why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden
Brage
been sacked after godwood (the battle of caen) but anyway he was very
popular in england.
--
Andrew Clark
"Brage" <kyle_bro...@yahoo.com> wrote
> why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden,
Because there was no reason to sack anyone over
Market-Garden. It was a justifiable operation of war which
was only partly successful. If every general who did not
achieve every objective was sacked, none of the Allied team
on D-Day would have lasted longer than three months.
Incidentally, Eisenhower approved Market Garden, as did the
Combined Chiefs of Staff, so the list of high command
casualties from M-G would have been stupendous.
A better question is why can't you spell or use punctuation?
--
Rich Rostrom
>why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden
Eisenhower wrote later
I not only approved MARKET-GARDEN, I insisted on it.
To have fixed on Montgomery sole responsibility for that
failure would have been blatant scapegoating.
And it would have been unjust and ill-advised to remove
the general who planned and executed the Normandy landings
and the battles around the beachhead - since the outcome
of that campaign was complete success.
--
Never consume legumes before transacting whatsoever | Rich Rostrom
even in the outermost courtyard of a descendant of |
Timur the Terrible. | rrostrom@dummy
--- Avram Davidson, _Dr. Bhumbo Singh_ | 21stcentury.net
--
Martin Clements
> why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden, i mean he should have
> been sacked after godwood (the battle of caen) but anyway he was very
> popular in england.
Two reasons.
1) In neither case did he do anything particularly wrong. Goodwood
was not a success in breaking out, and suffered heavy (but
replaceable) losses. It acheived what must be counted as one of its
major aims - of keeping the German armour pinned in the east, allowing
Operation Cobra to take place aginst mostly infantry units in the
west. Search this newsgroup for previous dicussions on the intent and
success of Goodwood.
Market garden was a bold plan, aimed to take advantage of the crack in
the German front which allowed British units to move forward at
approximately the same rate as Patton had in Normandy and Brittanny.
It was intended to exploit the German retreat while the situation was
still fluid. It failed. Most commanders involved felt it was worth
the gamble. IIRC, even those who felt they would have done things
differently with hindsight don't feel they would have not tried Market
garden - simply that they would have concentrated troops on Antwerp
(or rather, the Scheldt) quicker in the same period.
2) Eisenhower was enthusiastic about the paln and insisted on it
being put into action. How do you sack a commander who's actions you
have enthusiastically approved. Also, according to Wilmot in "The
Struggle for Europe", 21st AG went into market Garden with few
supplies as Eisenhower was intent on supplying Eisenhower's drive to
meet the troops from the Anvil invasion of Southern France. (P. 528)
Most of the criticism of Montgomery in Normandy was that he was too
slow and methodical. To sack him for taking an opportunity with both
hands (and with the support of his superior) would seem more than a
little unfair.
regards,
Martin Clememnts
--
Hans Christian Hoff
"Brage" <kyle_bro...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:bt7178$lfi$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden, i mean he should have
> been sacked after godwood (the battle of caen) but anyway he was very
> popular in england.
He was also the allied general most highly respected by his German
adversaries (see about this i.a. Liddell Hart: "On the other side of the
hill".
Regards
Hans
--
WalterM140
>been sacked after godwood (the battle of caen) but anyway he was very
>popular in england.
Montgomery wasn't sacked because the British needed a hero, and he was it,
warts and all.
Churchill -did- give his okay to Eisenhower to sack Montgomery if he was so
inclined.
Walt
--
Rotwang
> why wans't motgomery sacked after market garden, i mean he should have
> been sacked after godwood (the battle of caen) but anyway he was very
> popular in england.
A rushed plan like Market Garden wasn't Monty's proverbial cup of tea. But
the window of opportunity was closing fast and something had to happen. The
Allies gambled and lost. They probably did better than the odds prescribed
anyway. You can blame many things on Monty, but Market Garden is not his
mistake alone. Something had to be done at that precise moment and Market
Garden was the best they could come up with.
There were many opportunities where Monty could have been sacked, but he
somehow was lucky and it allowed him to remain at his post until the end of
the war.
--
WalterM140
>He was also the allied general most highly respected by his German
>adversaries (see about this i.a. Liddell Hart: "On the other side of the
>hill".
"The Other Side of the Hill" was published in the US as "The German Generals
talk."
Could you provide a page number? This is what I see.
"What did the Germans think of their Western opponents? They were diffident in
expressing an opinion on this matter, but I gathered a few impressions in the
course of our talks. In reference to the Allied comanders, Rundstedt said:
"Montgomery and Patton were the two best that I met. Field Marshall Montgomery
was very systematic. He aded: "That is alright if you have sufficient forces,
and sufficent time." Blumentritt made a similar comment. After paying tribute
to the speed of Patton's drive, he added: "Field Marshall Montgomery was the
one general who never suffered a reverse. He moved like this" -- Blumentritt
took a series of very deliberate and short steps, putting his foot down heavily
each time."
--"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell Hart
Also:
"I do not propose to discuss British generalship; their commanders committed
many grave blunders and suffered some needless and sanguinary
disasters. Even
the best of their generals were not as dashing or versatile as Rommel, and I
don't think the British ever solved the problem of mobile warfare in the
desert. In general the British method of making war is slow, rigid, and
methodical; they trust to their sea power and the vast resources of their
empire and dominions."
--"Panzer Battles" p. 179 by F.W. Von Mellenthin
Is that sour grapes from a loser? Consider also:
"I think it true that Montgomery was completely formed as a soldier at the end
of the First World War. He did not grow after that. He became
increasingly
efficient, but he did not absorb a new idea. At fifty he was the same man he
had been at thirty."
--"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p. 92 by R.W. Thompson
Thompson continues:
"He read everything he could lay his hands upon that was relevant to his
profession, but some things appear to have been against his nature.
Outstanding among these things was his failure to grasp the theory of the
'expanding torrent' expounded by Liddell Hart. His whole essentially tidy mind
liked the 'set-piece' attack, and all went well until the breakthrough demanded
exploitation. Again and again his senior military friends hammered home the
vital necessity of swift exploitation of the breakthrough. He accepts it but
he cannot --think-- it, and he cannot do it...
[Montgomery wrote in 1924]
"I have not mentioned exploitation anywhere. Perhaps I should have done so,
and if I ever get out a revised edition I will do so. I was anxious not to
try and teach too much. The first thing to my mind is to get them to understand
the elementary principles of attack and defense. But I think you are probably
right, and exploitation should have been brought out."
Thompson continues:
"Seven years later Montgomery was still fighting shy of exploitation and the
expanding torrrent. His draft for the new Training Manual was sent to Liddell
Hart for criticism by Brigadier Fisher, Chief of Staff to General Sir David
Campbell, G.O.C- in C. Again the problems of exploiting success were not dealt
with. Liddell Hart sent his detailed comments and Fisher wrote:
'September 7, 1930
I had a long talk to Montgomery and we went carefully through your criticisms
with the new Infantry Training--with the result that the great
majority of them
are being incorporated in the final proof. The importance of the expanding
torrent are being specially emphasized...'
Yet when the new Training Manual appeared the problems of exploitation were
neither neither emphasized nor understood. Indeed by omissions of passages from
the old manual and the substitutions of new, the tactics of the First World War
were preserved."
--"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" pp 90-91 by R.W. Thompson.
"Montgomery's failure to destroy the enemy at Alam Halfa must be a measure of
his capacity as a general. Alan Morehead, writing soon after these events, is
as emphatic as Horrocks about Montgomery's intentions:
'On one matter the C-in-C was especially emphatic. This was to be a static
battle. Except in the fluid gap in the south no-one was to budge an inch in
any direction. It did not matter if the enemy were routed; there was to be no
pursuit. Everyone must stand fast. The enemy must be beaten off and then left
alone.
The reason for this was that the real conflict with Rommel was going to
follow later on when everything was ready.'
-"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p.103 by R.W. Thompson
So Montgomery later generated 13,000 casualties when he didn't have to. Had he
hit the Afrika Korps in September, before it had a chance to prepare
defensively, he might have spared many of his men's lives. His combat power
relative to the Axis in this time frame was not likely to grow enough warrant a
delay. But if your mindset is stuck in World War One, and you feel you
personally must control as much as possible of everything that happens, then a
delay might be indicated.
Also consider:
"The British had such superiority in weapons, both in quality and quantity,
that they were able to force through any and every kind of operation... For
the rest, the British based their planning on the principal of exact
calculation, a principal which can only be followed where there is complete
material superiority. They actually undertook no -operations- but relied simply
and solely on the effect of their artillery and air force."
--Erwin Rommel
Montgomery is the most overrated general of all time.
Walt
--
WalterS
> Blumentritt made a similar comment. After paying tribute
> to the speed of Patton's drive, he added: "Field Marshall Montgomery was the
> one general who never suffered a reverse. He moved like this" -- Blumentritt
> took a series of very deliberate and short steps, putting his foot down >heavily
> each time."
>
> --"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell Hart
Well, the same has been said about General Grant in the US Civil War,
particularly in his 1864-65 campaigns against Lee in Virginia. Grant
was called a "butcher" but he got the job done.
Montgomery, like Grant, took advantage of superiority in numbers,
resources and positioning and delivered hammer-blows against his
opponent when *he* was ready. The fact that Montgomery was not
particularly innovative or dashing does not make him an ineffective
commander. He got the job done. The job was to beat the Germans
wherever and whenever possible. He did that. He chased Rommel (who is
considered a tactical genius) across North Africa, making use of the
advantages he had: air power, supplies, communications. Sounds like
Montgomery knew what he was doing. He was a British hero when the
British people needed one. He spearheaded the conquest of Sicily, led
the invasion of Italy, and was in overall command of D-Day ground
forces. All operations were successful, if not spectacular.
In my view, Market-Garden was a plan that was conceived boldly but
executed timidly, with limited and faulty intelligence, some "victory
disease" wishful thinking at SHAEF HQ, an underestimation of the
combat effectiveness of German troops in Sep 44 and overestimation of
the ability of General Horrocks' XXX Corps tanks to make the 60+ mile
dash along a single highway. Montgomery made mistakes of judgement in
the planning for the operation, as did Eisenhower who approved it and
British General Browning who commanded the Airborne forces. In all of
the reading I have done on M-G, and it is considerable, I can recall
only one commander, the Polish General Sosobowski, who openly called
for the operation's cancellation. Other commanders expressed some
reservations but the three principal airborne commanders: Urquhardt(Br
1st Airborne), Gavin (US 82nd) and Taylor (US 101st) all supported the
operation.
Market Garden was, indeed, a costly failure, but that doesn't mean it
was a bad idea. There were lots of failures and defeats during the
war. Commanders were sacked for incompetence and negligence,
especially early in the war. Don't forget MacArthur lost the whole of
the Philippines, and not only wasn't he not sacked, he was rescued and
sent to Australi to begin planning what would become a spectacular
campaign against the Japanese in SW Pacific.
> Montgomery is the most overrated general of all time.
>
> Walt
I think Montgomery, for all his faults and shortcomings and
irritability and arrogance did just fine and I am glad he was on our
side.
Walter S
--
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> --"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell
Hart
It's well-known that Liddell Hart hated Montgomery and
edited his book so as to exclude favourable remarks by
German generals about Montgomery. L-H also managed to foster
the entirely erroneous apologia that the German generals
were innocent of complicity in genocide and atrocity on a
gigantic scale. Altogether, Liddell Hart is not a reliable
source without detailed independent corroboration.
