[henkster]

My impression of Monty is that he was not a bad general, but he was a bad person.

[colorado tanker]

My opinion of Monty's generalship is that he was good at the set piece battle, both on offense and defense, where caution is usually a virtue. He was the perfect choice for Eighth Army at that time when Rommel and Afrika Korps were so close to Alexandria. That also made him effective in the war of attrition phase of Normandy. He treated his Rhine crossing as a set piece affair.

But Monty did not seem to have had a good grasp of how to fight a war of maneuver, at which Patton excelled. Monty certainly didn't "dash" up the Arnhem road in the Market Garden fight. He absolutely would have been the wrong commander for the one big push on Berlin plan he and Churchill kept pushing.