Alanbrooke. The British Commander most neglected by History?

Credit where credit is due.

Army commanders get the credit due for getting the troops to Dunkirk.

Matelots get the credit due for evacuating them from Dunkirk.

One cannot exist without the other.

But ponder the thought, if the matelots managed to evacuate just the 45,000 the Admiralty thought possible, how would history have recorded the event? Do the matelots get blamed for not lifting more? Does the army get blamed for getting backed up to the coast? Or do the French just get blamed for being French? Do we view Gort's decisions in a different light? Brooke's? Etc etc.

 

The BEF commanders could do no more than get their troops back to the coast and they did it well, generally speaking with well-practised procedures for disengaging and withdrawing. The blame would surely have been applied to the French for the breakthrough at Sedan which started the whole sorry episode.

 

Had the Tars evacuated 45,000 Tommies and then stopped because they'd met their quota, the BEF might have had something to say. If the 45,000th one was being loaded as the panzers nosed down the prom then no more could have been expected.

Blame isn't really the issue; the best was made of a bad job. All the services were lucky, but a lot of that luck was of their own making.

Has anyone ever seriously argued that the withdrawal and evacuation would have gone better if different decisions had been made?

 

Good morning Rich and idler,

I am conscious of the recent moderator requests to keep on topic so will try to frame this in such a way as to remain relevant to Brooke without being directly about him.

As idler hints, it's not so much about blame, but ensuring we have the best understanding of our history.

The perceived wisdom at the time was that the main battle would fall in Belgium hence why the Anglo-French plan was to deploy their most mobile and most capable forces into Belgium. Whilst it is true that the breakthrough fell upon the French 2nd and 9th Armies, the blame for that lies squarely on the shoulders of the Germans for having the temerity not to attack where the Anglo-French plan required them to.

Did Gort and the commanders of the the three corps and nine divisions of the BEF who had moved into Belgium effect a succesful withdrawal to the coast? Yes. And if we are to understand their qualities as commanders within the narrow boundaries of their ability to effect a successful withdrawal of those nine divisions, then they all score fairly highly because, with the benefit of hindsight, we know they survived fairly intact to fight another day.

Problem is, the BEF was more than just those nine divisions in Belgium.

Moreover, if the perceived wisdom at the time was that the matelots were expecting to be able to get just 45,000 off the coast, does marching 225,000 to the coast really make sense?

The point I'm driving at is we have a generally positive view of what the army commanders achieved in Belgium because we know the matelots got them away. Would we have such a positive view if they marched the majority to the coast and then captivity? Same decisions, same succesful withdarawal, but a different evacuation outcome which was completely out of their control.

That's a bit of a strawman response.

Why would anyone argue such having got over 300,000 out when perceived wisdom at the time was a maximum of 45,000 was doable?

The Germans had worked their way into a position to threaten the entire BEF. Whilst the exact nature of the threat was a bit of a blur, the fundamental problem was known on the 15th: the German breakthrough was threatening to roll over HQ BEF, the airfields of the Air Component and severe their LoC. Maintaining a cohesive and reasonably compact nine divisions in Belgium was 'good' for those nine divisions and made a succcesful withdrawal to the coast doable. But was it 'good' for the BEF as a whole? Gort's responsibility was for the entire BEF, not just the nine divisions in Belgium.

I'm not smart enough to answer my own question.

I am fairly confident that, and using our collective knowledge of 80 years of hindsight, there probably wasn't a much better option because the battlefield was being controlled by the Germans. British commanders were not really making truely independent decisions; they were confoming to what the Germans were forcing upon them.

But at the time, British commanders would have thought that their fate was still in their own hands, and on that basis, I am not sure that we haven't come away with a somewhat rose tinted understanding because the matelots exceeded expectation so magnificently.

 

Had the BEF fallen back on the coast in relatively good order as they did, I'd like to think a dispassionate analysis of that campaign would have recognised its abilities and achievements even if the RN had said "sod it", stayed in port and left them to go into the bag.

The withdrawal to the coast was not an administrative move that guaranteed success as long as no-one made a major cock-up, it was an unlikely outcome that was built on hundreds of smaller unlikely outcomes that each had to be won. I don't think it's rose-tinting it to appreciate the BEF's cool-headedness in adversity.

Regarding Gort: I think the LoC was a formation in its own right, so I'm not sure he would have been responsible for that,even before the tail was severed from the teeth.

 

Chiming In [*Sound FX*]

I don't think that Brooke has been neglected by history. His diaries have been edited and published not once but twice. There is a statue of him in Whitehall. Every serious historian and serious student of Britain's part in WWII knows how important he was. It is true that he has little place in the popular image of the war (everybody except Monty is nowhere in that) but the popular image and history are two different things.

