Comments by "" (@lyndoncmp5751) on "TIKhistory" channel.

  1. They got "some" troop out? The Axis actually got out 2/3 of the approximately 60,000 troops trapped in the pocket. 40,423 managed to get out. 36,232 broke out and 4,161 were flown out. I would consider this an Axis success and a Soviet failure, just as the Dunkirk evacuation was an Allied success and a German failure. When you have 60,000 troops encircled and on the face of it looking doomed, another Stalingrad, then to extract 2/3 of them can only be considered a tactical victory despite the larger strategic picture being a loss. It depends what aspect we focus on. The actual pocket aspect was a Soviet failure.
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  2. Which other allied commanders moved quicker when they had an enemy in the way? Patton in the Lorraine? Hodges in the Hurtgen?
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  3. Bruce Bartup, According to Eisenhower. Eisenhower assumed both the Ruhr and Saar and Le Havre and Antwerp could all be attained at the same time. His communication to Montgomery between 7th and 9th September came in two parts because Eisenhower was too far away from the front. Even though Eisenhower took over from Montgomery as commander of all ground forces on 1st September, his HQ remained at Granville, on the west coast of the Cherbourg peninsula..... some 400 miles from the front. As Montgomery put, Eisenhower was in "a useless place for a land force commander who had to keep his finger on the pulse of his armies and give quick decisions in rapidly changing situations. There were no telephone lines, not even radio telephone between his HQ and Bradley and myself. In the early days of September he was in fact, completely out of touch with the land battle". Source. Montgomerys, Memoirs page 271.
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  4.  @brucebartup6161  Blumentritts opinion will answer your question. -------------- ""The best course of the Allies would have been to concentrate a really strong striking force with which to break through past Aachen to the Ruhr area. Germany's strength is in the north. South Germany was a side issue. He who holds northern Germany holds Germany. Such a break-through, coupled with air domination, would have torn in pieces the weak German front and ended the war. Berlin and Prague would have been occupied ahead of the Russians. There were no German forces behind the Rhine, and at the end of August our front was wide open. There was the possibility of an operational break-through in the Aachen area, in September. This would have facilitated a rapid conquest of the Ruhr and a quicker advance on Berlin. By turning the forces from the Aachen area sharply northward, the German 15th and 1st Parachute Armies could have been pinned against the estuaries of the Mass and the Rhine. They could not have escaped eastwards into Germany. A direct attack on Metz was unnecessary. The Metz fortress area could have been masked. In contrast, a swerve northward in the direction of Luxembourg and Bitburg would have met with great success and caused the collapse of the right flank of our 7th Army. By such a flank move to the north the entire 7th Army could have been cut off before it could retreat behind the Rhine. Thus the bulk of the defeated German Army would have been wiped out west of the Rhine. "" Gunther Blumentritt in The Other Side Of The Hill by Liddell Hart. ------------ A far more concentrated and considerably stronger northern effort in autumn 1944 could have been made than wasting men and resources in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine, Alsace etc. From Eisenhower and the Art of Warfare by DJ Haycock, page 182. "Despite objections raised to Montgomery's plan of an assault on a 40 division front, it was more sensible than Eisenhower's insistence on the entire front being in motion at all times, for no better reason than he could not abide the thought that the two American army groups would not participate as entities in the anticipated victory. Not only did Eisenhower fail to heed Montgomery's suggestions, but also he never seemed to understand the possible benefits. He was evidently unable to understand that to supply 40 divisions attacking on one front would have been an easier task than to supply first one army and then the other as each in turn went over to the offensive. It was this concentration of effort which Eisenhower failed to understand and to implement""
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  5.  @scottkrater2131  "Better read check your figures Tommy." Already done it. You make it sound like Britain wasn't a major industrial nation and had to rely on America for everything. I didn't know all those Spitfires, Hurricanes, Lancasters, Mosquitos, Typhoons, Churchills, Cromwells, Scammells, Bedfords etc etc were built in Detroit. 😂
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  6.  @scottkrater2131  El Alamein wasn't even the first allied victory in Africa. The British Commonwealth forces pushed the Axis back in both Operation Compass and Operation Crusader. The USA wasn't in the war then. The USA wasn't in WW2 when the Royal Air Force stopped the Luftwaffe from attaining air superiority over England in 1940 and ended any German hopes of an invasion of Britain. US involvement in the Battle of the Atlantic was comparatively minimal. It was the British and Commonwealth forces who sank 80% of German and Italian U-boats, as well as disposing of ALL the German battleships, cruisers and destroyers they lost. Not the US Navy. The Atlantic and Mediterranean was primarily a British naval victory.
