Montgomery

Should have guessed you would be on this site, Chris. How's life treating you these days? Am trying to hustle up some sales for 'the book' - getting very bored with the corona restrictions

 

Should have guessed you would be on this site, Chris. How's life treating you these days? Am trying to hustle up some sales for 'the book' - getting very bored with the corona restrictions

 

I'm doing well, James. Certainly very bored with the restrictions too! This is a really fantastic site full of people extremely interested and knowledgeable in the war.

I'd highly recommend introducing yourself over here User Introductions and telling everyone about your interest in the desert and so on.

 

Montgomery was fortunate in several ways.

He rose to Army command at a time when the battles could be won - unlike year earlier in Greece, Crete or Libya. He was fortunate that the Germans shot down Gott. Otherwise he might or might not have been in command of 1st Army.

He had a supportive patron in Brooke who saw a battle winner in Montgomery, and protected him on several occasions from the results of impulsive follies.

He also survived serious wounds in 1914 and then served from 1915-1918 in operations staff roles at Brigade, divisional and corps level. Other WW2 generals had more experience as fighting soldiers - Alexander, Gort, Freyburg, Patton and MacArthur, but only Brooke and Marshall had seen the war from inside a higher formation HQ. His Corps had served under Plumer at Messines Ridge and 3rd Ypres, which demonstrated how well prepared British infantry with good artillery support could seize ground and defeat the inevitable German counter attacks. He had seen all phases of war in adversity and success. Not a bad place to learn how to read a battle.

Montgomery brought several key skills

He focused on morale. We do not like to admit that British soldiers suffered from poor morale and fighting spirit in WW2. But there was a morale crisis in 1942 with soldiers losing confidence in their commanders.

He addressed training deficiencies. Monty was a brilliant trainer of soldiers. By Summer 1942 the 8th Army was said to be "brave but baffled" One cause of bafflement was the extreme decentralisation in the name of all arms co-operation.

He could read a battle and stay one jump ahead of the enemy. This isn't just the Enigma int. He made Rommel react to his moves, never allowing the Germans the chance to regain the initiative. This may have been the product of his WW1 experience.

His methods allowed 8th Army to regain confidence in themselves. This included his spurious claims that everything worked the way he planned.

My father served in the 21st Army Group and would not hear a word said against Monty. "If you new he was in charge you knew it had been planned properly and everything had been done to make it a success."

Stephen Hart's Monty's Colossal Cracks has a lot more about why his methods were right for the British Army.

 

Like this forum a mix of types and thoughts and it works a great deal of the time.We have a few spats but on the whole the success moves forward.Many different personalities.
The same can be said for the Generals and battle planners of WW2 they got it right most of the time but not always.Yes I know lives were lost and I dont say it lightly. Many different personalities.

 

My dad was in N Africa before Monty arrived (W Yorks Regt, 5 Indian Division) - always said the difference Monty made then was unbelievable. And after 20 yrs in the army, in 1949, thoroughly hacked off and disenchanted, he was forced to go to listen to a talk by Monty - and came back a different man according to my mother, full of energy and enthusiasm !

 

I'm broadly in agreement with what Sheldrake wrote.

However, I'm not sure that "fortunate" is the best descriptor. He was, in Brooke's eyes, first choice to take over 8th Army. He had got to that position through his previous efforts. True, cronyism in the british officer corps was endemic, which may have helped a bit, but was also the key reason why Gott jumped ahead of him. Perhaps the only obvious contemporary alternative, Alexander, was made his boss. Perhaps Wilson was overlooked.

Montgomery had an approach to waging war on the battlefront that would not have succeeded before his appointment. I don't see Montgomery coming up with a plan that wins BATTLEAXE or delivers a better result in CRUSADER. I don't see his approach getting a better result in the battle of then withdrawal from Gazala to Alamein either.

Similarly, I imagine a few generals had the nous to succeed at Alamein and then march on to Tunisia and further with the resources then available and broader context.

In simple terms, I rate his overall performance as above average but hardly stellar.

 

What are the groups thoughts on Montgomery's performance in Operation Goodwood?
I like most of what I read about him but it's my understanding that he deliberately lied to Brooke and Eisenhower about the good progress he was making. Is this true? Doesn't seem to be a lot of information available. If it is he should have been relived on the spot, in my opinion.

 

Dave, by "performance" do you solely mean this communication, or the performance of the troops?

About the desert war: I have read (I cannot lie, I'm pretty sure it was in James' book) that Montgomery might have been sent out to the desert sooner if it was not for animosity between him and Auchinleck.

I think that potential success that Monty might have had earlier would have depended a great deal on the performance of his subordinates and whether he could have whipped them into shape. The British Army up until mid 1942 was operating under some seriously deficient ideas about how to fight effectively. I am sure that better outcomes were possible given the men and materiel available, but whether they would have been deployed more effectively is another question.

