I understand DeGaulle’s Allied keepers were sort of on standby to make certain DeGaulle died in an automobile accident if necessary. War is Hell, you know?
As I recall, he stayed so far in the rear that nobody could communicate with him. I also seem to recall that he was building himself a gigantic bunker to keep as a permanent HQ, and managed to get himself sacked as a result of his cowardice and poor leadership, but my memory may be fuzzy on that.
Put your money where your mouth is, man!
Another of his jerkass moments was after his fellow PoWs figured out how to send messages - with great time and effort - back to London for intel. Bader wanted them to send back a message along the lines of “Bader says give them hell!”, not exactly a sensible use of resources.
Good thing you aren’t talking about Clark because family lore has my uncle as his driver.
He and FDR became fast enemies: Roosevelt thought De Gaulle considered himself king or something.
Roosevelt wasn’t a general. If you’re going to include country leaders, I’m pretty sure Stalin would get the “honor” above Roosevelt. He probably did put millions into detainment camps (and probably killed millions even before the war ended. He certainly did during the entire period of leading the USSR). Roosevelt’s detainment tool was in the 100 thousands only.
Hell, Stalin killed thousands in his birthplace by forgetting to send food.
Tough to say. Ordinarily I’d give it to Harris because he insisted on killing so many civilians so uselessly because he couldn’t figure out how to primarily attack military targets, leaving that to the Americans.
But Montgomery is a special case because he has so many Brits hoodwinked that he was better than just barely competent. Somewhere upthread someone said he was the best allied battlefield commander in WWII. What a load of self-indulgent shit. Patton was better and he was a severe asshole. Abrams was better. McAullife was better. MacArthur was better (and a truly obnoxious asshole). All of them were vastly superior to Montgomery.
Montgomery decisively won El Alameinhttp://ww2history.com/key_moments/Western/Allies_win_at_El_Alamein and that was with a two to one manpower advantage and unlimited oil for the Allies and limited oil for the Axis. Dieppe and Market Garden and his conduct in Sicily and Normandy can be described as competent at best and rather showing that he was lackluster. And he was a huge asshole to his allies.
Anyone who insists on calling Field Marshall Montgomery “Monty” should be viewed with a suspicion of nativist bias. I am unaware of any non-UK military historian who would rank Montgomery as the best allied commander. That kudo is usually reserved for the general who won all his battles, Marshall Zukov.
If I was running an Allied fantasy league I’d only eventually draft Montgomery if it was required that a British general be on each Allied team and Major-General Orde Charles Wingate was already taken.
Montgomery was a poser, prima-donna trouble maker.
Patton was an army commander, a subordinate commander for his entire career. One who saw his juniors promoted over his head. Abrams and McAullif were division commanders. MacArthur was a theatre commander. You cannot compare any of them to Montgomery, as they each had vastly different responsibilities, Monty being a Group commander. What are you going to do next, compare Montgomery to a Company Commander like Maj Winters?
That’s just bullshit right there.
Certainly I can and I did. Patton was a far superior general to Montgomery. Zukov was even better. Montgomery was the sort of talent-short commander who needed at least 2 to 1 numerical superiority before he would go up against Rommel’s oil starved troops despite being awash in fuel and having Rommel’s complete order of battle through Ultra intercepts, lies to the contrary notwithstanding.
The only reason he was not an outright shitty commander is because he refused to take on Rommel’s oil starved army without such an advantage because he knew he was so utterly outclassed. That the Brits would claim Montgomery was the best battlefield commander of the Allies in WWII shows just how completely besotted the Brits are on the subject. Did he regularly beat superior enemies? No. He did not. Did he repeatedly fuck up? Yes, See Dieppe and Market Garden. Were Montgomery a good commander, he would have done what Grant did in the Civil War and used his numerical advantage and material advantage to relentlessly grind down a more talented enemy commander. But he did not. A wise decision considering he was such a lackluster commander.
While Montgomery wasn’t bad, like Harris, he only was outstanding when compared to the usual fare of British officer corps.
So while I will happily agree that Montgomery was the best* British* battlefield commander, you ought to consider that the rest just sucked. Not as bad as the WWI idiots though.
There is a reason that the US military is so utterly resistant to putting US troops under the command of non-American officers.
Ah, yes – supposedly-innocuous letters to relatives and friends back home, which concealed war-related information, per a pre-arranged code. (If you were doing this, you had to make sure not to take too long composing said letters; or else the Germans would likely have smelt a rat. That factor would have caused me to be no use for this activity.) What a waste, re something this difficult and demanding, to use it for a boost to Mr. Bader’s already-huge ego.
