Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Military History not Visualized"
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@silarpac
“The plan upon which the Americans were to uncurl and deliver their great thrust southwards towards Brittany and the Loire was set out before Brooke and General Simpson (the DMO, to whom a copy was sent), in simple, clear English, a month and a half before it was enacted. ‘The First US Army,’ Monty declared under the heading: ‘Para 14. Future intentions’, was:
e) To hold on firmly to Caumont; to recapture CARENTAN and to hold it firmly.
f) To capture ST LO and then COUTANCE
g) To thrust southwards from CAUMONT towards VIRE and MORTAIN; and from ST LO towards VILLEDIEU and AVRANCHES
h) All the time to exert pressure towards LA HAYE DU PUITS and VOLOGNES, and to capture CHERBOURG.
A glance at the map will show that this was, town for town, the layout of Operation ‘Cobra’ - the great American offensive that paved the way for Patton to be unleashed into Brittany and the Loire in August 1944.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”PLAN IN OUTLINE
To hold the maximum number of enemy divisions on our eastern flank between CAEN and VILLERS BOCAGE, and to swing the [American] western or right flank of the Army Group southwards and eastwards in a wide sweep so as to threaten the line of withdrawal of such enemy divisions to the south of PARIS.
Later historians, particularly the American Official Historian Dr Martin Blumenson, would try to appropriate the credit for this plan for their heroes General Patton and to a lesser extent, General Bradley. In his edition of Patton’s papers, Dr Blumenson quoted Patton’s diary entry of 2 July 1944, in which Patton noted his own new ‘Schlieffen’ plan for a ‘rear attack on the Germans confronting the First U.S. Army, and then driving on to the line Alençon-Argentan, and thereafter on on Evreux or Chartres, depending on circumstances, we will really pull a coup’. Commenting, Blumenson remarked on Patton’s ‘remarkable’ intuition and stated that some weeks later ‘Bradley would come up with an interesting idea’ for such a coup, ‘an operation called Cobra’.
That ‘Cobra’ was in fact the plan given out by Montgomery at his headquarters on 30 June 1944 was to become a fact which some American historians hated to credit, preferring to take at face value Patton’s misrepresentation, penned in frustration in his English headquarters, that the Allies were merely pursuing ‘phase lines’ and that ‘we will die of old age before we finish’.
However unpalatable to such writers, the fact remains that Bradley, Dempsey and Crerar all attended Monty’s conference on 30 June, all concurred in Monty’s strategy, and that Eisenhower, Brooke, the War Office and Main Headquarters of 21st Army Group at Portsmouth all had copies of Monty’s plan. Nor was it some vague notion, for Monty laid down at the conference how he wished the plan to be executed in the coming weeks. Originally, in England before D-Day, he had intended to push the British Second Army south of Caen to secure space for airfields and provide the shield he needed for Bradley’s southern thrust to Brittany. Rommel’s fierce reaction at Caen had, however, made this unnecessary. Indeed a British thrust too far from it’s present sector would open up Second Army to a German counter-thrust by extending the front to be defended, whereas although it was greatly congested, the British front was currently almost impregnable.
……..Bradley’s break-out via Brittany had originally been conceived in England before D-Day, and throughout the long bitter weeks of fighting in June and July, Dempsey had been instructed to lock in combat the main enemy formations. Six thousand British and Canadian soldiers had fallen, even before ‘Goodwood’, to make possible the expansion of the American sector behind them, first to Cherbourg, and now towards Brittany.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
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@silarpac
The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British under Montgomery. From Alem el Halfa it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery, in command of all ground forces, had to give the US armies an infantry role in Normandy as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.
Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:
♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa;
♦ October 1942 - El Alamein;
♦ March 1943 - Medenine;
♦ June 1944 - Normandy;
♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - The Netherlands;
♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge;
A list of Montgomery’s victories in WW2:
♦ Battle of Alam Halfa;
♦ Second Battle of El Alamein;
♦ Battle of El Agheila;
♦ Battle of Medenine;
♦ Battle of the Mareth Line;
♦ Battle of Wadi Akarit;
♦ Allied invasion of Sicily;
♦ Operation Overlord - the largest amphibious invasion in history;
♦ Market Garden - a 60 mile salient created into German territory;
♦ Battle of the Bulge - while taking control of two shambolic US armies;
♦ Operation Veritable;
♦ Operation Plunder.
Montgomery not once had a reverse.
