Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein,
KG,
GCB,
DSO,
PC (
17 November 1887 â€"
24 March 1976) was a
British Army officer, often referred to as "Monty". He successfully commanded Allied forces at the
Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in
World War II, and troops under his command were largely responsible for the expulsion of the
Axis forces from North Africa. He was later a prominent commander in Italy and North-West Europe, where he was in command of all Allied ground forces during
Operation Overlord and then until after the
Battle of Normandy.
Montgomery was born in
Kennington,
London in 1887, the fourth child of nine to an
Anglo-Irish Anglican priest, Revd. Henry Montgomery. The Montgomery family came from the
Moville,
County Donegal, near
Londonderry, and maintained their home, New Park, there. Montgomery considered himself Irish and a County Donegal man. In 1889, the family moved with his father when he was made
Bishop of
Tasmania. His father was kind, but ineffectual in the house, and often away on missionary work. His mother was a martinet, who allowed her husband 10 shillings a week from his salary and gave out beatings to her children. Montgomery said that he had an unhappy childhood, often clashing with his mother and becoming the black sheep of the family.
In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Bernard went to
St Paul's School and then the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for setting fire to a fellow cadet during a fight with pokers. He joined the 1st Battalion,
The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1908, first seeing service in
India until 1913.
The
First World War began in August 1914 and he moved to France with his regiment that month. He saw service during the retreat from
Mons during which half the men in his battalion became casualties or prisoners. At
Meteren, near the Belgian border at
Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper and was injured seriously enough for his grave to be dug in preparation for his death. He was awarded the
DSO for gallant leadership.
After recovering in early 1915, he was promoted to a brigade-major training
Kitchener's New Army and returned to the Western Front in early 1916 as an operations staff officer during the battles of
the Somme,
Arras, and
Passchendaele. During this time he came under the command of General Sir
Herbert Plumer, in charge of training for the 9th Corps. Through his training, rehearsal, and integration of the infantry with artillery and engineers, Plumer's troops were able to achieve their objectives with a minimum of casualties.
Montgomery served at the battles of
the Lys and
Chemin-des-Dames before finishing the war as General Staff Officer 1 and a temporary
lieutenant-colonel, in the
47th (2nd London) Division.
After the war, Montgomery served in the
British Army of the Rhine and wrote up his experiences in a series of training pamphlets and manuals. He then attended the army's Staff College at
Camberley, before being appointed as a brigade-major of the 17th infantry brigade at the end of 1920. The brigade was stationed in
County Cork during the
Anglo-Irish War. A cousin of Montgomery's had been assassinated by the
IRA in 1920 (see the
Cairo Gang) and he was a half-Irish protestant. However, though he was effective, he did not employ methods as brutal as those of his contemporary in
Cork,
Arthur Percival. On his arrival he urged units of his brigade that their "behaviour must be beyond reproach" although later he stated that it "never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt" (a reference to the government policy of burning the homes of suspected
republicans and sympathisers). IRA officer
Tom Barry said that he "behaved with great correctness". Montgomery increasingly came to see the conflict as one that could not be won, and withdrawal of British forces as the only feasible solution. In 1923, after the establishment of the
Irish Free State and during the
Irish Civil War, Montgomery wrote to Percival that (in order) "to win a war of that sort you must be ruthless" and 20th century democratic Britain would not do that, and so "the only way therefore was to give them [the Irish] some form of self-government and let them squash the rebellion themselves".
In 1923 Montgomery was posted to the
territorial 49th division, eschewing the usual amounts of drill for tactical training. He returned to the 1st Royal Warwickshires in 1925 as a company commander and
captain, before becoming an instructor at the Camberley Staff College and a major (brevet Lieutenant-Colonel). He met and married a widow,
Elizabeth Carver in 1927 and a son was born in August 1928. He became Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st battalion of
The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1931, and saw service in
Palestine,
Egypt, and India. He was promoted to Colonel and became an instructor at the
Indian Army Staff College in
Quetta, India. Montgomery did, as was usual, maintain links with the Royal Warwickshires, taking up the honorary position of Colonel-of-the-Regiment in 1947. As throughout his career, Montgomery stirred up the resentment of his superiors for his arrogance and dictatorial ways, and also for his disregard of convention when it obstructed military effectiveness. For example, he set up a battalion
brothel, regularly inspected by the medical officer, for the 'horizontal refreshment' of his soldiers rather than forcing them to take chances in unregulated establishments. His father died at Molville in 1932.
