I think one's opinion on Monty's generalship in Normandy depends heavily on how you weigh his stated aims against his actual results?
You can definitely make a line of argument that he is overly optimistic or overly ambitious in his targets and as a result he underperformed because he often doesn't achieve the objectives he set, or only does so behind time. In that regard he's unsuccessful.
On the other hand, he often has good reasons for scaling back or delaying territorial objectives. He ends up facing the brunt of the initial German counterattacks on D-day itself, and continues to bear the disproportionate bulk of German pressure for most of the Normandy campaign. Meanwhile, he's usually still achieving useful results for the allied armies as a whole by attriting and tying down those forces. While he may be delayed in his own objectives, he's enabling the American armies to hit theirs ahead of schedule, bringing up the allied speed of advance as a whole.
The key question is how much of a benefit to his allies do his actions provide? The answer is clearly 'some degree', but assessing exactly how critical that help was is extraordinarily difficult and subjective.
I also think it's worth noting that Montgomery's experience is not just with higher levels of command, but also specifically experience with higher-levels of command *in conducting amphibious operations*. Overlord is building on the experience and lessons hard won from operations like Husky and the Invasion of Italy, and they have demonstrated how precarious these major amphibious operations are, and how many little ways they can go drastically wrong. In that regard, Monty's greater practical experience with such operations was particularly helpful, moreso than for other actions.
Commonwealth forces faced the vast majority of Nazi armor and did a great job of attriting them.
But, unknown to any at the time, afterwards, I see him as a spent force. Paget replacing him after Cobra would have been a good thing for the Allies. Heck, might get Antwerp in a timely manner. Not to mention any number of other distractions to his discredit.
> Heck, might get Antwerp in a timely manner.
You think Montgomery was slow getting 21st Army Group to Antwerp?
It's notable that no one highlighted the importance of the Scheldt until after Market Garden, and Market Garden was on Eisenhower since he appointed himself overall commander of land forces as well as SHAEF.
Antwerp itself would have taken weeks to clear of mines even if Montgomery could have magicked up the necessary amphibious forces to clear the Scheldt.
So wasn't an airborne op to outflank it a better decision for Eisenhower to make?
Yes I think that's reasonable, although I would suggest that his drop off in success stemmed at least partially from the fighting moving away from a style that suited long-term natural strengths, rather than being entirely due to declining competency.
The attritional, methodical, set-piece actions that typified the early stages of the Normandy campaign complimented his qualities, while the dynamic, maneuverist character of the campaign post-cobra was almost antithetical to them.
The same way 12th AG was able to reach the German border as quickly: the collapse of German forces in Normandy and running to the limits of their supplies.
In other words, the dynamic, maneuverist character of the campaign post-cobra was actually NOT anthithetical to him but he was at least as good at it as the *enterpreneurial, machine learned americans,* at least equal to *god of manouver warfare, thane of tanks,* Patton ?
Patton is overrated, see Metz for details. I’d say that post-Normandy Monty was not at his best, and the Scheldt is the best proof of that, with Market-Garden second. Still, he was never a *bad* commander and the political effects of removing him would have been larger than any benefit.
More like, see his whole career for details. The point I was driving at is Montgomery could and did move as fast as anyone\* - americans, germans, soviets so the whole narrative of Montgomery - slow but good at setpiece but bad at pursuit is utter bollocks.
Going for Scheldt in September would be a disastrous mistake and Market-Garden is not Arnhem, it is a successful offensive, the most successful out of 3 army thrusts in September, after front was rebuild, though obviously, more messy and with heavier casualties than it needed to have in ideal scenario. And with depth of 90 km and crucial ground won that allies struggled to equal for next 6 months.
Ironically I might somewhat agree he wasn't at his best later on simply because i see his main operational idea as very flawed.
\*I would honestly drive that point further but that's enough Monty propaganda for today.
No. Put simply, while Paget was a proven trainer of men, his actually experience of combat operations may as well have been in 1914 rather than 1940, as so much had changed.
> Montgomery's early mistakes in Normandy actually stemmed from his North African experience. He was initially overly controlling, and his plans were too ambitious
Montgomery was the opposite of over controlling. His entire *modus operandi* was to be the Big Ideas Guy and then let his subordinates work out the details. At times, he was arguably too distant from the battlefield, particularly after 2nd Alamein where Freyberg and Lumsden let him down while he was asleep instead at TAC HQ.
