Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "The worst US General in World War 2?" video.
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@DonMeaker
Not this one again! Operation Cobra was planned by Monty - part of the overall plan explained at St.Paul's school in London. All below is from Nigel Hamilton in _Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944:
Brooke, however, was worried that he had not completely stopped the rot, and the next morning penned a long letter to Monty warning him of Eisenhower’s ‘mischief-making’:
My dear Monty The trouble between you and the P.M. has been satisfactorily settled for the present, but the other trouble I spoke to you about is looming large still and wants watching very carefully. Ike lunched with P.M. again this week and as a result I was sent for by P.M. and told that Ike was worried at the outlook taken by the American Press that the British were not taking their share of the fighting and of the casualties.
There seems to be more in it than that and Ike himself seemed to consider that the British Army could and should be more offensive. The P.M. asked me to meet Ike at dinner with him which I did last night, Bedell was there also. It is quite clear that Ike considers that Dempsey should be doing more than he does; it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!
I drew attention to what your basic strategy had been, i.e. to hold with your left and draw the Germans onto the flank while you pushed with your right. I explained how in my mind this conception was being carried out, that the bulk of the Armour had continuously been kept against the British. He could not refute these arguments, and then asked whether I did not consider that we were in a position to launch major offensives on each Army front simultaneously. I told him that in view of the fact that the German density in Normandy is 2 ½ times that on the Russian front, whilst our superiority in strength was only in the nature of some 25% as compared to 300% on the Russian superiority on the Eastern front, I did not consider that we were in a position to launch an all out offensive along the whole front.
Such a procedure would definitely not fit in with our strategy of opening up Brest by swinging forward Western Flank.’
To Brooke, Monty’s strategy was so clear that he could not understand Eisenhower’s apparent obsession with side issues, such as accusations in the American press that the British were leaving all the fighting up to the Americans: ’The strategy of the Normandy landing is quite straight-forward. The British (on the left) must hold and draw Germans on to themselves off the western flank whilst Americans swing up to open Brest peninsular,’ Brooke noted in his diary.
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@Front-Toward-Enemy
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.
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@DonMeaker
The idea was to form a bridgehead over the Rhine at Arnhem until Antwerp is online. A prime strategic problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp and keeping it from German counter-attack - the logistics problem to supply all allied armies. It was:
1) Take Noord Brabant, the land to the north and northeast of Antwerp, or;
2) Take the Schedlt.
Eisenhower had a weak Northern Thrust strategy at the time. Taking Noord Babant fell in line with the desires for both SHEAF and Eisenhower.
Noord Brabant had to be taken before the Scheldt, as it was essential. It was taken with limited forces, with minimal forces also sent to put pressure on the Schedlt. Market Garden had to go ahead regardless of any threat or Northern Thrust strategy, actually being a success.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches, the Scheldt and everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen needed to be under allied control. The low-lying lands, boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen with land strewn with rivers and canals, is perfect geography as a barrier against a German counter-attack towards Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant German forces would have been in artillery range of Antwerp, and with a build up of forces and supply directly back to Germany in perfect position for a counter-attack.
Market Garden was the offensive SHEAF wanted to secure Antwerp, a prime port for logistics for all allied armies. It made sense as the Germans were in disarray, so should be easy enough to gain. Monty added Arnhem to form a bridgehead over the Rhine to fall in line with Eisenhower's priority Northern Thrust strategy at the time. It made complete sense in establishing a bridgehead over the Rhine as an extra to the operation.
You needed Arnhem for an easier jump into Germany. Everything up to Nijmegen was needed if you wanted to do anything at all - that is, protect Antwerp and have a staging point to move into Germany. Gaining Noord Brabant, was vital, and was successfully seized. Fighting in the low lying mud and waterways of the Schedlt, which will take time, while the Germans a few miles away and still holding Noord Brabant made no sense at all.
SHEAF got what they wanted from a strategic point of view.
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@DonMeaker
You have no idea. Such confusion. The Normandy plans went as clockwork. So much the operation came in ahead of scheduled. So much that the British wiped out 90% of German armour in the west.
Monty cared nothing of phase lines. Only the start and end points. From Nigel Hamilton’s three volume biography of Montgomery:
”To help illustrate his presentation Monty had asked his MA - Lt Colonel Dawnay, to ink colluded phases onto the maps - as Dawnay later remembered:
’I had the maps prepared and drew on them the D-Day targets for the troops along the invasion front. And the dropping zones of the paratroopers. And the after consulting with Monty I drew the D plus 90 line - showing where he felt we should get by D plus 90 - which included Paris and a line back along the Loire.And I asked Monty how I should draw the lines in between. And he said , ‘Well it doesn’t matter Kit, draw them as you like.’ ‘So I said, ‘ Shall I draw them equally, sir?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’ll do.’