Slim was the best western Allied commander in WWII, but in a theatre that is largely forgotten.
A lot of the people calling Montgomery “Monty” in this thread don’t appear to be British. I’m certain a few aren’t. The only person who seems to care about nationality in this thread is you. The bias is all yours.
This is probably the most sensible post so far (IMHO). There is no clear definition of what the original poster meant, but let’s not forget that most of the others won a war for their country. Well De Gaulle did little but postured a lot. (We won’t mention the gold reserves after the war).
I think Mark Clark should have been included as a candidate as his vanity cost a lot of lives.
The posts about the British Generals being useless are just wrong. Churchill sacked quite a few - that was his thoughts, not on their capability- but he wanted results. Unfortunately the resources weren’t available at the time. Monty at least had the balls to tell Churchill when he would be able to go ahead.
I don’t get the hatred for Eisenhower. He was not a battlefield commander- he was more an administrator and probably the only acceptable one at the time.
Zhukov was mentioned as a great general- well perhaps when he had superiority and loss of men don’t matter. And you can airbrush any defeats out of record books.
I suppose when it comes down to it, at least on the western side, the US and UK were lucky to have George Marshall and Alan Brooke in place as Chief of Staff and CIGS, respectively. They both knew that their political over-seers must be managed carefully (a burden that fell on Brooke’s shoulders rather more heavily, I feel).
But anyway, the flawed people (every one who made the highest ranks in the western allies - how could it be anything other?) managed to be on the winning side, and they did it without getting millions of their own soldiers killed. Marshall Zhukov was, well, he was not so constrained by his political masters.
I’ve either massively missed your point or you and I have very different ideas of being constrained. Nobody in Soviet command was safe from Stalin. The head of the Soviet Air Force once unguardedly told Stalin that air losses were so high because of their crap aircraft - “You’re making us fly in coffins!” Stalin quietly replied “You shouldn’t have said that,” and had him and his wife tortured and shot.
Characterizing Georgy Zhukov as a guy who won just through numbers is totally unfair. Zhukov was a general of tremendous ability. He showed great skill against the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol, was sounding the alarm about German intentions before Barbarossa when Stalin wouldn’t listen to him, and was the voice of reason in the early stages of the war. When Stalin wouldn’t listen to that reason, Zhukov took a lower ranking job and won a major battle at a time the Soviets weren’t winning battles, and… well, I could go on, but Zhukov won and won and won, and no, he did not just win by throwing superior numbers at the Germans.
It’s more likely I didn’t make my point well enough, to be honest. Zhukov wasn’t constrained by the people, in the way that the western allied generals were. Operation Bagration was a massive hammer-blow against the Germans, and there were others, but such operations were not something that could have been done in the west. A US or UK general would have to stand in front of a President, Prime Minister or King, and try to justify the slaughter of their own troops. Comrade Stalin was a bit more morally flexible.
Good show, Uncle Joe. That sure improved the Soviet Air Force. Durak.:mad::rolleyes:
The cold war is and has been over for like 25 years.:rolleyes:
Can we please finish that meme now? The USSR was fighting a war for national survival, a genocidal war had been imposed on them. The US and UK were not. What is acceptable casualties is different there. As it is casualties in Bagration were in the 500,000 region for both sides.
During the two months of Bagration, the Soviets suffered about 1500 casualties. The casualties that the W Allies took per day in the Bulge campaign were about 1700 per day.
[QUOTE= The Second Stobe]
Certainly I can and I did. Patton was a far superior general to Montgomery. Zukov was even better. Montgomery was the sort of talent-short commander who needed at least 2 to 1 numerical superiority before he would go up against Rommel’s oil starved troops despite being awash in fuel and having Rommel’s complete order of battle through Ultra intercepts, lies to the contrary notwithstanding.
[/QUOTE]
While I will give you Zhukov, Patton’s performances in Sicily nor at Metz exactly show him in a great light. As for Montgomery in N Africa, what kind of bizzaro world do you live in, considering EIght Army smashed the German/Italians and chased them 1500 miles to Tunisia?
Errr… Dieppe? Monty was not in charge at Dieppe, that was Louis Mountbatten. His entire contribution to that operation was that some troops were taken from formations under his command, he had no role in suggesting, planning or executing said raid. So how did he “fuck up”?Besides not staging a coup and stopping it? Market Garden was, bad luck and some poor decisions, true. But, it was a worthwhile operation which if it had succeeded would have ended the war very soon.
In other words exactly what was done in Normandy and Northern France? Formations under Montgomery’s command engaged the vast majority of the troops facing the Germans and faced almost all German armour. His troops advanced further than anyone else (especially the Canadian First Army).