> --"Panzer Battles" p. 179 by F.W. Von Mellenthin
It's so obvious as to be easily missed: here is a general
who never commanded Allied mechanised and armoured troops
criticising Allied generals for not being able to emulate
German troops, entirely (as does Guderian and Manstein in
their memoirs) overlooking the differences in troops,
training and particularly logistics. That doesn't make Von
Mellenthin's opinions useless, but it does mean that they
cannot be taken at face valuewithout a careful and balanced
analysis of the facts.
> --"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p. 92 by R.W.
Thompson
Thompson is a controversial and revisionist historian,
relentlessly and bitterly critical of Churchill and
Montgomery (and indeed any poular icon of WW2). His several
books have attracted substantial criticism from other
historians and biographers. That doesn't make Thompson's
opinions useless, but it does mean that they cannot be taken
at face value without a careful and balanced analysis of the
rest of the evidence.
> Montgomery is the most overrated general of all time.
An opinion based on partial, selective and biased sources is
useless.
--
WalterM140
>An opinion based on partial, selective and biased sources is
>useless.
Well now.
Churchill did give Eisenhower permission to sack Montgomery. That hardly seems
the mark of a great commander, almost getting booted.
And:
"Regardless of Montgomery's retrospective view of the situation, the
generals
and air marshalls At Eisenhower's headquarters in London considered
Goodwood a
total failure. Before the attack Air Chief Marshall Sir Artthur
Tedder
received a telegram from Montgomery on 14 July in which it was stated
about the
prospects for Goodwood that "if successful, the plan promises to be
decisive."
At 16:30 hours on 18 July Montgomery sent a message to Field Marshall
Brooke,
the Chief of Imperial General Staff: "Operations this morning a
complete
success." That evening he made a special announcement to the press in
which he
in effect claimed to have broken out. But by the 20th he had been
stopped dead.
At SHEAF those who were concerned about the leadership of Montgomery
had their
worst fears confirmed. In the vanguard was Tedder, who on 20 July
wrote that
he and Marshall of the Royal Air Force Sir Charles Portal, who was
Chief of the
British Air Staff, "were agreed in regarding Montgomery as the cause."
When
Eisenhower then went to Normandy to access the situation Tedder wrote
to him
there saying, "all the evidence available to me indicated a serious
lack of
fighting leadership in the high direction of the British Armies in
Normandy."
On 25 July, the day Bradley launched Cobra, Tedder wrote that "we have
been had
for suckers. I do not belive there was the slightest intention to make
a clean
breakthrough."
Notwithstanding his precarious position, Montgomery survived a visit
of General
Marshall on 24 July when the powerful top American military man was
apparently
quite prepared to move to unseat him because of the slow progress.
Monty had a
long and satisfactory session with Churchill that same day, and he was
able to
assure the great man of his mastery of the situation and that his plan
of
pivoting on Caen was in fact being followed. However he was disturbed
by the
appointment by the government of a War Cabinet Liaison Officer posted
to his
headquarters for the purpose of sending back "true" status reports
rather than
the selfserving messages that came from Montgomery."
-"Patton's Gap", pp 140-42 by Richard Rohmer
Walt
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> Could you provide a page number? This is what I see.
>
> "What did the Germans think of their Western opponents? They were diffident in
> expressing an opinion on this matter, but I gathered a few impressions in the
> course of our talks. In reference to the Allied comanders, Rundstedt said:
> "Montgomery and Patton were the two best that I met. Field Marshall Montgomery
> was very systematic. He aded: "That is alright if you have sufficient forces,
> and sufficent time." Blumentritt made a similar comment. After paying tribute
> to the speed of Patton's drive, he added: "Field Marshall Montgomery was the
> one general who never suffered a reverse. He moved like this" -- Blumentritt
> took a series of very deliberate and short steps, putting his foot down heavily
> each time."
>
> --"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell Hart
Well, that still makes Montgomery the best (or second-best after Patton
if you wish) Allied general according to his German opponents - the
critical opinion according to you in another thread. In other words,
Rundstedt thinks that Montgomery was better than Bradley, Patch, etc.
That's pretty good.
As to the "sufficient forces and sufficient time", Montgomery in fact
advanced as fast as any other Allied general, and he didn't have
overwhelming superiority across the board. He did take care to ensure
superiority at the point of attack, but that's the mark of good
generalship. After all, the Germans hit Sedan in 1940 with 3 reinforced
panzer divisions and over half of the Luftwaffe against one single
infantry division with a reinforced artillery. But they don't seem to
consider this discrepancy in numbers to have been an unfair practice,
rather the consensus is that the French were to blame for being caught
with their pants down.
Why should the Germans get a different treatment for when they were on
the receiving end of enemy superiority ?
> Also:
>
> "I do not propose to discuss British generalship; their commanders committed
> many grave blunders and suffered some needless and sanguinary
> disasters. Even
> the best of their generals were not as dashing or versatile as Rommel, and I
> don't think the British ever solved the problem of mobile warfare in the
> desert. In general the British method of making war is slow, rigid, and
> methodical; they trust to their sea power and the vast resources of their
> empire and dominions."
>
> --"Panzer Battles" p. 179 by F.W. Von Mellenthin
British generalship is a general statement for von Mellenthin's
experience in Africa. He fought since April 1941, and the leadership he
alludes to, as he makes clear in the rest of that section, is what he
encountered.
This means
1/ division and corps commanders (not Montgomery), and here von
Mellenthin - rightly - points out that the British had a problem with
their junior commander. Actually the problem was doctrine.
2/ army commanders: von Mellenthin "fought" Wavell, Cunningham,
Auchinleck, Ritchie, Auchinleck again and Montgomery.
Here's a remark about British leaders on p.173 of "Panzer Battles":
"Auchinleck was an excellent strategist, with many of the qualities of a
great commander, but he seems to have failed in tactical detail, or
perhaps in ability to make his subordinates do what he wanted. (...) I
am unable to say how far this was the fault of Auchinleck, or that of
his corps commanders (...)".
So the remark mostly does NOT apply to Montgomery, but in your best
traditions of quoting only those parts of a book that you like no matter
whether or not they are relevant to the point you're making, you ignore
this.
Here are some other quotes from von Mellenthin, the page numbers being
from the paperback edition which you appear to be using.
p. 173
"...General Montgomery had taken over command of Eighth Army. There can
be no question that the fighting efficiency of the British improved
vastly under the new leadership, and for the first time Eighth Army had
a commander who really made his will felt throughout the whole force"
p. 174
"Montgomery is undoubtedly a great tactician - circumspect and thorough
in making his plans, utterly ruthless in carrying them out. He brought a
new spirit to Eighth Army, and illustrated once again the vital
importance of personal leadership in war".
> Is that sour grapes from a loser?
It obviously is.
> Consider also:
>
> "I think it true that Montgomery was completely formed as a soldier at the end
> of the First World War. He did not grow after that. He became
> increasingly
> efficient, but he did not absorb a new idea. At fifty he was the same man he
> had been at thirty."
>
> --"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p. 92 by R.W. Thompson
Well, in that case he was a remarkably gifted individual at the end of WWI.
I would suggest that Thompson is the one who didn't understand what new
ideas Montgomery absorbed, unless of course you go into mindreading the
way you seemed to be doing in the strategic bombing thread.
Montgomery only lost one battle, which is better than Rommel's achievements.
(snip more Thompson, because I'm not interested in amateur psychology
and I will let discussion of the Training Manual to others more
knowledgeable than I. Regarding Montgomery's alledged failure to
contemplate exploitation, I'll note that he created a "corps de chasse"
with the whole of X Corps for the express purpose of exploiting).
> "Montgomery's failure to destroy the enemy at Alam Halfa must be a measure of
> his capacity as a general. Alan Morehead, writing soon after these events, is
> as emphatic as Horrocks about Montgomery's intentions:
>
> 'On one matter the C-in-C was especially emphatic. This was to be a static
> battle. Except in the fluid gap in the south no-one was to budge an inch in
> any direction. It did not matter if the enemy were routed; there was to be no
> pursuit. Everyone must stand fast. The enemy must be beaten off and then left
> alone.
> The reason for this was that the real conflict with Rommel was going to
> follow later on when everything was ready.'
>
> -"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p.103 by R.W. Thompson
I didn't find the quote in "African Trilogy", care to provide better
indications ?
Because as far as I can tell this is exaggerated. Montgomery ordered an
attack south (which was just what von Mellenthin says would have hurt
the Germans if it had materialized) but the subordinate commanders
(Freyberg and the commanders of 5th Indian and 44th infantry divisions)
refused to carry it out quickly enough. The attack was finally launched
on the night of 3 September and failed.
Montgomery had been emphathic that no attack whatsoever should be
launched without his express authorization. Thanks to that order, Rommel
was unable to lure British tanks into his anti-tank screen as he had
done numerous times before, including in the 1st El Alamein battle in July.
> So Montgomery later generated 13,000 casualties when he didn't have to.
Says who ?
For your statement to be convincing, you need to provide evidence that
1/ the British would have won the same results that they later did at
2nd Alamein had they been more aggressive at Alam Halfa, i.e. decisively
defeated the Germans, and
2/ that would have been accomplished with 13,000 less casualties.
Go ahead...
When Montgomery did order a counterattack in the south at Alam Halfa, it
went badly. Montgomery therefore rightly concluded that his forces were
insufficiently trained for advance tactics, a conclusion which
incidentally von Mellenthin echoes when he comments on British
counterattacks during the Gazala battles.
> Had he
> hit the Afrika Korps in September, before it had a chance to prepare
> defensively, he might have spared many of his men's lives.
You mean the Afrika Korps didn't have prepared positions in September ?
Where do you get that idea from ?
Montgomery's reasoning - in which he was entirely correct, was that 8th
Army's preparations were going faster than Panzerarmee Afrika's. So he
was right to wait until *he* was ready.
> His combat power
> relative to the Axis in this time frame was not likely to grow enough warrant a
> delay.
...which goes to show you don't know much about 8th Army, but then what
else is new ?
If you care, please detail how Montgomery's combat power remained constant.
> "The British had such superiority in weapons, both in quality and quantity,
> that they were able to force through any and every kind of operation... For
> the rest, the British based their planning on the principal of exact
> calculation, a principal which can only be followed where there is complete
> material superiority. They actually undertook no -operations- but relied simply
> and solely on the effect of their artillery and air force."
>
> --Erwin Rommel
Sour grapes.
Montgomery's "-operations-" after El Alamein resulted in just as fast an
advance as Rommel's had been.
The difference is that in addition to advancing fast, Montgomery made
extra sure that there would be no chance of Rommel catching him
unprepared with a counter-attack, which is why the Germans could never
made a comeback, ever. While that would undoubtedly be frustrating for
Rommel, it's still good generalship of Montgomery to have played to his
strengths.
> Montgomery is the most overrated general of all time.
It can't be. Given the US propensity for self-satisfaction, matched only
by Montgomery's memoirs, the most overrated general of all time *has* to
be an American ! :-)
My own candidate would be Alexander the Great Drunkard.
Louis
--
Remove "e" from address to reply
--
David R Brooks
getting bogged down into such a static killing match.
walte...@aol.com (WalterS) wrote:
:Well, the same has been said about General Grant in the US Civil War,
:particularly in his 1864-65 campaigns against Lee in Virginia. Grant
:was called a "butcher" but he got the job done.
--
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
>
>> --"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell
>Hart
>
>It's well-known that Liddell Hart hated Montgomery and
>edited his book so as to exclude favourable remarks by
>German generals about Montgomery.
