Comments by "Bullet-Tooth Tony" (@Bullet-Tooth-Tony-) on "The BAD BOY of Operation Market Garden | General 'Boy' Browning" video.

@billfix1150 The option to not proceed with Market Garden would simply mean another bloody frontal assault into strong German positions causing heavy casualties, exactly what occurred at Metz, Huertgen and Overloon.
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@billfix1150 Most people forget that Monty was the most experienced of the Allied generals and played the key role in Normandy, which was needed to kick start the reconquest of France.
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@johnburns4017 Personally, I would nominate William Slim, as the finest general. He was extremely adaptable, and able to turn a defeated army into one capable of beating the same enemies that had pushed it off its lawn. Slim had in fact inflicted possibly one of the greatest defeats that Japanese Army had experienced in World War II, and that came after Japanese had initially beaten British and Indian troops in Southeast Asia. He was also very good at mission-command, decentralising decision making by allowing low-level commanders to make key decisions: same thing which had allowed Germans to beat Allies in France in 1940, and also sustained logistics over nigh-impossible terrain.
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@bigwoody4704 I'm talking about Normandy, not Sicily, Montgomery was correct that neutralising Caen would effectively cut off all the Germans towards the beach heads, rendering Cherbourg practically useless. Even an attack on Caen would force the Germans to redeploy and rethink their strategy.
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@bigwoody4704 How could Slim be called up? He was tied down fighting 300,000 Japanese troops in Asia.
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@bigwoody4704 There were five major British military offensive operations in the Caen Campaign. I remember that Monty did incredibly well at the last one, which was also one of the most successful offensive in the entire Normandy Campaign. He effectively performed the combination of arms of artillery, air force and land force, and thus captured large tract of land that the previous four offensives could not compare with in territorial gains.
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@bigwoody4704 It should be noted that Monty was dissatisfied with the command and organisation of the Goodwood, Perch and surrounding battles, Dempsey (British 2nd Army) was even more scathing. Following this unimpressive performance both Bucknall (XXX Corps) and Erskine (7th Armoured) were sacked.
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@bigwoody4704 Monty also took the step of having it drilled right into the heads of the tank crews that they shouldn't do any "see German tank, chase German tank near indefinitely if it flees" which was usually how they blundered into the Flak 88 traps in the first place, which was the battle where the British armour did charge the Germans at Gazala similar to the famous cavalry one of the Crimea? Balaclava i think it was. My understanding of the problem was that most of the British tanks were designed as infantry tanks, supporting the infantry at company-Battalion strength. However there was no inter-corps communication with any corps (from arty-airforce), one of Monty's skills was that he changed this. As soon as the infantry tanks were doing what they were designed to do, they worked rather effectively.
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@KMN-bg3yu If the 1 million strong 21st Army Group had been unleashed it would have most definitely smashed through the Ruhr.
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