Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

My point is not necessarily that Montgomery was the best commander, but that his record should not be dismissed, as it often is. One of the features of command is self-belief and if that makes people insufferable, then that applies to many, if not all successful commanders.

There probabily is no real answer to who was best, as all commanders had good and bad days, you can point out successes and failures in all of them. However, I would still rate Alan Brooke highly, with a record from 1940, organising a successful withdrawal can be more difficult than organising a successful advance, through to the highest levels of command. Russian commanders achieved success, but at a huge cost, as that was the nature of their war. Allied success later in the war was won with overwhelming air, artillery and naval support. Kesselring and Manstein fighting against all the odds must count somewhere.

But, going back to the start of the thread, PyleDriver is about to capture Moscow, how high does that rate.

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ORIGINAL: PyleDriver

ComradeP...You said the two key words about Marshall, gamble and success...Patton is my main man, he played that same dice roll...

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ORIGINAL: Zorch

My $0.02:

Marshall was a great strategist and diplomat, and would have been a good operational commander. I think he would have been more inclined to take risks then Ike was in the fall of '44. He would not have lost focus like Ike did, in letting Monty postpone clearing the approaches to Antwerp and take the lion's share of supplies for his Arnhem fiasco.

It's interesting to compare the WWI records of Marshall, Ike, and Patton...

Some historian said that Monty was 'the best WWI general in WWII'. Too bad for the Brits that he was fighting the wrong war.

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

If any general thinks it's a good idea to more or less supply an entire corps over a single good road, whilst knowing next to nothing about enemy strength in the area, he's not really a good general.

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Monty's war record is, to me, not all that special. He had the means to do what he did, and the staff and men to do what he did. He was still learning about modern war in 1942, and his advance from El Alamein was too cautious.

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Gambling and winning or being bold and being lucky doesn't make you a good general. Proper operational planning and a good understanding of how a war should be fought in your time makes you a good general. Marshall, MacArthur or Monty don't really qualify as good generals in combat. If you win a wargame because you get good rolls, that's much less of a win than winning due to a good strategy.

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The idea that Allied commanders knew they were scraping the bottom of the manpower barrel doesn't match with the ambitious and risky operations they planned in 1944.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I suspect Patton is for Brits a little bit like Monty is for us.

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ORIGINAL: warspite1

I've missed this thread until now and just read through the posts - a real interesting debate guys.

For my 2 cents Field Marshall Lord Alan Brooke takes some beating. Working with the great man Winston Churchill cannot have been a walk in the park. He also performed very well in France in 1940.

As for Montgomery, I can fully understand why Americans find his insufferable peronality hard to stomach - but that should not deflect from his achievements in the field. To say that he was only successful at El-Alamein and Normandy is rather unfair. The point was made earlier about his [ultimately vital] contribution to the Normandy planning.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

He appeals to us at some elemental level. It's not a cowboy thing, exactly. It's more of a mobility thing, this is a country of automobiles and vast spaces. (I myself am a Californian and completely indifferent to cowboys, actually.)

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He was the right guy at the right place at the right time so far as the Normandy breakout is concerned, imo. (And you really cannot pin the Brittany sideshow on him.)

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Now you're trying to pin a certain sentiment on me. I'm not trying to trivialise anything, I'm saying the difference in combat experience between British and US forces was not as substantial as some historians like to claim. Rather than trivialise the achievements of your (grand)parents, I'm trying to introduce a little perspective into some of the statements you and others make about certain generals.

As to "serious combat": that's not as "thin ice" as you seem to think it is. Today's combat intensity in Afghanistan (for example) is much higher than it was throughout most of WWII. A NATO soldier in Afghanistan now will experience more combat or more intensity in a war zone in about two months than the average European Allied soldier did between the start of WWII and the Torch landings 3 years later. There's a perspective to everything.

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american doctrine advocated a very attritional style of getting to grips with the enemy's main body and kicking it until it was dead

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But this was the essence of German operational method. They threw an Army group over the dirt tracks of the Ardennes in 1940 and won Modern history's most stunning victory. Most people criticise him for his slow, methodical pace, but then seem to criticise him when he goes for broke as well.

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I once said this but then someone told me how fast Eighth Army moved and I was forced to retract.

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But what was good strategy? Monty and Bradley fought within their respective operational methods. Neither Commander had the Officer corp, doctrine or operational method to fight like Germans so fought the way they knew how. Fighting like Germans would have risked everything, because the Germans fought like Germans better than the Allies would have done, so "Blitzkrieg" (I hate that word) like encirclements would have often cost more than their standard methodology.

