Was General Bernard Montgomery a gob....?

Judgement Day · 19-12-2010 8:26pm #1

A serious question not a trolling exercise. Tonight while listening to the RTE's "History Show" I nearly choked on my mince pie to hear General Montgomery, hero of El Alamein, described as a gob****e by that giant of Irish intellect Terry Prone. The rest of the panel - Jane Ohlmeyer, (historian) Diarmaid Ferriter, Mike Cronin Chief Executive of the Boston College and host Myles Dungan chortled at this witty comment. Perhaps, they or I, have watched too many Holywood movies about Monty? Anybody got any worthwhile thoughts on the matter - and not the usual anti-British rants please.

Wiki entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery,_1st_Viscount_Montgomery_of_Alamein

meathstevie · 19-12-2010 8:32pm

I my recollection is correct I remember reading somewhere that other senior officers deemed him to be a little bit overcautious.

Judgement Day · 19-12-2010 8:54pm

The link for the programme podcast is here: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/player_av.html?0,null,200,http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-r1-thehistoryshow.smil

If you start listening at 47.00 you can hear the comments for yourself (and the chortling) and on listening again I note that Terry Prone also called him a "complete fraud".

jonniebgood1 · 19-12-2010 9:05pm

Judgement Day wrote: »

The link for the programme podcast is here: http://www.rte.ie/radio1/player_av.html?0,null,200,http://dynamic.rte.ie/quickaxs/209-r1-thehistoryshow.smil

If you start listening at 47.00 you can hear the comments for yourself (and the chortling) and on listening again I note that Terry Prone also called him a "complete fraud".

Thanks for link.

I think the comment in question is more reflection on said Ms Prone than anything else. I think that it is easy to take Montgomery to task on isolated events, particularly in reference to Ireland (considering he was the 'enemy'). I should listen to the programme linked before commenting further.

Manach · 19-12-2010 9:20pm

I have only the vaguest of ideas who or what on earth is Terry Prone.
My knowledge of Montgomery is mostly based on a book by Alan Moorehead. I'd agree with the consensus he was in most cases cautious when it came to battles - but this was during the stage of the war 1941/42 when the UK was low on trained troops and logistics. He showed a flair when he proposed the assault on at Arheim, perhaps a bit too much.
Finally, a recent book I'm reading "The Ghosts of Cannae" mentioned Montgomery's theories of the Punic conflict, so his scholarly input is not being forgotten in 2010.

ankles · 19-12-2010 9:23pm

He doesn't come too well out of D-Day (Beevor) either

indioblack · 19-12-2010 9:53pm

As for D-Day I think it was his stated intention that the landing forces would take Caen and then basically go swanning around that let him down.

Jo King · 19-12-2010 10:28pm

There was an officer called Eric Dorman Smith who was a brigadier in the British Army. He left the army and Gaelicised his name to O Gowan. He lived in Ireland in later life. I remember reading
an article in an Irish newspaper some years ago. The author had met with Dorman Smith and had been shown papers related to the battle of El Alamein. The papers proved that the Allied victory was engineered by Dorman Smith and not Montgomery. That is probably the basis for calling Montgomery a fraud.

Judgement Day · 19-12-2010 11:54pm

Jo King wrote: »

There was an officer called Eric Dorman Smith who was a brigadier in the British Army. He left the army and Gaelicised his name to O Gowan. He lived in Ireland in later life. I remember reading
an article in an Irish newspaper some years ago. The author had met with Dorman Smith and had been shown papers related to the battle of El Alamein. The papers proved that the Allied victory was engineered by Dorman Smith and not Montgomery. That is probably the basis for calling Montgomery a fraud.

Given that Dorman-Smith was sacked in August 1942 and the decisive El Alamein battle took place in October 1942 it seems highly unlikely that he could have had any role in Montgomery's plans. Dorman-Smith appears to have been something of a maverick and was unpopular with most other commanders in North Africa. He was out of Africa before Montgomery arrived from England to take command of the Eighth Army towards the end of August 1942.

Delancey · 20-12-2010 12:21am

Montgomery was a complex character and like most of the ' great ' generals of the War it is unwise to use one word to describe him , to that extent calling him a '' Gobsh1te '' is unhelpful.
The great German Field Marshal Gerd Von Runstedt described him as '' cautious , habit-ridden and predictable '' - there is little debate among historians that Monty was cautious and rarely attacked unless he had overwhelming superiority on his side. That said , Montgomery was a veteran of the First World War and had been horrified by the massive slaughter of the trenches , this effected him deeply and he did not wish to repeat this - I have been fortunate to meet veterans of his campaigns and they spoke highly of his leadership and his concern for their safety.

