Free Armageddon by Max Hastings Page B

by Montgomery but fully appreciated by Freddie [de Guingand, 21st Army Group’s Chief of Staff].”
    Eisenhower never for a moment accepted the British view about a “single thrust” in the north. He made plain, in terms which everyone save Montgomery understood, that whatever advances the British made in the north, U.S. forces would meanwhile address the Siegfried Line further south, on the German frontier. At a big press conference in London on 31 August, he asserted that “General Montgomery’s forces were expected to beat the Germans in the north; General Bradley’s to defeat them in the centre; and the Mediterranean forces, under General Jacob Devers, to press from the south.” Harry Butcher, Eisenhower’s aide, described his master’s plan as being “to hustle all our forces up to the Rhine.” Nowhere in his career did the Supreme Commander reveal talent as a battlefield general. Few even among his biographers attempt to stake such a claim for him. Yet he displayed a greatness as chief manager of an alliance army for which he deserves the gratitude of posterity. No plausible candidate has ever been suggested who could have managed the personalities under his command with Eisenhower’s patience and charm.
    Montgomery was surely correct in supposing that a ground-force commander was needed, to provide the focus and impetus of which Eisenhower was incapable. But none of the available candidates, least of all himself, could credibly fill the role. To understand what took place in north-west Europe in 1944–45, it is important to note that no American or British general possessed the experience in manoeuvring great armies which was commonplace among their Russian and German counterparts. American and British staff colleges before the Second World War taught officers to fight battles involving tens of thousands of men, not millions. Many times Churchill was driven to despair by the difficulty of identifying British commanders capable of matching those of the Wehrmacht. “Have you not got a single general . . . who can win battles?” the prime minister cried out to Brooke early in 1942. The U.S. Army produced at least five outstanding corps commanders, whereas the British and Canadians boasted only two officers at corps level—Horrocks and Simonds—who could be considered competent. Lieutenant-General Sir Richard O’Connor, commanding VIII Corps, did nothing for his staff’s confidence in him when he observed cheerfully in Holland one day: “Whatever balls-ups I make, chaps, I know you’ll see me through.” At divisional level too, the Americans were better served than the British, but it is hard to argue that either ally’s general officers matched those of Germany. Exceptional professional skills coupled with absolute ruthlessness rendered many German—and Russian—generals repugnant human beings but formidable warriors. The democracies recruited their generals from societies in which military achievement was deemed a doubtful boon, if not an embarrassment. The American and British armies in the Second World War paid a high price for the privilege of the profoundly anti-militaristic ethos of their nations.
    Montgomery was a superb planner and trainer, but he was always most comfortable directing a static battle, of the kind with which he had become familiar a world war earlier. He failed repeatedly in exploitation. Bradley was a steady, likeable officer who possessed solid virtues as commander of 12th Army Group, but showed no greater gifts than Eisenhower in the creation of grand strategy. In the last stages of the war, he became prey to jealousies and frustrations which caused him not infrequently, and almost literally, to sulk in his tent. Only Patton showed himself at ease in the imaginative direction of large forces. Had he not been disgraced for the notorious “slapping incidents” in Sicily*  3 —behaviour curiously characteristic of a German or Soviet general rather than an American