HAIG AND MONTGOMERY, A COMPARISON - PART TWO
HAIG AND MONTGOMERY – A COMPARISON, PART TWO
After ten months in Palestine Montgomery was appointed to command 3 Division in the UK, in August 1939, and when war broke out the British Expeditionary Force, commanded by General Lord Gort – ‘when dealing with Montgomery one must remember that he is not quite a gentleman’ – crossed to Europe with Montgomery’s division in 2 Corps commanded by his old Staff College colleague Lieutenant General Alan Brooke. The ‘miracle of Dunkirk’ was nothing of the sort: it was the culmination of a national humiliation, when the British and French were defeated by a better led, better trained and better motivated German army. Montgomery performed as well as any divisional commander could have, although he made a large number of then junior enemies by sacking majors and captains whom he considered not up to the job, and advising the sacking of some not under his command. In some cases he was undoubtedly right, but in others his decisions were based on a perfunctory meeting engendering instant dislike of the victim.
After evacuation to England Montgomery had to be warned to stop circulating exaggerated criticisms of the performance of senior commanders and staff during the Battle of France, and he was thoroughly disloyal to, and intrigued against, his new corps commander, Auchinleck. Why Montgomery conceived such an instant and never rescinded dislike of Auchinleck can only be speculated on. Auchinleck was rightly regarded as one of the few far-thinking British soldiers of the time and many of his ideas on training, defence of the homeland and preparation for subsequent operations coincided with Montgomery’s, as did his views on the Dunkirk disaster and what should be done to recover from it. He had captured Narvik and had manged to extricate the British army from that chaotic, misconceived and badly handled campaign and was regarded as very much the coming man in both Indian and British armies. Contrary to Montgomery’s rather unprepossessing appearance, Auchinleck was the very image of a soldier: tall, slim and good looking. It may simply be that Montgomery’s failure to get into the Indian Army turned him against anyone from that army, he may have envied the respect and affection in which Auchinleck was held, and it may also be yet another manifestation of Montgomery’s antipathy to anyone who might be his equal or even his superior as a commander. Montgomery had shown from his early days as a company commander that he could stomach no competition. The dislike and disobedience continued after Auchinleck was promoted to Southern Command and Montgomery succeeded him in command of VI Corps. Auchinleck appears to have been blissfully unaware of this deliberate undermining – he was just too honest a man himself to conceive of such un-officer-like behaviour – and Montgomery knew that as long as his behaviour did not become too obvious he would have the support of Brooke, who was now GOC Home Forces.
During the retreat from Mons in 1914 Haig’s corps was not in the direct line of the German advance, but he ably supported Smith-Dorrien’s 2 Corps and was placed in command of the First Army at Christmas 1914 when the BEF was became large enough to expand from two corps into two armies. Haig rightly closed down the Battle of Neuve Chappelle in March 1915 when, despite an auspicious beginning by the Indian Corps when they captured and held the village of that name, there was insufficient artillery ammunition to support any farther advance. Haig never criticised his superiors in public or to officers junior to them, and only reluctantly expressed his views on Field Marshal French’s conduct of the Battle of Loos in September/October 1915 when the King specifically demanded his opinion [*]. Once in supreme command he kept to himself his views of politicians with no military experience who nevertheless tried to tell him how to fight the war, and he was always protective of his subordinates. There were occasions when he probably should have intervened, but he had seen how Kitchener had behaved in the Sudan and South Africa, when the great man would bypass divisional and brigade headquarters and give orders direct to battalion and regimental commanders, giving rise to ‘K of K’ being translated not as ‘Kitchener of Khartoum’ but ‘Kitchener of Chaos’. Haig therefore ensured that the chain of command was always followed, so that all levels knew what was happening and what was intended, and he was always reluctant to interfere with a subordinate’s conduct of a plan once he had accepted it.
Although Haig was commanding the largest British army in the nation’s history, this was coalition warfare and the British were nevertheless the junior partner, at least on land. Britain had started the war with four infantry and one cavalry divisions, plus an independent brigade, compared to the French sixty-two infantry and ten cavalry divisions. Even in the last years of the war when the British had sixty-one infantry and three cavalry divisions, the French had over 200. Thus, much of what the BEF did on the Western Front may not make much sense until one looks at the front, or the war, as a whole. Haig never wanted to fight on the Somme, for there was no British interest there, but had to agree in the interests of allied solidarity to a role initially subsidiary to the French, but in which the British became the leading partner once the Germans attacked at Verdun in February 1916 and more and more French divisions were diverted there. While to the British 1 July 1916 is the first day of the Somme, it was also the 121st day of Verdun, by which date the French had already suffered half a million casualties. The Somme offensive had to go on, and the sixty-nine German divisions drawn onto the British front (there were six before the attacks began) were prevented from being diverted to Verdun. The Somme offensive was a British victory, and while argument still rages as to its cost effectiveness, it did push the Germans back seven miles over a ten-mile front and inflicted half a million casualties on them. General Ludendorff said that the German army could not withstand another Somme.