He became commanding officer of the 9th Infantry Brigade in 1937, but the year also saw tragedy for him. His marriage had been a very happy and loving one, but his wife was bitten by an insect while on holiday in
Burnham-on-Sea. The bite became infected, and his wife died in his arms from
septicaemia following an amputation. The loss devastated Montgomery, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral.
In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new commander-in-chief, southern command, General
Wavell. He was promoted to major-general and took command of the
8th Division in Palestine. There he quashed an Arab revolt before returning in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command of the
3rd (Iron) infantry division.
Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The 3rd division was deployed to Belgium as part of the
British Expeditionary Force. Montgomery predicted a disaster similar to that in 1914, and so spent the
phony war training his troops for tactical retreat rather than offensive operations. During this time, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his superiors after again taking a very pragmatic attitude towards the sexual health of his soldiers. His training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the
Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd division advanced to the Dyle and then withdrew to
Dunkirk with great professionalism, returning to Britain intact with only nominal casualties. During
Operation Dynamo Montgomery assumed command of the
II Corps On his return Montgomery antagonised the
War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF and was briefly relegated to divisional command and only made
CB. In July 1940 he was promoted to
Lieutenant-General, placed in command of
V Corps and started a long-running feud with the new commander-in-chief, southern command,
Claude Auchinleck. In April 1941 he became commander of the
XII Corps and in December 1941 renamed the South-Eastern Command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces
exercise involving 100,000 troops.
North Africa and Italy
|
Montgomery in North Africa, November 1942. His aide (shown behind him looking through binoculars) was killed in action in 1945. |
In 1942 a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was commander-in-chief. He had stabilised the allied position at Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister,
Winston Churchill replaced him with
Alexander, and was persuaded by
Alan Brooke to appoint Montgomery commander of the
British Eighth Army in the North African campaign after Churchill's own preferred candidate,
William Gott, was killed flying back to
Cairo.
Montgomery's peremptory assumption of command of Eighth Army was deeply resented by Auchinleck and his departing staff, but transformed the Eighth Army. Taking command two days earlier than authorised on
13 August 1942, Montgomery ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, joined the army and air headquarters together in a single operating unit, and ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on the 19 August.
Montgomery also managed to transform the morale of the Eighth Army quickly, though at the expense of denigrating Auchinleck. Montgomery made a concerted effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men. A criticism of the 8th Army up until this point had been that the constituent units tended to fight their own separate battles. Montgomery was determined that the Army should fight its battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan.
German commander
Erwin Rommel attempted to encircle the Eighth Army at the
Battle of Alam Halfa from
31 August 1942.
ULTRA decryption had confirmed Montgomery's initial decision to defend the area, and Rommel was halted with very little gain. After this engagement, Montgomery was criticized for not attacking the retreating German forces; however, in Montgomery's judgement, the 8th Army could not defeat the Germans in mobile, fluid mechanized battles and choosing to engage in such a battle, therefore, would play to German strength.
The reconquest of North Africa was essential for airfields to support
Malta and for
Operation Torch. Ignoring Churchill's demands for quick action Montgomery prepared meticulously for the new offensive. He was determined not to fight until he thought there had been sufficient preparation for a decisive victory, and put into action his beliefs with the gathering of resources, detailed planning, the training of troops, especially in night fighting and in the use of over 800 of the latest American-built
tanks, and visiting every single unit involved in the offensive.
|
Infantry advance during the Battle of El Alamein. In fact, this image was staged by the photographer Len Chetwyn, and shows Australians storming their own cookhouse. |
The
Battle of El Alamein began on
23 October, and ended 12 days later with the first large-scale, decisive allied land victory of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500).
Montgomery was
knighted and promoted to full
general. The Eighth Army's subsequent slow and steady advance as the Germans retreated hundreds of miles towards their bases in
Tunisia used the logistical and firepower advantages of the British Army while avoiding manoeuvre battles. It also gave the Allies an indication that the tide of war had genuinely turned in North Africa. Montgomery kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. On 6 March 1943 Rommel's attack on the over-extended 8th Army at Medenine with the largest concentration of German armour in north Africa was successfully repulsed. At the
Mareth Line, 20-27 March, when Montgomery encountered fiercer frontal opposition than he had anticipated, he switched his major effort into an outflanking inland pincer, backed by low-flying
RAF fighter-bomber support.
