Montgomery - Part II

"In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."

We continue our article on British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. Likely the best-known British general of World War II, Montgomery had a hand in several pivotal battles and operations from the Second Battle of El-Alamein through the D-Day landings and the ill-fated Operation Market Garden. A very difficult person to get along with, he had his share of enemies and draws both high praise and scathing condemnation to this day. We will try present an unbiased view of Montgomery, mentioning both his strengths and weaknesses and placing them in a historical context, in the second part of our biography of the "Spartan general." (Read first part here)

Montgomery's thorough training of the 3rd Infantry Division paid off in spades when Germany invaded France and the Low Countries in May 1940. During their arrival to their position in Belgium, strung-out Belgian troops mistook the unit for German paratroopers and opened fire. Montgomery defused the situation by offering to place the division under Belgian command (though he ended up commanding it when the Germans arrived). It was during this time that he developed a habit of always going to bed at 9:30 p.m. after giving an order not to disturb him, a command that was rarely disobeyed. (It's possible that his dependence on habit might have been a sign of autism, a possibility some doctors raised more recently.)

While the division didn't see much action, the mobility it gained from Monty's training allowed it to always be in the right place at the right time during the first clashes and the eventual retreat into France. On one occasion, it quickly filled a gap in the defensive lines by moving, at night, from the right flank of another division to its left without any problems. The unit became the only fully equipped British division after the Dunkirk evacuation. (Read our earlier article)

Monty fulfilled defensive and training duties for the next two years while also developing invasion plans of the Azores and Cape Verde (both belonging to neutral Portugal) and of the neutral Republic of Ireland, plans British high command briefly considered then dropped. As part of his troop training job, he organized Exercise Tiger, a 1942 combined arms exercise that involved 100,000 soldiers and was the largest in British history up to that point. (This is not to be confused with the tragic 1944 Exercise Tiger.) (Read our earlier article)

In July 1942, Rommel's (Read our earlier article) Afrika Korps and Italian forces were stopped at the First Battle of El-Alamein and lost the initiative in North Africa. The British effort was overseen by General Sir Claude Auchinleck, who was both the commander-on-chief of Middle East Command and commander of the Eighth Army. Despite his victory, Churchill had doubts about Auchinleck's ability to command troops in Africa and had him replaced by General Harold Alexander as C-in-C and William Gott as Eight Army commander. Montgomery was slated to replace Alexander at the head of the First Army for the upcoming Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa, but fate intervened.

Gott was flying back from the front to Cairo along a route known to be safe on August 7, 1942. The Germans, who had cracked British radio codes, set an ambush for the plane, shot it down and strafed the wreck, killing everyone who couldn't escape, Gott included. Lieutenant-General Montgomery was quickly sent as his replacement at the head of the Eighth Army.

Monty rapidly revitalized the army. He ordered all retreat plans to be destroyed, declaring "if we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead." He reorganized the army, placing all infantry divisions into one corps and all tanks into another (which worked for him but was later criticized as a poor decision). He spent two months reinforcing the defensive lines at El-Alamein, moved his HQ closer to a Royal Air Force command post to improve cooperation, and made sure that every soldier under his command knew him. He also started to wear his distinctive black tanker's beret at this time.

Rommel attacked the left flank of the Eight Army in late August 1942 but was repulsed after heavy fighting. Montgomery received criticism for not pursuing Rommel while the latter's forces were strung out and in the middle of a large British minefield, thus allowing Axis forces to escape. It should be noted though that Monty began planning a major offensive for October as soon as he arrived in Africa, and he was wary that giving chase early and possibly suffering heavy casualties would have jeopardized that upcoming attack.

That attack began on October 23 with the Second Battle of El-Alamein, one of the first large-scale Allied land victories. Monty's preparations included not just a troop buildup and meticulous planning, but also the heavy use of subterfuge through the use of false troops movements, tanks disguised and trucks, jeeps disguised as tanks and an obviously fake artillery position revealed to the Germans than switch for a real one. The planning paid off and, while Montgomery was once again criticized for not pursuing with enough haste, the battle began the inexorable push which forced the Axis out of Africa by May 1943.

It was one month before that victory that Monty's difficult personality came to the forefront again. He made a bet with Eisenhower's chief of staff Walter Bedell Smith that he could capture a certain city by a certain date. Everyone understood the bet to be a joke, but when Montgomery did capture the city, he started earnestly demanding the agreed-upon prize of a B-17 Flying Fortress. (Read our earlier article) The incident caused a lot of ill feelings and was settled by Eisenhower (Read our earlier article) who made sure Monty got his bomber.