In his opinion it was not of any importance where he would be groundwise between D plus 1 and D plus 90, because he felt sure he could capture the line D plus 90 by the end of 3 months, and he was not going to capture ground, he was going to destroy enemy forces. Using Monty’s presentation notes, Dawnay drew in the arbitrary lines, never dreaming that they would be used in evidence against Monty when the campaign did not go ‘according to plan’…….In his later memoirs, Tedder reported the same Eisenhower allegation that would so infuriate Monty: ‘When a week had passed since D-Day without the capture of Caen it became clear to us at SHAEF that the hopes of a road breakthrough on the left were now remote.’
Yet Monty had never suggested or intended a break-through on the left; only a battle around Caen that would permit him to establish and extend the shield behind which Bradley could take Cherbourg and breakout via St Lo and Avranches to Brittany. Some of the misunderstanding was undoubtedly caused by Monty himself, as his MA, Lt Colonel Dawnay, later recognised: I think he had given the RAF a totally false impression, at St Paul’s and elsewhere, as to when he was going to get the airfields, south of Caen - a totally false impression. Because when we got there [to Normandy] we realized quite quickly that he didn’t care a damn about those airfields, as long as he could draw all the German armour on to the [eastern] side and give a chance for his right swing to break out!”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”As he explained in a letter that evening to Major-General Simpson at the war Office, Caen was only a name; he did not want to waste British and Canadians lives a la Stalingrad: The Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to CAEN. I have decided not to have a lot of casualties by butting up against the place; so I have ordered Second Army to keep up a good pressure at CAEN, and to make its main effort towards VILLERS BOCAGE and EVRECY and thence S.E. towards FALAISE.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
But this had been stated in an address he had given before D-Day. Monty’s actual address, never published before, makes it quite clear that, with the exception of ports, the battle for Normandy would not be conducted with object of capturing towns, but of step by step building up of men and resources until the moment when the Americans would be strong enough to drive south into Brittany and to the Loire. It was a strategy that Monty unfolded with absolute conviction, two months before the new date set for the invasion: the first full moon in June. As in the address to senior officers before Alamein the calm authority with which Monty outlined his plan, the likely enemy response, and the phases through which the battle would go, was almost incredible to those present who did not already know Montgomery.
At no point in this military lecture to Brooke, Churchill and Smuts, did Monty ever suggest that Dempsey was to do more than bring the German forces to battle around Caen, however - and when after the war, Eisenhower wrote that ‘in the east we had been unable to break out towards the Seine’, Monty was furious, for this was a complete travesty of the facts. To Churchill Monty had made it quite clear that there was no question of wild break-outs. How could there be when the Allies had only fourteen divisions ashore, many of which, particularly the parachute and first assault divisions, were inevitably running out of steam?
As Churchill pointed out to Stalin the battle for Normandy would be a slow and deliberate one: _‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August.Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
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@DonMeaker
John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
Montgomery to Alexander on July 19th 1943. A letter regarding Patton and Messina in Sicily: " ..when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerte (Tunisia) manoeuvre (i.e cut them off)"
Monty wrote in his diary:
"the Seventh American Army should develop two strong thrusts with (a) two divisions on Highway 120 and (b) two divisions on Highway 113 towards Messina. This was all agreed"
Pages 140/141 of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory by Michael Reynolds.
"[Monty] sent a message to Patton inviting him to come and discuss the capture of Messina. He offered, “Many congratulations to you and your gallant soldiers on securing Palermo and clearing up the western half of Sicily.” Privately, of course, he believed Patton’s Palermo escapade had been a completely wasted effort."
"Patton met Monty at Syracuse airfield on the 25th. Expecting the worst and mistrusting his comrade’s intentions, he was astounded when Monty suggested that the Seventh Army should use both the major roads north of Mount Etna (Highways 113 and 120) in a drive to capture Messina. In fact, Monty went even further and suggested that his right hand, or southern, thrust might even cross the inter-Army boundary and strike for Taormina, thereby cutting off the two German divisions facing the Eighth Army; the latter would “take a back seat.”
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
‘Montgomery was heading for Messina too, but the German forces still on the island threw up a tough defence line and it was late July before Montgomery worked his way through them and resumed his advance. Fans of the movie ''Patton'' think they know what happened next. Montgomery marched into Messina at the head of his triumphant troops - to find a smirking Patton waiting for him. Mr. D'Este assures us it didn't happen that way. Patton was indeed trying to beat Montgomery to Messina, but Montgomery would not make a race of it. He wanted only to keep the Germans from escaping and realized Patton was in the best position to accomplish that. In fact he urged Patton to use roads assigned to the Eighth Army.’