He was fond of blowing his own trumpet and Operation Market Garden which was ( unusually for Monty ) a bold plan was a total disaster with the British Airborne forces forced to surrender/withdraw at Arnhem,yet he declared it to have been '' 90% sucessful ''. His capacity for self-promotion was stunning and he doubtless wronged many by failing to give credit where it was due.

In any discussion on War Leaders it is worth reflecting on the fact at the end of the First World War Field Marshal Haig was feted as a hero by almost everyone , when he died in 1928 hundreds of thousands of veterans filed past his coffin yet nowadays he is called '' Butcher Haig '' - nothing like revisionism :rolleyes:

CDfm · 20-12-2010 1:51am

It is not a fair appraisal of him as a hallmark of Monty's leadership was training and careful planning. El Alamein was his triumph.

I always have thought of him as being a bit out of step , a sort of Baden-Powell but not as twee.

He was very aware of the political realities and his analysis of Ireland was fairly spot on.

McArthur said that "in war, there is no substitute for victory".

He was also fairly in tune with the difference between being an army of occupation and the political realities of the task.

I think he became more outspoken after WWII because has fame gave him media power -then he may have sounded like a gobs**** - but then Operation Market Garden had a military objective of containing the Soviets as opposed to defeating the Germans ,so just maybe the blame should be shifted a bit to the outcome of the Yalta Conference and its failure to reach clear objectives in 1943.

Latchy · 20-12-2010 2:10am

Recently read a book about Commander in chief of all allied forces during world war two , General Eisenhower 'Ike' and chapter dealing with the other senior allied officers under his command , including Montgomery is interesting in that he (Ike) in trying to find a balanced medium that allowed them express opinions and have a say in planning of operations , was caught between the cautiousness of Mongomery and the gung ho attitude of General Patton , not helped that Eisenhower had no previous military expierence in the field of battle which was not lost on some of the British high command .

Fratton Fred · 20-12-2010 9:23am

As Churchill said about Monty;

"indomitable in retreat; invincible in advance; insufferable in victory".

I think maybe he was a bit "cocky" for want of a better word, but a fraud would have been found out quite quickly.

As for Haig, the butcher title, along with phrases such as lions led by donkies is something that came about as part of the increase in socialism post wwii. The tactics used in wwi weren't actually as ridiculous as they sound.

dpe · 20-12-2010 2:20pm

Maybe Ms. Prone should pick up less of her history from Band of Brothers and choose some more sources (Stephen Ambrose was rather fond of putting words in his characters' mouths dissing Montgomery).

The man had a lot of faults, not least a massive ego, (but show me a successful WWII general, with maybe the exception of Oliver Leese, who didn't display an ego), but his troops loved him, and you could argue that the one time he didn't use his cautious playbook the results were disastrous, so revisionist historians should cut the man some slack. You can find a stick to beat most of the allied generals one way or another, but the reality was the varying approaches they took ended up giving the best results (Montgomery could have reached Berlin before the Russians, it was politics that stopped him, not lack of ability); imagine if every allied general had been a Patton (or worse, a Mark Clark)? It would have been an allied bloodbath.

Morlar · 20-12-2010 3:30pm

I think he was good for morale but there seems to have been a tendency to inflate his achievments for the sake of british national pride. I would say that by and large the Germans would have preferred to face monty rather than patton.

Snickers Man · 20-12-2010 4:03pm

First off: Terry Prone calling anybody a gob****e brings to mind the old proverb which begins "Athnionn cuireoig..." Why the air-headed opinions of this PR Flack are so frequently canvassed by RTE is beyond me.

As for Montgomery: truly a horrid little man, but then so are many successful, driven, ruthless people. He was an exemplar of the adage that ambition is a great substitute for talent and he went for his goals with determination, diligence and a complete disregard for what those deemed to be his subordinates or rivals thought of him.

He was an utter pragmatist: if it worked, do it. If somebody else thought something oughtto work but didn't he would discard it immediately. He insisted on providing properly supervised and medically inspected brothels for his soldiers "If a soldier wants a woman, he should have one" which incurred some wrath from on high, and was particularly ironic as he was the son of a bishop.