Monty also replaced a bunch of people, and the army as a whole underwent an improvement process between May and October 1942. (Thinking here of Niall Barr's Pendulum of War here)

 

Hello Chris,

As Sheldrake has rightly identified, Montgomery's approach to winning battles was shaped by his experience in WW1. But it was an approach that was very much suited to large, set-piece engagements against foes they looked at across an extended and well defined front.

That context simply didn't exist in the desert in 1940 or 1941. It started to take shape at the end of CRUSADER with the forming of the Gazala Line.

Going back to BATTLEAXE is a good scenario to try some mental gymnastics.

Would Montgomery have done a better job, and achieved better outcomes, had he been parachuted in to command WDF instead of Beresford-Peirce? I think not.

There were not the resources available for the type of battle Montgomery would have wanted to fight. On paper, there were no obviously better subordinates to replace the division and brigade commanders. And, corporately, the British Army was struggling to find a way of fighting battles in the desert successfully with the resources available.

Remember, British Army doctrine extant in 1941 had been drafted by Wavell the CinC. That doctrine regarding the handling of armoured forces, and overall understanding of how to perform armoured warfare, was extremely weak. And what did exist was being largely ignored by commanders on the ground. Partly that was because the resources were not there and partly because the RAC still hadn't really thought through what they were supposed to be doing. That latter problem was still very much evident in CRUSADER.

I don't see Montgomery being able to turn that around.

The WDF had the resources to obtain a far better outcome than they historically did, but their way of thinking had not progressed far enough to make it happen. Ultimately, the solution they chose was not to change their thinking but survive until they had the resources to win the way they felt comfortable with. Cue Montgomery, Alamein and 'bite and hold'.

 

Perhaps you should consider the points raised in this letter and wonder if


To the Editor:
I would refer to Mr. Lawrence Briskin’s letter in the JMH of July 2002. I
note that Colonel d’Este has declined to reply, probably because a proper
answer would either take a whole book or be a total waste of time. However,
as a British military historian, perhaps I could take Mr. Briskin up on just a
couple of points, General Montgomery and the matter of tea.
The British drink tea. So too do the Americans; today iced or hot, historically
like the British—has Mr. Briskin never heard of the Boston Tea Party?
To really enjoy a cup of British Army tea, Mr. Briskin might like to try
the following. Load up with sixty to eighty pounds of kit, plus a personal
weapon, a couple of grenades, some mortar bombs and two hundred rounds
of rifle ammunition. Then march twenty miles over rough country, preferably
at night. It should be raining, but snow or a tropical downpour will do.
Someone ought to be shooting at him—I could do that—but at least there
should be sporadic shelling. Then, when all this has been going on for far too
long, some hero hands Mr. Briskin a pint of tea, piping hot, sweet and full of
condensed milk. I venture to suggest that Mr. Briskin would find that mixture,
at that time, close to nectar and ambrosia.
I have before me an account from a Guards officer who found a young
American lady dispensing hot coffee to U.S. troops close to the Volterno river
in Italy in 1944. In a previous book I heard of U.S. troops getting coffee and
doughnuts, served by “a real American girl,” close to the front in North West
Europe in 1945.
When I tell that to British veterans their reaction is “Good luck to them”
or “We wouldn’t have minded a bit of that ourselves.” Unlike Mr. Briskin,
they do not see their American comrades enjoying a hot drink as an excuse
for cheap sneers.
And so to General Montgomery. Could someone please explain the reasons
for this on-going hostility among U.S. historians to Monty? Montgomery
only commanded U.S. troops for ninety days in a six-year war—well, three and
a half for the U.S.A.—during the Battle of Normandy and then at one remove,
General Bradley being the First Army commander. And yet we have had
nearly sixty years of continuous denigration of this senior Allied Commander,
almost exclusively from the U.S.A. What exactly is the problem here?
During the Second World War Montgomery commanded Australian,
British, Canadian, French, Greek, Indian, New Zealand, Polish—even Italian
soldiers. For my current work, a history of Eighth Army, I have contacted
soldiers from all these nations. They are united in their praise of this commander
but from the U.S.A. we get nothing but this on-going whine, all too
often based on a careful selection of the facts.
For example, why is it that when Bradley’s First Army took a month to
cover the last five miles to St. Lô this is attributed (correctly) to the bocage
and the enemy but when the British Second Army took as long to cover the
six miles into Caen that is attributed to Monty’s “timidity,” “caution,” and
“slowness”? The presence of seven German panzer divisions in front of Caen
is usually left out of this equation.
It is said that Monty was vain; so he was, but that accusation might be
balanced in the U.S.A. by thinking of those three blushing, retiring, American
violets, Generals Patton, Clark, and MacArthur, men not noted for modesty
though all three had much to be modest about. The implication that
only Monty had a super-ego is at variance with the facts.
It is alleged that Monty tried to hog the credit for the defeat of the Germans
in the Bulge, an allegation based on his speech to the press on 7 January
1945. The evidence here is scanty and partial. The full text of that
speech gives ample praise to the “fighting qualities of the American soldier,”
and to “the captain of our team, General Eisenhower” but this speech was
picked up by the Germans, edited, and rebroadcast to the Allies. This edited,
propaganda version has been used ever since to smear Monty; when it comes
to denigrating Monty—and the British—even Dr. Goebbels comes in useful.
It would be possible to go on but surely the point is made? No one is
obliged to like the British—there are times when I am not too keen on them
myself—and no army is above criticism but the rampaging Anglophobia that
permeates Mr. Briskin’s letter should be seen for what it is. Nor is he alone
in this, as anyone reading U.S. accounts of Allied affairs in the Second World
War soon becomes aware; Anglophobia is rife. I can confidently assert that
Mr. Briskin and his ilk will loathe my current book on the Battle of Normandy
which disputes many popular allegations and examines closely the
actions of all the Allied Armies in Normandy, not just the British. Incidentally,
there already is a complete history of the British Army in the Second
World War, David Fraser’s And We Shall Shock Them, published by Hodder
& Stoughton 1983 and Cassell Paperbacks in 1999.
There is a serious, current point here. Our countries may be about to
enter another war. If Mr. Briskin removes his head from the dark place it currently
occupies and looks around, he may notice that the U.S.A. is not all
that popular in the world at large and the British are the only reliable ally
the Americans have.
Mr. Briskin’s rant, childish and ill-informed though it is, does no service
either to scholarship or the mutual respect that Allies should have for one
another when their fathers and brothers have shared the burden of one hard
war and the current generation might be about to fight another. If all we can
expect afterwards is cheap sneers from the likes of Mr. Briskin, perhaps the
British should stay out of it this time? People on this side of the Pond are
running out of cheeks to turn over this constant carping.
Finally, I have had the pleasure of corresponding with many hundreds
of American veterans over the last thirty years. Not one of them has ever had
a hard word to say about their British comrades; front-line soldiers are too
wise and too decent to indulge in smear tactics and some American historians
have much to learn from their example. And now, having got that off my
chest, I think I will go and have a cup of tea.
Robin Neillands Marlborough, Wiltshire, England