- NY Times, 1988, review book, The Finish Line Was Messina
In Sicily Patton was moving in the west over ground the Germans had abandoned and still made heavy going of it. It was arranged that Patton gets to Messina first with Montgomery. His troops did taking the easy route while the British slogged it out with the Germans, reaching Messina only a few hours after Patton.
"Although Brig. Gen. Maxwell Taylor, the artillery commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, described the provisional corps’ advance into northwestern Sicily as “a pleasure march, shaking hands with Italians asking, ‘How’s my brother Joe in Brooklyn?’ Nicest war I’ve ever been in!” it was in fact extremely unpleasant for many of the GIs who had to march over 100 miles through very rugged country in stifling heat and swirling dust."
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Bradley:
“Patton was developing as an unpopular guy. He steamed about with great convoys of cars and great squads of cameramen … To George, tactics was simply a process of bulling ahead. Never seemed to think out a campaign. Seldom made a careful estimate of the situation. I thought him a shallow commander … I disliked the way he worked, upset tactical plans, interfered in my orders. His stubbornness on amphibious operations, parade plans into Messina sickened me and soured me on Patton. We learned how not to behave from Patton’s Seventh Army.”
The reference to amphibious operations was in relation to three landings made on the north coast of Sicily during the advance to Messina, known to the Americans as end runs. Patton did not in fact interfere in the first successful landing, but he ordered the second to take place earlier than Bradley and Truscott wished, ending in a minor disaster, and he ordered the third to take place despite the fact that the 3rd Division had already advanced beyond the landing site!"
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
More amateurism from the Americans, taking towns unnecessarily slowing down the operation:
"On July 19, Monty had signalled Alexander, outlining his axes of advance around either side of Mount Etna and suggesting that “when the Americans have cut the coast road north of Petralia, one American division should develop a strong thrust eastwards towards Messina so as to stretch the enemy who are all Germans and possibly repeat the Bizerta manoeuvre [i.e., cut them off].”
"This made complete military sense, but by the 17th Patton had persuaded Alexander to allow him to drive toward the northwestern part of the island. When Alexander tried to restrain Patton by sending him a new directive on the evening of the 19th, it was too late. The directive, in accordance with Monty’s suggestion, ordered Patton to first cut the coastal road north of Petralia and only then to move on Palermo. However, the Seventh Army Chief of Staff, Brig. Gen. Hobart Gay, kept the first part of the message from Patton, ensured that the remainder took a long time to be decoded, and then asked for it to be repeated on the grounds that it had been garbled! By the time this problem had been resolved, the advance guard of Keyes’ provisional corps was already in Palermo and Monty’s idea of an American division helping him, at least in the short term, had been frustrated."
- by Michael Reynolds author of Monty and Patton: Two Paths To Victory
Patton was a buffoon!
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Oh Nicholas!
Montgomery never planned or was involved in the execution of Market Garden (Arnhem), only proposing the concept. Eisenhower, approved under resourcing 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 US generals 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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@TheChieftainsHatch
Oh Nicholas! Montgomery was more than just a "fairly good general" for sure. Montgomery was the finest western general by a country mile. Just look at facts...
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.
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@williestyle35
Caen! Americans have a thing about Caen. Caen was not a first rate objective. If it could be taken on the first day or two then fine. Monty wanted his forces not to be driven back into the sea in the early days of D-Day. He was not going to to tie up limited resources, resources that were slowly coming ashore on beaches, in street fighting for a 2nd tier objective.
From Nigel Hamilton’s three volume biography of Montgomery:
”To help illustrate his presentation Monty had asked his MA - Lt Colonel Dawnay, to ink colluded phases onto the maps - as Dawnay later remembered: ’I had the maps prepared and drew on them the D-Day targets for the troops along the invasion front. And the dropping zones of the paratroopers. And the after consulting with Monty I drew the D plus 90 line - showing where he felt we should get by D plus 90 - which included Paris and a line back along the Loire.And I asked Monty how I should draw the lines in between. And he said, Well it doesn’t matter Kit, draw them as you like.’ So I said, ‘ Shall I draw them equally, sir?’ And he said ‘Yes, that’ll do.’ In his opinion it was not of any importance where he would be groundwise between D plus 1 and D plus 90, because he felt sure he could capture the line D plus 90 by the end of three months, and he was not going to capture ground, he was going to destroy enemy forces. Using Monty’s presentation notes, Dawnay drew in the arbitrary lines, never dreaming that they would be used in evidence against Monty when the campaign did not go ‘according to plan’…….
In his later memoirs, Tedder reported the same Eisenhower allegation that would so infuriate Monty: ‘When a week had passed since D-Day without the capture of Caen it became clear to us at SHAEF that the hopes of a road breakthrough on the left were now remote.’Yet Monty had never suggested or intended a break-through on the left; only a battle around Caen that would permit him to establish and extend the shield behind which Bradley could take Cherbourg and breakout via St Lo and Avranches to Brittany. Some of the misunderstanding was undoubtedly caused by Monty himself, as his MA, Lt Colonel Dawnay, later recognised: I think he had given the RAF a totally false impression, at St Paul’s and elsewhere, as to when he was going to get the airfields, south of Caen - a totally false impression.