Montgomery commanded British forces during the invasion of Sicily, where further friction arose between him, General George S. Patton (Read our earlier article) and General Omar Bradley, in no small part over what many people consider a sort of "race" between Montgomery and Patton to hog the glory of capturing Messina. (Read our earlier article)

Montgomery's Eighth Army participated in the invasion of Italy in early September 1943, becoming the first Allied force to land in mainland Western Europe. British forces landed in the southern half of the peninsula, from where they had a long slog up north, slowed down by a terrible road network, demolished bridges and fierce German resistance in the north. Once more, Monty was criticized for being slow; he himself considered the entire campaign "a dog's breakfast" due to a lack of coordination, a dispersal of effort instead of concentrating Allied forces, and a lack of opportunistic attacks. One example of the difficulties the Allies faced was the siege of the mountaintop abbey of Monte Cassino (Rear our earlier article), which stopped British and American forces for four months and could only be taken through the complete destruction of the edifice.

Montgomery returned to Britain in January 1944 and was given command of the 21st Army Group, consisting of all the ground forces to participate in Operation Overlord. Both Churchill and Eisenhower would have preferred the position to go to General Sir Harold Alexander, who was far easier to work with, but Montgomery's old superior and patron, General Sir Alan Brooke, convinced them the Monty was a better commander. Montgomery came up with the basic idea on how the landings should be executed, and jotted down the fundamentals on a single piece of paper with the note “The key note to everything to be SIMPLICITY.” He also argued for landing on five different beaches rather than the originally planned three, to allow for more men and equipment to go on shore at the same time, a decision history proved correct.

Montgomery's command in Normandy, and the controversy about it, revolved around the city of Caen. Located near the east end of the Allied front after the landings, it was a German stronghold that served as an anchor for the battle lines, with Germany's best armor divisions stationed there. Montgomery ordered numerous operations and advances by British and Canadian forces to surround or enter the city, and every small gain extracted a high price in blood. By late July, however, German forces were depleted to the point that they could only hold Caen by leaving the west end of the front weakly attended, allowing U.S. forces to break through during Operation Cobra. (Read our earlier article)

Montgomery's decisions came under heavy scrutiny, and his motives are still hotly debated to this day. Some historians, like Monty himself, claim that executing a "holding operation" around Caen to pin German forces there and force them to weaken the western part of the front had always been the plan, and it worked perfectly. An opposing school maintains that Montgomery originally hoped to capture Caen early, move to the south of it, and perform a breakout with British and Canadian units in the east. Some letters written by Eisenhower at the time reveal that, according to Eisenhower's understanding, this was the plan, and that western breakout with Operation Cobra was a later development in response to the unbreakable defenses in the city. We would like to add that if that was the case, then Montgomery's decision to change an unworkable plan (which was originally made without knowing how the Germans would respond to the landings) and adapt to the situation was a sign of good, rather than poor generalship.

Another theory is that Montgomery was "hedging his bets": he knew that the chances of capturing Caen were dubious, and had one plan for exploiting a breakthrough there, but also another to allow the Americans to break out if the first one didn't work. Yet another suggestion is that he always wanted a western breakout but had to lie to his soldiers about the plan, as ordering expensive and bloody large-scale operations only to let U.S. forces "hog" the glory would have been hard to sell to British high command.

Whatever the truth was, Montgomery faced heavy criticism for the course of events, and was almost sacked. Interestingly, his most vocal detractor was not an American officer, but British Air Marshal Arthur Tedder. On July 20 and 21, Montgomery met Eisenhower and Churchill, respectively, to explain his plans. It was common knowledge among Monty's staff that Churchill was visiting to remove him from command. No records were made of the meetings, but Montgomery managed to convince his superiors not to sack him.

On a sidenote, Montgomery had ancestral ties to Normandy. Some of his ancestors served in the army of William the Conqueror, who ruled Normandy in the 11th century and invaded England in 1066. The Normandy settlements of Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery and Saint-Germain-de-Montgommery pay tribute to these ancestors, while Colleville-Montgomery, named Colleville-sur-Orne until 1946, is named in honor of Bernard Law Montgomery. The latter even got a new coat of arms which includes a landing craft and Montgomery’s portrait.

Eisenhower took over Ground Forces Command in September 1944; Montgomery retained command of the 21st Army Group, but it mainly comprised British and Canadian units from that point onward. Montgomery took to the change badly, but was promoted to field marshal to sweeten the bitter pill. The political reality was that three-quarters of the Allied troops in Western Europe were Americans at this point, and the American public would not have tolerated their soldiers fighting under British command.