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Well, it was certainly an issue for Monty as he was disbanding divisions in early 45 to flesh out the other formations. Besides, Arnhem really only used the strategic reserve. two thirds of which was American so it was a risk that didn't have much impact on the general manpower issues he faced.

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I have been avoiding answering this out of respect for our coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but it would be difficult to tell 'European Allied' veterans of the early stages of the war that they had not been involved in 'serious combat'. It would be possible to give examples, but this is not a time for comparing current operations with the past.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I suspect Patton is for Brits a little bit like Monty is for us.

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american doctrine advocated a very attritional style of getting to grips with the enemy's main body and kicking it until it was dead

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ORIGINAL: ComradeP
The doctrine was partially based on application of superior firepower to attrite the enemy and cause a knockout blow. The doctrine was not suitable for prolonged fairly static combat operations, because attritional battles automatically hurt the Americans more than the Germans in terms of the quality of their forces.

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A 90 division army fighting both in the Pacific and in Africa/Europe was not well suited to, say, Soviet style attritional warfare.

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But this was the essence of German operational method. They threw an Army group over the dirt tracks of the Ardennes in 1940 and won Modern history's most stunning victory. Most people criticise him for his slow, methodical pace, but then seem to criticise him when he goes for broke as well.

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The operations are not really comparable.

-The Germans knew there were only 2 Belgian divisions in the Ardennes and that they would both be rendered combat ineffective in a day or two. They guessed the French would not intervene quickly enough, but that would have brought the grand total up to only 5, or 6 if the second Ardense Jagers division is included. Facing those 2 to 6 divisions were around 24 German divisions.

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-The Ardennes didn't have only dirt tracks, there were several good roads as well as railroads, supplies could also come from the North after the forces in or around the fortresses of Liege and Namur had been defeated/contained. Market Garden had little to no alternatives for "Hell's Highway".

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I once said this but then someone told me how fast Eighth Army moved and I was forced to retract.

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I meant "cautious" as in: many Germans got away (forcing Monty to keep fighting them over and over, although to his credit he could not be lured into a slow methodical battle not of his choosing, he handled the German counterattacks before the Mareth Line very well), not "cautious" as in: slow.

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But what was good strategy? Monty and Bradley fought within their respective operational methods. Neither Commander had the Officer corp, doctrine or operational method to fight like Germans so fought the way they knew how. Fighting like Germans would have risked everything, because the Germans fought like Germans better than the Allies would have done, so "Blitzkrieg" (I hate that word) like encirclements would have often cost more than their standard methodology.

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The Allies greatest advantages were mobility in terms of their total transport pool and firepower. They chose to fight in Italy with a motorised/mechanised force (the problem was especially bad with Commonwealth forces, still equipped for mobile "desert" warfare) and one of the most densely forested areas of Europe. The closing stages of the war in Europe (the battles in Germany proper) showed what Allied mobility could achieve.

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Well, it was certainly an issue for Monty as he was disbanding divisions in early 45 to flesh out the other formations. Besides, Arnhem really only used the strategic reserve. two thirds of which was American so it was a risk that didn't have much impact on the general manpower issues he faced.

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It also matters which forces were used, in this case paratroopers that could've been used for speeding up the advance into Germany.

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The small number of US divisions meant that the paratroopers had to be used as regular infantry after the battle.

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The battle for Crete had a small impact on the German manpower pool, but it was significant because most of the casualties were well trained paratroopers and their transports (which had already taken a serious beating during the operations around Rotterdam and the Hague).

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I have been avoiding answering this out of respect for our coalition forces fighting in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but it would be difficult to tell 'European Allied' veterans of the early stages of the war that they had not been involved in 'serious combat'. It would be possible to give examples, but this is not a time for comparing current operations with the past.

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The argument concerned how much more combat experience the British had than the Americans. I could compare the initial battles in 1940 with some other WWII operations that showed similarities to current operations too, like the battles in the Ardennes in 1944/1945 and the battle for Stalingrad. Combat becomes more intense if you're located in enemy territory 24/7. In early war battles, forces might fight for a day or two and spend the rest of the week relocating and fighting some rearguard actions.

The British campaigns in Belgium/France and Greece (with the exception of the beginning of the battle for Crete) were not always combat heavy for all units involved in the operation. In both cases, the forces fought for a while and staged an organized withdrawal with rearguard actions. The majority of the battles in the desert were skirmishes, the war was more about mobility than hitting the enemy head on. If you'd count the combat experience of the average British soldier in 1939-1942, most of them would not have been involved in a month of serious combat (30 days which the soldier spend mostly fighting). I'm not saying there was no serious combat at all, I'm saying that the difference in terms of combat experience between British and American forces didn't amount to 3 years which some historians would like you to believe.