This campaign demonstrated the battle-winning ingredients of morale (sickness and absenteeism was virtually eliminated in the Eighth Army), co-operation of all arms including the air forces, first-class logistical back-up and clear-cut orders.
The next major Allied attack was
Operation Husky, the invasion of
Sicily. It was in Sicily that Montgomery's famous tensions with US commanders really began. Montgomery managed to recast plans for the Allied invasion, in general making the plan more cautious. Inter-allied tensions grew as the American commanders
Patton and
Bradley, took umbrage at what they perceived as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. They resented him, while accepting his skills as a general.
Montgomery continued to command Eighth Army during the landings on the mainland of Italy itself. Montgomery abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort, and the strategic muddle and opportunism and was glad to leave the
"dog's breakfast" on
December 23.
Normandy
Montgomery returned to Britain to take command of the
21st Army Group which consisted of all Allied ground forces that would take part in
Operation Overlord, the invasion of
Normandy. Preliminary planning for the invasion had been taking place for two years, most recently by COSSAC staff (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander). Montgomery quickly concluded that the COSSAC plan was too limited, and strongly advocated expanding the plan from a three-division to a five-division assault. As with his takeover of the Eighth Army, Montgomery travelled frequently to his units, raising morale and ensuring training was progressing. On
April 7 and
May 15 he presented his strategy for the invasion at St Paul's School. He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the
Seine, pivoting on an Allied-held
Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the U.S. armies wheeling on the right. During the hard fought two and a half month
Battle of Normandy that followed, Montgomery was not able to follow the original campaign plan, but in a series of improvised offensives the Allied armies under his command inflicted one of the biggest defeats of the war on the German army in the west.
Advance to the Rhine
The increasing preponderance of American troops in the European theatre (from 2 out of 5 divisions at D-day to 72 out of 85 in 1945) made it a political impossibility for the Ground Forces Commander to be British.
General Eisenhower himself took over Ground Forces Command while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery bitterly resented this change, even though it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion.
Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to
Field Marshal by way of compensation.
Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to adopt his strategy of a single thrust to the
Ruhr with
Operation Market Garden in September 1944. It was the most uncharacteristic of Montgomery's battles: the offensive was bold and poorly planned. It ended in failure with the destruction of the
1st Airborne Division at
Arnhem. Montgomery's preoccupation with the push to the Ruhr had also distracted him from the essential task of clearing the
Scheldt during the capture of Antwerp, and so after Arnhem, Montgomery's group were instructed to concentrate on
doing this so that the port of Antwerp could be opened.
When the surprise attack on the Ardennes took place on
December 16 1944, starting the
Battle of the Bulge, the front of the
U.S. 12th Army Group was split, with the bulk of the
U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The Army Group commander, General
Omar Bradley, was located south of the penetration at
Luxembourg and command of the U.S. First Army became problematic. Montgomery was the nearest commander on the ground and on
20 December, Eisenhower (who was in
Versailles) transferred
Courtney Hodges' U.S. First Army and the
U.S. Ninth Army to his 21st Army Group, despite Bradley's vehement objections. Montgomery grasped the situation quickly, visiting all divisional, corps, and army field commanders himself and instituting his 'Phantom' network of liaison officers. He grouped the
British XXX Corps as a strategic reserve and reorganized the U.S. defence of the northern shoulder, ordering the evacuation of
St. Vith. The German commander of the 5th Panzer Army,
Hasso von Manteuffel said
"The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough."
[Patrick Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge - Hitler's Final Gamble (2004)]Eisenhower had then wanted Montgomery to go on the offensive on
January 1 to meet Patton's army that had started advancing from the south on
December 19 and in doing so, trap the Germans. However, Montgomery refused to commit infantry he considered underprepared into a snowstorm and for a strategically unimportant piece of land. He did not launch the attack until 3 January, by which point the German forces had been able to escape. A large part of American military opinion thought that he should not have held back, though it was characteristic of him not to want to throw troops away owing to inadequate preparation. After the battle the U.S. First Army was restored to the 12th Army Group; the U.S. Ninth Army remained under 21st Army Group until it crossed the Rhine.
Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine with operations
Veritable and
Grenade in February 1945. After a meticulously-planned
Rhine crossing on
24 March and the subsequent
encirclement of the German
Army Group B in the
Ruhr, Montgomery's role was initially to guard the flank of the American advance. This was altered, however, to forestall any chance of a
Red Army advance into Denmark, and the 21st Army Group occupied
Hamburg and
Rostock and sealed off the
Danish peninsula.
