When was that quote made? I roll my eyes at anything M said when his job was threatened after shoving his foot in his mouth.
Ah yes, our fine nascent and then loathed capitol got burnt. The same capitol where diplomats got combat pay for serving. Then the British went to crush that backwater port Baltimo…oh wait. Well then you went down south to crush some backwoods hicks in Louisia…oh wait.
We can play this game all day.
Hey Hugo First. If you want Washington DC back, by all means, its yours.
Well, I was quite surprised this morning to discover that I’m anti-American based upon my comments in this thread. Rather bizarre being called anti-American by a Brit for not conforming to his preconceived notions about Americans.
Every time I post that I always get the same charge-that must be Monty after the 'press conference 'where he claimed all the credit and an attempt to dig himself out of the hole.
Now this may come as a shock to those brought up on garbled 5th hand accounts of the ‘press conference’ but 'That is a** direct quote **(taken from a US Newspaper) from the press confrence.
Now someone tell me again how Monty disparaged the American soldier.
Yes we can. You capital was sacked. Losing even 10 battles can compare.
Why is it that US posters who rate Rommel so highly then go on to completely ignore the immense intelligence advantage that he had due to the Italians having broken the US coms codes, which coms contained almost everything that an enemy would want to know about the British order of battle, they knew where the British were, they knew what units were there, and they knew their intentions.
This was all because the US Cairo attaché Bonner Fellows had put far too much detail into his messages back to the US, instead of understanding the ‘need to know’ aspect of security.
His reports almost cost Malta, because he reported on British intentions to mount Operation Pedestal and this was one of the most fiercely fought convoys of the entire war. Malta itself was crucial in the defeat of the Axis in North Africa, from it British forces were able to cut off Rommels supply line.
Rommel had this advantage fro two full years, and he made the most of it, once he lost this advantage, he never won another single battle, he never advanced once more in the entire war.
Once the intelligence of Ultra was given over to Montgomery, pretty much at the same time as Rommel lost his intelligence advantage, guess what> Monty did not retreat ever during the remainder of the war. It was actually Ultra that finally plugged the security hole.
If there was a prize for being wrong you would be at the front of the queue. I am not British.
I would not place Patton so highly but we all have our opinions.
There is a quote from Rundstedt :
“*Montgomery and Patton were the two best that I met” *
And Blumentritt made a similar comment.
After paying tribute to
the speed of Patton drive, he added: “Field-Marshal Montgomery
was the one general who never suffered a reverse.”
Now who would have believed that?
Despite my Americanism, I’m not saying that Montgomery was all bad and American generals - like Patton - were all good. Patton certainly made mistakes. Patton pretty much always used the same plan - launch a full-on attack. But Patton was lucky because he was a general in a situation where even if that wasn’t always the best plan, it was usually at least successful.
I don’t want to hear excuses, soldier.
Eisenhower had to authorise all the big ticket things after he became Supreme Commander, and even then he was constrained by the likes of Generals Brooke and Marshall acting for Churchill and FDR. He had to juggle a bunch of massive egos, ones who had Army Groups under their command, and the equivalent in Air Force and Navy terms. He played it really damn well. A war on that scale is a rolling clusterfuck, and y’know, look at the outcome: most objectives achieved, and lots of boys went home safe.
The overall US strategic appreciation of mobile warfare was so poor that it reduced the speed of the Allied advance.
Montgomery wanted to use concentrated narrow front attacks to break up the Axis rear, does this sound familiar? That’s because Monty understood what Blitzkrieg actually meant.
It was the British army that had originally tried out this doctrine, and then shelved it, well before WW2.
Once the battle for Normandy was pretty much over the US generals wanted a general advance, it was Monty who pointed out that no force could be strong at all points, and advocated the massed armour/air attack, however he was overruled by Eisenhower who went along with the general advance along the whole front.
The result was there were signs of the Allies being overstretched as early as August 1944 and by around early October they had to stop and break, this allowed the Axis build up and subsequent Battle of the Bulge. Had Montgomery’s strategy been followed, this would not have happened, the Axis would not have been able to build up in the same way and would have been off balance. Long vulnerable areas would have been avoided.
In the end it took Montgomery to take the situation in hand and coordinate the counter offensive, one that need not have happened in the first place.
I imagine that US military don’t mention this too much, and given all the egos, they probably don’t want to publicise their failing all that much either - best way to do that is to blame the messenger
You are just picking the worst possible examples to use, and as I’ve said I am in total agreement with you that Montgomery gets a lot of undeserved criticism.
Specious American-bashing. Care to explain why Commonwealth forces were using American made tanks and trucks even when they made their own?
