MONTGOMERY AFTER THE WAR
As far as the British public were concerned Churchill and Montgomery had won the war, and although Churchill lost the 1945 election, Montgomery was raised to the peerage as Viscount Montgomery of Alamein and became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army occupying the British sector of Germany, that nation now divided into Russian, American, French and British zones. Then, in June 1946 he succeeded Brooke, now Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke, as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the professional head of the army, and proceeded to surround himself and pack the army council with his own favourites. Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templar said that Montgomery had been ‘the worst CIGS for fifty years’, knowing full well that the appointment had existed for a lot less than fifty years.
During this time Montgomery exhibited a strange disloyalty to those who had supported him. Freddie de Guingand had served him loyally and well, had covered up for his mistakes and had on many occasions mollified irate British and Allied colleagues. Now he very much wanted a posting to Europe, turned down by Montgomery with little grace. Having promised de Guingand the post of Vice Chief of the General Staff, Montgomery gave it to another of his favourites, General Frank Simpson: de Guingand retired from the army.
It is surprising that Montgomery lasted as CIGS as long as he did. He quarrelled incessantly with the other chiefs of staff, Air Marshal Tedder (who as Eisenhower’s deputy had tried to get Montgomery sacked) and Admiral Cunningham, and he was openly contemptuous of the Prime Minister, Attlee, and the Minister of Defence, AV Alexander, son of a blacksmith and a long time Labour MP who had previously been a successful First Lord of the Admiralty.
In 1948 Montgomery was made Chairman of the Commander-in-Chiefs’ Committee of the Western European Union, in which the British, the French, the Belgians, Luxembourg and the Dutch attempted to form a plan for the coordinated defence of Europe, the forerunner of NATO. There were few in the War Office or in the army who were sorry to see him go, but in typical Montgomery fashion he had tried to insert his own candidate as his successor. General Sir John Crocker had been a corps commander under Montgomery in North West Europe and had been told by Montgomery that he would get the job. When Montgomery discovered that Prime Minister Attlee favoured General Sir William Slim, the victor of Burma who was both of the Indian Army and a Roman Catholic – two of Montgomery’s pet hates – he did his best to disparage Slim, telling all who would listen that as an officer of the Indian Army he would never be accepted by the British service, and that anyway he knew nothing about European warfare. Attlee got his way and as Templar said later: ‘Slim cared about the army. Monty cared only about himself’. Slim was a resounding success as CIGS and is still generally regarded as one of the best the army has ever had.
At the Western European Union there were problems. The French General Alphonse Juin, nominated as Commander Land Forces, refused to serve under Montgomery and the post went to General de Lattre de Tassigny who was, unfortunately, very like Montgomery in character: vain, boastful, ambitious, theatrical to the point of ridicule, fond of intrigue and unshakeable in what he liked and what he did not. The result was entirely predictable: the two men argued incessantly with Montgomery insisting forcibly that de Lattre was under his orders, while de Lattre equally forcibly insisted that he was not. The situation was only resolved by the eventual posting of de Lattre as governor of French Indo-China. Montgomery’s reputation was not helped by the publication in the winter in 1948 of Eisenhower’s memoirs in which he came in for some adverse criticism, and the continuing row with de Lattre hindered any possible agreement as to the collective defence of Europe against a Russian threat.
During this time Montgomery became increasingly isolated; he refused to attend his mother’s funeral and he rarely saw his son, drawing more and more into himself while trying to persuade European ministers and generals of the need to produce a workable plan for European defence. In 1951 the Western European Union metamorphosed into NATO, a mutual defence organisation which, in addition to the five Western Union nations, included the USA, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Italy and Portugal and, from 1952 Greece and Turkey, and West Germany from 1955. General Eisenhower was appointed the first Supreme Commander Allied Powers in Europe, and after much lobbying by himself Montgomery became his deputy. Soon another memoir appeared in America, that of General Bradley this time, in which Montgomery again came in for some not unjustified criticism. While he obviously did not accept the truth of the criticisms, he did feel – rightly – that officers who were still serving (and Bradley was Chairman of the US Combined Chiefs of Staff) should not publicly disagree with each other. In his own statements to the press and anyone else who would listen Montgomery was, of course, guilty of exactly the same offence.
As deputy to Eisenhower Montgomery was given his head to inquire, probe, inspect and harangue. Convinced that the NATO members failed to take collective defence seriously, he had no scruples in telling defence and foreign ministers that they were not pulling their weight, and no hesitation in condemning senior military officers who he felt were dilatory or ‘useless’. With Eisenhower more interested in the political aspects of NATO, Montgomery usually got his way and it is to his credit that at last a workable defence plan was adopted, and nations were shamed into turning paper divisions into real ones. Montgomery even acted as a pallbearer at de Lattre’s funeral when the latter died of cancer in 1952.
