Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Hillsdale College"
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Oh no! Monty was only good at set battles? From El Alemein, he chased Rommel 1,000 kms in 17 days. The fastest advance in WW2 over that distance. It’s a myth that Monty was ‘slow’ and ‘cautious’ and American propaganda, spread largely by Bradley and his staff because Bradley was embarrassed that during the Bulge Monty was brought in to replace him and take control of two shambolic US armies.
In France 1944 D-Day plus 90 was 4 September 1944, the projected end to the operation. Monty said Paris would be liberated on D-day plus 90. It was liberated on D-Day plus 80.
Dempsey took Brussels, 183 miles from Caen, on D-Day plus 89. Dempsey took Antwerp, 253 miles from Caen, on D-Day plus 90.That is faster than the Germans in 1940.
Monty had no time for WW1-like narrow breakthroughs that would run out of steam after a few miles and let the Germans form new defensive lines. Many generals before Monty had outrun their supply.
From Nigel Hamilton’s biography:
As in the campaign from Alamein to Tripoli, Monty’s intention was to resist opportunism and to defeat the enemy by retaining the initiative- building up his forces, and then ‘driving’ so hard that he could maintain sufficient momentum to reach his considered objective in one operation. Tripoli had fallen in this way.
Monty was in his element. It was a repetition of Alam Halfa- and just as he had then astonished his staff by planning the offensive battle of Alamein while Eighth Army prepared itself for a defensive battle at Alam Halfa, so now he gave Simpson details of his forthcoming offensive at Mareth.....
The secret, as he had learned in the aftermath of Alamein and demonstrated in the battle for Tripoli, was not simply to follow up the enemy, but to prepare men, material and supplies so that, having once broken through the crust of opposition, Eight Army had sufficient momentum to smash its way through to its further objectives. In a letter of 2 January 1943 Monty had explained his tactical strategy to the CIGS, Sir Alanbrooke:
”My present situation is that the further I get from Benghazi, the more difficult my administration becomes. I have now got to the point where I cannot let the enemy go on drawing me forward slowly. My solution is to stand where I am, to spend up to 14th Jan in building resources of petrol, supplies, ammunition, etc. and then to smash my way through to TRIPOLI in one big bound.”
This tactical strategy, so mocked later by romantic historians enamoured of the pragmatic cut-and-thrust type of military manoeuvre, was Monty’s greatest contribution to the war in North Africa. The Allies under Eisenhower had attempted to exploit the success and surprise of their ‘Torch’ landing by piecemeal advance into Tunisia. Within a month Anderson was confessing to Eisenhower he had reached a "point of diminishing power" being at the end of a long and tortuous line of supply.
- Hamilton, Nigel. Monty, Master of the Battlefield.
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
♦ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
♦ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was
short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard
Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
♦ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division
levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
♦ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality” —a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
♦ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
♦ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing
commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “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” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
♦ 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.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
♦ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
♦ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not
appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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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 to 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.’
www.nytimes.com/1988/11/27/books/the-finish-line-was-messina.html
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 Patton, 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
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What US historian Harry Yeide wrote of what the Germans thought of Patton:
▪ for most of the war the Germans barely took notice [of Patton].
▪ on March 23 at the Battle of El Guettar—the first American victory against the experienced Germans. Patton’s momentum, however, was short-lived: Axis troops held him to virtually no gain until April 7, when they withdrew under threat from British Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army.
▪ There is no indication in the surviving German military records—which include intelligence reports at the theater, army, and division levels—that Patton’s enemies had any idea who he was at the time. Likewise, the immediate postwar accounts of the German commanders in Tunisia, written for the U.S. Army’s History Division, ignore Patton. Those reports show that ground commanders considered II Corps’s attacks under Patton to have been hesitant, and to have missed great opportunities.
▪ In mid-June [1943], another detachment report described Patton as “an energetic and responsibility-loving command personality” —a passing comment on one of the numerous Allied commanders. Patton simply had not yet done anything particularly noteworthy in their eyes.
