Monty at the Bulge: Withdrawal the best strategy?

[carnivorousplant]

Didn’t Montgomery go up against Erwin Rommel?
That sort of thing would cause me to be cautious for life, about everything.

[Dissonance]

@No_Wikipedia_Cites

The titleof the book isn’t necessary to answer the question.

The title of the comic is in fact quite necessary to answer the question, as the question itself is based on an entirely false premise. There can be no ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the question of ‘was Monty right?’ in “wanting the US forces to pull back from the Bulge sectors and let the German attack exhaust itself out, through lack of supplies and fuel; then counter-attack. The US Generals refused to fight by retreating” if none of this in fact ever happened outside the confines of a comic book writer’s imagination. Believe it or not 300 is not an accurate portrayal or history of Thermopylae, Sparta, the Persians or King Leonidas I. I find little reason to believe Montgomery wanted US forces to retreat during the Ardennes Offensive but the brave American Generals refused to fight by retreating based upon the word of what someone claims to have read in an unnamed ‘graphic novel’.

@No_Wikipedia_Cites

The book is also sourced from existing histories of the Battle and contains a bibliography, as since you care for details, you may examine yourself at your local library.

Great, but I hate to be the one to inform you that the onus is upon you to present evidence of your claim. I happen to actually care about details like did Monty ever even want to do what your comic book claims he wanted to. I have yet to see a shred of evidence that he wanted the Americans to retreat but the Americans refused.

[Little_Nemo]

@Dissonance

Great, but I hate to be the one to inform you that the onus is upon you to present evidence of your claim.

The OP seems to be asking a question not making a claim. You don’t have to offer evidence to support a question. The usual point of asking the question is to obtain information that you don’t have.

[Dissonance]

@Little_Nemo

The OP seems to be asking a question not making a claim. You don’t have to offer evidence to support a question. The usual point of asking the question is to obtain information that you don’t have.

The ‘question’ he is asking is based upon a false premise: that Monty wanted the Americans to retreat but the Americans refused to. I’m aware that you are knowledgeable about WWII, have you ever heard this before? As you know, I’m well versed in WWII, and off the top of my head I’ve read The U.S. Army in World War II Series: European Theater of Operations - The Ardennes - Battle of the Bulge and Trevor N. Dupuy’s Hitler’s Last Gamble: The Battle of the Bulge, December 1944-January 1945 amongst quite a few other books dealing specifically with the Ardennes Offensive and lord knows how many books dealing with the ETO in general. Outside of what No Wikipedia Cites claims Wayne Vansant’s graphic novel says, I have never heard that Monty wanted the American’s to retreat but the American Generals refused to. The question is based upon this fantastic claim being true, and is impossible to provide a meaningful answer to. Here’s what wiki has to say about Monty in the Ardennes Offensive:

The abrasive British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was quick to widen this gap with characteristically inflammatory correspondence and public pronouncements, and a major break with the U.S. command seemed in the offing. Major General Freddie de Guingand, a staff member of Montgomery’s 21st Army Group, brilliantly rose to the occasion, and personally smoothed over the crisis on December 30.[107]:489–90

As the Ardennes crisis developed, at 10:30 a.m. on 20 December, Eisenhower telephoned Montgomery and ordered him to assume command of the American First (Hodges) and Ninth Army (Simpson)[108] – which, until then, were under Bradley’s overall command. This change in command was ordered because the northern armies had not only lost all communications with Bradley, who was based in Luxembourg City,[109] and the US command structure, but with adjacent units. Without radio or telephone communication Montgomery managed to improvise an effective command and control system based on those of the Duke of Wellington’s ‘gallopers’ of the Battle of Waterloo.[citation needed]