Because when we got there [to Normandy] we realized quite quickly that he didn’t care a damn about those airfields, as long as he could draw all the German armour on to the [eastern] side and give a chance for his right swing to break out!”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
”As he explained in a letter that evening to Major-General Simpson at the war Office, Caen was only a name; he did not want to waste British and Canadians lives a la Stalingrad: The Germans are doing everything they can to hold on to CAEN. I have decided not to have a lot of casualties by butting up against the place; so I have ordered Second Army to keep up a good pressure at CAEN, and to make its main effort towards VILLERS BOCAGE and EVRECY and thence S.E. towards FALAISE.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942-1944.
But this had been stated in an address he had given before D-Day. ”Monty’s actual address, never published before, makes it quite clear that, with the exception of ports, the battle for Normandy would not be conducted with object of capturing towns, but of step by step building up of men and resources until the moment when the Americans would be strong enough to drive south into Brittany and to the Loire. It was a strategy that Monty unfolded with absolute conviction, two months before the new date set for the invasion: the first full moon in June. As in the address to senior officers before Alamein the calm authority with which Monty outlined his plan, the likely enemy response, and the phases through which the battle would go, was almost incredible to those present who did not already know Montgomery. At no point in this military lecture to Brooke, Churchill and Smuts, did Monty ever suggest that Dempsey was to do more than bring the German forces to battle around Caen, however - and when after the war, Eisenhower wrote that ‘in the east we had been unable to break out towards the Seine’, Monty was furious, for this was a complete travesty of the facts. To Churchill Monty had made it quite clear that there was no question of wild break-outs. How could there be when the Allies had only fourteen divisions ashore, many of which, particularly the parachute and first assault divisions, were inevitably running out of steam? As Churchill pointed out to Stalin the battle for Normandy would be a slow and deliberate one:
‘I should think it quite likely that we should work up to a battle of about a million a side, lasting throughout June and July. We plan to have about two million there by mid-August. Eisenhower’s unfortunate obfuscation has coloured the military accounts ever since, polarizing chroniclers into nationalistic camps. This was, Monty felt, a tragedy in view of the fact that the battle for Normandy was, at all stages, an Allied battle, in which Allied soldiers gave their lives, conforming to an Allied plan to defeat the German armies in the West - not to ‘break out towards the Seine’ in some mythical Lancelot charge...Dempsey’s brief then was not to ‘break out towards Seine’, but to play his part in a truly Allied undertaking, bringing to battle the mobile German forces that would otherwise - as Rommel wished - destroy the American assault on Cherbourg.”
-Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield 1942–1944.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
I prefer facts myself. The US army in the ETO was a poor army, its record speaks for itself. Big and well supplied but poor, especially in leadership. We have had 75 years of US propaganda from Hollywood and TV 'documentaries' making out US forces were key and superior, when the truth is quite the opposite. Any historian looking at the ETO cannot come out with any other conclusion.
The British made them, look what they were - amateurs, especially in leadership. So much the US developed Anglophobia. The mention of Montgomery sends Americans wild. The words ass-hole are liberally used, as they have been told this for 75 years. But just look at my posts on his achievements - the finest general in the world. Even when confronted with facts, like you, they do not believe them the indoctrination is so strong.
Even US screw ups, they point at the Brits, to hide their own embarrassment. Market Garden was planned by Americans, not Monty. He was not involved in its execution. Two US airborne units failed to seize their bridges precluding a bridgehead over the Rhine. US propaganda blames Monty and XXX Corps. XXX Corps never put a foot wrong, having to seize a bridge for the US 82nd. Laughable.
Another is Caen, which is really laughable. A second tier objective of no strategic value. Ports were the priority not cities. At the 11 hour Monty directed a US 82nd jump from Caen to Cherbourg, indicating the priority. Monty ran Normandy bringing it in ahead of schedule with less than predicted casualties.
When the US were by themselves, not with other forces, they were poor. Operation Queen, the Battle of the Bulge (Monty had to take command of two shambolic US armies to save it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvcJfXtkCW8
Then Lorraine when the US myth of Patton said to Bradley on 5 Nov 1944 that he would be over the German Westwall in three days. He never got over it via Lorraine, also moving 10 miles in three months at Metz.