It's also well known that he was perfectly willing to play fast
and loose with the truth to suit his purposes.
>> --"Panzer Battles" p. 179 by F.W. Von Mellenthin
>
>It's so obvious as to be easily missed: here is a general
>who never commanded Allied mechanised and armoured troops
Hardly ever commanded German, either; he was normally a staff
officer.
>criticising Allied generals for not being able to emulate
>German troops, entirely (as does Guderian and Manstein in
>their memoirs) overlooking the differences in troops,
>training and particularly logistics.
What differences were these? I don't see that the Germans
had a big quality advantage over the British, and the difference
in logistics was normally in favor of the Western Allies.
Certainly Rommel had bad logistics (and came very close to total
defeat in the Cauldron because of logistics), and von Mellinthin
spent a lot of time working for him. How superior was German
training, in a way that would affect operations?
While I'd never take memoirs as truth, and the German WWII memoirs
are particularly bad in that way, it seems to me that von Mellinthin
was not as unqualified an observer as you make out.
>> Montgomery is the most overrated general of all time.
>
>An opinion based on partial, selective and biased sources is
>useless.
>
Montgomery is certainly one of the most controversial Western
Allied generals of WWII, and has been both overrated and
underrated.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> What differences were these? I don't see that the Germans
> had a big quality advantage over the British, and the difference
> in logistics was normally in favor of the Western Allies.
> Certainly Rommel had bad logistics (and came very close to total
> defeat in the Cauldron because of logistics), and von Mellinthin
> spent a lot of time working for him. How superior was German
> training, in a way that would affect operations?
I'd say there was a major difference between German doctrine and British
doctrine.
Not only that, but the British didn't actually have a doctrine at the
time von Mellenthin wrote about. They were more or less trying to invent
one. After Montgomery took over, they did have a doctrine, i.e. a
specific way of doing things which was considered, always the same, and
adapted to British strengths and known German practices.
In 1941, and even more in early 1942 (Gazala), British training was very
bad: at the individual level, the crews knew their job well enough
(though you can argue about British vs German tank crews...), but
British commanders couldn't move large formations quickly, make
coordinated attacks on the fly, etc. The Germans could do all that, and
there are many times when von Mellenthin shows that the British were not
only outgeneralled (allowing their armor to be defeated piecemeal) but
also poorly-trained (commenting that given the British standard of
training, other tactics than the frontal unsubtle assaults were probably
impossible in mobile battles). Montgomery made the very same point when
he took over.
There's a good overview in Bungay's "Alamein".
a425couple
> Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDEL.IT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> >"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> >It's well-known that Liddell Hart hated Montgomery and
> It's also well known that he was perfectly willing to play fast
> and loose with the truth to suit his purposes.
Off the current thread, but a related request for info.
One source I have and use is B.H.L. Hart's
"History of the Second World War"
These posts have alerted me to be careful of his
opinions.
Do you learned posters have specific concerns
about his accuracy in this book that you would like
to advise me about?
I do note that BHL Hart is frequently used as a
source and listed in bibliographies of
encyclopedias.
--
Andrew Clark
"David Thornley" <thor...@visi.com> wrote
> What differences were these? I don't see that
> the Germans had a big quality advantage over
> the British, and the difference in logistics
> was normally in favor of the Western Allies.
It's not so much about advantages as about *differences*.
Briefly, the Heer:
1. travelled very light compared to the more ponderous
Allied formations tied to their LOC, and in particular to
their POL supplies.
2. was organised in smaller formations with multiple
redundancies against command chain breakdown whereas the
Western Allies had much bigger formations with a more linear
command system.
3. until the late war generally had a better standard of
troop training and leadership than all but the best Allied
formations.
These and other factors meant that Western armies and Heer
armies had to be managed in *different* ways. What one army
might do well would be difficult for another.
Guenter Scholz
>> spent a lot of time working for him. How superior was German
>> training, in a way that would affect operations?
>
troops parachuting in on Malta even though they had full and complete
knowledge of the imminent German offense.
- regards
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> Mr. Clark, diplomatic as always:
>
> >An opinion based on partial, selective and biased sources
is
> >useless.
>
> Well now.
I posted specific reasons why the books you have quoted in
your criticisms of Montgomery were partial, selective and
biased sources, which you have deleted and ignored. I'm
assuming that your silence means that you have accepted the
unreliability of these sources unless uncorroborated.
However, in case I'm wrong, for your convenience let me
repeat them:
> --"The German General Talk", pp.257-58, by B.H. Liddell
Hart
It's well-known that Liddell Hart hated Montgomery and
edited his book so as to exclude favourable remarks by
German generals about Montgomery. L-H also managed to foster
the entirely erroneous apologia that the German generals
were innocent of complicity in genocide and atrocity on a
gigantic scale. Altogether, Liddell Hart is not a reliable
source without detailed independent corroboration.
> --"Panzer Battles" p. 179 by F.W. Von Mellenthin
It's so obvious as to be easily missed: here is a general
who never commanded Allied mechanised and armoured troops
criticising Allied generals for not being able to emulate
German troops, entirely (as does Guderian and Manstein in
their memoirs) overlooking the differences in troops,
training and particularly logistics. That doesn't make Von
Mellenthin's opinions useless, but it does mean that they
cannot be taken at face valuewithout a careful and balanced
analysis of the facts.
> --"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p. 92 by R.W.
Thompson
Thompson is a controversial and revisionist historian,
relentlessly and bitterly critical of Churchill and
Montgomery (and indeed any popular icon of WW2). His several
books have attracted substantial criticism from other
historians and biographers. That doesn't make Thompson's
opinions useless, but it does mean that they cannot be taken
at face value without a careful and balanced analysis of the
rest of the evidence.
> Churchill did give Eisenhower permission to
> sack Montgomery. That hardly seems the mark of
> a great commander, almost getting booted.
Once again, you are entirely wrong.
>From "Normandy 1944", Stephen Badsey (Osprey Books 1990).
"It was then [20 July 1944] that Eisenhower showed the
qualities that had made him Allied Supreme Commander.
Despite pressure from Tedder, from his own [SHAEF] staff and
from every critic of Montgomery in the Allied war effort, he
made no attempt to have Montgomery removed". In fact, as
Badsey notes later, rather than assume control of ground
forces himself on 1 August as originally planned:
"...Eisenhower stipulated that Montgomery should remain in
charge of both [21st British and 12th US) army groups until
the battle was over".
So not only was Montgomery not "almost booted" but his
command qualities were acknowledged by an extension of his
overall command of Allied Land Forces in NW Europe. Other
sources, eg the Official Histories, and Hastings,
"Overlord", concur.
> "Regardless of Montgomery's retrospective view
> of the situation, the generals
> and air marshalls At Eisenhower's headquarters
> in London considered Goodwood a
> total failure.
It's very well known that Tedder and some others were fierce
critics of Montgomery and their views are recycled ad
infinitum by fellow critics. This doesn't mean that Tedder
etc was right: in fact he was mostly wrong.
Try reading Max Hastings' "Overlord", (my copy PaperMac
1993) which says on page 270: "His [Tedder's] intelligence
and force of personality were not in doubt, but it is
questionable whether he was able to employ these to best
effect as Eisenhower's Deputy, and whether his understanding
of the ground battle was sufficient to justify his gross
disloyalty to Montgomery...".
Or Lewin "Montgomery as Military Commander" (London 1971),
page 219: "Chief among these sirens [calling for Eisenhower
to take over comand from Montgomery] was his Deputy, Tedder,
who as an airman had always a penchant for knowing how to
run a battle on land".
Or Badsey, who remarks: "With Goodwood, Montgomery had now
won his battle".
(snip remainder)
--
Andrew Clark
.
> One source I have and use is B.H.L. Hart's
> "History of the Second World War"
> These posts have alerted me to be careful of his
> opinions.
I think the basic advice is caveat emptor. Liddell Hart (not
Hart: he had a double-barrelled unhyphenated name) is a
partisan author to the point of deliberate premeditated bias
and deception. Anything he says should be carefully checked
against other sources, ideally primary or at least more
reliable secondary ones.
--
Andrew Clark
"Guenter Scholz" <sch...@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> wrote
> One might consider why the British were not able
> to stop the German troops parachuting in on
> Malta even though they had full and complete
> knowledge of the imminent German offense.
I think you mean Crete?
While I quite agree with Louis that the British Army
suffered badly from a lack of proper battle doctrine until
1943, I'm not sure that this is the main reason for the fall
of Crete. IMO, the main reasons that the German assault on
Crete succeeded was overwhelming German air power. This
quite simply prevented the British from moving their
superior infantry numbers to eliminate German bridgeheads,
allowing the Germans to win local superiority and to build
up their forces. A sort of Normandy TAF story writ smaller
and more effective, in fact.
--
Michele Armellini
"Guenter Scholz" <sch...@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> ha scritto nel messaggio
news:4003e88...@news.pacific.net.au...
> One might consider why the British were not able to stop the German
> troops parachuting in on Malta even though they had full and complete
> knowledge of the imminent German offense.
Well, if the Germans took Malta, it was very unkind of them not to inform
the Italian Navy about that.
Michele
--
Elz
"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:btf0ga$n46$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
> Churchill did give Eisenhower permission to sack Montgomery. That hardly
seems
> the mark of a great commander, almost getting booted.
By your definition then, there was absolutely nothing great about Patton.
Walter, why
don't you just admit your anti-Commonwealth bias once and for all?
--
Freddie Clark
it was a surprise attack they not only surprised the British defenders, they
also managed to surprise every historian who wrote after 1945.. Perhaps you
mean Crete??, where German parachute troops were handled so roughly that
Germany never again tried a major airborne landing??. And all allied powers
drew exactly different conclusions and thus engendered the huge parachute
divisions used later in the war..
regards Freddie
"Guenter Scholz" <sch...@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> wrote in message
news:4003e88...@news.pacific.net.au...
Tarjei T. Jensen
David Thornley wrote:
> What differences were these? I don't see that the Germans
> had a big quality advantage over the British, and the difference
> in logistics was normally in favor of the Western Allies.
> Certainly Rommel had bad logistics (and came very close to total
> defeat in the Cauldron because of logistics), and von Mellinthin
> spent a lot of time working for him. How superior was German
> training, in a way that would affect operations?
Read "Raising Churchill's army" by David French or Bruce Gudmundsson "On
Infantry".
The Germans while not always the best Generals, had the best trained
infantry in Europe (most likely: the world). They had quality problems
towards the end. The only reason the British managed to contain Rommel was
through superior resources. Without the Americans, the British would have
had to teach their infantry how to fight German style. With the officer
material the British had, it is not likely that they would have managed to
change their doctrine in such a way that they could resist the Germans.
I don't see the British having the industrial capacity to compensate for
their lack of basic fighting skill. Their only hope would be that the
situation becomes to bad that they need to use General Slim in Europe. And
that he reshapes the infantry training.
Much the same the Germans did in 1914-15 when they discovered that their
infantry doctrine did not work. They had too many losses.
The Germans sought a tactical solution to their problem. The British wanted
a technical solution. The problem is that the technical solution is
horrificly expensive and requires a lot of industrial capacity.
The German tactical solution meant that they got more from their men than
enybody else in Europe. Their enphasis on a tactical solution did not help
when they ran out of resources.
Montgomery's strategy was to make the Germans run out of resources by
launching one attack after another on different parts of the German lines.
In the end, the Germans ran out of reserves and he won the battle.
greetings,
--
Ken Young
acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk (Andrew Clark) wrote:
> partisan author to the point of deliberate premeditated bias
> and deception.