He certainly was an ardent self publicist and credit hogger. He took great pains to discredit rivals such as Auchinlek, whose success in stopping the Italian advance at the first battle of El Alamein came to be seen as every bit as important as Montgomery's later defeat of the outnumbered, over extended and Rommel-less (for the first few days) Italian/German forces at the same place.

Auchinlek was sacked because he couldn't or wouldn't plan for an early counter offensive against the Italians forces, and their German supplementaries. Montgomery took his place and through devious manipulation of Churchill and others, launched his own offensive at almost exactly the same time Auchinlek had estimated he would have done.

He was meticulous, disciplined, driven, determined and an utterly professional devotee of his craft. But thoroughly obnoxious. Even one of his admirers described him as "antisocial almost to the point of autistic".

I'm no psychologist but he had a strange family background. A largely absent father, owing to his episcopal duties; a mother whom he came to despise; a childhood often spent in boarding schools from an early age. (He even admitted in his memoirs to being "a dreadful little boy", with a penchant for bullying). A happy marriage was cut short by his wife's early death.

He was also a determined believer in the British Empire and its importance in the world. He greatly resented the usurpation of its dominant position in the English-speaking world by the Americans, a trait common to many British generals, and was fond of lecturing his transAtlantic cousins on their comparative callowness in power politics. "In world relations, the British have the experience of centuries," he told a post war television interviewer. "The Americans have only the experience of decades."

Unsurprisingly the Yanks hated him. They're not always wrong, you know!

dpe · 20-12-2010 4:06pm

Morlar wrote: »

I think he was good for morale but there seems to have been a tendency to inflate his achievments for the sake of british national pride. I would say that by and large the Germans would have preferred to face monty rather than patton.

I don't think any of the British or American generals held particular fears for the Germans; the only thing about the western allies that scared them was their air power.

In reality Montgomery wasn't even the best British general, he was probably fourth behind Alexander, Leese and Bill Slim in particular, who all did more with less, in less glamorous theatres.

MarchDub · 20-12-2010 4:10pm

Monty's apparently erroneous/misleading remarks on the Battle of the Bulge got him into trouble - especially as he gave a press conference and his remarks ended up in the newspapers and with him getting a reprimand from Churchill.

It’s easy to forget that, in spite of the multiple countries coming at Germany from the West, 90% of the soldiers that fought in the Ardennes were Americans…many of them with little combat experience. The 99th and 2nd Divisions were green troops or recuperating troops, sent to a relatively “quiet sector” to gain experience (or regain health) before moving to the front lines. On December 16th, the front lines came to them in traumatic fashion, and relative “boys in war” became men, doing so at a price that stained the pristine Ardennes snow a bloody red. American casualties were the heaviest of any campaign fought anywhere during the War. Nearly 20,000 Americans were killed and another 70,000 were wounded or captured. But they held against a most determined and desperate foe.
So it shouldn’t surprise us to learn that American commanders, stinging from their miscalculation and reeling from their losses, were angry…no, incensed is a better word…by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s actions on January 7, 1945. It was then that he held a press conference, largely taking credit for stopping the Germans.
Monty said, “As soon as I saw what was happening, I took certain steps myself to ensure that if the Germans got to the Meuse they would certainly not get over the river.”
In his book The Longest Winter, Alex Kershaw says, “The picture Montgomery gave of the battle was of massive American blundering: only when he had been brought in to command the armies holding the northern shoulder had catastrophe been averted.”

In fact, it was the 99th, outnumbered and holding under intense pressure and bitter cold at Elsenborn Ridge, that allowed the northern shoulder to hold.

General George Patton, never one to hide his feelings and having been frustrated by Monty in the Mediterranean was less angry with Monty’s words than he was with Monty’s refusal to actually counterattack with any serious aggression. He said that, had it not been for Montgomery, Americans could have “bagged the whole German Army…War requires the taking of risks and he won’t take them.”

It’s possible to that Montgomery was still bitter at “losing out” on overall command to Ike, even though he had instead been given the rank of Field Marshal by Churchill as a bone. Or maybe he was trying to get a little more attention shown on the British, who comprised barely one-tenth of the battle forces at the Bulge. But whatever the reason, Montgomery’s grandstanding really angered the American commanders. And even as the War was winding down, disagreements such as this (some with issues going all the way back to North Africa two years before) were serving to tear down relations between the Americans and British.

CDfm · 20-12-2010 4:24pm

Wasn't Montgomery himsef badly injured in WWI in the trenches and maybe his earlier war experiences made him cautious.