Similarly, the other great offensive over which Haig presided was the Third Battle of Ypres, often known as Passchendaele, although that was only one of the battles in the campaign. Here the area did suit British strategic interests but again had to be persisted with long after Haig would normally have closed it down when the weather broke in early October, because of what was happening in the French army when there had been outbreaks of mass mutiny (described by the French as ‘instances of collective indiscipline’). Until the newly appointed commander in chief, Petain, could restore the French army to its duty, Haig had to keep going in order to keep German efforts concentrated on the BEF. Third Ypres drew in eighty-eight German divisions, more than half their total on the Western Front, and gave them a very bloody nose indeed. 4 October 1917, when the British took Broodseinde Ridge and thus completed the capture of the Gheluvelt Plateau, was described by Ludendorff as ‘the black day of the German army’.
Then, beginning on 8 August 1918 with the Battle of Amiens, it was Haig’s British Empire army – not the French, not the Americans – that led the allied advance which pushed the Germans back and back until faced with defeat on the battlefield and starvation at home, they sued for peace. It was Haig’s victory. Haig who had taken a tiny British army and expanded it, trained it, equipped it and deployed it until it was the only allied army capable of defeating the Germans on the field of battle.
Montgomery’s reputation springs from his command of the Eighth Army in North Africa and of 21 Army Group in Northwest Europe. He first came to public attention after what he always referred to as the Battle of Alamein, deliberately omitting any reference to the first battle of that name, that had stopped the German advance on Egypt – but that was Auchinleck’s battle and Montgomery, having been unnecessarily and disgracefully rude to Auchinleck while taking over from him, was determined to destroy his predecessor’s reputation. He claimed that Auchinleck was about to retreat to the Delta (he wasn’t) and wrote to one of his acolytes in the War Office, a brigadier, saying that Auchinleck must never again be employed in any command appointment whatsoever [†]. He deliberately fostered the impression that all before him was failure and defeat, but now he, Montgomery, had arrived things would change. Montgomery was allowed until the end of October to prepare an advance: Auchinleck had been sacked for not doing so in September.
Montgomery’s Alamein battle was conducted according to Auchinleck and Dorman Smith’s plan, with minor amendments, but even then it was not well executed despite Montgomery having access to Ultra, the deciphering of German and Italian radio traffic. Even with Montgomery having nearly twice as many tanks and anti-tank guns and twice the manpower, Rommel’s Panzer Army Africa was able to withdraw at its own pace, and subsequent attempts by Montgomery along the African coast to cut him off failed. Erwin Rommel, promoted to Field Marshal after his capture of Tobruk in June 1942 was regarded by other senior German officers as a maverick in a subsidiary theatre, described in one report by an inspecting officer from OKW, the German armed forces high command, as being out of control, dashing about at the front and out of communication with his headquarters. He only looked good because the British army was so bad, and it was in Montgomery’s interest for people to think that Rommel was far more competent than he actually was. Only with the Torch landings in November 1943, with the Axis pressed by General Anderson’s Anglo-American First British Army from the west and Montgomery from the East were the Axis pushed back into Tunisia and finally forced to surrender. When Montgomery heard that Kenneth Anderson was to command the Second Army he wrote to Alexander, now commanding the land forces in North Africa under Eisenhower, and Brooke, now the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, or the professional head of the army, saying that Anderson ‘is quite unfit to command an army in the field’. Here again is an example of Montgomery attempting to blacken the reputation of a man who might steal some of his glory. Anderson, although of the British army, had attended the Indian staff college and had commanded an Indian Brigade, an association which tainted him in Montgomery’s eyes. He had succeeded Montgomery as GOC of 3 Division and although four years younger than Montgomery was three months senior to him as a major general and five months senior as a lieutenant general.
As the commander land forces for Operation Overlord, the allied invasion of Northwest Europe in June 1944, Montgomery bagged the credit for the success of the largest amphibious operation ever attempted, despite most of the planning having been done by Lieutenant General Frederick Morgan who had been appointed chief of staff to the supreme allied commander (COSSAC) from March 1943, with Eisenhower eventually being appointed supreme allied commander. Montgomery, on appointment, declared Morgan’s plan ‘completely unacceptable’ – Morgan was tainted by having spent much of his service in India, including being at the Indian staff college at Quetta with Kenneth Anderson. In fact, with the exception of an increased frontage and more troops for the landing (not previously possible due to insufficient numbers of landing craft) the plan was Morgan’s. After Operation Goodwood, where Montgomery’s claims that all had been as he had planned, when it clearly was not, Air Chief Marshal Tedder, Eisenhower’s deputy, recommended that Montgomery be sacked, but the British had created a messiah, and now that he was found to have feet of clay, they could not get rid of him.