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  7.  @scottkrater2131  Yes I know my history. I know, for example' the British provided Reverse Lend Lease to the USA. Britain supplied the USA what amounted to roughly 30% of its basic needs in the ETO, from flour for its bread rations to building barracks and hospitals for them to shopping them across the Atlantic on huge liners like the Queen Mary. Without Britain, the US Army would never have even got across the Atlantic. Nor would they have had any place to fight 😂. You do know that Britain was also able to send literally THOUSANDS of tanks and planes to the USSR, right? In fact British Lend Lease to the USSR was more crucial in 1941 than American. British supplied tanks made up nearly 40% of Soviet medium and heavy tanks in the Moscow sector in December 1941.
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  8.  @johnpeate4544  Yes and it got worse because transport had to be diverted in panic to assist the American retreat in the Ardennes. There was little transport left to distribute the supplies at Antwerp because everything was put on hold because of the Ardennes. All available transport was used to deploy men and material to halt the German advance.
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  9. Montgomerys concentrated northern thrust wasn't really narrow. It would have been 200km in width at least, from the coast down to the Ruhr then across northern Germany towards Berlin. Montgomerys northern thrust would have involved 40 divisions in 4 armies. North to South : Canadian 1st. British 2nd. US 1st. US 3rd. Montgomerys proposal was for these 4 armies to stick together as one massive force and take Northern Germany instead of wasting the time and resources in the largely irrelevant southern half of Germany. "He who takes Northern Germany takes Germany" is what Gunther Blumentritt said. He felt Montgomerys proposal would have been the best one.
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  10. But on the other hand the U-boats didn't stop Britain from sending men, equipment and supplies basically anywhere the British wanted to send them, from Russia to North Africa to India etc. The Arctic Convoys were crucial for the USSR in late 1941, and so was the influx of men and material into North Africa in 1941/42. Comparatively very little was stopped by U-boats.
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  11. @madmonkeys88 There is absolutely no chance that more lives would have been lost under Montgomery. It was Eisenhower who insisted on the broad front strategy, wasting countless men. Montgomery wouldn't have messed around in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Alsace and Montgomery wouldn't have fallen asleep in front of the Ardennes. Eisenhower allowed all those debacle to occur.
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  12. The narrow thrust wasn't even that narrow. It would have gone from the coast to the Ruhr area. 40 divisions in 4 armies taking northern Germany. Southern Germany was an irrelevant side issue.
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  13. But the concentrated northern thrust in September would have cut off Antwerp reached the Ruhr (the German industrial heartland) sooner. Both of these would have had enormous benefit to ending the war sooner. The broad front failed to achieve these objectives quickly. Metz was not important. The Ruhr was.
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  14. A bridgehead across the Rhine was a major part of it though. For the next phase, an advance on the Ruhr. Market Garden wasn't ALL about cutting off the Netherlands there. Getting a foothold over the Rhine when the opportunity was there was a major factor. Rather than let the Germans consolidate and strengthen.
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  15. 1st Airbornes intelligence told them the Germans had 8,000 to 10,000 troops in the Arnhem area, and elsewhere a battle scarred panzer division or two refitting. That is why 1st Airborne brought along 6 pounder and 17 pounder anti tank guns. They expected to face tanks. In reality there were zero German tanks in the area on the 17th when the troops dropped. The first German tank attack of Market Garden did not take place until late on the 18th. These were Panzer IVs and IIIs of Kompanie Mielke, which had only just arrived. It was in Bielefeld Germany, some 200km from Arnhem, when the paras were dropping. It moved to Arnhem over the night of the 17th/18th. This tank attack late on the 18th was stopped by the 6 pounder anti tank guns and PIATs of Frosts men. Two Panzer IVs were knocked out.
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  16. Well Browning was shunted out 2 months later and sent to Burma as as admin to Mountbatten.
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  17. Montys Scheldt campaign = the ONLY western allied campaign of autumn 1944 to achieve its objectives. All the others, including the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine, Operation Queen, Vosges etc failed.
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  18. German Generalmajor von Mellenthin on Montgomery: "That Montgomery was probably the best tactician if not the best strategist of the war is undoubted. we knew his methods well, his ability to move a division across our front in 1940 fighting by day and moving through the night was because of his adherence to training his men.""