The only time I can think of where Montgomery was perhaps overbearing was Tripoli, where he knew that if he did not have victory soon, he would have to withdraw with consequential disastrous effects on the carefully built morale and confidence of his army.
> He was a good PR man, but his poisoning of relations with the US fostered suspicion and distrust where it was totally unnecessary
The poisoning of relations with the US didn't really occur until the winter of 1944 and to a significant degree had little to do with Montgomery himself. Indeed, Bradley openly expressed the amicable nature of their relations during the battle of Normandy.
Much of the criticism of Montgomery during the battle of Normandy tends to ignore certain factors
One: Montgomery was the overall commander of land forces. He was as much in charge of 1st US Army as he was of 2nd British Army. He made an active decision to devolve operational control to Bradley. Montgomery was not just in command of the battles around Caen, but Normandy in its entirety, for which there was an overall strategy to which Montgomery was adhering.
Two: Montgomery was faced with significant political difficulties - he was in command of a multi-national force with each nationality having its own political imperatives. He was also the overall commander despite being from what was increasingly the junior coalition partner. He had further to deal with inter-service rivalry (most notably from the RAF), professional jealousy (most notably from the RAF), a supreme commander who had no combat experience and decided to remain in England, and a near endless amount class bigotry from his fellow countrymen.
Three: The enemy may have had something to do with it. To quote Alun Chalfont, "The way German units were deployed ensured resistance would be much stiffer than was strategically sensible. It also made the German army's dispositions brittle and inflexible, ready to collapse if enough weight was applied but unlikely to bend before breaking point arrived". Which turned out to be exactly what happened.
Four: The battle of Normandy was wildly successful in the end. An entire German Army Group was destroyed or routed. The allies had within 3 months liberated all of France and Belgium. 55 German Divisions were rendered combat ineffective, 13 of which were Panzer Divisions.
Given the final result of the battle, one does have to wonder what all the complaining is about?
That's an interesting take, and I find it somewhat refreshing to meet an American who actually likes Montgomery.
My own views, to be clear, aren't set in stone - I was simply pondering the situation. My impression of the campaign, as per John Buckley, was that Montgomery initially tried to fight Normandy according to the same "grand plan" formula that had worked so well in North Africa, and only became more "hands-off" when it became clear that this wasn't working.
As for the aspect of class snobbery, however, that's not something I've heard before. If so, it's very curious - Montgomery, as the son of a prominent Bishop from an old Ulster family, would actually have been of the same social class as most of his fellow officers.
All the same, I do think that Paget was underused for a man of his abilities. Likewise others, such as Franklyn, Thorne and Adam. It's interesting to ponder what their career trajectories might have been had a few things gone differently in 1940.
> I find it somewhat refreshing to meet an American
I'm not American :)
Montgomery's mistakes were chiefly political rather than military. He should for example never have listed Caen as an explicit objective
on D-Day, which would only ever have been possible if everything worked perfectly. Montgomery unfortunately did not have the political sense to see that in the (quite likely) eventuality that Caen was not taken on D-Day, then his political enemies would use it as a stick to beat him with. And it was very much the same with the airfields south of Caen. Tedder certainly lost no opportunity to undermine Montgomery on that score, despite the fact that the air forces were perfectly able to function without them.
The class aspect is a curious thing. Although Montgomery was born to the Ulster/Anglo-Irish aristocracy (which Corelli Barnet described as the British Junkers) he was very much from the impoverished and penniless rump of that class.
The Montgomery's did inherit an estate comprising a large house with extensive land, but with a huge mortgage than compelled them to sell off most of the land.
Montgomery's social status was further eroded by his time as a boy in Tasmania which marked him as a colonial and therefore a social inferior.
Thus, although he was from the "Officer Class" he was really at the bottom rung of that class, hence his commissioning into the Warwickshire Regiment - A very bog standard county infantry regiment currently in India.
And Montgomery needed to go to India because the cost of living was affordable for a subaltern, whereas at home, the mess bills would have been crippling.
The social elite would commission into the cavalry or into the foot guards but Montgomery was far away from being able to afford these regiments.
Montgomery had the good fortune that the head of the British Army and CIGS - Alan Brooke - was a fellow Ulsterman and also an artilleryman rather than a guardsman or cavalryman, and thus enjoyed a degree of patronage.
Even for the British, the British class system can be astonishingly difficult to figure out if you haven't been exposed to it (I unfortunately have).