I could go on and on.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
Britain was key in WW2. Britain fought on every front, being in the war on the first day up to the last - the only country at the surrender of Japan in September 1945 to do so - Britain’s war actually ended in 1946 staying on in Viet Nam using Japanese troops alongside British troops to defeat the Viet Minh, but that is another story. Britain was not attacked or attacked anyone, going into WW2 on principle. The Turkish ambassador to the UK stated that the UK can raise 40 million troops from its empire so will win the war. This was noted by Franco who indirectly said to Hitler he would not win, fearing British occupation of Spanish islands and territory if Spain joined the war. Spain and Turkey stayed out of the war.
The Turkish ambassador’s point was given credence when an army of 2.6 million was assembled in India that moved into Burma to wipe out the Japanese. From day one the Royal Navy formed a ring around the Axis positioning ships from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Arctic off Norway, blockading the international trade of the Axis. This deprived the Axis of vital human and animal food, oil, rubber, metals, and other vital resources. By 1941 the successful Royal Navy blockade had confined the Italian navy to port due to lack of oil. By the autumn of 1941 Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, by the British fleet and the chronic lack of fuel. A potential German invasion from the the USSR in the north into the oil rich Middle East entailed expanded British troop deployment to keep the Germans away from the oil fields, until they were defeated at Stalingrad.
Throughout 1942 British Commonwealth troops were fighting, or seriously expecting to be attacked, in:
♦ French North Africa;
♦ Libya;
♦ Egypt;
♦ Cyprus;
♦ Syria: where an airborne assault was expected, with preparations to reinforce Turkey if they were attacked;
♦ Madagascar: fighting the Vichy French to prevent them from inviting the Japanese in as they had done in Indochina;
♦ Iraq;
♦ Iran: the British & Soviets invaded Iran in August 1941.
A million British troops in the Middle East and North Africa, supplied around the Cape - the equivalent to half way around the world, supplied by a massive merchant fleet. Those spread-out covering troops were more in combined numbers than were facing Japan and Rommel in North Africa. The British Commonwealth fielded over 100 divisions in 1942 alone, compared to the US total of 88 by the end of the war. The Americans and Soviets were Johnny-come-late in WW2, moreso the Americans.
Before the USSR entered the conflict the Royal Navy’s blockade had reduced the Italian and German surface navies to the occasional sorties because of a lack of oil, with the British attacking the Germans and Italians in North Africa, also securing Syria, Iraq, the Levant and ridding the Italians from East Africa. After the USSR came into the war the British secured Iran and the British refinery at Aberdan.
The Germans were on the run by the time the USA had boots on the ground against the Axis.
The Germans had been stopped:
♦ in the west at the Battle of Britain in 1940;
♦ in the east at the Battle of Moscow in 1941. In which Britain provided 40% of the Soviet tanks.
The Germans were on the run after the simultaneous battles in late 1942 of:
♦ El Alemein;
♦ Stalingrad;
The Battle of El Alemein culminated in a quarter of a million Axis prisoners taken in Tunisia - more than taken at Stalingrad.
Apart from the US Filipino forces that surrendered in early 1942, the US had a couple of divisions in Gaudalcanal after August 1942, and one in New Guinea by November 1942. In 1943 the US managed to get up to six divisions in the Pacific, but still not matching the British or British Indian armies respectively. Until late 1943 the Australian Army alone deployed more ground fighting troops against the Japanese than the USA. The Americans never put more ground troops into combat against the Japanese at any point than just the British Indian Army alone, which was 2.6 million strong. The US had nowhere near 2.6 million men on the ground against the Japanese. The Soviets fielded about a million against the Japanese.
Most Japanese troops were put out of action by the British and Soviets, not the USA. At the battles of Khohima and Imphal the Japanese suffered their worst defeat in their history up to that point.
Then the British set their Eastern and Pacific fleets against the Japanese, not far off in numbers to the US fleet. The British Pacific Fleet assisted US troops protecting the western coast of Okinawa with its armoured carriers - they could operate way nearer to the coast than wooden decked US carriers, as kamikaze's bounced off them. The fleet also bombarded Japan, Sumatra and Taiwan, sinking one Japanese aircraft carrier and disabling another. The massive British merchant fleet greatly assisted the supply of US forces.
The Australian navy assisted the US navy all through the Japanese war. The USA was in the war for four years, yet it was less than 10 months before the Japanese surrender they actually fielded an entire army against the Japanese. That was in the Philippines. Before that it was just divisions fighting on scattered islands for a month or so at a time. Even the island hopping was heavily assissted by the massive British merchant fleet, over the horizon ready to move in.
In Europe the British planned and ran the D-Day Normandy campaign which came in ahead of schedule with 22% less casualties than predicted, with the British in command of all the air, sea and land forces of all nationalities. Then also destroying 90% of German armour in the west in the process, with constant air raids on German cities and industry culminating with 1,000 bomber raids. The Canadian navy was heavily involved in anti U-Boat operations in the Atlantic. The biggest agents in the defeat of the Nazis and Japanese were the British.