▪ But his race to Palermo through country they had already abandoned left the commanders unimpressed. Major General Eberhard Rodt, who led the 15th Panzergrenadier Division against Patton’s troops during the Allied push toward Messina, thought the American Seventh Army fought hesitantly and predictably. He wrote in an immediate postwar report on Sicily, “The enemy very often conducted his movements systematically, and only attacked after a heavy artillery preparation when he believed he had broken our resistance. This kept him regularly from exploiting the weakness of our situation and gave me the opportunity to consolidate dangerous situations.” Once again, Patton finished a campaign without impressing his opponents.
▪ General Hermann Balck, who took command of Army Group G in September, thus did not think highly of Patton—or any other opposing commanders—during this time. Balck wrote to his commander, Runstedt, on October 10, “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” Looking back on his battles against Patton throughout the autumn, in 1979 Balck recalled, “Within my zone, the Americans never once exploited a success. Often [General Friedrich Wilhelm von] Mellenthin, my chief of staff, and I would stand in front of the map and say, ‘Patton is helping us; he failed to exploit another success.’”
▪ 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.” The commanders who fought against Patton in his last two mobile campaigns in the Saar-Palatinate and east of the Rhine already knew they could not win; their losses from this point forward were inevitable, regardless of the commanding Allied opponent.
▪ the Germans offered Patton faint praise during and immediately after the war.
▪ posterity deserves fact and not myth. The Germans did not track Patton’s movements as the key to Allied intentions. Hitler does not appear to have thought often of Patton, if at all. The Germans considered Patton a hesitant commanding general in the scrum of position warfare. They never raised his name in the context of worthy strategists.
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@naturalobserver6130 wrote:
"the only ones that got trounced in the battle of the bulge were the germans."
Initially? No. Montgomery on hearing of the attack immediately moved British troops to the Meuse river, maintaining a physical barrier, protecting the rear of the US First Army, without any orders from Eisenhower. Hodges only needed to concentrate on the Germans ahead as Monty protected him.
The US First and Ninth armies were a shambles having to be given to Monty to command. Monty stopped the piecemeal counter-attacks, brought them all back into a coherent organised force, then using British troops inside the decimated US armies, stopped the advance, pushing the Germans back to their start line.
"The operations of the American First Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough".
- The commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel.
The only allied retreat in the 1944/45 timeframe was US forces in the Ardennes, who took 100,000 casualties. The US Ninth army was under Monty's command until near the end of the war. They did not retreat under Monty.
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@naturalobserver6130
Eisenhower prioritized the northern thrust over other fronts and even seizing Antwerp and clearing the Schedlt. Clearing the Scheldt would take time as the German 15th SS army, highly experienced from the Russian front, had set up shop in the Scheldt and not retreated back into Germany, under Hitler's orders. All available supplies would be directed to this northern thrust.
"Since Eisenhower — the Supreme Commander and Ground Force Commander — approved the Arnhem operation rather than a push to clear the Scheldt, then surely he was right, as well as noble, to accept the responsibility and any resulting blame? The choice in early September was the Rhine or Antwerp: to continue the pursuit or secure the necessary facilities to solve the logistical problem? The decision was made to go for the Rhine, and that decision was Eisenhower’s."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"On 4 Sept, the day Antwerp fell, Eisenhower issued another directive, ordering the forces north-west of the Ardennes — 21st Army Group and two corps of the US First Army — to take Antwerp, reach the Rhine and seize the Ruhr"
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Eisenhower did not know Antwerp had fallen to British troops when he issued the northern thrust directive. Montgomery wanted a thrust up and over the Rhine prior to Eisenhower's directive, devising Operation Comet, multiple crossings of the Rhine, to be launched on 2 Sept, being cancelled due to German resistance and poor weather. Operation Comet was not presented to Eisenhower for his approval. Montgomery asked Brereton, an American, of the First Allied Airborne Army, to drop into the Scheldt in early September - he refused.