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ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

Things got kind of wild towards the end there which allowed Patton to get away with the Hammelburg business. The press never called him on it or made a big stink of it. And, frankly, the biggest problem with it that most Americans have is that it didn't work. Would've made quite the splash in the headlines if it had. (If you think he'd have been courtmartialed for this, you don't understand Americans very well. The media and public would've loved a successful raid. Probably would've made a Hollywood movie out of it eventually.)

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This just wasn't like, say, the soldier slapping business, which crossed a definite line.

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Why? In 1944, the German manpower barrel was in real trouble. They had largely static forces to act as a tripwire and mobile formations to act as the Fire Brigade. Committing the Fire Brigades with offensive action and then attriting them would never hurt the Americans as it would the Germans. American formations improve after D-Day whereas the quality of German forces steadily declined. The americans could afford the losses, the Germans couldn't.

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But it didn't need to be. The American replacement system provided a steady stream of replacements.

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I'm getting a little lost here. The point of the German advance was not to cross the Ardennes, but strike the Meuse. Therefore, the French 2nd Army and a lot more besides would have to dealt with before very long. They also planned to force the Meuse by assault crossing, whereas the British planned to drive across the bridges, which they did in many cases on the way to Arnhem.

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German traffic was backed up halfway across Germany. The roads were so good that the various Divisions got in each other's way attempting to get off some of the roads assigned to them and several "good roads" is hardly the point if you want to move an Army Group over them.

Ultimately, Monty attempted the most audacious Allied operation of the war. It was arguably the most audacious operation of the war. My point was that those that give Monty a hard time for being cautious, reflect on MG's failure, not on the fact it was the most incautious Allied effort of the 20th century. You can't have it both ways.

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In which case we can characterise Patton;s breakout as cautious since the only forces captured were generally those penned up in coastal fortresses who did their utmost to become entrapped.

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Before that, the Allies slugged their way through Notmandy, fought a broad front advance to the borders of the Reich then everything collapsed. Arguably, the Ruhr was an operational encirclement, but then everything was over bar the shouting at that point. At Falaise, the Allies demonstrated that real manouver warfare was simply not in their makeup.

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They were. We dropped thousands of them during the Rhine crossing.

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It was significant because it convinced Hitler paratroopers were not a strategic, or perhaps even operational weapon.

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By 1943/44, Britain had a lot of bad experiences and lessons to draw upon. They may well have sounded high handed to proud American warriors, but it was Brits who developed specialised armour for Normandy, added bigger guns to the Shermans and successfully argued for a later rather than earlier D-Day.

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The plan failed not because of the road, but because an airborne division, with almost not transport, was dropped 8 miles from the target.

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ORIGINAL: Rasputitsa

1st Airborne would have dropped at Arnhem, even if it had been in Hell. These were highly trained and motivated troops, and in September 1944 almost everyone thought that the war was nearly over and didn't want to miss it. Several airborne operations were planned, but then cancelled as the Normandy breakout went faster than expected and the planned drops were overtaken by events. These divisions had been in training forever, they just wanted to go, at any cost.

XXX Corps made it up the road and, had the airborne division landed on the Arnhem bridge in divisional strength, holding it at both ends, XXX Corps could have passed over. They would possibily have been able to hold the railway bridge as well. As it was, fragments of only one airborne battalion made it to the bridge, but they were able to hold one end for several days. The 1st Airborne expended its strenghth trying to hold on to its landing and supply DZs. If these had been around the bridges, everyone would have known where to make the follow-up and supply drops, even with poor radios.

The plan failed not because of the road, but because an airborne division, with almost not transport, was dropped 8 miles from the target.

I have always been puzzled that the allies did not produce better armoured vehicles, until the war was nearly over. I can understand that all equipment had to be sea transportable (imagine taking Tigers in a LCT, or liberty ship) and there was a decision to go for quantity production. However, reading the story of Percy Hobart, it was mentioned that one month before the war started, the UK Ministry of Supply was formed to provide equipment for the armed forces. The Navy and RAF managed to stay out, but the War office lost control of the Directorate of Mechanisation. Anyone who knows how British ministries work will understand what that means, the rest is history.

The other mystery is why, when German 88s were tearing our tanke to pieces, British 3.7 in. AA guns were kept pointing skywards. These guns had equally good ballistic capabilities as the 88 and could have done as much damage.