Not on one occasion were ground armies, British, US or others, under Monty's command pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. Monty's 8th Army advanced the fastest of any army in WW2. From El Alamein to El Agheila from the 4th to 23rd November 1942, 1,300 km in just 17 days. After fighting a major exhausting battle at El Alemein through half a million mines. This was an Incredible feat, unparalleled in WW2. With El Alamein costing just 13,500 casualties.
The US Army were a shambles in 1944/45 retreating in the Ardennes. The Americans didn't perform well at all east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months at Metz with over 50,000 casualties, with the Lorraine campaign being a failure.
Then Montgomery had to be put in command of the shambolic US First and Ninth armies, aided by the British 21st Army Group, just to get back to the start line in the Ardennes, with nearly 100,000 US casualties. Hodges, head of the US First army, fled from Spa to near Liege on the 18th, despite the Germans never getting anywhere near to Spa. Hodges did not even wait for the Germans to approach Spa. He had already fled long before the Germans were stopped. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe.
The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, was the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe. Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US First and Ninth armies. Coningham of the RAF was put in command of USAAF elements. The US Third Army constantly stalled after coming up from the south. The Ninth stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about. The US armies were losing men at unsustainable rates due to poor generalship.
Normandy was planned and commanded by the British, with Montgomery involved in planning, with also Montgomery leading all ground forces, which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule and with less casualties than predicted. The Royal Navy was in command of all naval forces and the RAF all air forces. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily the British - the US forces were impotent against massed panzers.
Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) giving them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped, or experienced, to fight concentrated tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.
You need to give respect where it is due.
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@silarpac
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden, only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved and under resourced the operation. Two American Air Force Generals, Brereton, in command of the First Allied Airborne Army, and Williams, USAAF, were the prime culprits of why the Market Garden plan was flawed. The Market part was planned by mainly Americans while Garden mainly the British. Nevertheless, despite their failings, the operation failed to be a 100% success by a whisker. It was Brereton and Williams who:
♦ Ignored nearly all the Airborne tactics and doctrine that had been established, practised and performed in operations in Sicily, Italy and Normandy;
♦ Who decided that there would be drops spread over three days, losing all surprise, defeating the object of para jumps;
♦ Who decided that there would only be one airlift on the first day, despite there being multiple airlifts on day one on Operation Dragoon weeks previously. The RAF offered to man the US planes for a second lift but were refused;
♦ Who rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-Day on the Pegasus bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet;
♦ Who chose the drop and landing zones so far from bridges - RAF were partly to blame here by agreeing;
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports and thereby not hindering the German reinforcements. Ground attack fighters were devastating in Normandy, yet rarely seen at Market Garden;
♦ Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of "possible flak". The job of the Airborne was to capture the bridges with as Brereton said 'thunderclap surprise'. Only one bridge, at Grave, was planned and executed using Airborne tactics of surprise, speed and aggression - land as close to the objectives as possible and attack the bridge simultaneously from both ends.
General Gavin of the 82nd decided to lower the priority of the biggest road bridge in Europe, the Nijmegen road bridge, going against orders compromising the operation. To compound his error, lack of judgement or refusal to carry out an order, he totally ignored the adjacent Nijmegen rail bridge, which the Germans had installed wooden planks between the rails for light vehicles to move on. At the time of the landings by the 82nd there were only 19 Germans guarding both bridges with a few troops in the town. There were no bridge defences such as ditches and barbed wire. This has been confirmed by German archives.
Gavin sent only two companies of the 508 seven hours after they had landed to capture the bridges. They arrived at 2200, eight hours after being ready to march. Company A moved towards the bridge while Company B got lost. In the interim eight hours the 19 guards had been replaced by Kampfgruppe Henke with 750 men and then a brigade of the 10th SS Panzer Division (infantry) setting up shop in the park adjacent to the south side of the road bridge at 1900 hours, five hours after the jump. The Germans occupied the town, which was good defensive territory being rubble in the centre as the USAAF had previously bombed the town in March 1944 by mistake thinking they were in Germany, killing 800. An easy taking of the bridge had now passed.
XXX Corps Guards Division's aim was to reach Arnhem at 15.00 on D-Day+2. They arrived at Nijmegen in the morning of D-Day+2, with only 7 miles to go to Arnhem. Expecting to cross the road bridge they found it in German hands with Germans fighting 82nd men at the edge of the town, seeing something seriously had gone wrong. The 82nd had not captured either of the bridges or cleared out the Germans from Nijmegen town itself.