On
May 4 1945, on
Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in northern Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands.
After the war, Montgomery was created 1st
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946. He was
Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1946 until 1948, but was largely a failure as it required the strategic and political skills he did not possess. He was then supreme commander or chairman of the western union's commanders-in-chief committee. He was an effective inspector-general and mounted good exercises, but out of his depth politically, and was pleased to become Eisenhower's deputy in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (
NATO) forces from 1951 until his retirement in 1958. His mother died in 1949; Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "too busy".
Montgomery was chairman of the governing body of
St John's School,
Leatherhead,
Surrey from 1951 to 1966 and a generous supporter.
Before retirement, Montgomery's outspoken views on some subjects, such as race, were often officially suppressed. After retirement these outspoken views became public and his reputation suffered. His memoirs were broadly judged to be self-serving and arrogant. He criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower (whom he accused, among other things, of prolonging the war by a year through poor leadership - allegations which ended their friendship). He applauded
apartheid and Chinese communism under
Mao Zedong, and argued against the legalisation of
homosexuality in the
United Kingdom, arguing that the
Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery" and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British - thank God." Despite these stated views, in a 2001 book,
The Full Monty, Montgomery's official biographer and long-time friend,
Nigel Hamilton, alleged that the general was a "repressed homosexual" who had "quasi love affairs" with numerous young men and boys, although there was no actual evidence of any kind of sexual intimacy or sexual relationships with these men
[*Article in The Guardian newspaper.].
Montgomery died in 1976 at his home in
Alton,
Hampshire, and was interred in the nearby Holy Cross Churchyard,
Binsted after a
state funeral at
St George's Chapel, Windsor. His portrait (by
Frank O. Salisbury, 1945) hangs in the
National Portrait Gallery [*Portrait of Montgomery NPG L165]Montgomery was a complex person. On the one hand, though far from flawless, he was a great and successful general through hard work, a refusal to conform to dead tradition, and an open, clear and sensitive mind. He was a humane man and was capable of inspiring great loyalty among his staff and his troops. Montgomery believed that in the 20th century it was essential to explain to troops why they were fighting and that orders and plans must be clear. He therefore tended to appeal more to the common soldiers under his command than to many of the officers who had more direct dealings with him. These men defended him with great passion even after the war, as the British historian
Richard Holmes discovered when he was critical of Montgomery.
On the other hand, he was personally a difficult man. Montgomery did not get on with his contemporaries and mostly associated with junior officers. He was insensitive, conceited, and boastful. He was not an easy man to know socially and not loyal to the staff officers serving immediately under him. His dismissive and occasionally insulting attitude to others often soured opinions about his abilities and personality. It can be argued that his failures happened when he allowed his desire for personal glory to taint his planning, causing him to abandon his usual caution.
Often it was Montgomery's statements about battles, as much as his actual conduct of it, that have formed the basis of the controversy. In his career, Montgomery's orders to his subordinates were clear and complete, yet with his superiors his communications would be opaque and incomplete
[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.361]. So, in Normandy he gave the impression to Eisenhower and others that he was attempting a breakout, while playing down this possibility in his actual orders to his subordinates. For example, shortly before
Operation Goodwood he removed Falaise as an objective, but did not forward these new orders to
SHAEF. Throughout his career he enraged his superiors and colleagues, partly because he would not allow convention to disrupt military effectiveness, partly because of a contempt for authority and an unwillingness to be in a situation where he was not in control, and partly because he could be quite a strange person. Bedell-Smith once said to him
"You may be great to serve under, difficult to serve alongside, but you sure are hell to serve over!"
[N.Hamilton, Monty. vol. 2.xxv (1981-6)]. He also found it difficult to publicly admit his operations had not gone to plan, irrespective of whether they were ultimately successful (Normandy) or unsuccessful (Market Garden, where he claimed that it had been a 90% success).
In the United Kingdom, Montgomery is remembered particularly for his victorious campaign in North Africa, which, with the
Battle of Stalingrad, was very much seen as the turning point of
World War II. The different nature of the war for the
United States means that his reputation there is very much coloured by the controversies in the later stages of the war in Europe, especially around the
Battle of the Bulge. These brought into relief both his virtues and failings.