 

No it is not.

Regards

Tom

 

Solely his progress report back to Ike and Allen Brooke. I've never been critical of his performance.

I don't know who Robin Neillands is or was but I've read "US accounts of Allied affairs in the Second World War" for sixty years and Anglophobia is not rife. More praise, admiration and thankfulness.

I thought the account of Montgomery misleading his commanders was in Carl D'este's book on Eisenhower but I just reread all the parts on Goodwood and Caen and it didn't come from that.

 

Chapter Twelve of Decision In Normandy has much on how Monty supposedly misled the public after the war about the nature of his plans for Caen. I'm not 100% on board with this as I've read David Belchem's Victory In Normandy, and I recall that he lays out his former boss's plans pretty convincingly. Belchem was BGS Ops at 21st AG.

All available here:
Decision in Normandy

 

Not so. After the war there was an avalanche of anti-Mongomery books from US authors. I would rate Ralph Ingersoll as one of the worst but it went much deeper. Perhaps the problem is that if you think the insane charges have merit then you don't see them as unreasonable. Robin Neillands is spot on and I saw the same type of ill-informed garbage all over the internet when I started out. For a while I just tried to argue fact but it seems to make no impression on most of the haters. A while back I decided to fight fire with fire and if anyone posts made-up anti-Monty bollocks where I am active then I give them both barrels. If you are a sensitive soul living in an echo chamber of like-minded souls this can be quite a shock to your system.
For instance do you know the charge that Monty tried to claim the credit for winning The Bulge and criticised US Soldiers and Generals in a news conference is a flat out lie?

 

Right. I've read that one. Post war stuff is much less serious, in my opinion.

 

Does anyone have access to the July 2002 issue of Journal Of Military History so we can see the tone of Lawrence Briskin’s letter

 

Never heard or read anything like that.

But if you won't broach any criticism of Montgomery that's okay with me.

 

How about D'Este and Decision In Normandy? It is a complete hatchet job on Montgomery and the Commonwealth Forces in general.
The passing insults in Saving Private Ryan?

 

And there we have the automatic reply to anyone who dares to suggest the criticism of Monty is unwarranted. Can you not see how you make a fool of yourself by making up a claim that I won't broach any criticism of Montgomery.
Care to walk that one back?