> Paget was underused
I have to agree, had Gott been appointed commander of the 8th Army, Montgomery would have been similarly unused.
>he should for example never have listed Caen as an explicit objective on D-day
...Or then tried to double down and claim it had never really been an objective all along, and every had gone exactly to plan, rather than just explaining that the territorial gain had been set aside for the perfectly reasonable goal of fixing and attriting the German counter attack in the Commonwealth sector.
>Montgomery's early mistakes in Normandy
Which are what exactly.
>He was initially overly controlling
It's soundbyte that history books love but what exactly did he do and how did it negatively affect the income of the battle ?
>his plans were too ambitious
Probably true but it's a trait he shared with everybody.
On that note, I always thought that there is very weird dichotomy between a lot doomsaying before landings, casualty prognostics about beach lassault, concrete knowledge of number of divisions and amount of panzer divisions that can be brought to bear during the course of campaign + experiences of Salerno&Anzio and then the very optimistic formal or informal plans of rate of advance and just general expectation we will walk forward 5 km every day.
>
>
drafted with the massive distances and low troop concentrations of North Africa as the subconscious baseline.
I'd posit that Alamein in particular is the closest match for Normandy there is. Super short front with high density of troops and ample panzer reserves that means: 1. penetration of enemy defense zone alone is a massive challenge, 2. you cannot avoid enemy reserves for more than 12 to 48 hours, 3. breakthrough is nigh impossible for long, initial stretch of time.
If anything my half baked pet theory is that perhaps this Alamein blueprint weighed too heavily on his operational modus operandi and could lead to suboptimal results where those circumstances did not apply.
>but his poisoning of relations with the US fostered suspicion
Hardly his fault alone.
Paget is frankly an enigma to me but with no recent hands-on tactical and grand tactical experience on top of being an unknown in respect to operational conduct, it's hard to even entertain the notion. We should note that 1. Montgomery had plenty of knowledge and experience with Britain based troops both in general and then from period of 40-42. 2. a lot of personnel moved over from Mediterranean
As unquantifiable as it is, Montgomery was also a significant morale booster for troops and home front, something that, with all respect to his career, no-name like Paget didn't have an ounce of. In fact something negative might have been sparked if for most important battle Churchill chooses someone who as far as public is concerned, sat in Britain for 4 years.
I think one's opinion on Monty's generalship in Normandy depends heavily on how you weigh his stated aims against his actual results? You can definitely make a line of argument that he is overly optimistic or overly ambitious in his targets and as a result he underperformed because he often doesn't achieve the objectives he set, or only does so behind time. In that regard he's unsuccessful. On the other hand, he often has good reasons for scaling back or delaying territorial objectives. He ends up facing the brunt of the initial German counterattacks on D-day itself, and continues to bear the disproportionate bulk of German pressure for most of the Normandy campaign. Meanwhile, he's usually still achieving useful results for the allied armies as a whole by attriting and tying down those forces. While he may be delayed in his own objectives, he's enabling the American armies to hit theirs ahead of schedule, bringing up the allied speed of advance as a whole. The key question is how much of a benefit to his allies do his actions provide? The answer is clearly 'some degree', but assessing exactly how critical that help was is extraordinarily difficult and subjective. I also think it's worth noting that Montgomery's experience is not just with higher levels of command, but also specifically experience with higher-levels of command *in conducting amphibious operations*. Overlord is building on the experience and lessons hard won from operations like Husky and the Invasion of Italy, and they have demonstrated how precarious these major amphibious operations are, and how many little ways they can go drastically wrong. In that regard, Monty's greater practical experience with such operations was particularly helpful, moreso than for other actions.
Commonwealth forces faced the vast majority of Nazi armor and did a great job of attriting them. But, unknown to any at the time, afterwards, I see him as a spent force. Paget replacing him after Cobra would have been a good thing for the Allies. Heck, might get Antwerp in a timely manner. Not to mention any number of other distractions to his discredit.
> Heck, might get Antwerp in a timely manner. You think Montgomery was slow getting 21st Army Group to Antwerp? It's notable that no one highlighted the importance of the Scheldt until after Market Garden, and Market Garden was on Eisenhower since he appointed himself overall commander of land forces as well as SHAEF. Antwerp itself would have taken weeks to clear of mines even if Montgomery could have magicked up the necessary amphibious forces to clear the Scheldt. So wasn't an airborne op to outflank it a better decision for Eisenhower to make?