XXX Corps then had to seize both bridges themselves and clear the Germans from the town, using some 82nd men in clearing the town, seizing the bridge themselves. What you see in the film 'A Bridge Too Far' is fiction. It was the Grenadier Guards tanks and the Irish Guards infantry who seized the Nijmegen road bridge. If the 82nd had seized the road bridge, immediately on landing, as ordered, XXX Corp's Guards Division would have reached Arnhem well within time relieving the British 1st Airborne men on the north side of Arnhem bridge. The German archives state quite clearly that failure to capture the Nijmegen bridge on d-day was the reason for XXX Corps not making a bridgehead north of the Rhine. A clear failure by General Gavin.
Even the US Official War record confirms this. Charles B. MacDonald wrote the US Official history on Market Garden: https://history.army.mil/books/70-7_19.htm The Market part of Market Garden failed. The Garden part was a success. XXX Corps hardly put a foot wrong.
"it was not until 9 October, more than a month after the fall of Antwerp, that General Eisenhower told Montgomery to devote his entire attention to the clearance of the Scheldt. By that time Monty had the Canadians cleared it, or were investing in many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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@silarpac
You are a historian? My God!
The British drew in German armour at Caen to grind it up, to allow the Americans to break out - Operation Cobra.
General Omar Bradley...
While Collins was hoisting his VII Corps flag over Cherbourg, Montgomery was spending his reputation in a bitter siege against the old university city of Caen. For three weeks he had rammed his troops against those panzer divisions he had deliberately drawn towards that city as part of our Allied strategy of diversion in the Normandy Campaign. Although Caen contained an important road junction that Montgomery would eventually need, for the moment the capture of that city was only incidental to his mission. For Monty’s primary task was to attract German troops to the British front that we might more easily secure Cherbourg and get into position for the breakout.
In this diversionary mission Monty was more than successful, for the harder he hammered towards Caen, the more German troops he drew into that sector. Too many correspondents, however, had overrated the importance of Caen itself, and when Monty failed to take it, they blamed him for the delay. But had we attempted to exonerate Montgomery by explaining how successfully he had hoodwinked the German by diverting him toward Caen from the Cotentin, we would have also given our strategy away. We desperately wanted the German to believe this attack on Caen was the main Allied effort.
But while this diversion of Monty’s was brilliantly achieved, he never the less left himself open to criticism by overemphasizing the importance of his thrust toward Caen. Had he limited himself simply to the containment without making Caen a symbol of it, he would have been credited with success instead of being charged, as he was, with failure at Caen. For Monty’s success should have been measured in the panzer divisions the enemy rushed against him whilst Collins sped on toward Cherbourg. Instead, the Allied newspaper readers clammered for a place name called Caen which Monty had once promised but failed to win for them.
The containment mission that had been assigned Monty in the Overlord plan was not calculated to burnish British pride in the accomplishments of their troops. For in the minds of most people, success in battle is measured in the rate and length of advance. They found it difficult to realise that the more successful Monty was in stirring up German resistance, the less likely he was to advance. For another four weeks it fell to the British to pin down superior enemy forces in that sector while we maneuvered into position for the US breakout. With the Allied world crying for blitzkrieg the first week after we landed, the British endured their passive role with patience and forbearing.
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@silarpac
Monty's first battle against Rommel was at Alem el Halfa. The Germans had equal men, superior armour with new Mk 4 long gun tank, with enough fuel to reach Suez. They were beaten. Rommel was outfoxed.
" he still could not finish off Rommel in N. Africa."
Is this guy serious? Is he on this planet? Monty ran Rommel into Tunisia and out of Africa. Monty had the fastest advance in WW2, 1,000km in 17 days. A quarter of a million Axis troops were POWs, more than taken at Stalingrad.
The Bulge was an allied victory in the end, thanks to Montgomery having to take command of two shambolic US armies and Coningham of the RAF taking command of USAAF units, with British forces ensuring they never got over the Meuse.
In the 1944-45 timeframe the only allied retreat was the US at the Bulge, with 90,000 casualties. The largest number of allied POWs taken in that time frame was US troops taken by Germans at the Bulge.
Read:
The Battle of the Bulge by Whitting
The US Third army took more casualties than any other western allied army - also for little gain. They failed to reach the westwall, suffering 52,000 casualties in the attempt.