Immediately after the Battle of the Bulge, on
January 7, 1945 Montgomery held a press conference in which he downplayed the role of the American generals, especially Patton, in the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge and focused on his own generalship. Many of his comments were ill-judged, particularly his statement that when the situation "began to deteriorate", Eisenhower had placed him in command in the north, and they were inflammatory to Patton, implying that he needed to be rescued by Montgomery
"with a bang". In the press conference Montgomery said that he thought the counter-offensive had gone very well and did not explain his delayed attack on 3 January. According to Churchill, the attack from the south under Patton was steady but slow and involved heavy losses, and Montgomery claimed to be trying to avoid this situation. A slanted version broadcast by German radio added to American resentment.
In a memo to Eisenhower, Montgomery proposed that he should again be made Commander Ground Forces and implicitly criticised recent conduct of the war. At a time when American confidence had been shaken and nerves were raw, this was unwise. Eisenhower, encouraged by the Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Marshal
Tedder (another person with a long running feud with Montgomery), was on the point of dismissing Montgomery, when Bedell Smith and Montgomery's chief-of-staff, Major-General
Freddie de Guingand, pointed that this would be both politically unwise and difficult to justify. De Guingand was able to convince Montgomery of the impact of his words (of which he was apparently unaware) and Montgomery wrote an apology to Eisenhower. The moment passed. Eisenhower commented in his memoirs:
"I doubt if Montgomery ever came to realise how resentful some American commanders were. They believed he had belittled them - and they were not slow to voice reciprocal scorn and contempt".
On the other hand, during the same press conference Montgomery showed his respect for ordinary troops and eulogised the American soldier:
"I first saw him in battle in Sicily and I formed a very high opinion of him. I saw him again in Italy. He is a very brave fighting man, steady under fire and with that tenacity in battle which marks the first-class fighting soldier. I have a great affection and admiration for the American soldier. I salute the brave fighting men of America. I never want to fight alongside better soldiers. I have tried to feel that I am almost an American soldier myself so that I might take no unsuitable action or offend them in any way ... Rundstedt was really beaten by the good fighting qualities of the American soldier and by the team work of the Allies."
On Eisenhower, he said:
"The captain of our team is Eisenhower. I am absolutely devoted to Ike; we are the greatest of friends. It grieves me when I see uncomplimentary articles about him in the British press; he bears a great burden, he needs our fullest support, he has the right to expect it and it is up to all of us to see that he gets it.".
Montgomery later wrote:
"I think now that I should never have held that press conference. So great were the feelings against me on the part of the American generals that whatever I said was bound to be wrong. I should therefore have said nothing."
Brooke was perhaps near the truth when he said of Montgomery,
"He is probably the finest tactical general we have had since Wellington. But on some of his strategy, and especially on his relations with the Americans, he is almost a disaster."
Any assessment of Montgomery is immediately entangled in his sometimes difficult, boastful personality, harshness towards those he felt did not measure up, and issues of Anglo-American national pride. Nevertheless this section attempts a balanced summing up of his general leadership from a military perspective. Was he primarily a ponderous set-piece general or was he indeed one of the most brilliant commanders of recent history, a true heir to
Marlborough, at least from the British perspective? The truth lies somewhere in between. It is helpful to analyze Montgomery's generalship by looking at some central aspects of his successes and failures.
Positive aspects
As a trainer of men and mentor of subordinatesMontgomery deserves his due as an outstanding trainer of men. His record in Palestine, North Africa, Sicily and Northern Europe shows this. His meticulous preparation of his troops, ranging from the usual physical necessities, to painstaking explanation of his vision and plans down to relatively low levels, to well articulated exercises and drills, to his insistence that formations like divisions "should fight as divisions" (i.e. gain proficiency in "big picture" coordination and integration) show the mind and skill of a keen organizer. None of this is earth-shattering for any competent military commander, but Montgomery demonstrated a great level of proficiency and made it one his special trademarks.
Montgomery was a keen advocate of physical fitness and hard training: in the desert he had all ranks from
brigadier down doing daily physical training; any man, no matter what rank, was expected to be fit to fight, and if any officer could not keep up on daily runs, he was sent home
[For a humorous account of the effect of Montgomery on the soldiers of the south-east army, see Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler- my part in his downfall, Penguin (1972)]. Montgomery was also a critic of Battle Drill Training, which he felt was a crutch used by unit commanders. His personal view, put into action during the
Phony War and afterwards, was that company and battalion training in the phases of war - relief in place, passage of obstacles, hasty attack, etc. - was ignored in favour of simple drilling at the section and platoon level.