Since the days of Edward I the British have fought their wars with an increasingly professional, as opposed to conscript, army. Professional armies are expensive, so they will be small, and so Britain’s generals must be able to work with allies in a coalition; they must understand the use of technology as a force multiplier to compensate for being almost always outnumbered, and as most British wars are fought far from home, they must understand logistics. A commander might have the best troops in the world, excellently trained, superbly led and equipped with the best weapons that money can buy, but if he cannot move them, and feed them, and accommodate them, and resupply them, and tend them when they are wounded, then he can do nothing at all.
Haig spoke good French and developed an excellent relationship with Joffre, Nivelle, Petain and Foch; he got on very well with Pershing, the American commander, and whatever military disagreements he might have had with the French he never let them become personal and he retained their confidence to the end. Many years later, when the anti-Haig diatribe was at its height, Pershing said in his diary ‘how can the British do this to the man who won the war?’. Far from being the technophobic cavalryman of popular imagination, Haig well understood the importance of new ideas and new equipment. Emerging from the staff college he heard of the new machine guns which the British army had acquired, and in his own time made his way to Enfield to get to understand as much as he could about them. As commander of the BEF he put his full weight behind the development of the tank, as soon as heard about the experiments being conducted by the Admiralty land ships commission, and he insisted that anything that would save lives must be at least tried. In India he had learned of the advantages that aircraft could give to a land commander and he advanced the cause of military aviation on the Western Front. He ordered the formation of tunnelling companies and the development of gas warfare, at which the British became the most competent practitioners [‡]. Haig was well aware of the vital place that logistics played in the waging of war, and he was not restricted by regulation or outdated custom in pursuing excellence. Where he considered that a civilian expert could do a job better than a commissioned officer, he brought that civilian in and gave him a military rank. Eric Geddes, the deputy general manager of the North-eastern Railway, and with no military experience, was brought in by Haig to be Director General of Military Railways and Inspector-General of Transportation and given the instant rank of major general. Haig did the same when he wanted someone to manage canals and waterways and stood no nonsense from those who said the post should go to a soldier.
Montgomery made no effort whatsoever to understand the needs of his allies and made no attempt to accommodate them. He did more damage to Anglo American relations than anyone since Benedict Arnold, and both in Sicily and in Northern Europe after Normandy most Americans who came in contact with him went from mild surprise at his behaviour to active dislike. Despite their having more troops and much more hardware in theatre than did the British, Montgomery continued to treat the Americans as inexperienced junior amateurs, when he considered them at all. He was the very antithesis of a coalition partner.
Montgomery pontificated at length about technology and particularly about armoured warfare, despite having no experience of it. When as commander Eighth Army he realised that wearing an Australian bush hat festooned with badges made him look ridiculous, he took to wearing a Royal Tank Regiment black beret with that regiment’s badge on it along with his general officer’s badge. Needless to say he had no right whatsoever to adorn himself with the accoutrements of a regiment not his own, and it caused considerable grumblings amongst those who were entitled, and also amongst those who’s badge he did not wear. In the early phase of Second Alamein Montgomery ordered the commander 10th Armoured Division, Major General Alec Gatehouse, late of the Royal Tank Regiment, and probably the most experienced armoured warfare officer in the army at that time, to send his tanks, without infantry support, through a minefield against a line of German anti-tank guns. When Gatehouse protested, he was ordered to do it or be sacked. The result was entirely predictable and the lead regiment, the Staffordshire Yeomanry, lost forty-one of their fifty-two tanks, and Gatehouse was still sacked, for having said ‘I told you so’. There were many victims of Montgomery’s often totally irrational dislike. Lieutenant General Herbert Lumsden, an old Etonian of independent means, and commander of X Corps, saw no reason to toady to Montgomery, openly voiced his objection to Montgomery’s beret and frequently argued with him when he thought (usually rightly) that Montgomery was wrong. This Montgomery could not stand, and so Lumsden went too.
Montgomery did understand logistics, and he has been criticised for insisting on a complete build-up of troops and equipment before he would move, but in this he was surely right: the British army simply wasn’t up to anything more ambitious than using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, particularly if that nut was German.