In June 1952, however, Eisenhower was succeeded as Supreme Commander by General Mathew Ridgeway, who was not prepared to let Montgomery go his own way and proceeded to try to rein him in. Relations between the two men descended very nearly to the level that had existed between Montgomery and de Lattre, until in 1953 by much intrigue the now President Eisenhower was persuaded to replace Ridgeway with General Al Gruenther, who knew exactly how to handle Montgomery, whose own tour of duty was now extended despite his being sixty-five years old. While Gruenther was able to a large extent to deflect Montgomery’s attempts to be the effective Supreme Commander himself, he could not prevent Montgomery from interfering with the postings of British officers on the NATO staff. Many promising and competent officers had their careers blighted because Montgomery took a dislike to them, either because they would not defer to him or because they did not share his vision of the defence plan in case of war. Montgomery stayed in the job of deputy commander for far too long, not retiring until 1958, when he was seventy. Had he retired along with Eisenhower then he would have been remembered as the man who forced the members of NATO to face up to reality, and who created a functioning staff. As it was he built up huge resentments, both militarily and politically, which did little to promote British interests.
Now retired, Montgomery could take his revenge on all those who had criticised him, or whom he disliked or whom he considered incompetent. He wrote his memoirs, and although one of the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, which all officers sign, was and is than any intended book, article or film relating to their service must be approved by the Ministry of Defence prior to publication, Montgomery refused to do so until sending the Minister a copy just before publication, when it was too late for any amendments. Many of those to whom he had shown drafts begged him not to publish. It is indeed bile from start to finish, viciously critical of generals, politicians and particularly Eisenhower and the Americans. It caused huge offence and probably did more damage to Anglo-American relations than anything since Benedict Arnold’s treachery during the American Revolution. The foreign ministers of Italy and Belgium summoned the British ambassadors in Brussels and Rome, outraged at Montgomery’s comments about their armies; sacked generals threatened legal action and even Field Marshal Auchinleck, who held back from what would almost certainly have been a successful action for libel only because he felt that field marshals do not sue each other, did get a note published in next editions of the book which softened the unfair comments about him. It was in America that most offence was taken. The city of Montgomery, Alabama, withdrew the Freedom of the City that they had granted, but to President Eisenhower, already irritated by Montgomery’s familiarity in addressing him as ‘Ike’ in public (US presidents are by convention always addressed as ‘Mr President’), this really was the last straw and he was incensed. In vain did ambassadors and liaison officers protest that what was said was Montgomery’s personal opinion and not official policy, Montgomery’s prestige and fame was such that everything he said or wrote was instantly blazoned across the front pages of the world’s press. He would not take back anything that he claimed, and insisted that all of his battles had gone exactly the way he had planned: his victories had been achieved by him alone, and he refused to give credit to anyone else.
In retirement – although in theory field marshals never retire but, until recently, went on half pay – Montgomery travelled extensively, largely paid for by the Sunday Times which published his accounts of the people he met: Khrushchev, Mao Tse Tung, Nasser, but not those of his South African visits, thought to be too favourable towards Dr Verwoerd and apartheid. He continued to cause offence: he refused to include Freddie de Guingand in his party visiting Alamein for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle in 1967, no doubt fearful that he, and not Montgomery, might steal the show; but instead he included only those whom he knew would toe the line of Montgomery’s infallibility. He refused to come home for Churchill’s funeral, which upset the Churchill family, and when his son David was divorced, he cut him out of his will, only being reconciled shortly before his death.
As he got older and stopped travelling he became more and more a recluse, languishing in a refurbished water mill in Hampshire that he had bought in 1947 after unsuccessfully importuning the King to provide him with ‘a little cottage – seven or eight bedrooms would do’, and seeing only a carefully selected list of visitors who were told at precisely what time they should arrive, and at precisely when they should depart. His books became best sellers, although the work for his History of Warfare, published in 1968, was mostly done by a Sandhurst lecturer, Anthony Brett-James, and it was mainly his writings that paid for his staff and living expenses, for he was never rich and drew his old age pension from his local post office. As his health began to fade he spent more and more time in bed, and his legendary memory began to fade, until on 24 March 1976, at the age of eighty-eight Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein died, and after a state funeral in Windsor on 1 April he was buried in the churchyard of the church of the Holy Cross at Binstead.
Thanks for the illuminating essay, Gordon. My knowledge of Monty only goes as far as the Battle of the Bulge when he famously "tidied up" the battlefield for the Americans (his own words, I believe). Interesting to see that, long after the pressures of war had faded, he continued to fall out with his peers left, right, and centre. Though I can at least sympathize in the case of de Lattre; I believe General George C. Marshall lost his cool with the man on more than one occasion during Operation Dragoon in the south of France in '44. Plus ca change.