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  19. Eisenhower was the one with the biggest ego. Not content with being Supreme Commander, he also took Montgomery's job of C-in-C of all ground forces and then Trumans job of President of the USA. Montgomery told Eisenhower he was prepared to serve under Bradley as C-in-C of all ground forces (if an American had to take his job) as long as the concentrated northern thrust be implemented instead of the broad front. Montgomery was more interested in ending the war quickly than personal glory. Everything Montgomery did was to try and finish the war.
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  20.  @rufusmcgee4383  It should have been over quickly given the force ratios enjoyed by Patton, yes. A post war official US Army study on Patton in the Lorraine concluded this: ""General Patton can also be faulted for neglecting to practice economy of force. We have noted several instances in which Third Army's forces were spread out on a broad front in an attempt to be strong everywhere with the result that they were decisively strong nowhere. Furthermore, Patton never made an attempt to punch through the German defenses with divisions in column, even though he received approval for such an operation from his superior, LTG Bradley. One rule of thumb for mechanized forces that emerged from World War II was to march dispersed but concentrate to fight. In Lorraine, Third Army fought dispersed. The American armored elements were not at their best in Lorraine either. Much of this can be attributed to the weather, but some of the blame must be given to the army commander for binding his armored divisions into infantry-heavy corps. Patton's reluctance to mass his armor came as a pleasant surprise to the Germans, who believed that their panzer divisions were just as useful in creating breakthroughs as they were in exploiting them. At a lower level, the combat command concept provided great tactical flexibility through decentralized control, but it also tempted Patton's corps commanders to break up the armored division and parcel it out by combat commands, a policy that further diluted Third Army's armored punch."" Hope that helped.
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  21. Brereton was the wrong man to command First Allied Airborne Army. Browning and Urquhart were not the best choices for their respective roles either. Same can be said of Taylor of the 101st. First Allied Airborne Army was rife with wrong command choices.
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  22. I dont know where you got that figure from. The true figures are 40,423 that got out. 36,232, broke out and 4,161 were flown out. Page 366 Hells Gate by Douglas Nash.
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  23. TIK They got some of their men out? They got 40,423 out in total. 36,232 broke out and 4,161 were flown out. That is 2/3 of the trapped Axis force. It certainly was an Axis tactical victory to extract 2/3 of their trapped forces, and it was a, Soviet failure. In the same way Dunkirk was an Allied success and a German failure. For the most comprehensive and balanced work on this battle Hells Gate by Douglas Nash is the go to source.
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  24. The Americans went running to Monty after this and asked him to sort their self made Ardennes mess out for them.
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  25. Montgomery was right however that a desk man like Eisenhower should NEVER have taken over command of ground strategy and told him so. Eisenhower wouldn't listen, and the broad front failure was the result.
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  26. Jeffrey Beigie, Montgomery actually told Eisenhower face to face that he'd serve under Bradley if his 4 army northern thrust proposal was accepted. Montgomery was primarily interested in the war coming to an end. It was Eisenhower who had the biggest ego. Not content with being Supreme Commander, Eisenhower, a totally inexperienced battlefield general also decided he could direct the war better than his experienced battlefield generals. Well that didn't work out well did it? The advance stalled for six months and even suffered a retreat. Ouch. Montgomery was perfection in contrast.
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  27.  @Ussurin  You'd be speaking German if not for Britain.
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  28. Zd zichu S, Please, study the eastern front. The Soviets messed up far more, even when they had the Germans on the retreat. Take the Cherkassy-Korsun Pocket of January February 1944. They had the Germans completely trapped and surrounded. Totally blocked off. 60,000 of them going nowhere. Yet 2/3 of the trapped German troops, over 40,000 of them, managed to get out of the trap and the Soviets suffered over 50,000 casualties themselves trying to stop them. That's 3 times the allied casualties in Market Garden. Yet neither Zhukov, Konev or Vatutin were shot as incompetent war criminal traitors. So you were saying?
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  29. @ElGrandoCaymano But Montgomery warned Eisenhower on 28th November that the American front line before the Ardennes was too weak and thinly held and should be strengthened. Eisenhower did nothing.