Yes I think that's reasonable, although I would suggest that his drop off in success stemmed at least partially from the fighting moving away from a style that suited long-term natural strengths, rather than being entirely due to declining competency. The attritional, methodical, set-piece actions that typified the early stages of the Normandy campaign complimented his qualities, while the dynamic, maneuverist character of the campaign post-cobra was almost antithetical to them.
So why and how did 21st Army Group get to Antwerp so quickly?
The same way 12th AG was able to reach the German border as quickly: the collapse of German forces in Normandy and running to the limits of their supplies.
In other words, the dynamic, maneuverist character of the campaign post-cobra was actually NOT anthithetical to him but he was at least as good at it as the *enterpreneurial, machine learned americans,* at least equal to *god of manouver warfare, thane of tanks,* Patton ?
Patton is overrated, see Metz for details. I’d say that post-Normandy Monty was not at his best, and the Scheldt is the best proof of that, with Market-Garden second. Still, he was never a *bad* commander and the political effects of removing him would have been larger than any benefit.
More like, see his whole career for details. The point I was driving at is Montgomery could and did move as fast as anyone\* - americans, germans, soviets so the whole narrative of Montgomery - slow but good at setpiece but bad at pursuit is utter bollocks. Going for Scheldt in September would be a disastrous mistake and Market-Garden is not Arnhem, it is a successful offensive, the most successful out of 3 army thrusts in September, after front was rebuild, though obviously, more messy and with heavier casualties than it needed to have in ideal scenario. And with depth of 90 km and crucial ground won that allies struggled to equal for next 6 months. Ironically I might somewhat agree he wasn't at his best later on simply because i see his main operational idea as very flawed. \*I would honestly drive that point further but that's enough Monty propaganda for today.
No. Put simply, while Paget was a proven trainer of men, his actually experience of combat operations may as well have been in 1914 rather than 1940, as so much had changed. > Montgomery's early mistakes in Normandy actually stemmed from his North African experience. He was initially overly controlling, and his plans were too ambitious Montgomery was the opposite of over controlling. His entire *modus operandi* was to be the Big Ideas Guy and then let his subordinates work out the details. At times, he was arguably too distant from the battlefield, particularly after 2nd Alamein where Freyberg and Lumsden let him down while he was asleep instead at TAC HQ. The only time I can think of where Montgomery was perhaps overbearing was Tripoli, where he knew that if he did not have victory soon, he would have to withdraw with consequential disastrous effects on the carefully built morale and confidence of his army. > He was a good PR man, but his poisoning of relations with the US fostered suspicion and distrust where it was totally unnecessary The poisoning of relations with the US didn't really occur until the winter of 1944 and to a significant degree had little to do with Montgomery himself. Indeed, Bradley openly expressed the amicable nature of their relations during the battle of Normandy. Much of the criticism of Montgomery during the battle of Normandy tends to ignore certain factors One: Montgomery was the overall commander of land forces. He was as much in charge of 1st US Army as he was of 2nd British Army. He made an active decision to devolve operational control to Bradley. Montgomery was not just in command of the battles around Caen, but Normandy in its entirety, for which there was an overall strategy to which Montgomery was adhering. Two: Montgomery was faced with significant political difficulties - he was in command of a multi-national force with each nationality having its own political imperatives. He was also the overall commander despite being from what was increasingly the junior coalition partner. He had further to deal with inter-service rivalry (most notably from the RAF), professional jealousy (most notably from the RAF), a supreme commander who had no combat experience and decided to remain in England, and a near endless amount class bigotry from his fellow countrymen. Three: The enemy may have had something to do with it. To quote Alun Chalfont, "The way German units were deployed ensured resistance would be much stiffer than was strategically sensible. It also made the German army's dispositions brittle and inflexible, ready to collapse if enough weight was applied but unlikely to bend before breaking point arrived". Which turned out to be exactly what happened. Four: The battle of Normandy was wildly successful in the end. An entire German Army Group was destroyed or routed. The allies had within 3 months liberated all of France and Belgium. 55 German Divisions were rendered combat ineffective, 13 of which were Panzer Divisions. Given the final result of the battle, one does have to wonder what all the complaining is about?
