Posted on 09/21/2019 6:58:44 PM PDT by aspasia
You know, history tends to portray Montgomery as this great tactician, but from D-day forward most everything he was involved in was an unmitigated disaster. Considering his earlier successes that puts his batting average at about .500 . Not great stats for how he is portrayed.
CC
Well put.
I knew quite a number of American veterans of WW2 who saw combat in Europe. Men who landed on fought in North Africa, Italy, D-Day, took part in Market-Garden and survived The Battle of The Bulge. To a man they HATED Montgomery. One vet told me flat out “I’d have shot that Limey bastard quicker than I’d have shot Hitler’’.
Americans don’t consider Vietnam to be a success. Montgomery considered Market-Garden to be one. No one is taking it out on the troops who did their duty during the week of the 17th. of September of 1944. That wasn’t the case with American veterans of Vietnam.
‘Zactly. While the Netherlands has fallen into the European PC culture, they still remember the sacrifices made to liberate them. In Ottawa, in May, occurs the Tulip Festival. In 1945, the Dutch Royal Family sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to Canada, as a thank you for sheltering then Princess Juliana during the Nazi occupation. They continue to send 10,000 tulip bulbs annually.
A daughter of Princess Juliana was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital in 1943. To ensure that Princess Margriet had exclusively Dutch nationality, rather than dual citizenship, ensuring her remaining in the line of succession, that floor of the Hospital was declared extraterritorial.
In addition, the Canadian Army was tasked with clearing the Scheldt, to allow Allied supplies to arrive via the port of Antwerp. The Canadian Army liberated much of Southern Netherlands and are well remembered.
Unfortunately, Jim 0216 over there seems to think they aren’t worth remembering because their leader was a swelled-headed idiot.
Sorry I don’t blame Montgomery. This was an Ike debacle. He knew it was a half assed plan made up in a few weeks. He should have weighed Montgomery’s abilities and screw the Brits. They needed us more then we needed them, and their leaders sucked.
That’s a taste of how they fought 75 years ago.
It’s a shame we can’t make our victories stick and dissuade religious dystopias from sending the dregs of their societies to the West.
I’ve known a number of American WW2 vets who survived, some of them barely, because of Montgomery’s arrogance and recklessness. They hated him.
I disagree. Monty was trying to get press for himself and for British troops when it was the US and Canadian troops doing most of the heavy lifting - and getting the majority of the credit.
At this time, the Brits were starting to plan for the post war era and they were actually trying to restore the luster of the battered Empire. There was actually political pressure brought to bear on Ike to let Monty have his head for this reason.
It didn’t work out the way they through it would.
A bit young, are you? No insult, just thought this was common history, what with the movie and all.
Montgomery is an interesting study in competence losing to hubris due to success. He was actually probably the best general the British had from the start of hostilities through the effective ejection of the Axis from Africa. The retrograde action of his 3rd Division back to Dunkirk after advancing to the Dijle and realizing they couldn’t hold their gains (and that they had no support) is a textbook example of the results of proper prior training and planning even when everything else has gone to hell. It was also remarkable in how few casualties they sustained for the damage caused to the advancing German horde and how the division survived almost completely intact all the way back to England - despite seeing serious action. It was clear that he was realistic, cared for his men and had a good grasp of his own limits at this point in time.
He went on to be a solid and methodical commander in Africa and while not spectacular, he did the job well. His guiding principle of not going on the offensive until you had as overwhelming a force as you could muster in a timely fashion is still a solid one today and it served the Allies well in Africa.
Unfortunately at this point, the British press began massively promoting the man’s actions and comparing him to Nelson or Wellington. Even more unfortunately, he began *believing* that he was that good. From this point forward, he was increasingly a glory hound for himself and for his empire, over and above the good of his men and the actual goals of the war. He became increasingly convinced that he could do no wrong and that his plans would always succeed. We’ve already seen how that worked; Market Garden was insanely complex and relied on too many moving parts working and moving at exactly the right time with not enough margin given for, say, enemy action, environmental variables or just plain bad luck. The plan seems to have been to get the Empire (and Monty) the most glory and more important in the short term, more influence in the conduct of the war in the European theatre. Troops paid the price for his and his government’s machinations.
Montgomery in 1940 is just the kind of guy you want covering your arse in a retreat, keeping the enemy off you while husbanding his men and equipment well. Montgomery in Africa is the guy you want running the show to keep your troops alive and to extract maximum gains for minimum loss while not giving an inch.
Montgomery after Africa is someone you increasingly really don’t want to be anywhere near. Or worse, under, with the decay of his effectiveness and increase in arrogance starting in Sicily. Fortunately for everyone else in the Allied forces, Market Garden was rightly the end of *that* particular crapshow of a policy and a general from the British.
See my post 32 above, please.
Montgomery’s hubris began at an early age, mostly fueled by his mother.
Perhaps, but it didn’t cause real problems until after Africa.
Subtitles!
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[vrroooomm]
I don't know why they would want to reenact such a debacle.I studied a little about that. It was another Montgomery disaster - Monty twisting Eisenhower's arm, wanting to get some glory that was going to Patton and the Americans at the time.
Operation Market Garden, the Charge of the Light Brigade - those and others are examples IMO of the history of flawed and aloof British command.
If it weren't for down-to-earth American command and resources, the world as we know it would not exist.
Airplanes, paratroops, commandos, "stiff upper lip," sacrifice for a noble cause, etc... all very stirring. The Brits commemorate differently than we do.
On September 14, 1944 - three days before Operation Market Garden began - my uncle's Co. E, 47th Inf, 9th ID moved out from Eupen, Belgium crossing the Westwall towards their objective of Düren, Germany. As the crow flies, that is around 29 miles, and can be driven today in less than an hour. "Down-to-earth American command and resources" were such that not only didn't the 47th get to take Düren, it wasn't until February 25, 1945 when another outfit did get it to surrender. The Brits had no monopoly of flawed and aloof command, and Montgomery was certainly not alone in producing disasters.
If there has been a commemoration marking the 75th anniversary of what the Germans referred to as the Battles of Aachen, and Americans called the Huertgen Forest, I seem to have missed it. Here in the US, we have remembered Pearl Harbor, D-Day and even the Battle of the Bulge, but the Huertgen Forest is something that was a little too bloody, a little too dirty, took too long and had just an ugly local name rather than some stirring nom de guerre.
Memorials are different than reenactments. I don’t think anyone thinks reenacting Vietnam is a good idea.
I absolutely blame short-sighted, envious Monty, but Ike can share in the blame because as you say he should have known better. As Patton reportedly said, “That’s what happens when you stop fighting for America and start fighting for the Allies.”
Nevertheless, 20-20 hindsight is always so clear. Ike was doing the almost impossible job of holding together a coalition of self-willed nations with their own agendas against the very real threat of Worldwide Nazi Domination. Not easy.
Ironically, I think England had one of the best leaders of the time, Churchill, who emerged as maybe the most clear-thinker of the time, only to be trashed later by a misguided country. He was certainly better than socialist FDR.
Later, Ike bitterly regretted going along with Monty’s constant nagging and I think held Monty in contempt for such arm twisting.
We had Patton. England had Churchill. Their leadership did a lot to beat Hitler.
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