An example of this is his rewriting of pre-WW2 books without any
mention of the fact that they had been altered to confirm with what
had worked instead of what he originally put forward. His influence is
also exaggerated. Apparently the German version of Manstein's memoirs
had few if any mentions of Liddle Hart, the British version translated
after the war, thanks to Liddle Hart has many mentions.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.co.uk
Maternity is a matter of fact
Paternity is a matter of opinion
--
Tarjei T. Jensen
"WalterM140" wrote:
> 'On one matter the C-in-C was especially emphatic. This was to be a
static
> battle. Except in the fluid gap in the south no-one was to budge an inch
in
> any direction. It did not matter if the enemy were routed; there was to
be no
> pursuit. Everyone must stand fast. The enemy must be beaten off and then
left
> alone.
> The reason for this was that the real conflict with Rommel was going to
> follow later on when everything was ready.'
>
> -"Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" p.103 by R.W. Thompson
Or that a fluid situation could develop and that it could not be controlled
by the British. Montgomery knew the limitations of the British forces. They
were no good against a opponent like the Germans if the situation became too
fluid. Rommel would exploit it and possibly crush the British.
The only British general who managed to train his troops to a satisfactory
standard seems to have been Slim. He trained his troops to handle a just as
difficult enemy as the Germans; the Japanese in the jungle. If Bruce
Gudmunsson is to be believed in "on infantry", the Japanese had very a good
infantry doctrine.
greetings,
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"Guenter Scholz" <sch...@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca> wrote
>
>> One might consider why the British were not able
>> to stop the German troops parachuting in on
>> Malta even though they had full and complete
>> knowledge of the imminent German offense.
>
>I think you mean Crete?
>
>While I quite agree with Louis that the British Army
>suffered badly from a lack of proper battle doctrine until
>1943, I'm not sure that this is the main reason for the fall
>of Crete. IMO, the main reasons that the German assault on
>Crete succeeded was overwhelming German air power.
The communications also seem to have been very bad, which is
doubtless related to the German air attacks, but has other
causes.
The British moved into the Greek mainland with the intention of
fighting Axis troops there, and that wound up not working.
They never intended to build Crete into a fortress, but rather
were using it as something of an assembly point for a further
evacuation. They had also left Greece without much heavy
equipment.
IIRC, the Germans succeeded at Maleme, where a NZ battalion commander
really didn't know what was going on, and made a bad decision.
Louis Capdeboscq
> Perhaps you
> mean Crete??, where German parachute troops were handled so roughly that
> Germany never again tried a major airborne landing??. And all allied powers
> drew exactly different conclusions and thus engendered the huge parachute
> divisions used later in the war..
1. Hitler was impressed with his losses and didn't launch a major
airborne operation after Crete. Not that he had the opportunity to do
so. He certainly didn't make the decision never to use paratroopers, as
there was a Crete-sized operation planned against Malta in 1942, the
size of the Fallschirmjaeger troops increased throughout the war (not
all of them jump-capable, but some of the units fighting in Normandy in
1944 had been trained for airborne operations, there certainly were a
lot of them), and Germany launched successful airborne operations
against the British in the same sector (Dodecanese) late in 1943.
2. The Allies were impressed with German paratroopers which had bested a
larger defending force over poor terrain.
It seems to me that both sides concluded that Crete had been a victory
of the German paratroopers.
Colin McGARRY
wrote:
An important point to note is that Liddel Hart didn't know about
Ultra. Read an account of the influence of Ultra on the war and
sometimes you'll think that Liddel Hart is talking about a differnet
battle.
>Off the current thread, but a related request for info.
>One source I have and use is B.H.L. Hart's
>"History of the Second World War"
>These posts have alerted me to be careful of his
>opinions.
>Do you learned posters have specific concerns
>about his accuracy in this book that you would like
>to advise me about?
>
>I do note that BHL Hart is frequently used as a
>source and listed in bibliographies of
>encyclopedias.
Colin
cmcgarry (at) cpmac . com
www.cpmac.com
--
Andrew Clark
"Tarjei T. Jensen" <tar...@online.no> wrote
> Read "Raising Churchill's army" by David French or
> Bruce Gudmundsson "On Infantry".
Yes, I have. And I'm not persuaded by the Liddell Hart
notion that the German Army stood head and shoulders above
every other Army perpetuated by Gudmundsson in particular.
> The Germans while not always the best Generals, had
> the best trained infantry in Europe (most likely: the
world).
> They had quality problems towards the end.
The German front-line infantry was very good until 1942.
Thereafter, with the massive losses on the Eastern Front,
the general quality of even the front-line infantry started
to decline sharply. See Bartov "Hitler's Army" (OUP, 1991),
which highlights the immense material and physical attrition
of the Ostheer and the consequent "demodernisation" of the
eastern conflict on the German side.
> The only reason the British managed to contain
> Rommel was through superior resources.
Rubbish. There was a process of progressive improvement in
logistics, training, doctrine, command and equipment in the
desert army from 1940-1942 all of which played a role in the
containment and then utter rout of the Axis forces at 2nd
Alamein. While the British did (eventually) have superior
numbers, that wasn't in itself the main cause of victory.
Bad logistics on the part of the Axis were important, for
example.
> Without the Americans, the British would
> have had to teach their infantry how to
> fight German style.
What, precisely, is "German style"?
> With the officer material the British had, it is
> not likely that they would have managed to
> change their doctrine in such a way that
> they could resist the Germans.
How do you explain that an infantry doctrine which enabled
British and Commonwealth troops to repeatedly defeat German
troops, even the elite German troops, in Europe was actually
formulated and in place by 1942-43?
> I don't see the British having the industrial capacity
> to compensate for their lack of basic fighting skill.
You have yet to either establish this lack of basic fighting
skill or to enumerate British industrial capacity. In fact,
this is all uninformed speculation.
> Their only hope would be that the
> situation becomes to bad that they
> need to use General Slim in Europe. And
> that he reshapes the infantry training.
Slim was an exceptional general, but he fought a very
different war than that fought in Europe. Battles against
the Japanese in Burma usually consisted of fighting
fanatically tenacious battalion-sized infantry units backed
by small amounts of artillery and poor quality AT guns and
armour, in a jungle environment with fragile LOC. Defeating
them required an infantry (and indeed armoured and air)
fighting doctrine very different to that required against an
enemy operating in urban and rural locations in mobile
brigade and division-sized units with strong armour, AT guns
and artillery and relatively secure LOC. It is not apparent
that importing the doctrines that worked against the
Japanese in jungle fighting would greatly assist, for
example, 2nd British Army in Normandy.
> Much the same the Germans did in 1914-15 when
> they discovered that their infantry doctrine did not
> work. They had too many losses.
I'm afraid you will need to expalin this further.
> The Germans sought a tactical solution to their problem.
> The British wanted a technical solution. The problem
> is that the technical solution is horrificly expensive
> and requires a lot of industrial capacity.
The British Army sought to and succeeded in giving infantry
units greater punch and strength by mechanisation and the
provision of heavy weapon support on a lavish scale. The
Heer could not afford to do this except for key units, being
critically short of vehicles. (By way of illustration, in
1941, half the entire Barbarossa invasion force -77
divisions - was reliant entirely on horse-drawn transport).
It sems pointless to laud the Heer for not doing something
which they couldn't afford to do in the first place.
> The German tactical solution meant that they
> got more from their men than enybody else
> in Europe. Their enphasis on a tactical solution
> did not help when they ran out of resources.
The German tactical solution which you seem to admire was
forced upon them by lack of resources.
> Montgomery's strategy was to make the Germans
> run out of resources by launching one attack
> after another on different parts of the German lines.
This is called dispersing the enemy and is a basic
operational skill. It does not mean that British infantry
doctrine in 1942 was inferiorto that of the Heer.
> In the end, the Germans ran out of reserves
> and he won the battle.
In the end, the British beat the Germans into a rout. Go
figure.
>
> greetings,
>
> --
>
Errol Cavit
news:<400585f...@news.pacific.net.au>...
> In article <btmo4v$fm2$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu>,
> Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >While I quite agree with Louis that the British Army
> >suffered badly from a lack of proper battle doctrine until
> >1943, I'm not sure that this is the main reason for the fall
> >of Crete.
Doctrine seemed reasonable on Crete, implementation was a bit lacking.
> >IMO, the main reasons that the German assault on
> >Crete succeeded was overwhelming German air power.
>
> The communications also seem to have been very bad, which is
> doubtless related to the German air attacks, but has other
> causes.
>
Indeed. IMO a better summary is to say the main reason for German
success was poor communications available to the defenders - this
being communications in the widest sense. Limited road network, the
requirement to use ports on the north side of the island for supplies,
Luftwaffe interdiction of any daytime movement, and lack of radio
comms.
> The British moved into the Greek mainland with the intention of
> fighting Axis troops there, and that wound up not working.
> They never intended to build Crete into a fortress, but rather
> were using it as something of an assembly point for a further
> evacuation. They had also left Greece without much heavy
> equipment.
>
> IIRC, the Germans succeeded at Maleme, where a NZ battalion commander
> really didn't know what was going on, and made a bad decision.
Lt Col Andrew VC (CO 22 Batt) made a decision which was understandable
given what he knew ("didn't know what was going on" can be interpreted
to be more critical than I think you intend it to be) but was (in
retrospect) bad. The Germans being prepared to crashland Ju-52s to
reinforce their position also had something to do with it!
Cheers Errol Cavit | 2-Lt Charles UPHAM - 1st VC citation
During the operations in Crete this officer performed a series of
remarkable exploits, showing outstanding leadership, tactical skill
and utter indifference to danger. He commanded a forward platoon in
the attack on [Maleme], on 22nd May and fought his way forward for
over three thousand yards unsupported by any other arms and against a
defence strongly organized in depth...
Louis Capdeboscq
> While I quite agree with Louis that the British Army
> suffered badly from a lack of proper battle doctrine until
> 1943, I'm not sure that this is the main reason for the fall
> of Crete. IMO, the main reasons that the German assault on
> Crete succeeded was overwhelming German air power.
I don't know. The British could probably have won despite German air
power, had they been fighting like Germans. In such a case, the
battalion commander would have counterattacked on his own initiative
rather than pulling back from what he would have been told was a key
objective of the campaign.
For instance, had it been the same number of British paratroopers &
airlanding troops, with the same number of British planes as the Germans
had, attacking Crete with the defenders being the same number of German
infantry as the Commonwealth had troops (let's say Greeks are still
Greeks for ease of comparison), my bet is the German defenders would
probably not have lost.
So it was a combination of various things, none of which were fatal in
isolation. "Bleed from a thousand cuts", rather than a major arterial
haemorragy. In these, I would generally consider doctrine / tactics /
training to be one of the largest cuts, certainly as large as the
Luftwaffe. As an example, the British fought very indecisive battles at
First Alamein and only got a defensive victory at Halam Alfa despite
overwhelming air superiority. X British troops were simply not the
equivalent of X German troops at the time.
Louis Capdeboscq
> Read "Raising Churchill's army" by David French or Bruce Gudmundsson "On
> Infantry".
While these are doubtless excellent books (I haven't read "On Infantry",
but did read "Command or Control" by IIRC the same author), they are
descriptive, not predictive.
> Without the Americans, the British would have
> had to teach their infantry how to fight German style. With the officer
> material the British had, it is not likely that they would have managed to
> change their doctrine in such a way that they could resist the Germans.