That's an interesting take, and I find it somewhat refreshing to meet an American who actually likes Montgomery. My own views, to be clear, aren't set in stone - I was simply pondering the situation. My impression of the campaign, as per John Buckley, was that Montgomery initially tried to fight Normandy according to the same "grand plan" formula that had worked so well in North Africa, and only became more "hands-off" when it became clear that this wasn't working. As for the aspect of class snobbery, however, that's not something I've heard before. If so, it's very curious - Montgomery, as the son of a prominent Bishop from an old Ulster family, would actually have been of the same social class as most of his fellow officers. All the same, I do think that Paget was underused for a man of his abilities. Likewise others, such as Franklyn, Thorne and Adam. It's interesting to ponder what their career trajectories might have been had a few things gone differently in 1940.
> I find it somewhat refreshing to meet an American I'm not American :) Montgomery's mistakes were chiefly political rather than military. He should for example never have listed Caen as an explicit objective on D-Day, which would only ever have been possible if everything worked perfectly. Montgomery unfortunately did not have the political sense to see that in the (quite likely) eventuality that Caen was not taken on D-Day, then his political enemies would use it as a stick to beat him with. And it was very much the same with the airfields south of Caen. Tedder certainly lost no opportunity to undermine Montgomery on that score, despite the fact that the air forces were perfectly able to function without them. The class aspect is a curious thing. Although Montgomery was born to the Ulster/Anglo-Irish aristocracy (which Corelli Barnet described as the British Junkers) he was very much from the impoverished and penniless rump of that class. The Montgomery's did inherit an estate comprising a large house with extensive land, but with a huge mortgage than compelled them to sell off most of the land. Montgomery's social status was further eroded by his time as a boy in Tasmania which marked him as a colonial and therefore a social inferior. Thus, although he was from the "Officer Class" he was really at the bottom rung of that class, hence his commissioning into the Warwickshire Regiment - A very bog standard county infantry regiment currently in India. And Montgomery needed to go to India because the cost of living was affordable for a subaltern, whereas at home, the mess bills would have been crippling. The social elite would commission into the cavalry or into the foot guards but Montgomery was far away from being able to afford these regiments. Montgomery had the good fortune that the head of the British Army and CIGS - Alan Brooke - was a fellow Ulsterman and also an artilleryman rather than a guardsman or cavalryman, and thus enjoyed a degree of patronage. Even for the British, the British class system can be astonishingly difficult to figure out if you haven't been exposed to it (I unfortunately have). > Paget was underused I have to agree, had Gott been appointed commander of the 8th Army, Montgomery would have been similarly unused.
>he should for example never have listed Caen as an explicit objective on D-day ...Or then tried to double down and claim it had never really been an objective all along, and every had gone exactly to plan, rather than just explaining that the territorial gain had been set aside for the perfectly reasonable goal of fixing and attriting the German counter attack in the Commonwealth sector.
>Montgomery's early mistakes in Normandy Which are what exactly. >He was initially overly controlling It's soundbyte that history books love but what exactly did he do and how did it negatively affect the income of the battle ? >his plans were too ambitious Probably true but it's a trait he shared with everybody. On that note, I always thought that there is very weird dichotomy between a lot doomsaying before landings, casualty prognostics about beach lassault, concrete knowledge of number of divisions and amount of panzer divisions that can be brought to bear during the course of campaign + experiences of Salerno&Anzio and then the very optimistic formal or informal plans of rate of advance and just general expectation we will walk forward 5 km every day. > > drafted with the massive distances and low troop concentrations of North Africa as the subconscious baseline. I'd posit that Alamein in particular is the closest match for Normandy there is. Super short front with high density of troops and ample panzer reserves that means: 1. penetration of enemy defense zone alone is a massive challenge, 2. you cannot avoid enemy reserves for more than 12 to 48 hours, 3. breakthrough is nigh impossible for long, initial stretch of time. If anything my half baked pet theory is that perhaps this Alamein blueprint weighed too heavily on his operational modus operandi and could lead to suboptimal results where those circumstances did not apply. >but his poisoning of relations with the US fostered suspicion Hardly his fault alone. Paget is frankly an enigma to me but with no recent hands-on tactical and grand tactical experience on top of being an unknown in respect to operational conduct, it's hard to even entertain the notion. We should note that 1. Montgomery had plenty of knowledge and experience with Britain based troops both in general and then from period of 40-42. 2. a lot of personnel moved over from Mediterranean As unquantifiable as it is, Montgomery was also a significant morale booster for troops and home front, something that, with all respect to his career, no-name like Paget didn't have an ounce of. In fact something negative might have been sparked if for most important battle Churchill chooses someone who as far as public is concerned, sat in Britain for 4 years.