You will not get that information from Hollywood.
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@BobSmith-dk8nw
Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims —entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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@michaeldunne338
Elsenborn Ridge went onto the 26 December.
To try and spin it that the US forces would have defeated the Germans at the Bulge without British intervention and command, is pure fantasy.
“I find it difficult to refrain from expressing my indignation at Hodges and Ridgeway and my appreciation of Montgomery whenever I talk about St. Vith. It is my firm opinion that if it hadn't been for Montgomery, the First US Army, and especially the troops in the St. Vith salient, would have ended in a debacle that would have gone down in history.”
“I'm sure you remember how First Army HQ fled from Spa leaving food cooking on the stoves, officers' Xmas presents from home on their beds and, worst of all, top secret maps still on the walls... First Army HQ never contacted us with their new location and I had to send an officer to find them. He did and they knew nothing about us...(Montgomery) was at First Army HQ when my officer arrived. A liaison officer from Montgomery arrived at my HQ within 24 hrs. His report to Montgomery is what saved us...”
- Hasbrouck of 7th Armor - “Generals of the Bulge” by Jerry D. Morelock, footnote 91,92, page 298.
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@michaeldunne338
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 inside did not change the course of the battle.
The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks. Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne.
Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost three days just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne.
After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
The commander of the Fifth Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel, aimed a dismissive, indirect critique at Patton’s efforts at Bastogne, writing in his memoirs that the Americans did not “strike with full élan.”
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@michaeldunne338
♦ Only the Americans criticise Monty, in a veiled attempt to disguise their inept performance in Europe. Monty never retreated, not once.
♦ Bradley felt humiliated having two of his three armies taken from him and giving to Monty in the Bulge.
♦ The depleted and demoralised US armies should have been pushed to the rear of the British 21st Army Group. Monty never humiliated them. He kept them at the front.
♦ Monty filled the losses of the two US armies with British troops. British troops under US command with the US command under British command. It worked.
When the US First and Ninth armies were given to Monty at the Bulge, Monty chose the right option. Instead of joining a grindmeat where the Americans lost almost 100,000 and the Germans around 75,000, Monty decided to choose his own ground, and not commit too many of his troops in the Ardennes, using US troops for that.
The result was that more than 100,000 Germans were made casualties in Operation Veritable and Grenade, British and American casualties were less than 20.000. In Operation Plunder the British went further to make 30,000 German casualties, for an remarkable number of only 4,000 allied casualties. Monty's operations were on the offensive, and yet the Germans suffered a gigantic number of casualties compared to the minimum of the British.
Of the three main powers, the British managed the most cost effective advances in the war, while still keeping up the pace, and even facing the majority of the Germans in Normandy, while advancing faster than everyone else after the break out reaching Belgium. Patton was stuck in Metz for three months suffering 50.000 casualties failing to reach the Westwall. Bradley had 42.000 casualties in the Hurtgen Forest defeat.
The Americans were having manpower troubles after the Bulge. - mostly because of their head on tactics and complete lack of interest in keeping their soldiers alive. They counterattacked in the Bulge not because it was the most sane thing to do, but just to try make Bradley and the Americans at large less humiliated. Monty in the Bulge had the same thinking as in Operation Luttich, the German counter-attack against US forces in Normandy. Let the Germans go as far as west as possible while minimizing casualties.
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@michaeldunne338
Bastogne was merely a southern periphery battle, on the other side of the German 'Bulge'. The majority of the Bulge fighting was by US First Army to the north under the command of Montgomery from the 20th onwards (the 5th day of the battle).
Monty saved the US 7th Armored Division and US 82nd Airborne from annihilation around St Vith. The battles in the north were the most important in the Bulge. St Vith, Stoumont, Stavelot, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize, Marche, Celles, Manhay, Hotton etc etc. This is where the Germans were losing the majority of their men and tanks. Not around Bastogne.
Bastogne wasn't of any great importance for the Germans. The Germans left it behind and marched towards the River Meuse leaving only scratch forces to mop up around Bastogne.
An excellent American lecture on the battle. Search "Corps Commanders of the Bulge: Six American Generals and Victory in the Ardennes" on Utube.
The lecturer is correct when he says:
"The decision to give command to Monty was the best decision Eisenhower made. Montgomery is a better battle manager than Bradley. Courtney Hodges needed adult supervision, he can't manage the thing on his own. Eisenhower sensed that Hodges was going to need close supervising authority. Monty could do that."
"The real reason Ike did it. Monty with his system knew more about what was going on in the Bulge than Hodges knew. He had liaison officers further forward who were giving him reports faster and he started moving XXX Corps down to the Meuse. Monty moved XXX Corps down to the west bank of the Meuse. If you give Monty command of Simpson's Ninth Army and Hodges' First Army then Monty is into the battle full thing and you know damn well that XXX Corps is going to be there as well as emergency backstop if it's needed and that's the real reason Eisenhower did it!"