Here is the part where I disagree. You are extrapolating from an
observation - the British were doing things a certain way - to a
prediction - they couldn't have done things differently.
I don't see anything wrong with the British "officer material". If you
extrapolate Napoleon's statement that (paraphrasing) "there are no good
or bad troops, there are only good or bad officers" to doctrine, it
means that there are no good officers, there are only good and bad
doctrines. What happened was that for a variety of reasons - which are
very interesting, but difficult to study and which don't seem to
interest military historians one bit - the British society wanted to do
things a certain way, while the German society preferred to do things
another way, and the Americans did things yet a third way, i.e. they
were more flexible than the British but more institutionally
decentralized, less inclided to generalize one unit's experience (see
Doughty "Closing with the enemy" where the author valiantly struggles to
integrate that obvious defficiency into his "the US could do no wrong"
general thesis).
However, there was no physical problem preventing the British from
fighting differently. They started WWI fighting in a certain fashion,
and by 1918 they were fighting in a largely unfamiliar but more
effective way. After the war, they generally went back to more
institutionally comfortable ways, which were also less effective. On the
other hand, there was nothing preventing them from changing, just
institutional inertia which is usually overridden in an emergency. The
Soviets also adopted a fairly decentralized way of war - which they were
institutionally loathe to do - and the only reason why they didn't go
farther were actual physical limits (lack of educated manpower) which
the British didn't have. The French had exactly the same problems as the
British, they had gone through the same evolution during WWI and after
and their 1939-40 doctrine was even more inflexible than the British
one. However, they adapted quickly in June 1940 (under pressure), and
even the "Armee d'Afrique" which had fought in Tunisia more or less
according to 1940 doctrine evolved in Italy until it became able to
"out-infiltrate" the Germans.
My point here is sometimes there are physical limits to an evolution,
and therefore it's safe to say that "Army X could not have fought that
way". For example, the Soviet Army could not have fought the German way
because it simply didn't have the trained cadres to. The Wehrmacht could
not have become a fully-mechanised force like its western opponents, or
the later Bundeswehr, because the Germans simply didn't have the fuel
for such a force (and the industrial capacity was iffy, too). These are
physical limits, and you can safely write "they couldn't have done it".
But doctrine ? Hardly...
> Montgomery's strategy was to make the Germans run out of resources by
> launching one attack after another on different parts of the German lines.
> In the end, the Germans ran out of reserves and he won the battle.
Strangely enough, my understanding of Montgomery's battle was that he
kept hammering at the same part of the German line until it broke. There
was a deception involving a southern thrust, but no serious push, so the
Germans moved all their reserves to the north where they were hammered.
Martin Clements
Hi,
My last post on this seems to have disappeared - you'll have to make
do with the short version!
1) LH was a prophet on the 20s and 30s on how armoured warfare should
be carried out. Even in those works there was, I believe, some
complaint about the battles he chose to represent his arguments, and
those he ignored. In the 40s and 50s, he was a historian, judging how
armour had been used and others had used or misused his tactics. He
apparently accentuated some of his predictions(the things that did
happen), but not others (which did not happen). Len Deighton in
Blood, Tears and Folly says that LH did envisage an increase in the
size and power of tanks, and of their mobility; however, he felt this
would be checked by an even faster growth in the capacity of anti-tank
weapons. LH doesn't mention that after the war.
The other allied difficulty is, when did he change his views? In "The
History of the Second World War", Keegan notes that in the 30s LH
supported attacks on the morale of German workers, believing it might
cause a communistic revolution and end an Anglo-German war. By the
50s and 60s, in his History, LH is critical of Harris for carrying out
the area campaign. It is not clear when and why his views changed.
The role of prophet and historian for the same time period do not sit
well together.
2) Political. LH was advisor to Samuel Hore-Belisha in 1937(?), who
set about reforming the army. LH had drawn up a long list of reforms,
and apparently used to tick them off with relish when they were
implemented. Hore-Belisha upset too many people, and was removed from
power - and LH was too closely allied to him to remain as an advisor.
I can't recall who the new incumbent was, but LH was out of influence
as the war approached. He certainly did not like Churchill and his
ideas, although I don't know offhand if this was due to Hore-Belisha's
fall.
3) Post War. In interviewing the captured German generals after the
war, LH is accused of taking them too much at their word. He didn't
challenge thir views enough, and accepted their criticism of allied
generals, and praise of German generals uncritically. I believe there
was disquiet about his apparent moral blindness to the attrocities
committed by the Wehrmacht under command of some of these generals.
This made his opinions suspect to many.
Cheers,
Martin Clements
--
a425couple
> In article < (Andrew Clark) wrote:
> > partisan author to the point of deliberate premeditated bias
> > and deception.
> mention . fact that they had been altered to confirm with what
> had worked instead of what he originally put forward.
Thanks to all for the information.
I guess again I am lucky.
Mostly as a matter of style, and areas of interest,
I have always used other sources much more than
Liddell Hart.
I also had noted with some concern that my book's
foreword was written by Lady Liddell Hart.
I still have some surprise that he was / is listed
as a source by many (i.e. encyclopedias etc.).
Self propagandizing alone is rarely that successful!
WalterM140
>seems
>> the mark of a great commander, almost getting booted.
>By your definition then, there was absolutely nothing great about Patton.
Well, now. Patton -was- sacked.
But he was brought back. He was too valuable. He was, as Eisnhower said,
"indispensible to victory."
Esiehnower had Churchill's permission to sack Montgomery over his conduct of
operations in Normandy.
>Walter, why
>don't you just admit your anti-Commonwealth bias once and for all?
Because I don't have an anti-Commonwealth bias.
I don't much like seeing the record skewed though.
Walt
--
Andrew Clark
"Louis Capdeboscq" <loui...@yahoo.com> wrote
> I don't know. The British could probably have won
> despite German air power, had they been fighting
> like Germans. In such a case, the battalion commander
> would have counterattacked on his own initiative
> rather than pulling back from what he would have
> been told was a key objective of the campaign.
I presume you are referring to Lt-Col Andrew's order to
withdraw 22 battalion from the environs of Maleme aircraft.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of that decision, it cannot
be interpreted as a failure of the sort you cite. Andrew was
fully aware of the critical importance of Maleme and his
battalion had already that day incurred severe casualties in
repeatedly counter-attacking a far larger German force.
Andrew withdrew only when he had evidence (wrong, as it
turned out) that his companies holding the airfield
perimeter were already overrun and that the overrunning of
his entire battalion was immediately imminent.
The burden of blame lies, it appears, with Brigadier
Hargest, 5 NZ Brigade's commander, but not a professional
soldier, who failed to press 21 and 23 battalions forward
into a counter-attack on the airfield during the fisrt day,
and when told by Andrew that 22 battalion might be forced
back into new defensive positions simply acquiesced, without
either ordering up reinforcements or giving Andrew
reassurance that reinforcements would be sent.
It does not appear that this sort of command failure, which
occurred in all armies in WW2, is evidence of a failure in
Commonwealth infantry fighting doctrine.
> For instance, had it been the same number of
> British paratroopers & airlanding troops,
> with the same number of British planes as the
> Germans had, attacking Crete with the
> defenders being the same number of German
> infantry as the Commonwealth had troops
> (let's say Greeks are still Greeks for ease
> of comparison), my bet is the German defenders would
> probably not have lost.
Hum. Had the German defenders made the same tactical errors
as the Commonwealth defenders, and had the same failure of
command at brigade level around Maleme, the British, in all
probability, given the odds, would have achieved the same
victory. It's not at all clear to me that German infantry
doctrine in itself would have prevented those errors.
(snip)
> X British troops were simply not the
> equivalent of X German troops at the time.
I agree in terms of the period 1941-42 (and indeed the main
reason Montgomery gave for not exploiting Alam Halfa was
that 8th Army was not ready to do so).
--
Y. Macales
> Off the current thread, but a related request for info.
> One source I have and use is B.H.L. Hart's
> "History of the Second World War"
> These posts have alerted me to be careful of his
> opinions.
> Do you learned posters have specific concerns
> about his accuracy in this book that you would like
> to advise me about?
>
> I do note that BHL Hart is frequently used as a
> source and listed in bibliographies of
> encyclopedias.
> --
I just got out my videotape with the series "Soldiers"
hosted by Frederick Forsyth which was made in the 1980's.
The episode about Tank warfare which was written by
John Keegan states flatly that the idea of using tanks
as shock units to break through enemy lines and not
just as auxiliaries to the infantry was developed
by Liddell-Hart and General Fuller in the 1920's, but was
rejected by the British at the time. The Germans then
adopted their ideas for their Blitzkrieg doctrine.
Since Keegan is a highly respected military historian,
and he gives Liddell-Hart the credit for this, I must
assume that L-H was no dummy, at least, although this,
of course, does not reflect one way or the other
on his accuracy as a historian.
Pekka Riiali
> I also had noted with some concern that my book's
> foreword was written by Lady Liddell Hart.
That is because Liddell Hart died before the book was published. It seems
also that the book is unfinished. It is erratic and there are curious
omissions and errors.
//Beke
--
+ Pekka Riiali +
+ Kierniemenraitti 7 B 25, FIN-53850 LPR, FINLAND +
+ Tel: +358 (0)40 5431128, rii...@lut.fi +
David Thornley
WalterM140 <walte...@aol.com> wrote:
>>> Churchill did give Eisenhower permission to sack Montgomery. That hardly
>>seems
>>> the mark of a great commander, almost getting booted.
>
>>By your definition then, there was absolutely nothing great about Patton.
>
>Well, now. Patton -was- sacked.
>
after talking to a ladies' club in Britain, being quoted (correctly or
not) as saying some politically inconvenient things.
Patton was a brilliant commander, but often an embarassment off the
field.
>But he was brought back. He was too valuable. He was, as Eisnhower said,
>"indispensible to victory."
>
I wouldn't call him indispensible, but certainly very useful. The
Allies were going to win anyway by that time, although it was by no
means obvious to those doing the fighting.
>Esiehnower had Churchill's permission to sack Montgomery over his conduct of
>operations in Normandy.
>
And, you know what?
He didn't.
Eisenhower apparently had been assured that he could sack Montgomery
without political repercussions. He would have preferred to work with
Alexander (a person of many virtues, but not in my opinion a good
high-level commander). Montgomery was not making himself the extreme
pain in the rear he later did, but I would think it odd if he hadn't
annoyed Eisenhower several times. He was not an easy subordinate to
deal with.
Despite all this, and the initially disappointing results in Normandy,
Eisenhower left Montgomery just where he was. The seeming demotion
from theater land commander to army group commander was planned in
advance.
From this, I conclude that Eisenhower also thought Montgomery worth
keeping around, despite his negatives, perhaps also "indispensible
to victory".
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> Well, now. Patton -was- sacked.
No, he wasn't. He was merely reprimanded by Eisenhower in
circumstances when virtually any other general would have
been instantly removed from his post.
> But he was brought back. He was too valuable.
Patton was an "intimate friend of many years standing" of
Eisenhower (Crusade in Europe, page 236 of Heinemann
edition, 1949) and Eisenhower protected him against the
consequences of his military and personal failures, just as
Brooke protected Montgomery and Marshall protected
Eisenhower. To claim that Patton was too valuable to be
sacked when (a) he was not sacked and (b) was the known
protege of the Supreme Commander is typical nonsense.
> He was, as Eisnhower said,
> "indispensible to victory."
Source please. This phrase does not appear in Crusade in
Europe.
> Esiehnower had Churchill's permission to sack
> Montgomery over his conduct of
> operations in Normandy.