Montgomery had a deep technical understanding of how the Army operated, at all levels from the infantry company to the Army Group. He helped to shape the Canadian army through assisting the formation of the fledgling
First Canadian Army while they were under his command in South-Eastern Army. Montgomery personally visited most Canadian units, down to the battalion level, and assisted Canadian Army commander
Harry Crerar in weeding out poor officers, giving direct criticism of battalion commanders, company commanders, and even regimental sergeants major
[Some of his notes are reproduced in Terry Copp's book The Brigade.]. Montgomery indirectly shaped the Canadian Army that saw action in Italy and NW Europe.
As a strategist and tacticianMontgomery's hallmark as a strategist was a detailed analysis of his enemy and development of a clear vision as to how that enemy was to be fought and defeated. Two words sum up the approach of the British commander: clarity and organization. These were put into practice through careful preparation of what he termed a "master plan", to which all subsequent effort was to be subordinated. The "master plan" embodied the vision, and the strategic and tactical approaches that would be used. Far from being rigid, Montgomery held that the flexibility or "balance" was one of the keys to his overarching structure. He regarded the German Army as one of hard core professionalism, and held that wishful thinking and foggy concepts against such an opponent was a recipe for dismal failure.
Montgomery sought changes along these lines in the plan for the
Allied invasion of Sicily. His influence however was more limited and his own less than spectacular gains in the difficult terrain, were unfavorably compared by some to the thrusting mobility of US General George Patton - a foreshadowing of controversies to come. Operation Husky was a success, but the Germans were able to extract tens of thousands of troops from Sicily to fight elsewhere, indicating that Montgomery's concerns about concepts, planning and execution were not totally off the mark.
His approach can be seen in his insistence on recasting or adjusting the invasion plans of Normandy, generally strengthening initial shock forces and insisting on a clear vision and method of how subsequent battles were to be fought. The success of the D-Day landings owed a great debt to Montgomery's planning. After the war, Eisenhower and his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General
Bedell Smith told the American military correspondent, Drew Middleton that
"No one else could have got us across the Channel and into Normandy... Whatever they say about him, he got us there".
Montgomery felt his approach vindicated at the Second Battle of El Alamein. His strategic vision ushered in much needed clarity, and his defensive preparations (drawing in part on the prior work of his predecessor Auchinleck) also envisioned a decisive counterattack. During the most critical point of the battle his concept of "balance" or flexibility within the confines of a master plan held, and the British were able to shift forces to see off Rommel's thrust, and mount their own riposte that shattered the back of the Axis formations.
The Battle of Normandy saw similar success. He insisted on more forces for the initial landing and a clear vision for the further campaign against some planners who were primarily concerned with just getting on the beach. Despite the failure of all but the Canadians to gain the ambitious targets on D-Day, and the subsequent improvisations, his stategy of attritional battle on the left drawing in German forces and allowing a breakthrough on the right was successful. This approach could not be broadcast on the nightly news and the public perception of the struggle was typically one that saw both Allies equally attempting to break out of the beachhead, with progress being "slow." Montgomery however persisted, and deflecting pressure from his superiors (who remained in England) for quicker results, retained mastery of the developing battle, and achieved victory well within the originally planned ninety days. These two battles cement Montgomery's place as one of the greatest of the modern British generals in the view of some historians, and vindicate his concept of "balance" within the overall structure of a dominant "master plan"
[ See Alexander McKee, "Caen: Anvil of Victory", Souvenir Press (1984) for a detailed description of the east flank struggle.].
As a builder of moraleMontgomery also deserves credit as a builder of morale, both that of his soldiers and that of the general public. A large part of his reputation has been sustained by the people who served under him. After his experiences in the First World War he had determined not to waste soldiers' lives: as
Haig persisted in attritional battles, Montgomery wrote to his brother Donald, on seeing Canadians sent to assault Passchendaele ridge that they were 'magnificent', but 'they forget that the whole art of war is to gain your objective with as little loss as possible', which was a doctrine that Montgomery subsequently lived by.
