MONTGOMERY – A GREAT COMMANDER?
Even Montgomery’s severest critics would acknowledge his ability to reduce highly complex matters to a form intelligible to everybody, his mastery of logistics, his abilities as a teacher and a trainer at all levels, his singlemindedness and his unshakeable belief in final victory. Similarly his admirers would not deny that he was vain, boastful, socially inept and not someone to whom people automatically warmed. In analysing Montgomery it is difficult to separate his personal character from his ability as a commander, for while nice chaps don’t necessarily win wars, warfare is a team effort and the commander has to be able to carry his subordinates along with him. That Montgomery did carry his subordinates with him cannot be denied, for he was ruthless in getting rid of those whom he could not, and in every posting from corps commander upwards he endeavoured to take with him those with whom he had worked and whom he knew would support his policies.
His claim that all his battles went as he had intended is of course nonsense. As no plans, or very few, survive the first contact with the enemy there is no harm in retaining the flexibility to alter them in accordance with the situation as it is met, and Second Alamein certainly did not go according to plan – a perfectly good plan but at first flawed in its execution – nor did Operation Husky, the Sicily landings, although both these were eventual successes in that in the former case the German Italian forces were forced to withdraw, although in good order, and Sicily was captured. The question is, could they have succeeded is less time and with less casualties, and the probable answer has to be yes. The Normandy landings were a model of how an amphibious operation ought to be, but this was far more to do with General Sir Frederick Morgan, chief planner, and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, commanding the naval elements, than with Montgomery, and his attempts to cover up his over ambitious aims of Operation Goodwood in July 1944 would have led to the removal of a less well-known general.
There is nothing wrong with using the efforts of others, but common decency would say that such use should be acknowledged. It was First Alamein that stopped the Axis advance on the Suez Canal, and that was Auchinleck’s battle, and Second Alamein was Auchinleck’s plan, neither ever acknowledged by Montgomery. While demanding absolute loyalty from his own subordinates Montgomery rarely exhibited it to his superiors. His totally irrational dislike of his corps commander after Dunkirk, Auchinleck, of the Indian Army, whom he did not know and had never previously served with, made him deliberately set out to circumvent all the latter’s anti invasion plans, and this open defiance could have had very serious consequences if an invasion ever did happen. Montgomery as an officer cadet had failed to be accepted for the Indian Army, and Auchinleck was everything Montgomery was not – impressive in personality, of commanding appearance and socially adept. Montgomery’s taking over of command of the Eighth Army was ill mannered in the extreme, and his claim later that Auchinleck’s only plans were for a retreat was a blatant lie. Similarly in North West Europe he argued with and slighted Eisenhower and when things did go demonstrably wrong, such as the ill-fated Arnhem adventure, he was swift to divert the blame onto others.
There can be little doubt that Montgomery’s personality was stunted, partly perhaps by an unhappy childhood, but many people have had unhappy childhoods and have got over it. Montgomery’s boasting, his posturing, his refusal to give credit to anyone else, his favouritisms, his denigration of anyone who might attract some of the glory that he coveted for himself make Montgomery a deeply unattractive person, but those unpleasant characteristics do not necessarily disavow military competence. In his strategy and tactics he was unimaginative and ponderous, but in fairness to him the British army of the time simply did not have the flexibility and speed of reaction of its German opponents. Again, Montgomery’s increasing megalomania, his insufferable assumption of infallibility reinforced by his ascetic, almost monastic, lifestyle did not endear him to many, but these too would not necessarily rule him out as a great commander.
What does, however, mitigate against the epithet of ‘great’ is Montgomery’s constant disparaging of perfectly good officers and their enforced rustication, either by himself or by surrogacy: Corbett because he was of the Indian army; Lumsden for disapproving of Montgomery’s wearing of a ridiculous garb and refusal to kneel at the master’s feet; Anderson because in the Torch Landings he might have diverted glory away from Montgomery, and Dorman-Smith because when a student at the Staff College under Montgomery’s tutelage he had, on the day the course ended, ostentatiously burned all of the notes and precis issued by Montgomery on the lawn of the main building. There were many others high and low. Some may well have been incompetent, but many were not and their removal was a loss to the army at a time when there was not exactly a surfeit of talent. His intriguing against Slim, had he succeeded, (which thanks to Prime Minister Attlee he did not), would have deprived the army and the country of one of its greatest leaders at a critical time in the nation’s history.
Before Second Alamein the British army had consistently been defeated: in the Battle of France, in Norway, in Greece, in Crete, in Singapore and its only victories were against Italians in Somaliland and Vichy French in Syria. Second Alamein was a victory of sorts, the first of any consequence. Church bells were rung in England; Montgomery was lauded in the press and in parliament and promoted. The British had created a messiah and had put him on a pedestal. When that messiah turned out to have feet of clay it was simply impossible to remove him.
The British, unlike the other great powers, had long eschewed conscription and fought their wars with a professional army. Professional armies are expensive and therefore they will be small, so Britain fought its land wars in coalition. Even when conscription became necessary in 1916 and again just before the outbreak of the Second World War, the principle remained, for Britain could never match Germany in terms of population. A great British commander must understand logistics, for most British wars are fought in third world countries, and he must be able to work harmoniously in a coalition and get on with allies whose agenda may not always coincide with that of the British, and he must understand the political parameters of military operations. Marlborough had all sorts of trouble with Dutch Estates General but he knew how important it was to keep them on side, and he worked harmoniously with the Austrian general, Eugen of Savoy. Wellington knew the importance of supplying his army in Portugal and Spain and took pains to ensure that what was required was obtainable and while he privately despaired of the Spanish he knew how important it was to avoid alienating them. Haig always ensured that his army’s logistics worked and while he well understood the weaknesses of the French army he made sure that relations were cordial, he spoke French and was liked by his principal ally.
Montgomery certainly understood the importance of the logistic chain, and he refused to move until he had the ammunition, the fuel, the rations, the vehicles and all the paraphernalia of war needed before he would move. What he was not, however, was a coalition warrior. He infuriated the Americans, he patronised them, he denigrated them, he made no attempt to see their point of view and the result affected badly the course of the war and Anglo-American relations after it. On that basis alone, even if we discount all his other faults, Montgomery fails the test of a great commander. Montgomery was not the best general of the war; he was not the best allied general of the war, he was not even the best British general of the war. The best that can be said of him is that he did see what the British army had to do to have any hope of beating the Germans, and that after the war it was his harrying and badgering that eventually forced NATO to produce a workable plan for the defence of Europe. It was also he that persuaded Pandit Nehru, prime minister of newly independent India, to allow the British transit rights to and from Nepal at a time when that country had no airport that could take trooping flights, and for that achievement we must certainly thank him.
Canadian military historian Terry Copp calls Montgomery “a very average general”, and I tend to agree. Other than Simonds, one of Montgomery’s acolytes, the Canadian officers weren’t terribly impressed either, and Crerar and Monty loathed each other.