Describing the situation as he found it on 20 December, Montgomery wrote;
The First Army was fighting desperately. Having given orders to Dempsey and Crerar, who arrived for a conference at 11 am, I left at noon for the H.Q. of the First Army, where I had instructed Simpson to meet me. I found the northern flank of the bulge was very disorganized. Ninth Army had two corps and three divisions; First Army had three corps and fifteen divisions. Neither Army Commander had seen Bradley or any senior member of his staff since the battle began, and they had no directive on which to work. The first thing to do was to see the battle on the northern flank as one whole, to ensure the vital areas were held securely, and to create reserves for counter-attack. I embarked on these measures: I put British troops under command of the Ninth Army to fight alongside American soldiers, and made that Army take over some of the First Army Front. I positioned British troops as reserves behind the First and Ninth Armies until such time as American reserves could be created. Slowly but surely the situation was held, and then finally restored. Similar action was taken on the southern flank of the bulge by Bradley, with the Third Army.[108]

Due to the news blackout imposed on the 16th, the change of leadership to Montgomery did not become known to the outside world until eventually SHAEF made a public announcement making clear that the change in command was “absolutely nothing to do with failure on the part of the three American generals”.[110]:198 This resulted in headlines in British newspapers. The story was also covered in Stars and Stripes and for the first time British contribution to the fighting was mentioned.

Montgomery asked Churchill if he could give a conference to the press to explain the situation. Though some of his staff were concerned at the image it would give, the conference had been cleared by Alan Brooke, the CIGS, who was possibly the only person to whom Monty would listen.

On the same day as Hitler’s withdrawal order, 7 January, Montgomery held his press conference at Zonhoven.[111] Montgomery started with giving credit to the “courage and good fighting quality” of the American troops, characterizing a typical American as a “very brave fighting man who has that tenacity in battle which makes a great soldier”, and went on to talk about the necessity of Allied teamwork, and praised Eisenhower, stating, “Teamwork wins battles and battle victories win wars. On our team, the captain is General Ike.”

Then Montgomery described the course of the battle for a half-hour. Coming to the end of his speech he said he had “employed the whole available power of the British Group of Armies; this power was brought into play very gradually … Finally it was put into battle with a bang … you thus have the picture of British troops fighting on both sides of the Americans who have suffered a hard blow.” He stated that he (i.e., the German) was “headed off … seen off … and … written off”. “The battle has been the most interesting, I think possibly one of the most interesting and tricky battles I have ever handled.”.[112][113][114]

Despite his positive remarks about American soldiers, the overall impression given by Montgomery, at least in the ears of the American military leadership, was that he had taken the lion’s share of credit for the success of the campaign, and had been responsible for rescuing the besieged Americans.[115]

His comments were interpreted as self-promoting, particularly his claiming that when the situation “began to deteriorate,” Eisenhower had placed him in command in the north. Patton and Eisenhower both felt this was a misrepresentation of the relative share of the fighting played by the British and Americans in the Ardennes (for every British soldier there were thirty to forty Americans in the fight), and that it belittled the part played by Bradley, Patton and other American commanders. In the context of Patton’s and Montgomery’s well-known antipathy, Montgomery’s failure to mention the contribution of any American general beside Eisenhower was seen as insulting. Indeed, General Bradley and his American commanders were already starting their counterattack by the time Montgomery was given command of 1st and 9th U.S. Armies.[116] Focusing exclusively on his own generalship, Montgomery continued to say he thought the counteroffensive had gone very well but did not explain the reason for his delayed attack on 3 January. He later attributed this to needing more time for preparation on the northern front. According to Winston Churchill, the attack from the south under Patton was steady but slow and involved heavy losses, and Montgomery was trying to avoid this situation.

Considering the shit-storm that developed over Monty appearing to take undue credit in his press conference, one would imagine that a command dispute as huge as Monty wanting to have the Americans who were at this point under his direct control retreat but the American generals refusing to obey his orders would have warranted some mention somewhere outside of a comic book* if it had actually happened*.

[Manduck]

Uh, the allies won that battle. Their strategy couldn’t have been too bad.