No. Churchill was rattled by the difficult military
situation in Normandy (which he, like Eisenhower, didn't
fully understand) and reminded Eisenhower that he had the
power to remove any British officer under his command in
whom he no longer had confidence. This certainly included
Montgomery, but it also included British army commanders and
SHAEF HQ staff. After Eisenhower had talked to Montgomery,
he saw no need to change the plan which Montgomery was
pursuing (and in which, incidentally, Bradley had full
confidence). Neither did Churchill repeat these remarks once
he too had spoken to Montgomery and understood the plan.
In summary, there was a crisis of confidence in Montgomery
founded mainly on misunderstanding of the plan (necessarily
secret) which was in the process of being implemented and
fomented by anti-British and anti-Montgomery prejudice. To
try to paint this up into a real failure by Montgomery which
justified his dismissal is absurd.
> Because I don't have an anti-Commonwealth bias.
Is it just anti-British then? Those lucky lucky Canadians.
> I don't much like seeing the record skewed
> though.
Perhaps you ought to check your facts before posting, then.
>
> Walt
> --
>
Errol Cavit
> "Louis Capdeboscq" <loui...@yahoo.com> wrote
>
> > I don't know. The British could probably have won
> > despite German air power, had they been fighting
> > like Germans. In such a case, the battalion commander
> > would have counterattacked on his own initiative
> > rather than pulling back from what he would have
> > been told was a key objective of the campaign.
>
>
> The burden of blame lies, it appears, with Brigadier
> Hargest, 5 NZ Brigade's commander, but not a professional
> soldier, who failed to press 21 and 23 battalions forward
> into a counter-attack on the airfield during the fisrt day,
> and when told by Andrew that 22 battalion might be forced
> back into new defensive positions simply acquiesced, without
> either ordering up reinforcements or giving Andrew
> reassurance that reinforcements would be sent.
>
> It does not appear that this sort of command failure, which
> occurred in all armies in WW2, is evidence of a failure in
> Commonwealth infantry fighting doctrine.
>
I agree that doctrine doesn't seem to be lacking on the available
evidence.
A fairly recently available on-line resource is some of the volumes of
the NZ Official Histories. Neither the Crete campaign or 22 Batt
volumes are yet available, but 23 Batt is. Not new information of
course, pre-Ultra (although non-specified intelligence warnings were
acknowledged), and with the expected limitations of Official
Histories.
Some relevant extracts from the 23 Batt Chapter on Crete
http://www.nzetc.org/etexts/WH2-23Ba/c5.html
"Brigadier Puttick had written that ‘a good solid
battalion’ was required for the counter-attack role and this was
the task given to the 23rd, which was under orders to be prepared to
counter-attack the enemy should he land on the airfield or on the
beach to the east of it.
...
So far as the infantry units were concerned, the operation instruction
confirmed their roles: 5 Brigade was to ‘defend its position at
all costs’ and, in the event of the enemy making an airborne or
seaborne attack on any part of the brigade area between Platanias and
the Tavronitis River, its units were ‘to counter-attack and
destroy him immediately’. The Maori Battalion was to remain in
the Platanias area, to patrol the neighbouring beaches and to be
‘available for counter attack’. The engineers were made
responsible for their area and the beaches on their front. Similarly,
21 Battalion was to remain in its position but, since Brigadier
Hargest and others recognised the very real danger of an enemy landing
in the unoccupied and quite undefended area and beaches to the west of
the Tavronitis River, it was to be prepared ‘to move and hold
line of the river facing West from 22 Bn left flank’, and two
platoons with a mortar were to take up a holding position along this
west flank immediately. Twenty-second Battalion retained, as its
primary task, the static defence of the aerodrome by fire. Its support
and reserve companies were to be utilised for ‘immediate
counter-attack under cover of mortars and M.G. fire.’ The
instruction added: ‘If necessary, support will be called for
from 23 Bn and should telephonic means of comn fail here the call will
be by “verey” signal (WHITE-GREEN-WHITE)’.
Subsequent events make it important that the 23rd's orders be quoted
as given: ‘23 Bn will maintain its present position and be
prepared to counter-attack if enemy effects a landing (a) on the beach
or at Maleme Aerodrome, (b) on area occupied by Det N.Z.E. West of
Platanias.’"
Errol Cavit | "I long for the day when we can match the Germans in the
sky, ‘plane for ‘plane. When that day dawns, Germany is
beaten. We know by experience that we can whack his land forces, tanks
included, any day of the week." Private L. A. Diamond, 23 NZ Batt,
1941
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> I presume you are referring to Lt-Col Andrew's order to
> withdraw 22 battalion from the environs of Maleme aircraft.
Not exactly, no.
I am referring to the failure of the British to adequately react to the
German actions. I wasn't assigning blame to Lt-Col Andrew as an
individual because I wasn't sure about the details - which I thank you
for providing.
Whether the blame lies with platoon, company, battalion or brigade
commanders, the fact is that the Germans captured an airfield, that was
the difference between victory and defeat, the British didn't do their
best to prevent them - and I believe that they had the means to prevent
them from capturing Maleme - so there was something wrong with the way
the British fought that battle.
As similar failures occured repeatedly in the desert, I have to conclude
either that all British commanders, as individuals, simply did not have
the mental capacity to become good commanders (which has been stated
elsewhere and with which I disagree) or that there was something wrong
with British doctrine.
> It does not appear that this sort of command failure, which
> occurred in all armies in WW2, is evidence of a failure in
> Commonwealth infantry fighting doctrine.
Please note that you are progressively narrowing down the discussion.
The initial point IIRC was about fighting ability in general. Others,
including myself, mentioned training and doctrine. Now you are
mentioning "infantry fighting doctrine", which I'm not sure what it
corresponds to.
According to you, the "burden of blame" lies with the 5NZ brigade
commander who was not a professional. Implicitely, as I understand it,
you are claiming that he lacked adequate training. So there was indeed a
training problem.
Now doctrine. While I disagree with the "Germans were uebermenschen"
theory, Gudmunsson makes a good point regarding command vs control.
Centralized systems, as the British had, have their advantages. In a
fluid environment, like most of WWII, decentralized systems like the
mission tactics that the Germans practiced were superior. It was
evidenced in WWI, and again in WWII. There were lots of problems with
British doctrine (although the British were far from the only ones, it's
just that their doctrine is the one being discussed at the moment),
resulting for example in spectacular failures in inter-arms coordination
until at least late 1942. In that context, narrowing things down to
"infantry doctrine" misses the point, although I'm not convinced that
British infantry was superior to German infantry.
> Hum. Had the German defenders made the same tactical errors
> as the Commonwealth defenders, and had the same failure of
> command at brigade level around Maleme, the British, in all
> probability, given the odds, would have achieved the same
> victory. It's not at all clear to me that German infantry
> doctrine in itself would have prevented those errors.
Well, the historical record has the British making many more tactical
errors, and having more command failures, than the Germans in that period.
To be this indicates either extremely bad luck, incompetent individuals,
or poor doctrine. The last explanation seems the most likely, as it also
best explains how the British progressively got their act together.
> (snip)
>
>>X British troops were simply not the
>>equivalent of X German troops at the time.
>
> I agree in terms of the period 1941-42 (and indeed the main
> reason Montgomery gave for not exploiting Alam Halfa was
> that 8th Army was not ready to do so).
Absolutely. And in my opinion he was perfectly right to do so, as
Auchinleck's attacks the month before had gone nowhere.
I would put the period at 1939-42 myself, and possibly 1943. In 1944,
the British army didn't fight like Germans, but it fought well enough.
It had a doctrine.
Louis
--
Remove "e" from address to reply
--
John Thompson
> I just got out my videotape with the series "Soldiers"
> hosted by Frederick Forsyth which was made in the 1980's.
> The episode about Tank warfare which was written by
> John Keegan states flatly that the idea of using tanks
> as shock units to break through enemy lines and not
> just as auxiliaries to the infantry was developed
> by Liddell-Hart and General Fuller in the 1920's, but was
> rejected by the British at the time. The Germans then
> adopted their ideas for their Blitzkrieg doctrine.
> Since Keegan is a highly respected military historian,
> and he gives Liddell-Hart the credit for this, I must
> assume that L-H was no dummy, at least, although this,
> of course, does not reflect one way or the other
> on his accuracy as a historian.
It is interesting that just before WWII (in his book "The Defence of
Britain" published in 1939) Liddel-Hart stated that the chance for
successful blitzkrieg warfare had passed because everyone had figured
out that anti-tank guns can be made a lot cheaper and quicker than
tanks. But it turned out that everyone had not figured that out - it
took until about 1943. He felt the chief danger to Britain was the
possibility of fighting an enemy who had air and submarine bases in
Spain.
John
--
Whitey On The Moon
wrote:
[snipping of various specific points follows]
>Andrew Clark wrote:
>> I presume you are referring to Lt-Col Andrew's order to
>> withdraw 22 battalion from the environs of Maleme aircraft.
>
>Not exactly, no.
>
>I am referring to the failure of the British to adequately react to the
>German actions. I wasn't assigning blame to Lt-Col Andrew as an
>individual because I wasn't sure about the details - which I thank you
>for providing.
Within this, I would like to comment that much of (relevant and
largely accurate) criticism of British doctrinal and combat efficiency
in D'Este's "Decision in Normandy" is based on Hargest's report while
an observer with 30 Corps in June-July 1944. Much of what he
criticises in the behaviour of 2nd Army in 1944 (poor co-ordination
between different arms, rigid planning, lack of small-unit initiative)
IIRC was also on display under his command of the Maleme sector of
Crete, particularly the unwillingness or inability to mass a major
counter-attack on the first night of the invasion.
A counter-attack was launched, with such tank support as there was,
but not in the size required to seriously threaten the German air
head.
>Whether the blame lies with platoon, company, battalion or brigade
>commanders, the fact is that the Germans captured an airfield, that was
>the difference between victory and defeat, the British didn't do their
>best to prevent them - and I believe that they had the means to prevent
>them from capturing Maleme - so there was something wrong with the way
>the British fought that battle.
The critical problem were the dispositions before the battle, as
transport resources were scarce and Luftwaffe air superiority so
marked in daytime. Organised movement in daylight was almost
impossible, and the infantry were condemned to fight largely in their
original positions.
>As similar failures occured repeatedly in the desert, I have to conclude
>either that all British commanders, as individuals, simply did not have
>the mental capacity to become good commanders (which has been stated
>elsewhere and with which I disagree) or that there was something wrong
>with British doctrine.
Alternatively, the circumstances might differ. All units with the
capacity to launch local counterattacks appeared to have done so on
Crete, the problem being at Maleme that the concentration of German
force and the dispersal of the defenders was sufficient to limit the
critical action to a couple of companies of one New Zealand battalion.
No counter attack by those local forces ever stood a chance of
achieving anything meaningful against concentrated resistance.
Elsewhere, local counter-attacks and improvised forces proved very
successful at bottling up the airborne attackers and wiping out
scattered and straggling paratroopers.
Within the available means, there was clearly no problem with most of
the local commanders (up to battalion level) demanding a fierce
defence with company-sized local counter-attacks much as German
commanders might have reacted in the same situation. Where the higher
commanders failed, at brigade and divisional level (Hargest and
Freyburg) was to organise larger unit counter-attacks when this was
possible after nightfall in the decisive area as a matter of urgent
priority. Maleme was the only airfield under serious threat, and the
closest to the German staging areas in Greece.