Montgomery wanted to use a front so narrow that it was literally funneled into a one-tank front for most of the advance. He also neglected to bother securing Antwerp in favor of this one-tank front approach, and in typical Monty fashion refused to admit it was a failure or that he had made a mistake and called Market-Garden 90% successful. It was only 90% successful if his goal was to drive a vulnerable salient going nowhere into the German lines.
No it wasn’t. It was British generals (J. F. C. Fuller, Basil H. Lidell Hart) who wrote the theory behind modern mobile mechanized warfare. The British army didn’t try this doctrine out and then shelve it; the closest they came to trying it out was the short lived Experimental Mechanized Force. It was the German army that actually tried out the doctrine.
The Allies being forced to stop and break because of the supply situation was hardly helped by Monty’s failure to even bother starting to clear out the Scheldt Estuary until October in favor of his one tank advance in Market-Garden. Long vulnerable areas were also unavoidable; a narrow front vs. a broad front doesn’t get rid of them, it just changes where they are. German counterattacks in the Zon-Veghel area managed to cut the road south of Veghel on September 24th, see map here. The road being the only road supplying the entire advance; so much for Monty’s strategy avoiding long vulnerable areas.
Again, you are doing here exactly what you are ostensibly critical of others for: engaging in specious jingoism.
They never stopped making their own. It just happens that they used US trucks as well. Are we going down the road of 'we supplied all the equipment therefore we deserve all the credit’ road?
In WW1 the US army was equiped by the British and the French but I have never ever found anyone claiming this means the British and French deserve all the credit for any US army success
The Commonwealth never had severe supply problems. They could manage. The problem was with the US forces. Their quartermaster was a disaster. They ran out of replacement ammunition and tanks and had to be supplied with 25 pdr guns because there was lots of UK ammo. In December the shortage of US tanks was solved by the transfer of 350 Shermans from UK holdings.
The abandonment of CHASTITY is what did for the US Army.
I would never suggest the failure to take Cherbourg to its D-Day timetable and its late capture was due to any Generals ‘timidity’, ‘caution’ or ‘slowness’.
Is it seriously beung claimed that if Montgomery had been the ‘single thrust’ into Germany he would have advanced on a single road?
Given that other posters have already weighed in on your ‘points’ Dissonance
Care to comment on the intelligence failure that was inadvertently caused by the US?
I notice you have not addressed the fact that Rommel had superb intel on British forces and plans, but I also notice no-one else has either.
Here is the fact, again. whilst Rommel had the intel advantage, he advanced, once he lost it he never advanced again, not once.
For Montgomery the converse is true, he did what any decent general would do, he made full use of his advantages in numbers, resources and information, he didn’t retreat, and he never put himself in a position to give a sucker an even break.
It may not be glorious, it may well be methodical, but it was effective and killed Axis personnel whilst preserving his own.
The US general advance along the full front was understandable, they had not had the unfortunate benefit of experience - the fact that Monty was hectoring the high command was not the best way to change the US strategy, and it can be reasonably argued that his poor relationship with the US Generals was a significant failing on his part.
I agree with most of what you said but not the last item. One of Montgomery’s biggest flaws was he left openings for German generals to exploit. He did it in Sicily, he did it in Italy, he did it in Falais, and he did it in Antwerp. He left openings for German forces to withdraw from the battle when he could have cut them off and destroyed them.
This is the same strategy you condemned the Americans for in your previous post.
And when Montgomery was allowed to try a concentrated narrow front attack to break up the Axis rear, he showed that he didn’t understand the key factors of blitzkreig. His advance in Operation Garden proceeded at his usual methodical pace rather than the all-out dash that such an operation required.
Montgomery was, quite frankly, the kind of general that blitzkreig operations were designed to defeat.
The American strategy was far from methodical, it was pretty much all out at all points, and this is precisely the weakness that used up their resources and led to them having to rest, and allowed the Axis build up for the Bulge.
US criticisms of his failure to close the loop at Falaise do not take into account the fact the British had faced much more of Axis armour than expected, they were also well dug in with well prepared positions. Closing that loop faster may well have been very costly, and in subsequent action the loss of available force and materials might have made a significant difference in Battle of the Bulge - and you can argue that allowing some to escape also aided the Axis build up, its very much a value judgement of what to do.
A large sweeping advance gaining many miles of territory may look great, but what strategic effect did it have? Again that attack on all fronts was far more responsible, more concentrated attacks with air support would have prevented the build up.
It still boils down to this, did he lose any significant battles that could have changed the war? Far from it, and his reorganisation and coordination of Allied forces turned what could have been a defeat at the Bulge into an opportunity, destroying much of the Axis reserves. You have to ask yourself why a US general seemed incapable of handling the situation, or rather, why did the US agree to allow Montgomery to take overall control of the situation? Could it be that at the time he was best equipped to deal with it and the US knew it?