Further to this, he also displayed a genuine concern for the welfare of the men serving under him: for example, at one time he jeopardised his career by illegally hiring out land to a fair to raise welfare funds
[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.358]; he arranged for female nurses at forward casualty clearing centres in the desert war in 1943
[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.359]; he took a very pragmatic view towards sexual health
[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.277 - see also Poor Bloody Infantry by Charles Whiting; he was referred to as "The General of Love" by his troops in France in 1940 for his liberal views on promiscuity among soldiers, which some mistook for approval rather than acceptance.]; directly after the Battle of Medenine he was lobbying Brooke to allow long-serving soldiers to return to England
[Montgomery, Bernard Law, Nigel Hamilton, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP (2004)]. Coupled with this was his belief that soldiers must actually understand why they were fighting, and that they deserve to have things properly explained to them. Montgomery thought that one of the most important roles for a military commander was to motivate his men to fight, that military command is "a great human problem". In addition, Montgomery's experiences in the First World War led him to despise generals who led from the rear, well away from any fighting,
[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.374. In this context Montgomery used to tell the tale of the British Chief-of-Staff who, before returning to England, decided he would like to see the front at Paschandaele for the first time. This attitude was one of the things that caused friction between himself and other generals.] and so was visible in his campaigns.
The early years of World War II saw a series of humiliating defeats and military reverses for Britain. Montgomery was not the first to unequivocally reverse. His experiences in Ireland had shown him the importance of public support in a war. Montgomery was sometimes ungracious, but he was able to painstakingly articulate a vision for victory and couple with it a good sense for publicity (the use of his distinctive black beret with two badges, for example). He continued these same methods in England prior to the invasion, insisting on a clear concept of battle beyond the beaches, all united under a powerful master plan. Later on, Montgomery was not the only leader that struck a distinctive chord for morale prior to the great invasion, but he was certainly one of the most influential, ensuring not only the troops that stepped ashore on June 6, were thus men confident in their leaders, their plans, their equipment and their cause, but so were the public. His speaking tour of British munitions factories before D-Day had made Chuchill worry that he would be
"filling The Mall" with adoring crowds if he was allowed to receive his Field marshal's baton at
Buckingham Palace[A.Bryant, Triumph in the West, 1943-1946(1959)].
Criticisms of Montgomery's Generalship
Montgomery's record also has been extensively criticised. The criticism of his actions tends to be bound up with his difficult personality and relationships with superiors (see the Character and Controversy Section above) but generally two areas in particular can be separated out, which are summarised here. The reader is referred to detailed coverage of individual battles in other articles.
The slow pursuit of Rommel. Montgomery was often accused of being slow and overcautious. Examples cited include before El Alamein, afterwards in the pursuit of Rommel, the Battle of Normandy, and in the counter-offensive in the Ardennes. In North Africa, prior to Montgomery taking command, the history of the campaign in North Africa had see-sawed as each offensive outran its supply lines: both sides won battles but neither gained a decisive advantage
[von Thoma commented that "I thought he was very cautious considering his immensely superior strength", though added that "the decisive factor is the organisation of one's resources to maintain the momentum" (B.Liddell-Hart, The other side of the hill (1962))]. It can be argued that Rommel was still dangerous, requiring careful movement, and that in any event, the campaign achieved its objective, effectively shattering the Axis effort and reducing it to impotence in North Africa.