>According to you, the "burden of blame" lies with the 5NZ brigade
>commander who was not a professional. Implicitely, as I understand it,
>you are claiming that he lacked adequate training. So there was indeed a
>training problem.
There was a clear difference between Hargest's style of command and
Kippenberger's approach behind him, where the brigade commander in
that sector actually got out of his command post a little more,
observed the ground and tactical position first-hand, and ordered
improvised units around himself.
>I would put the period at 1939-42 myself, and possibly 1943. In 1944,
>the British army didn't fight like Germans, but it fought well enough.
>It had a doctrine.
Actually, the problems of doctrine and command were interdependent.
Taking Gazala as the prime example (a classic battle where British
commanders squander numeric superiority with overall air parity or
even superiority), the level of independence required to provide Corps
and Divisional commanders with the scope to display initiative was
certainly present, but was used by many of those commanders to indulge
their own wishes at the expense of a clearly-established overall plan
and the evident need to co-operate with neighbouring units in contact
with the enemy.
Some of this can be seen at First Alamein (and certainly at Matruh and
other episodes in between) but, when it comes down to the infantry,
the British made more use of their infantry formations as offensive
bodies in their own right than the Germans, and this was recognised by
Rommel (e.g. over night attacks on Divisional scale). The problem was
largely, but not exclusively tied to the co-operation between the
armour and everybody else.
The infantry did have their own doctrinal problems (properly
integrating infantry battle skills into the centralised,
artillery-fire-plan-dominated attacks in Normandy), but I think these
stand seperate from the command and inter-arm co-ordation problems
they also experienced.
Gavin Bailey
--
Martin Clements
> John Keegan states flatly that the idea of using tanks
> as shock units to break through enemy lines and not
> just as auxiliaries to the infantry was developed
> by Liddell-Hart and General Fuller in the 1920's, but was
> rejected by the British at the time. The Germans then
> adopted their ideas for their Blitzkrieg doctrine.
> Since Keegan is a highly respected military historian,
> and he gives Liddell-Hart the credit for this, I must
> assume that L-H was no dummy, at least, although this,
> of course, does not reflect one way or the other
> on his accuracy as a historian.
It certainly is true that Liddel Hart and Fuller came up with many of
the basics of tank warfare later adopted by the Germans. It's worth
noting though, that the constant rejoinder to these "apostles" calls
for tank warfare in the 20s and early 30s, was "what about the cost?".
Obviously cavalry regiments did not come cheap, but I do remember
hearing a lecture in which it was stated that no British government
was willing or likely to incurr the costs of the huge tank-based
armies that LH envisaged at various times. His views were therefore
viewed as exciting, but perhaps somewhat academic. He was no dummy in
the theories of armoured wafare, but perhaps less brilliant in the
sphere of army realpolitik.
That a government would arise which would put guns before butter, and
raise such armoured divisions, albeit in Grmany, was a factor the
critics did not consider.
Cheers,
Martin Clements
--
WalterM140
>
> Patton was an "intimate friend of many years standing" of
> Eisenhower (Crusade in Europe, page 236 of Heinemann
> edition, 1949) and Eisenhower protected him against the
> consequences of his military and personal failures, just as
> Brooke protected Montgomery and Marshall protected
> Eisenhower. To claim that Patton was too valuable to be
> sacked when (a) he was not sacked and (b) was the known
> protege of the Supreme Commander is typical nonsense.
>
Patton was clearly sacked.
But known protege? That won't fly.
Patton was six years Eisenhower's senior in the regular Army (USMA
1909 and USMA 1915). By 1940, Patton was a full colonel and
Eisenhower was a major.
During 1941, I believe, or early 1942, Esienhower suggested that
perhaps he could command a brigade in Patton's armored division.
Patton said he'd be glad to have him. Patton and Eisenhower did go
back as friends to 1919. After Patton attended Command and Staff
school, he loaned Eisenhower his notes. Eisenhower finished first in
his class. Patton did say to Ike back in the early 20s something
like, "you will be the Lee in the next war, and I shall be your
Jackson." That was pretty prescient, actually. They had little
contact between the wars after the early '20's. But Patton Ike's
protege? Please.
Patton also arrived in Europe before Eisenhower made an appearance,
and was senior at that time to him.
Eisenhower had a meteoric rise, but calling Patton his protege is more
than a stretch, even for you.
Now Patton was a keen observer of the British. He had a chance at a
posting in London as military attache before the war. He turned it
down, to his wife's disappointment. He wrote her:
"We have two marriageable daughters who...will be rich someday. If we
go to London it stands to reason that one or both of them will marry
an Englishman. Englishmen, well-bred Englishmen, are the most
attractive bastards in the world, and they always need all the money
they can lay their hands on to keep up the castle, or the grouse moor,
or the stud farm, or whatever it is that they have inherited. I
served with the British in the war, and I heard their talk. They are
men's men and they are totally inconsiderate of their wives and
daughters; everything goes to their sons, nothing to the girls. I
just can't see Little Bee or Ruth Ellie in that role. Someday just
tell them what I did for them and maybe they won't think I'm such an
old bastard after all."
--"Patton: a Genius For War" p. 345, by Carlo D'Este
Walt
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> That a government would arise which would put guns before butter, and
> raise such armoured divisions, albeit in Grmany, was a factor the
> critics did not consider.
That's quite true, although I would tend to lean somewhat more toward
the critics' point of view. Early tank enthusiasts asked for lots of
tanks. I mean lots.
At some point during the Phoney War, for example, De Gaulle was asking
for quite ludicrous numbers of tanks, something like (from memory alone)
1,000 50-ton tanks, 5,000 30-ton tanks and 10,000 10-ton ones. The price
tag for such a force - which was usually described as an all-or-nothing,
take-it-or-leave-it proposition - was enough to make any responsible
government think twice: after all, that's about as much as SHAEF
controlled in 1945, yet the French were supposed to field an equivalent
force on their own resources !
Now I don't recall the exact numbers mentioned by LH in his theories,
but it seems to me that they also involved thousands of tanks, a sort of
cavalry division except that the horses would be replaced by tanks. The
price of such units would definitely fall in the "prohibitive" category.
I'll look up "Achtung ! Panzer !" to refresh my memory on what Guderian
advocates, but it seems to me that his combined-arms approach was more
open to a modular acceptance, i.e. when you ask for lots of panzer
divisions, the government can still build a few of them and see how they
work. When, on the other hand, you ask for a single "armored corps" with
as many tanks as a late-war army group, you're likely to get a global,
over-the-board, negative answer.
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote
> Patton was clearly sacked.
When? Not after the incident in Sicily, certainly. State
your source.
> But known protege? That won't fly.
>
> Patton was six years Eisenhower's senior in the
> regular Army (USMA 1909 and USMA 1915).
> By 1940, Patton was a full colonel and
> Eisenhower was a major.
> During 1941, I believe, or early 1942, Esienhower
> suggested that perhaps he could command a brigade
> in Patton's armored division.
> Eisenhower had a meteoric rise, but calling Patton
> his protege is more than a stretch, even for you.
Marshall summoned Eisenhower to Washington as a colonel
(temporary) in the War Plans desk of the War Department in
December 1941. In January 1942, he became chief of WPD's
successor, the Operations Division of the General Staff, as
a Major-General (temporary). In April 1942, Eisenhower
proposed (against considerable resistance) putting Patton in
command of a US armoured division which it was proposed to
send to Egypt. (See Crusade in Europe, op cit). On 11
February 1943 he was promoted General.
It seems clear that by April 1942 Patton had become an
protégé of Eisenhower due to the latter's exalted command
position, whatever their respective seniorities and rank.
> Patton also arrived in Europe before Eisenhower
> made an appearance, and was senior at that time to him.
Eisenhower went to the UK in June 1942 as Commanding
General, European Theatre of Operations, US Army (ETOUSA).
Patton did not arrive in Africa until 1943 and Europe in
1944.
(snips)
--
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>"WalterM140" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote
>
>> Patton was clearly sacked.
>
>When? Not after the incident in Sicily, certainly. State
>your source.
He may not have been technically sacked (not that "sacked" has a
precise official definition), but as far as I'm concerned it's
close enough.
He was clearly sackable in that period, and Marshall felt compelled
(after the ladies' club debacle) to tell Eisenhower that Eisenhower
could decide to keep Patton.
I think this establishes any equivalency needed between the "Churchill
gave Eisenhower permission to sack Montgomery" and "Marshall gave
Eisenhower permission to sack Patton", and that using the former
as an argument against Montgomery's competence rather argues for
Patton's incompetence. Personally, I think both were very good,
but Patton was better.
>> Patton also arrived in Europe before Eisenhower
>> made an appearance, and was senior at that time to him.
>
>Eisenhower went to the UK in June 1942 as Commanding
>General, European Theatre of Operations, US Army (ETOUSA).
>Patton did not arrive in Africa until 1943 and Europe in
>1944.
>
Minor correction: Patton commanded the Morocco part of Torch, and
was therefore in Africa in November 1942. I don't believe he had
any part in fighting actual Germans until 1943.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
--
WalterM140
> "WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
>
>
> > He was, as Eisnhower said,
> > "indispensible to victory."
>
> Source please. This phrase does not appear in Crusade in
> Europe.
>
"Eisenhower told one of his senior officers: "If this thing ever gets
out, they'll be howling for Patton's scalp, and that will be the end
of George's service in this war. I simply cannot let that happen.
Patton is indispensable to the war effort - one of the guarantors of
our victory." Instead he wrote a letter to Patton demanding that he
should apologize or make "personal amends to the individuals concerned
as may be within your power."
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWpatton.htm
I've posted this text three times. I haven't seen it.
Walt
--
Velovich03
>
>When? Not after the incident in Sicily, certainly. State
>your source.
d'Este, "Patton: A genius for War" - *Patton* certainly took his relief from
7th Army as a 'sacking'. It was, to him, a reprimand for the slapping
incidents. That Ike did not tell him that it was merely his transfer for his
part of "Fortitude" as well as his taking over 3rd Army shows us that it was
meant as a reprimand. Ike was keeping Patton on tenderhooks to drive the point
home. Ike knew Patton well.
--
WalterM140
>> Patton was clearly sacked.
Mr. Clark:
>
>When? Not after the incident in Sicily, certainly. State
>your source.
>
"It is somewhat ironic that as Forrest Pogue writes, while Patton continued to
assume that he was wandering in a wilderness, the officers able to decide his
future [Marshall and Eisenhower] were only debating which of top two
assignments available he would handle best [ANVIL or 3rd Army]."
"wandering in a wilderness"?
Patton was relieved of command of 7th Army for cause -- sacked-- by any
reasonable definition.
--"Patton A Genius for War" p. 566 by Carlo D'Este
>> But known protege? That won't fly.
>>
>> Patton was six years Eisenhower's senior in the
>> regular Army (USMA 1909 and USMA 1915).
>> By 1940, Patton was a full colonel
and
>> Eisenhower was a major.
>> During 1941, I believe, or early 1942, Esienhower
>> suggested that perhaps he could command a brigade
>> in Patton's armored division.
>> Eisenhower had a meteoric rise, but calling Patton
>> his protege is more than a stretch, even for you.
<snip>
> In April 1942, Eisenhower
>proposed (against considerable resistance) putting Patton in
>command of a US armoured division which it was proposed to
send to Egypt. (See Crusade in Europe, op cit). On 11
>February 1943 he was promoted General.
Who opposed that?
>It seems clear that by April 1942 Patton had become an
>protégé of Eisenhower due to the latter's exalted command
>position, whatever their respective seniorities and rank.