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  30. "He didn't make it for reasons exacerbated by his own command style." Disagree. He was shunted aside and the air commanders and it was they who made the fatal decisions which doomed the operation. Notably Brereton, Williams and Hollinghurst. Had Montgomery the jurisdiction to plan and order his own choices it likely would have suceeded. Brereton and Williams refusing to fly double missions on day one (despite Montgomery arguing for this and despite the RAF telling Brereton it could do this around Arnhem) and instead insisting on dispersed drops over 3 days was the biggest mistake made in the operation. Even the Germans concluded that. Let's face it, apart from Montgomerys own Scheldt clearing campaign, (the only allied campaign of autumn 1944 to succeed in its objectives) NONE of the American campaigns that same autumn suceeded in their objectives, and there was in fact a US retreat in the Ardennes.
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  31.  @FromPovertyToProgress  It didn't. Supplies were pouring out of Antwerp more or less immediately. It didn't take months at all.
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  32.  @gawdsuniverse3282  " The Western Allies could not finish off the Germans because the supply lines were overstretched. And putting all the road-bound" How were the supply lines "overstretched"? They weren't even across the bloody Rhine until March 1945. Do you have have any idea how long the supply lines were in North Africa and on the Eastern Front? We are talking supply lines in the THOUSANDS of kilometres.
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  33.  @gawdsuniverse3282  "Ludicrous to think trucks alone and some small sections of rebuilt rail lines could support 40 divisions into Germany and on to Berlin" So Eisenhower instead has the "brilliant" plan to supply campaigns down in the Lorraine and Alsace? You do know its closer from the supply bases to the Ruhr than it is to the Alsace, right? I suspect you didn't know that. Montgomerys 40 division 4 army concentrated northern thrust had the immediate objective of the Ruhr in early autumn 1944. Then the idea was to consolidate, build up supplies THEN advance across Northern Germany towards Berlin. Logistics sorted. A sound military proposal. Too bad Eisenhower wasted all those men and material in pointless campaigns in the Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest, Alsace, Vosges etc. Mind you, sitting behind his desk on the other side of Paris some 400 km from the front lines its no wonder he was out of touch and mishandled the entire war effort from September 1944. I've heard his Versailles HQ was very very comfortable though. So much so that he and Bradley continued guzzling champagne there on the night of December 16th even AFTER they were told the Germans had broken through in the Ardennes. I guess being C-in-C of ground forces just wasn't that serious a concern for Eisenhower.
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  34.  @gawdsuniverse3282  You, and others lacking in logic, cannot grasp that a concentrated powerful northern thrust to the Ruhr in early autumn 1944 when the Germans were at their weakest instead of wasting men and resources in the Hurtgen Forest and Lorraine would have attained the Ruhr and cut off the Netherlands much quicker. This would have facilitated an earlier opening of Antwerp and the front line would have already been across the Rhine in autumn 1944 instead of spring 1945. In early autumn 1944 the Germans would have been powerless to counter a concentrated 4 army push into northern Germany centred on the Ruhr. Southern Germany was an irrelevant side issue. All logical clear thinking military minds agree with this.
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  35. And yet, on January 17th 1945 Montgomery received this letter by Ridgway himself : "It has been an honor and a privilege and a very great personal pleasure to have served, even so briefly, under your distinguished leadership. To the gifted professional guidance you at once gave me, was added your own consummate courtesy and consideration. I am deeply grateful for both. My warm and sincere good wishes will follow you and with them the hope of again serving with you in pursuit of a common goal" Sourced from Monty and Patton, Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds page 241
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  36. Except it wasn't the best, and it failed.
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  37. Eisenhower took over from Montgomery as ground forces commander on 1st September 1944. However, Eisenhower's HQ remained at Granville on the west coast of the Cherbourg peninsula, nearly 600 km away from where the front now was. As Montgomery put it, Eisenhower was in "a useless place for a land force commander who had to keep his finger on the pulse of his armies and give quick decisions in rapidly changing situations. There were no telephone lines, not even radio telephone between his HQ and Bradley and myself. In the early days of September he was in fact completely out of touch with the land battle". Source. Montgomery, Memoirs page 271
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  38.  @TotensBurntCorpse  They still managed to supply all those campaigns though. Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine, Alsace, Operation Queen were all well supplied without Antwerp. Supplies came from Normandy, then Le Havre was open. Antwerp was crucial for the advance across Germany once Germany was broken into but Antwerp was not crucial for the west wall battles which went up to March 1945. Antwerp was fully open at the end of November, yet Operation Queen and the Lorraine continued to fail. Even worse, the Americans got pushed back into a retreat in the Ardennes nearly a month after Antwerp was open, so Antwerp being open changed nothing for the westwall battles.