Montgomery's leadership during the fall of 1944 revolved around two major operations. One of these was Market Garden, an attempt to cut through German-occupied Netherlands and enter Germany at its northwest corner, going around the Siegfried Line. The operation famously failed, and you can read more about it in our article here. Montgomery's overly ambitious plan and carelessness is often cited as the primary cause of failure, but we should remember that many of the things that went wrong occurred at lower levels of command and Monty had no direct influence on them. Transport Command insisting on terrible drop zones near Arnhem, mistuned radios preventing communication, or General Gavin's (Read our earlier article) tardiness in capturing the Nijmegen bridge were all outside Montgomery's control. He's often criticized for ignoring reports of German tanks in the area, but the criticism isn't entirely fair: he knew there were tanks and believed that most of them were inoperable – a reasonable assumption, since the tank units were actually in the Netherlands for refit and repair. No operation is ever a guaranteed success – like every general all the time, Montgomery took a calculated risk and lost. It should be noted that he was also under great political pressure to use British paratroopers in a large-scale operation to make up for the fact that they "missed out" on D-Day, and liberating the Netherlands quickly was also important because it was used as a launch site of V-1 flying bombs (Read our earlier article) and V-2 rockets against England.

Overall, it might be fair to say that the other major operation overseen by Montgomery in the fall should reflect on him more poorly than Market Garden. Cherbourg (Read our earlier article) and the one remaining Mulberry harbor in Normandy were hard-pressed to satisfy the enormous logistical requirements of the Western European campaign, and more sea harbors, located closer to the front, were desperately needed. The port of Antwerp in Belgium was captured by Belgian resistance forces before the facilities could be demolished by the Germans, and the city itself was liberated by British forces in early September. Antwerp, however, is not located by the sea, but on the river Scheldt, which had been mined by the Germans. Sending transport ships up the river required clearing the mines first, but the Royal Navy was unable to do that as the mouth of the river was still held by German forces. Montgomery was aware of the need for more ports, but the Canadian forces sent to secure the river mouth were insufficient for the task, and Monty adamantly refused to send the necessary supplies and reinforcements, as he wanted to use those for Market Garden. It took forceful lobbying by the naval commander of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces and a chastisement by Eisenhower to get Montgomery release the necessary forces and supplies after the failure in the Netherlands.

Montgomery became the focus of controversy for the last time during the Battle of the Bulge. The German surprise offensive split Allied forces in two, and the U.S. Ninth Army and most of the U.S. First Army were stuck on the northern side of the salient, away from other American units. Bradley, who would have normally commanded the army group the armies belonged to, was in Luxembourg and unable to take effective control. Montgomery was the nearest army group commander on the ground, and Eisenhower gave him temporary command of the two armies. During the following week, Monty consolidated the northern side of the bulge, placed some British units under American control, and methodically built up his forces for a counterattack, very much the way he did in North Africa. This displeased Eisenhower, who wanted him to act quicker and launch smaller piecemeal attacks sooner, but Montgomery refused to deviate from his modus operandi. This, along with the fact that he was commanding American units, brewed even more resentment in U.S. circles. The situation was made worse after the battle, when Montgomery held a press conference; his words there were widely interpreted as an attempt to claim victory for the entire battle.

Monty returned home from the war as a national hero and held several prestigious positions: commander-on-chief of the British occupation forces in Germany, chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the first deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe in NATO (under Eisenhower). He retired in 1958 and passed away in 1976. He is buried in a village cemetery in East Hampshire, not far from where he lived out his later years.

So, looking past his insufferable personality, just how good a general was Montgomery? His name is certainly attached to some unambiguously poor decision (not detailing enough forces to clear the Scheldt estuary), and he often receives criticism for Market Garden, even though it would be unfair to place the entire burden of the failure on his shoulders. (For one, Eisenhower signed off on the plan - if all the blame falls on the top man, then what about the top man's boss?)

One thought that keeps coming up is Monty’s slowness in executing plans, and his refusal to take the moment’s opportunity. This criticism, however, ignores the fact that Montgomery had to work under one constraint that didn’t affect American commanders: tremendous political pressure. The final days of the British Empire were already around, and political leadership knew that Britain’s military performance in the war would greatly determine the country’s influence and standing among nations in the coming new world order. Top British commanders were under pressure to achieve some spectacular victories to cement the country’s reputation as a great military power even without its empire.

Great Britain, however, had neither the industrial capacity nor the manpower to match the United States or the Soviet Union in the scope of their battles, and Montgomery had to try and achieve great victories without the tools for such. This goes a long way to explain his oft-criticized cautiousness: sacrificing time to preserve men and supplies. For all his faults and all his insufferable personality, Monty did achieve something very difficult: he provided Britain with the victories it needed without running out of men.

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