Of course hindsight is 20-20, but had Ike told Monty to forget Market Garden, and instead directed him to secure the Scheldt Estuary at once, and let Patton have the supplies wasted on Market Garden, I think the odds of ending the war by Christmas would have been a real possibility.
The Port of Antwerp was of vastly greater strategic value than a bridge over the Rhine.
Unfortunately, capture of a port where ships will unload isn’t as newsworthy as rapid advances and enemy casualties. Especially when the port was captured without a fight.
All good points.
The “fog of war”, the multiple egos and personalities and international “Allied” political concerns Ike had to deal with, as well as certain unpopular objectives combined to allow things like M-G (instead of taking the Scheldt Estuary immediately) to do the damage it did in prolonging the war.
I admire Ike in the overall way he handled his role. I think few could have done it as well as he did. I guess we needed the British to win the war, apparently. But if we hadn’t needed the British militarily against the Nazis, personally I think it would have been better and faster if the Americans could have just gone in there and do what they had to do without all the British/Monty B.S.
I’ve come to the opinion that Monty’s failure to clear the Scheldt Estuary in September led directly to the Ardennes Offensive in December. Without the logistic limitations, the Americans would have deployed more divisions earlier, and sufficiently supplied, the “big push” in November at Metz and Aachen would have happened in October. Hitler would not have been able to hold the front west of the Rhine with his thin screen of units. The strategic reserve would have been forced from his hand before it was even fully assembled.