It has to wondered how it was that Montgomery managed to get away with his appalling behaviour and complete inability to get on with his allies. Prior to the invasion of Sicily his only comment about the Americans – swiftly reported to them – was ‘keep them out of my way’. He was supported and protected by Brooke, who did tend to look after those whom he had worked with or commanded in the past, and Churchill had eventually realised that he could not go on sacking generals who would not tell him what he wanted to hear. He had an excellent chief of staff in Major General Francis de Guingand, a man with considerable diplomatic skills who had an excellent relationship with Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, and he managed to smooth over many of Montgomery’s lapses [§]. Had Montgomery been an American general he would not have lasted long, but allied solidarity dictated that Eisenhower, no doubt gritting his teeth, tolerated him.
After the First World War Haig could reasonably have expected a major appointment, CIGS, or governor of a dominion – he knew India well and would have made an excellent viceroy, but it was not to be. The prime minister, Lloyd George, had intrigued mercilessly against Haig during the war, and would have sacked him if he could have found anyone capable or willing to replace him, and now was his opportunity to consign Haig to obscurity. Haig spent the rest of his life advancing the cause of ex-servicemen, particularly wounded ex-servicemen, founded the poppy factory in Edinburgh and died of a heart attack in 1928 at the relatively young age of sixty-seven. The queue to pass by his body as it lay in state in St Giles’ cathedral in Edinburgh was several miles long, in the pouring rain, such was the respect in which he was held.
Montgomery became CIGS after the war, and lobbied furiously to prevent Slim, of the Indian army, becoming his successor. Field Marshal Templar, who served as Vice CIGS to both men said that Slim was a good CIGS whereas Montgomery was a disaster. ‘Slim cared about the army’ said Templar ‘Montgomery cared only about himself’. Then, as chairman of the Western European Chiefs of Staff, the forerunner of NATO, Montgomery had blazing and very public rows with the French General de Lattre de Tassigny, and after that as Deputy Supreme Commander of NATO intrigued against the Supreme Commander, the American General Mathew Ridgeway, and disdained the views of anyone else.
Haig never wrote his memoirs, but we do have his diaries [**]. Montgomery published his memoirs: self-serving, vicious, ungracious, gratuitously insulting and deliberately downgrading of the efforts of others. Soldiers asked to read the draft pleaded with him not to publish, but he did, and once again did the reputation of this nation no good, particularly in America, where his erstwhile supreme commander, of whom he was critical, was now the president, and drawing furious protests from the president of Italy and the prime minister of Belgium about Montgomery’s pronouncements about the calibre of their soldiers. Much of what he said about Belgian and Italian soldiers’ performances during the war was true, but for a public figure to voice it so publicly when both countries were now members of NATO was unnecessarily disruptive.
Haig’s reputation began to be tarnished when the politicians were unable to produce the ‘land fit for heroes’ and determined to push the blame away from themselves and onto the generals, exacerbated by the ‘war poets’ – after all ‘butchers and bunglers’ is a more saleable headline that ‘decent men doing their best in a war the nature of which no one had anticipated’. More recently Joan Littlewood’s play, ‘Oh What a Lovely War’ produced at the height of the Cold War and as its scriptwriter admitted long afterwards ‘One part me and six parts Joe Stalin’; and numerous novels and television programmes such as Blackadder all painted, and still paint, the picture of uncaring generals, good only at playing polo, herding decent working class boys to their deaths. Montgomery, along with Churchill, is still thought to be the man who won the war, to the exclusion of far better generals.
It is sad but true that perception is often more influential than the truth, for an honest examination of the facts would surely show that Haig was a far better man, and a far better general, than Montgomery could ever be.
[*] Haig, and indeed French, never wanted to fight at Loos, but had to do so for political reasons (see my Loos 1915: The Unwanted Battle). French insisted on retaining control of the reserves himself, rather than putting them at the disposal of the commander on the spot, Haig, and when he finally released them they were too far back and arrived too late to be effective. French, although a dashing cavalry commander in South Africa, was in any case simply not sufficiently robust to command the main British effort in the most intensive war she had ever fought, before or since, and it was right that he was replaced, although not only because of his dissembling at Loos.
[†] Fortunately for the course of the war Auchinleck was re-employed as Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Army, where his contribution to Slim’s re-conquest of Burma was immeasurable. Post war he divided that army between India and the new nation of Pakistan in as fair and equable a way as could be achieved. He was far too much of a gentleman to reply to Montgomery’s criticisms of him during and after the war, and never wrote his memoirs.
[‡] On the Western Front during the whole of the war the British delivered twice as many gas attacks as did the Germans, despite the British only manning their own sector, whereas the Germans held the whole of the front.
[§] But even he fell foul of Montgomery after the war.
[**] There are several published versions, but the best is that of Gary Sheffield and John Bourne.