Slow progress during the Normandy battle. Similarly, during the Battle of Normandy, the fear of stalemate made the supreme command in Britain pressurise Montgomery (at one point in July 1944, it was thought that Churchill was flying to France to sack Montgomery at Eisenhower's request
[), with extra pressure being applied by air commanders wanting French airfields to operate from. However, in the end Montgomery's success was achieved in less time than planned. Much is made of the fact that many of Montgomery's intermediate targets were not met, especially the capture of Caen (criticism that was compounded after the war when Montgomery insisted that all elements had gone "according to plan", which clearly was not the case). However his predictions, the so called "phase lines" on the maps, were never intended to be a rigid guarantee but a guide, as would be clear from previous opposed landings at Salerno and Anzio. The Bridge Too Far- Market Garden. A second great area of criticism centres around Montgomery's only defeat of the Second World War, the failure of Operation Market Garden at Arnhem. It may be significant that this operation was unlike any of Montogomery's successful battles being bold, but poorly planned and supported. R.W.Thompson writes]The conception of such a plan was impossible for a man of Montgomery's innate caution...In fact, Montgomery's decision to mount the operation aimed at the Zuider Zee was as startling as it would have been for an elderly and saintly Bishop suddenly to take up safe-cracking and begin on the Bank of England.[ Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W.Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969), p.201]
It has been suggested that the ambition of the plan may have been a result of interpersonal friction and competition with the American generals, as well as other personality traits[On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976), p.360-361]Failure to clear the Scheldt estuaries. One of Montgomery's most significant lapses was the failure to clear the Scheldt estuary, which surrounded the vital port of Antwerp. In the Fall of 1944 logistical problems loomed large in the Allied effort. Failure to clear the Scheldt estuary meant that the Allies lacked a port that could have brought in much needed supplies to consolidate and hasten the advance into Germany. It also meant that the Germans could reinforce their defensive lines in Holland, blocking one main axis of advance into their homeland. Montgomery pleaded the difficulties of continual fighting in prior weeks and logistical problems, but whatever the merits of this argument, it is clear that failure to isolate and clear the estuary was to have major repercussions on the Allied advance into the Third Reich. The debacle of Market Garden which allowed the escape of the German 15th Army was seen as a distraction by critics from this vital task. Thompson calls it "Montgomery's most agonizing failure"[Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W.Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969)], while Montgomery himself later noted that this was "a bad mistake - I underestimated the difficulty of opening up the approaches to Antwerp ... I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong."Unimaginative 'general of material' or masterful steward of Britain's last major armies? The criticism of slowness has been taken further with Montgomery being called primarily a "general of material" [ Arthur Gwynne Jones Chalfont, Montgomery of Alamein (1976)]: one who emerged at the right time and place to take advantage of the massive outpouring of American and British war production, ensuring the Allies local material superiority against their opponents. Invidious comparisons have been made with the thrusting General Patton on the US side. But this charge is hard to maintain in a war during which material weight counted above almost all factors. It was a mass production war in every theatre, and the same "material" criticism of Montgomery must then need to apply to the great Russian commanders of the Eastern Front like Zhukov or Konev, as well as to the American effort. Equally, it ignores the successful improvised actions in North Africa, Normandy, and the Ardennes.
Montgomery was not a dashing general, and deliberately methodical, usually not willing to sacrifice military effectiveness for other people's agendas. The realities of the conflict Britain was fighting must also be remembered, which had seen severe early defeats, an economy almost crippled by German U-boat attacks, and dwindling supplies of manpower to fight on fronts ranging from the Far East to the Mediterranean. Furthermore, much of his apparent caution sprang from his regard for human life and a desire not to throw the lives of his troops away in the manner of the generals of the First World War. Therefore, for El Alamein and the Ardennes, he was not prepared to go into an offensive if he felt his troops were not sufficiently prepared. This approach sometimes exasperated his superiors, but it generally brought his command success, and ensured his popularity with his men.*Famous military commanders
*M. E. Clifton James - Monty's double during the war."The U.S. has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself.":(spoken of the US approach to the Vietnam War) Quoted in Chalfont's Montgomery of Alamein.
*Wikiquote
* Alamein, Stephen Bungay, Auram (2002)
* Armageddon, Max Hastings (2004)
* The Battle for the Rhine 1944, Robin Neillands (2005)
* On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Norman Dixon, Pimlico (1976)
* Montgomery: Master of the Battefield by Nigel Hamilton (1984). Part 2 of Hamilton's massive 3 volume biography of Montgomery which does not shirk from discussing both the good and the bad. Detailed coverage of El Alamein and Normandy battles.
* Caen: Anvil of Victory by Alexander McKee (1984). An excellent account of the great British shield on the eastern flank, and masterful descriptions of the fighting.
* And We Shall Shock Them: The British Army in World War II by David Fraser (1988). Gives a "big picture" look at the British Army in WWII and the restoration of its fortunes after early years of humiliation.
* Defeat Into Victory by General William Slim (2000). Provides a good contrast of leadership styles, the quieter, more honest Slim versus the more flambuoyant Montgomery. It should be noted that Slim too used some of the same methods to rebuild shattered British morale, including painstaking explanation of concepts to all ranks, reorganized training and confidence building battles that guaranteed victory before tackling bigger operations.
* The Path to Leadership by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery (1957).
* Montgomery of Alamein by Arthur Gwynne Jones Chalfont, (1976). Generally a critical biography of Montgomery, contesting several of his claims and giving voice to many alienated by his methods, including the oft forgotten Desert Generals of 1941-42.