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  39. Blame Brereton, Williams, Hollinghurst and even Urquhart for that.
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  40.  @SNP-1999  ""the British drop zone being too far." That was a decision made by Air Vice Marshall Hollinghurst of the RAF. He insisted the Flak would be too great if the transport planes flew closer.
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  41.  @communismenslavesmurders5774  And my response was basically so what big deal when Europe hasn't been stable for THOUSANDS of years.
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  42. That's why Montgomery was a level above Rommel.
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  43. @sean640307, Great posts. Also, people forget that from 1st September Montgomery was no longer C-in-C of ground forces. Any major change of plan or major advance had to be agreed to by Eisenhower. On 4th September Montgomery tried to contact Eisenhower for the push over the Rhine but Eisenhower took nearly a week to get back to him. Montgomery was on limbo, waiting for Eisenhower'response and agreement. Despite now being C-in-C of the armies, Eisenhower remained 600km away from them, near Cherbourg in an area with terrible communications. Eisenhower should have followed his armies and moved to better position closer to the front in order to meet or communicate and give quick thinking alterations consideration/agreement/disagreement. He didn't. Eisenhower made a pigs ear of his new position those first two weeks in September.
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  44. Indeed. Anyone who hasn't read the Nash book lacks full understanding of the battle.
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  45. Tom Halla Market Garden was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. It took 100km of German held ground in 3 days. Compare that to the snail pace of the American armies in the Lorraine, Hurtgen Forest and Alsace. Market Garden failed because the air commanders Brereton and Williams insisted on dispersed drops over a number of days. This was the fatal decision in the plan. The RAF also refused to drop close to Arnhem. It was firstly the decisions of the senior air commanders that scuppered the operation, and secondly the decisions of the individual airborne commanders.
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  46. andy moore Pretty obvious that Eisenhowers broad front strategy was a failure. The worst failure of the NW European campaign of 1944/45. It got next to nowhere from September 1944 to February 1945. 6 months and barely 100km advanced, with hundreds of thousands of casualties suffered. Under Montgomery, the allies advanced 500km in less than 3 months. Eisenhowers broad front strategy only reached the Rhine because the Germans threw away all those men and tanks etc in their ill fated Ardennes counter attack. It was getting more or less nowhere before that.
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  47. Terry Smith Yes indeed. Montgomery met with Eisenhower on August 23rd 1944 at his Tactical HQ in Normandy and tried to dissuade Eisenhower from descending from Supreme Commander into C-in-C of all ground forces. Montgomery advised Eisenhower to not do both jobs and he actually offered to serve under Bradley if American public pressure demanded an American command all ground forces. Montgomery did not push to command all ground forces once more American armies joined the front line after Dragoon. Source. Monty and Patton Two Paths to Victory pages 203/204. I think people sometimes confuse Montgomery pushing for his idea of a concentrated northern thrust to mean he wanted to still control everything. He was happy to serve under Bradley if the concentrated northern thrust went ahead. This would have involved US 1st and 3rd Armies as well as his 21st Army Group.
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  48. The British 2nd Army front line was still in Belgium on the 17th. Eindhoven was already 30km behind enemy lines. XXX Corps had to get out of Belgium first. Had they attacked Eindhoven first with no paras there to block them then the Germans may have strengthed more so. With no paras landing in Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven the Germans would likely have concentrated their forces and responded in the greatest strength in the Eindhoven area. When the paras did land in Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven the Germans had to disperse everywhere to try and handle all threats all at once.
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  49. Monty only came up with the broad idea, which General Brereton liked and told him it would work. It was then Brereton and others who actually planned it, and that's where it went wrong. Monty took a back seat and he let the other generals come up with the details.
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  50.  @nickdanger3802  There was no halt order on Metz. Patton was tasked with Metz by Bradley on September 3rd. Market Garden wasn't even decided on until the 10th. And even then, there was no halt order for 3rd Army to stop before Metz. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/01/21/pattons-bloody-battle-at-fortress-metz/ Meanwhile US 1st Army began attacking into the Hurtgen Forest AT THE SAME TIME as Market Garden was happening. The Hurtgen Forest campaign began September 19th, just 2 days after Market Garden began. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2020/01/29/the-nightmare-battle-of-hurtgen-forest/ This myth that all American operations were stood down for Market Garden is hilarious. Trying to blame the failures of the Americans going nowhere on Market Garden is as old as WW2. Its what many Americans like to do.
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