Brooke's achievements as CIGS were enormous and are generally acknowledged. He was the embodiment of professionalism and fiercely dedicated to the improvement of the British Army. He was ruthless in his pursuit of this end and as his diaries show he cut away dead wood and dead practices with no remorse or regard for personal considerations whatsoever. In many ways, Brooke is the true father of the modern professionally minded British Army. Brooke managed Churchill superbly, restraining most of the man's wilder flights of fancy and channeling his energies towards realistic goals. In this, Brooke succeeded where Ironside and Dill had failed, and Churchill acknowledged his debt to Brooke by keeping him in office despite their frequent disagreements. Where strategy was concerned, Brooke was right to emphasize the Mediterranean as the primary Allied theater for 1942-43. At that time the western Allies did not yet have the strength, the technique, or the air dominance to challenge the Germans directly in France, but by campaigning in the Med in 42-43 they could and did divert significant German resources and inflict serious losses on the Germans, thus aiding the Russians (especially in the air) and laying the groundwork for the invasion of France in 1944.

Brooke was not infallible and in the command and strategic controversies of 1944-45 he showed it, but I pass over that because by then he had already rendered his greatest services to the Allied cause. As far as 1940 is concerned everything I have read indicates that Brooke did a superb job, first as commander of II Corps and then as GOC BEF. In the first role he moved troops at top speed to the vital point on the BEF's left flank at a vital moment, thus very possibly saving the BEF from encirclement. As GOC BEF he told the unpalatable truth to the government, stood up against heavy (and highly understandable) political pressure, and by so doing saved the greater part of his command to fight another day. Taking him altogether, Brooke ranks alongside Montgomery and Slim as one of Britain's and the British Army's best. Indeed he may rank above them, because most of Slim's and Monty's victories were based on the organizational and strategic foundations laid by Brooke.

 

The British Army's biggest weakness in 1944/45, to my mind anyway, was the shortage of infantry reinforcements leading to the breaking-up of several divisions and brigades in theatre, this despite the army continuing to increase in size.

As the person at the top of the Army and with daily access to the Prime Minister, surely Alan Brooke must bear a large degree of responsibility for this?

 

General manpower shortage in the UK was a fact, not something caused by Brooke, but by the organisation of society and the allocation of workers to the various war industries.

I have always wondered how many additional soldiers could have been made available had, for example, the then widespread, if not the only, technique of riveting hulls of ships, landing craft and even tanks, been timely replaced by the much less costly (in terms of man hours) one of welding. I think I read somewhere that Unions resisted the change because it would threaten the job of thousands of riveters, but can't find the reference at the moment.

 

I hope this isn't going off topic but as CIGS did Brooke have any control over who had the position of ACIGS or DICGS?

 

Hello idler,

Indeed, to get a 'true' understanding, an analysis of the performance of the British commanders needs to be based soley on the decisions they made and options they chose and the consequences thus ensuing. That is precisely the point I am making.

In a perfect world, whether every single Tommy got back to Blighty with all his equipment or whether everything and everyone was lost at the coast should be irrelevant. Army commanders should be studied (and scored) on their ability to put up a fight and/or pull out of a fight. Their role, their responsibility, ended at the coast.

Commend them for effecting the withdrawal to the coast, avoid over-egging with a passionate claim regarding the subsequent evacuation.

LoC came under Gort's GHQ. He was responsible for them no less than he was the 9 fighting divisions in Belgium. It was exactly the same when Brooke was sent back to France as C-in-C BEF in June.

 

As CIGS, Brooke was on the Army appointments and promotion board. He didn't have exclusive control, but certainly one of louder voices in the selection.

 

It is said that in 1943 that the army was in fourth place in terms of manpower allocation, behind the Navy, the Air Force and the Ministry of Aircraft Production.

Other than that though we can query whether enough of the armys manpower was directed into the infantry rather than going to the other branches. I don't think there was.

 

Alan Brooke gets a very brief mention in this (below) at around the 48min mark, in reference to "Operation Unthinkable"....

BBC iPlayer - World War II: Behind Closed Doors - Episode 5

"Joseph Stalin was a tyrant responsible for the death of millions, yet he was also a vital ally of Britain and America during the Second World War.

How was it possible for Churchill and Roosevelt to deal with one tyrant, Joseph Stalin, in order to help beat another, Adolf Hitler? That's one of the key questions at the heart of this new six part landmark history series.

The series uses dramatic reconstructions - based on extensive fresh research in Russian and Western archives - and extraordinary testimony from witnesses of the time, including former Soviet secret policemen who have not spoken before on camera, in order to tell a 'Behind Closed Doors' history. It's a new way on television of looking at this most vital period, and will change the way you think about the war.

This fifth episode focuses on the dramatic story of the Red Army's fight through Eastern Europe in 1944, as well as the behind the scenes history of the most famous Allied conference of the war at Yalta in the Crimea."

Edit: Operation Unthinkable: 'Russia: Threat To Western Civilization'

(Although the 2009 link there has since ceased to function)

 

When he turned up in Brittany as C-in-C 2nd BEF, he had of course been briefed at the War Office, but was totally unaware and amazed that when the British head of Lines of Communication in Rennes briefed him that there were in excess of 100,000 Lof C troops still under command in the west apparently totally unknown to the War Office. It was his pressure during a difficult phone call to Churchill, who was still pressing for the second front to support the French, that saved the 190,000 or so who were evacuated in Operation Aerial.