Manic Moran · 20-12-2010 7:25pm

Being a gobsh... and being a competent general are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The man had a tendancy to win. How he got it done, or how many people he annoyed as he did it, is a secondary concern.

NTM

CDfm · 20-12-2010 7:45pm

Manic Moran wrote: »

Being a gobsh... and being a competent general are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The man had a tendancy to win. How he got it done, or how many people he annoyed as he did it, is a secondary concern.

NTM

LOL

MarchDub · 20-12-2010 10:07pm

Manic Moran wrote: »

Being a gobsh... and being a competent general are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

NTM

Being a gobsh*te and being ANYTHING else are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Question is [I think] - was he a gobsh*te General?

Looks like the jury is coming in with the answer.

CDfm · 20-12-2010 10:25pm

MarchDub wrote: »

Question is [I think] - was he a gobsh*te General?

.

Pedantic

MarchDub · 20-12-2010 10:46pm

MarchDub wrote: »

Question is [I think] - was he a gobsh*te General?

CDfm wrote: »

Pedantic

Well, maybe a redundancy

jonniebgood1 · 20-12-2010 11:39pm

If we accept that many people have cast aspersions on Montgomery (this is what Prone did and shes not the first) we can then explore the reasons why they do so. When considering other Generals and associates of Montgomery's criticism I would think their own legacy can sometime be an issue. Being self-confident, even arrogant may not be a good trait in normal life but in wars it is necessary in leading men.

There are various and wide ranging opinions particularly on page 4, 5 & 6 (to start) of this book link: http://books.google.ie/books?id=1XWpHOgXXT8C&pg=PA21&dq=Bernard+Law+Montgomery,+1887-1976:+a+selected+bibliography+page+5&hl=en&ei=iNcPTZ-7B4uFhQesjcW3Dg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

.These offer opinions on why people may not particularly like Montgomery, on the contrary they agree that he is easy to dislike. It suggests that he had a lack of respect for 'rank and distinction' which may explain a different side to other Generals dislike of him. There are also plenty of examples given of his childish arrogance.

Delancey · 21-12-2010 12:25am

Montgomery was deeply flawed yet he was undoubtedly successful - it is worth noting that his great ' rival ' George Patton was the same ; a driving and successful leader who it is now widely believed suffered from Aspergers Syndrome.
I think it fair to say that everyone here agrees to dismiss ' Monty ' as a gobsh1te is both childish and shows little understanding of the man or War itself.

CDfm · 21-12-2010 12:52am

Why are we discussing Terry Prone calling Montgomery a gob****e as if it was a serious analysis.

The real issue was if he was a good or even competant general and he was at the very least competant.

As a man he did have some strange idea's but you cant judge him by todays standards.His opposition to homosexuality though is of his era. The American's have just legislated about open homosexuality in the army. So nothing strange there.

He is of Irish extraction and I wonder how is views on moral and political matters compared to those of his Irish Contemporaries ,Eamonn DeValera or WT Cosgrave.

Even, then, you have to compare it against the Sunday Times calling Albert Reynolds a gombeen, implying stupidity or a lack of integrity.

MarchDub · 21-12-2010 12:54am

"War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military."

Georges Clemenceau

Manic Moran · 21-12-2010 1:29am

Monty did have some progressive ideas, mind.

Monty wrote:

Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.

Today, the 5-Paragraph-OpOrder will give 'Commander's Intent' two levels up verbatim, and will include even higher level situational awareness in Para 1.

Back in WWII, however, this wasn't considered so much a necessity. All that was considered required were instructions on which direction to go and who to shoot. Higher information was considered 'nice to know' but not required.
This may seem obvious today, but even in WWII, the military art was not quite well perfected: Admiral King in 1942 after a briefing: "I don't know what the hell this 'logistics' is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it."

It is worth noting that one of his definitions of leadership is "the will to dominate and the confidence to inspire." He is quite correct. It may seem a little combative, and a little aggressive, but fundamentally, you can't argue it. Even if it does ruffle a few feathers on the way.

NTM

CDfm · 21-12-2010 3:15am

So NTM was he a competant general and were his ideas wacko relative to his contempories?

Manic Moran · 21-12-2010 7:15pm

I don't know if I'd go as far as to say 'wacko', he just had some ideas which weren't initially spoken of by his colleagues. I'm sure his colleagues also had the occasional minority viewpoint on matters. At that rank, some form of initiative and independence of thought would be expected.

NTM

Was General Bernard Montgomery a gob....?

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