Eisenhower's directive of 4 Sept had divisions of the US 1st Army and Montgomery's view of taking multiple bridges on the Rhine from Arnhem to Wesel. The British 2nd Army needed some divisions of Hodges' US 1st army and the First Allied Airborne Army (which Monty controlled anyhow). Hodges' would protect the right flank. the Canadians would protect the left flank from the German 15th army.
"the narrow thrust was reduced to the Second Army and two US corps, the XIX and VII of Hodges’ First Army, a total of around eighteen Allied divisions"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
The northern thrust was to chase a disorganized retreating enemy preventing them from manning the German West Wall, gaining a footing over the Rhine, consolidating and then clearing the Scheldt to open up the port of Antwerp. A sound concept which even the German generals agreed would have worked.
"Perhaps not more then, but that much alone would have been very useful — and much more than was actually achieved. This view was confirmed after the war in interviews with the senior surviving German commanders, von Rundstedt, Student, Blumentritt and Rommel’s former chief of staff, General Speidel. They were unanimous in declaring that a full-blooded thrust from Belgium in September would have succeeded in crossing the Rhine and might have ended the war in 1944, since they had no means of stopping such a thrust reaching the Ruhr. In the event, largely due to the faulty command set-up [by Eisenhower] and lack of grip, even a bridgehead over the Rhine before the winter was still a dream in 1944."
- Neillands, The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower’s reply of 5 September to Montgomery deserves analysis, not least the part that concerns logistics. The interesting point is that Eisenhower apparently believes that it is possible to cross the Rhine and take both the Ruhr and the Saar — and open the Scheldt — using the existing logistical resources."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Eisenhower. He had now heard from both his Army Group commanders — or Commanders-in-Chief as they were currently called — and reached the conclusion that they were both right; that it was possible to achieve everything, even with lengthening supply lines and without Antwerp. In thinking this Ike was wrong."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
"Post-Normandy Bradley seemed unable to control Patton, who persistently flouted Eisenhower’s directives and went his own way, aided and abetted by Bradley. This part of their relationship quickly revealed itself in matters of supply, where Hodges, the commander of the US First Army, was continually starved of fuel and ammunition in order to keep Patton’s divisions rolling, even when Eisenhower’s strategy required First Army to play the major role in 12th Army Group’s activities."
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
Bradley was starving Hodges' First Army of supplies, against Eisenhower's orders, giving them to Patton who was running off into unimportant territory - again, and being bogged down - again. The resources starved First Army could not be a part of northern thrust as Bradley and Patton, against Eisenhower's orders, were syphoning off supplies destined for the First army.
This northern thrust over the Rhine, as Eisenhower envisaged, obviously would not work as he thought. A lesser operation was devised by Montgomery named Market Garden, eliminating the divisions of US First Army, with only ONE crossing of the Rhine. Market Garden would also eliminate V rocket launching sites, of which London wanted eliminating ASAP, giving a 60 mile long salient buffer between German forces and the important port of Antwerp. This would only have one corps above Eindhoven, a disgrace considering the forces in Europe at the time. Eisenhower had no grasp of the situation as it was and no strong strategy to advance. Eisenhower should have fired Bradley and Patton for sabotaging the Northern Thrust operation.
Montgomery did not plan or was in involved in Market Garden's execution. Montgomery, after fixing the operations objectives with Eisenhower to the measly forces available, gave Market Garden planning to others, mainly USAAF generals, Brereton and Williams. General Brereton, who liked the plan, agreed to it with even direct input. Brereton ordered the drops will take place during the day and Brereton oversaw the troop carrier and supply drops schedules. Williams forbid fighter-bombers to be used. A refusal by Brereton and the operation would never have gone ahead; he earlier rejected Montgomery's initial plan of a drop into the Scheldt at Walcheren Island.
"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 the Canadians had cleared, or were investing, many of the Channel ports"
- Neillands, Robin. The Battle for the Rhine 1944
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