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@michaeldunne338
Patton was an average US general, no more, after WW2 most German generals had never heard of him. A US media creation, elevating the average beyond their status.
"The Allied armies closing the pocket now needed to liaise, those held back giving way to any Allied force that could get ahead, regardless of boundaries – provided the situation was clear. On August 16, realising that his forces were not able to get forward quickly, General Crerar attempted to do this, writing a personal letter to Patton in an attempt to establish some effective contact between their two headquarters and sort out the question of Army boundaries, only to get a very dusty and unhelpful answer. Crerar sent an officer, Major A. M. Irving, and some signal equipment to Patton’s HQ, asking for details of Patton’s intentions and inviting Patton to send an American liaison officer to the Canadian First Army HQ for the same purpose.
Irving located but could not find Patton; he did, however, reach the First Army HQ and delivered Crerar’s letter which was duly relayed to Third Army HQ. Patton’s response is encapsulated in the message sent back by Irving to Canadian First Army; ‘Direct liaison not permitted. Liaison on Army Group level only except corps artillery. Awaiting arrival signal equipment before returning.’ Irving returned to Crerar’s HQ on August 20, with nothing achieved and while such uncooperative attitudes prevailed at the front line, it is hardly surprising that the moves of the Allied armies on Trun and Chambois remained hesitant."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Patton refused to liaise with other allied armies, exasperating a critical situation.
Patton’s corps duly surged away to the east, heading for Dreux, Chartres and Orléans respectively. None of these places lay in the path of the German retreat from Normandy: only Dreux is close to the Seine, Chartres is on the Beauce plain, south-east of Paris, and Orléans is on the river Loire. It appears that Patton had given up any attempt to head off the German retreat to the Seine and gone off across territory empty of enemy, gaining ground rapidly and capturing a quantity of newspaper headlines. This would be another whirlwind Patton advance – against negligible opposition – but while Patton disappeared towards the east the Canadians were still heavily engaged in the new battle for Falaise which had begun on August 14 and was making good progress."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle of Normandy 1944
Instead of moving east to cut retreating Germans at the Seine, Patton ran off to Paris. John Ellis in Brute Force described Patton's dash across northern France as well as his earlier “much overrated” pursuit through Sicily as more of “a triumphal procession than an actual military offensive.”
In Normandy, the panzer divisions had been largely worn down, primarily by the British and Canadians around Caen. The First US Army around St Lo then Mortain helped a little. Over 90% of German armour was destroyed by the British. Once again, Patton who came in late in Normandy, faced very little opposition in his break out in Operation Cobra performing mainly an infantry role. Nor did Patton advance any quicker across eastern France mainly devoid of German troops, than the British and Canadians did, who were in Brussels by early September seizing the vital port of Antwerp intact.This eastern dash devoid of German forces was the ride the US media claimed Patton was some sort of master of fast moving armour.
Patton at Metz advanced 10 miles in three months. The poorly devised Panzer Brigade concept was deployed in The Lorraine with green German troops. The Panzer Brigades were a rushed concept attempting to plug the gaps while the proper panzer divisions were re-fitting and rebuilt after the Normandy battles. The Panzer Brigades had green crews with little time to train, unfamiliar with their tanks, had no recon elements only meeting their unit commander on his arrival at the front. These were not elite forces. The 17th SS were not amongst the premier Waffen SS panzer divisions. It was not even a panzer division but a panzer grenadier division, equipped only with assault guns not tanks, with only a quarter of the number of AFVs as a panzer division. The 17th SS was badly mauled in Normandy being below strength at Arracourt in The Lorraine. In The Lorraine, the Third Army faced a rabble full of eyes and ears units. Even the German commander of Army Group G in The Lorraine, Hermann Balck, who took command in September 1944 said:_"I have never been in command of such irregularly_ assembled and ill-equipped troops. The fact that we have been able to straighten out the situation again…can only be attributed to the bad and hesitating command of the Americans."
Patton failed to reach the Westwall.
Patton was not advancing or being heavily engaged at the time he turned north to Bastogne when the Germans pounded through US lines in the Ardennes. Bastogne was on the very southern German flank, their focus being west. The strategic significance of the stand at Bastogne, is over exaggerated. The 18,000 did not change the course of the battle. The German's bypassed Bastogne, placing a containment force around the town.
Only when Patton neared Bastogne did he engage some German armour but not a great deal at all. Patton's ride to Bastogne was mainly through US held territory, with the road from Luxembourg to Bastogne having few German forces. The Fuhrer Grenadier Brigade was far from being one of the best German armoured units with about 80 tanks, 26th Volks-Grenadier having about 12 Hetzers, and the small element of Panzer Lehr (Kampfgruppe 901) left behind with a small number of operational tanks.
