no favours but then just about all Generals did.

He knew his business.

Regards,
IronDuke

Remind us all again how this master planner got an entire British crack airborne Division destroyed and caused heavy losses to an entire Corps in Market garden. How his understanding of his mens ability got them decimated by being dropped in a hornets nest of 2 SS Panzer Divisions he refused to believe were there. How his bold plan had the entire intitial land drive dependant on one narrow road over a swampy area into the teeth of the German Defenses.

Remind us how at the battle of the Bulge he said he needed a week to react to the German drive and Patton said and did it in 2 days.

[Sarge]

ORIGINAL: IronDuke

Monty was the right man in the right place at the right time.

A master planner, he had the things every great General needs: an understanding of what his men could achieve, an understanding of the geo-political environment they fought in, and he understood his enemy.

{snip}

A master planner

Are we talking about the same Monty’s Market Garden , if he understood the enemy he would have not put drop zones right in the middle of the SS.

A lot of Allies finest fertilized that ground due to his master planning.