The US army in the ETO was a moving disaster area. When by themselves they stalled. The Third Army abandoned reaching the westwall in Lorraine, Operation Queen was a stall with a defeat at Hurtgen Forest. Then the Bulge with the British having to bail them out.
They only got anywhere when the British, Canadians and French were with them - approx one million men were in the French First Army who were with Devers moving into the Saar.
You are a historian? Please!
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@silarpac
Beevor is a mercenary buffoon. He is not worth giving the time of day.
Browning, second in command of the First Allied Airborne Army who parachuted into Nijmegen, seeing the bridge untaken told General Gavin of the 82nd on the evening of 18th September that the Nijmegen bridge must be taken on the 19th, or at the latest, very early on the 20th. The Nijmegen bridge was not captured on the 17th because there was a foul up in communication between General Gavin and Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th PIR of the 82nd Airborne.
Gavin allegedly verbally told Lindquist during the pre-drop talk to take a battalion of the 508th and make a quick strike to the bridge on the 17th and to "move without delay" but Lindquist understood it that Gavin had told him that his 508th should only move for the bridge once his regiment had secured the assigned 508th's portion of the defensive perimeter for the 82nd Division. So Lindquist didn't move his battalion towards the Nijmegen bridge until after this had been done, and by that time it was too late.
This misunderstanding/miscommunication, which had disastrous ramifications for the overall Market Garden operation, has been the subject of much debate and controversy ever since.This was passing the buck, in an attempt to shift blame due to the 82nd totally failing to take the Nijmegen road bridge, which the Guards had to take for them, casting aspersions on the British tankers who's job it was to defend the bridge and prevent the Germans from taking it back.
Had the 82nd done the job it was supposed to have done, the bridge would have been taken 3 days before and XXX Corps would have reached Arnhem and relived the beleaguered British paras.
Sources:
It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw.
The Battle For The Rhine by Robin Neilands.
Reflect on Things Past by Peter Carington.
Market Garden Then and Now by Karel Magry (a Dutchman).
Lost at Nijmegen by Poulussen (a Dutchman).
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@silarpac
At Alam El Halfa Montgomery and the British were outnumbered:
Corps (Eighth Army)
- 4 divisions
Panzer Army Africa
- 6 divisions
Rommel had 500 tanks, 200 being modern PZ IV Ausf F and long barreled PZ IUI, and 700 airplanes, while Monty who had just arrived, had 450 tanks, 370 being outdated Matilda, Valentine and Crusader with the 2 pounder and 500 planes.
Result? Complete British victory,
Montgomery was often outnumbered in his pursuit of Rommel’s across North Africa:
He [Rommel] had now blundered by abandoning the best natural defensive position between Alamein and Tunisia to counter a daring but comparatively weak threat by the New Zealand Division to his flank.
Montgomery’s plan, laid down on 28th December 1942, had been spectacularly vindicated. While Rommel gasped at Mussolini’s criticism, the forward troops of Eighth Army were equally amazed at the way the Axis forces surrendered such easily defensible territory....
……he [Montgomery] penned his own secret confession of amazement that Rommel, falling back on his well-established lines of communication, often with superior forces and in ideal defensive positions, had failed to counter Eight Army’s bluff.
…..Monty had cause Rommel to adopt such a rapid withdrawal by a mixture of initial ruthlessness in battle at close quarters followed by dexterity and bluff. With only a minimum of forward troops he had forced Rommel not only to surrender almost one and a half thousand miles of territory, but to give up two excellent defensive positions in which he could have and why checked Eight Army sharply.
….In fact Montgomery had no intention of risking his meagre forward units in a premature attack on prepared defences without even proper air support. In artillery and men Eighth Army was vastly outnumbered in the Gulf of Sirte...
In fact the proof of Montgomery’s stretched administrative position was the way in which his foremost units / of 7th Armoured Division - were severely bombed and strafed by the Luftwaffe once they had hustled Rommel’s rearguard our of Agedabia, on the approach road to Agheila. There were a number of casualties, but until the last week in November the RAF was powerless to help, for only on 26 November did it manage to get two fighter wings operational at Msus.
…He would have found there that, apart from Fourth Light Armoured Brigade, which took the vital Martuba airfields on 15 November ( and thus saved Malta from starvation), Eighth Army could only support one division beyond Torbruk. This was Harding’s Seventh Armoured - of whose 47 medium tanks not even five were considered capable of making the 350- mile trans-desert journey to Benghazi, so worn out had they become.
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942- 1944
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