Patton did not have to smash through full panzer divisions or Tiger battalions on his way to Bastogne. Patton's armoured forces outnumbered the Germans by at least 6 to 1. Patton faced very little German armour when he broke through to Bastogne because the vast majority of the German 5th Panzer Army had already left Bastogne in their rear moving westwards to the River Meuse. They were engaging forces under Montgomery's 21st Army Group near Dinant by the Meuse. Monty's armies halted the German advance pushing them back.
On the night of the 22 December 1944, Patton ordered Combat Command B of 4th Armored Division to advance through the village of Chaumont in the night. A small number of German troops with anti tank weapons stopped the American attack who pulled back. The next day, fighter bombers strafed the village of Chaumont weakening the defenders enabling the attack to resume the next afternoon. However, a German counter attack north of Chaumont knocked out 12 Shermans with Combat Command B again retreating. It took Patton almost THREE DAYS just to get through the village of Chaumont. They didn't get through Chaumont village until Christmas Day. Hardly racing at breakneck speed.
Patton had less than 20 km of German held ground to cover during his actual 'attack' towards Bastogne, with the vast majority of his move towards Bastogne through American held lines devoid of the enemy. His start line for the attack was at Vaux-les-Rosieres, 15km southwest of Bastogne and yet he still took him five days to get through to Bastogne. After the German attack in the Ardennes, US air force units were put under Coningham of the RAF, who gave Patton massive ground attack support and he still stalled. Patton's failure to concentrate his forces on a narrow front and his decision to commit two green divisions to battle without adequate reconnaissance resulted in his stall.
The 18,000 men in Bastogne pretty well walked out, even the commander of the US 101st stated that. The Germans had vacated the area heading west.
Patton's Third Army was almost always where the weakest German divisions in the west where.
* Who did the 3rd Army engage?
* Who did the 3rd Army defeat?
* Patton never once faced a full strength premier Waffen SS panzer division nor a Tiger battalion.
* Patton was not at E Alamein, D-Day or the main area of the Bulge.
Patton repeatedly denigrated his subordinates:
* In Sicily he castigated Omar Bradley for the tactics Bradley's II Corps were employing;
* He accused the commander of 3rd Infantry Division, Truscott of being "afraid to fight";
* In the Ardennes he castigated Middleton of the US VIII Corps and Millikin of the US III Corps;
* When his advance from Bastogne to Houffalize stalled, he criticised the 11th Armoured Division for being "very green and taking unnecessary casualties to no effect";
* He called the 17th Airborne Division "hysterical" in reporting their losses;
Patton rarely took any responsibility for his own failures. It was always somebody else at fault. A poor general who thought he was reincarnated, had incestual relationships and wore cowboy guns. Patton detested Hodges, did not like Bradley disobeying his and Eisenhower's orders. He also hated Montgomery. About the only person he ever liked was himself.
Read:
Monty and Patton: Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds and_Fighting Patton: George S. Patton Jr. Through the Eyes of His Enemies_ by Harry Yeide
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Montgomery to Alan Brooke..
"If we want the war to end within any reasonable period you have to get Eisenhower’s hand taken off the land battle. I regret to say that in my opinion he just doesn’t know what he is doing.
Montgomery wrote of Eisenhower and his ridiculous broad-front strategy on 22 January 1945:
“I fear that the old snags of indecision and vacillation and refusal to consider the military problem fairly and squarely are coming to the front again . . . The real trouble is that there is no control and the three army groups are each intent on their own affairs. Patton today issued a stirring order to Third Army, saying the next step would be Cologne . . . One has to preserve a sense of humour these days, otherwise one would go mad.”
Alanbrooke wrote in his diary about buffoon Einsenhower:
“At the end of this morning's C.O.S. [Chief of Staff] meeting I put before the committee my views on the very unsatisfactory state of affairs in France, with no one running the land battle. Eisenhower, though supposed to be doing so, is on the golf links at Rheims — entirely detached and taking practically no part in running of the war. Matters got so bad lately that a deputation of Whiteley, Bedell Smith and a few others went up to tell him that he must get down to it and RUN the war, which he said he would."
"We discussed the advisability of getting Marshall to come out to discuss the matter, but we are doubtful if he would appreciate the situation. Finally decided that I am to see the P.M. to discuss the situation with him.”
"November 28th I went to see the P.M. I told him I was very worried."
Alan Brooke described in his daily diary that American generals Eisenhower and Marshall as poor strategists, when they were in jobs were strategy mattered. Brooke wrote to Montgomery about his talks with Eisenhower, “it is equally clear that Ike has the very vaguest conception of war!”
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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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