It's not clear at all, if only for the time period involved. Becoming a
protege takes time.
>> Patton also arrived in Europe before Eisenhower
>> made an appearance, and was senior at that time to him.
>
>Eisenhower went to the UK in June 1942 as Commanding
>General, European Theatre of Operations, US Army (ETOUSA).
Thanks for the correction.
>Patton did not arrive in Africa until 1943 and Europe in
>1944.
Patton of course landed in North Africa in November, 1942 with the TORCH
landings.
Finally:
"Some months later Patton was delighted when someone related that General
Wedemeyer was overheard stoutly defending him in a heated conversation with
Eisenhower: "Hell, got on to yourself Ike; you didn't make him, he made you."
Ibid, p. 567
Walt
--
Andrew Clark
"David Thornley" <thor...@visi.com> wrote
> He may not have been technically sacked
> (not that "sacked" has a precise official
> definition), but as far as I'm concerned it's
> close enough.
Patton's personnel file recorded (eventually) only a written
reprimand from Eisenhower in relation to the slapping
incident. Ergo, he was not removed from command for
disciplinary reasons, which is what I take sacked to mean in
this context. Indeed, so far as I can see, officially,
Patton was not formally displaced from command of 7th Army
until his replacement, Patch, took up command in March 1944.
> He was clearly sackable in that period,
On purely military grounds, Patton had hardly shone in
Africa or Sicily.
(snip remaining agreed stuff)
--
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <Walte...@aol.com> wrote
> "Eisenhower told one of his senior officers: "If this thing ever gets
> out, they'll be howling for Patton's scalp, and that will be the end
> of George's service in this war. I simply cannot let that happen.
> Patton is indispensable to the war effort - one of the guarantors of
> our victory." Instead he wrote a letter to Patton demanding that he
> should apologize or make "personal amends to the individuals concerned
> as may be within your power."
So let me get this straight. In another post, you argue that
Patton was sacked by Eisenhower. And in this post you cite
text (albeit from an unreferenced popular website) which
clearly proves that Eisenhower didn't sack Patton. Which is
it, "Walt"?
--
Michael Emrys
acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk wrote on 1/19/04 12:10 PM:
> ...Patton did not arrive in Africa until 1943 and Europe in 1944.
I would think the people of Sicily, where Patton commanded 7th. Army in
*1943*, would feel some alarm to hear they are no longer considered a part
of Europe. Then again, who knows?
;-)
Michael
--
Andrew Clark
"Velovich03" <velov...@aol.com> wrote
> d'Este, "Patton: A genius for War" -
I have found this formerly to be a highly partisan source.
> *Patton* certainly took his relief from
> 7th Army as a 'sacking'. It was, to him,
> a reprimand for the slapping
> incidents.
This does not square at all with what Eisenhower says in
"Crusade in Europe". Being ordered to apologise to"
representative groups of men under your command" indicates
that Patton knew quite well that he remained commander of
7th US Army.
Andrew Clark
"WalterM140" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> Patton was relieved of command of 7th Army for cause --
sacked-- by any
> reasonable definition.
Patton's personnel file recorded (eventually) only a written
reprimand from Eisenhower in relation to the slapping
incident. He was not removed from command for disciplinary
reasons, Indeed, so far as I can see, officially, Patton was
not formally displaced from command of 7th Army until his
replacement, Patch, took up command in March 1944.
> --"Patton A Genius for War" p. 566 by Carlo D'Este
A highly partisan source (again).
> It's not clear at all, if only for the time period
involved.
> Becoming a protege takes time.
According to who? Go look up the word protege in a
dictionary.
(snips)
> Patton of course landed in North Africa in November, 1942
> with the TORCH landings.
Thank you for the correction of my typo. Eisenhower still
arrived in the ETO four months before Patton, as as his
commanding officer.
> "Some months later Patton was delighted when
> someone related that General Wedemeyer was
> overheard stoutly defending him in a heated
> conversation with Eisenhower: "Hell, got on to
> yourself Ike; you didn't make him, he made you."
I'm sure Patton was delighted. But Wedemeyer wasn't right.
Marshall "made" Eisenhower in the sense that Marshall guided
Eisenhower into senior command positions.
WalterS
>
> Eisenhower went to the UK in June 1942 as Commanding
> General, European Theatre of Operations, US Army (ETOUSA).
> Patton did not arrive in Africa until 1943 and Europe in
> 1944.
>
> (snips)
>
> --
Actually, Patton landed in Morocco (Africa) in November, 1942 as
commander of the Western Task Force in Operation "Torch." He was part
of the invasion of Sicily (Europe) in July 1943. (Keegan, "The Second
World War, pp.337-340, 347-350)
Of course, I suppose one could argue that Sicily, being in the
"Mediterranean Theater of Operations," technically wasn't part of
Europe as far as the Allied war planners were concerned, but most maps
of Europe that I see include Sicily. I know the Italians do, if
somewhat reluctantly ;)
As far as the protege question mentioned previously is concerned, I
don't think that Patton was Ike's protege in the classical sense that
one thinks of a protege: a younger person being guided and mentored by
an experienced elder/superior. Patton was several years (I think 5)
older than Ike and was, as has been stated, senior to Ike in permanent
rank when the war began. What Ike did when he was named Supreme
Commander in Europe was to identify and groom those officers whom he
felt would be suitable for leading the American forces in battle
against the Germans in Europe. Thus, Patton, Bradley, Hodges, Clark
and others were "flagged" by Ike as potential battlefield commanders.
Ike also protected these men when they came under criticism at various
stages of the war. So, "protege" is not, in my opinion, a misuse of
the word in this context.
Walter S
WalterM140
>On purely military grounds, Patton had hardly shone in
>Africa or Sicily.
Gosh, did we jump over into the Anglo-apologia thread?
You are certainly welcome to your opinion.
He turned around the II Corps and it defeated the Germans only a short time
after being badly handled by them at Kasserine Pass.
And in Sicily, he bailed out Eisenhower AND Montgomery.
The plan executed at Sicily ensured that the Germans could control the pace of
operations, but then that was typical of plans developed/promoted by
Montgomery.
Walt
--
WalterS
>
> On purely military grounds, Patton had hardly shone in
> Africa or Sicily.
>
Please provide the documentation that supports this statement. My
reading of Patton's efforts in North Africa and Sicily indicate that
he did quite well.
"By his aggressive tactics, however, Patton had revived II Corps in
the demoralizing aftermath of the German attack at the Kasserine Pass,
and gone on to develop the Seventh Army and lead it to a dazzling
string of victories in Sicily."
---David Eisenhower, "Eisenhower at War, 1943-45" p. 37.
Walter S
WalterM140
>> "Eisenhower told one of his senior officers: "If this thing ever gets
>> out, they'll be howling for Patton's scalp, and that will be the end
>> of George's service in this war. I simply cannot let that happen.
>> Patton is indispensable to the war effort - one of the guarantors of
our victory." Instead he wrote a letter to Patton demanding that he
>> should apologize or make "personal amends to the individuals concerned
>> as may be within your power."
>So let me get this straight. In another post, you argue that
>Patton was sacked by Eisenhower.
Yep.
>And in this post you cite
>text (albeit from an unreferenced popular website) which
>clearly proves that Eisenhower didn't sack Patton. Which is
>it, "Walt"?
I recall hearing this story back in 1970 when the Patton movie came out.
Patton was sacked from command of 7th Army and later had to serve under an
officer he had previously commanded -- Bradley. He was sacked.
He was brought back because he was "indispensible to the war effort."
Now, we've slipped off the Montgomery part of the thread? Did Eisenhower ever
say Monmtgomery was "indispensible to the war effort"?
In fact, Montgomery muddled along and barely kept from getting sacked himself.
--Had-- he been sacked, it wouldn't have been for personal attributes, although
those were glaringly odious, but because his conduct of operations was sub-par.
Walt
Velov...@aol.com
>
>I have found this formerly to be a highly partisan source.
Perhaps a kind on, to be sure. He did have the family's assistance,
including access to personal papers that were never published previously.
And d'Este does NOT pull many punches. When Patton was wrong, he says so.
>> *Patton* certainly took his relief from
>> 7th Army as a 'sacking'. It was, to him,
>> a reprimand for the slapping
>> incidents.
>
>This does not square at all with what Eisenhower says in
>"Crusade in Europe". Being ordered to apologise to"
>representative groups of men under your command" indicates
>that Patton knew quite well that he remained commander of
>7th US Army.
You left out the rest where I commented, based on d'Este, how Patton
*took* his relief, combined with his NOT getting a major command OR any guidance
on
what was going on for some time (his part on distracting/fooling the Germans)
*as* an "unofficial" reprimand.
We are talking about a period of time when the US Army was undergoing a
lot of changes. Patton's previous service, before the war, was a time where
commanders often meted out punishment that was unoficial in order punish without
an offical record of it. This often corrected deficiency of an otherwise
good soldier without permanently scarring his record.
Hence, Ike leaving Patton on tenderhooks over what his next assignment
was, having him put in appearances in places as if he was preparing for
invasions
that in reality would never come (and Patton knew this), it was the same
thing as an unofficial work detail after hours.
Barring a concise statement in Ike's papers or journals to the contrary,
I think he was playing to Patton's ego and self-doubts to drive his point home.
V-man
David Thornley
Louis Capdeboscq <loui...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>At some point during the Phoney War, for example, De Gaulle was asking
>for quite ludicrous numbers of tanks, something like (from memory alone)
>1,000 50-ton tanks, 5,000 30-ton tanks and 10,000 10-ton ones. The price
>tag for such a force - which was usually described as an all-or-nothing,
>take-it-or-leave-it proposition - was enough to make any responsible
>government think twice: after all, that's about as much as SHAEF
This rather reminds me of Billy Mitchell in the 1920s, the man who
championed bombing. He tends to be favorably remembered nowadays,
because his more extreme opinions are largely forgotten. (Much
like de Gaulle gets credit for wanting to wage armored warfare
while his excessive demands get forgotten.)
For example, Mitchell thought warships were obsolete, including
aircraft carriers, and that future wars would be decided soley by
land-based bombers. In this, he was far less correct than, say,
US admirals, who already recognized carriers as the second most
important ships in the Fleet. Remember that the Washington naval
reduction treaty limited battleships and aircraft carriers.
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <soc.history.war.world-war-ii> wrote:
>
>"Velovich03" <velov...@aol.com> wrote
>
>> d'Este, "Patton: A genius for War" -
>
>I have found this formerly to be a highly partisan source.
>
it is wrong in *this* *particular* *case*?
>> *Patton* certainly took his relief from
>> 7th Army as a 'sacking'. It was, to him,
>> a reprimand for the slapping
>> incidents.
>
>This does not square at all with what Eisenhower says in
>"Crusade in Europe".
Andrew, "Crusade in Europe" is a *memoir*. It is not a work of history
in any reasonable sense of the word. It is part of the raw material
of history, and less reliable than most of it. There is no way of
knowing what Eisenhower checked and what he wrote down out of memory
of years past. There is no way of knowing what Eisenhower modified
or left out or misinterpreted in order to present an image of himself.
A quick check shows a copyright date of 1948. At that time, Eisenhower
was probably already thinking of running for President. (According
to d'Este, Patton thought he was planning that in 1945.) Can you
trust him to write the unvarnished truth about things?
You're straining at d'Este and swallowing Eisenhower.
Being ordered to apologise to"
>representative groups of men under your command" indicates
>that Patton knew quite well that he remained commander of
>7th US Army.
>
For the moment.
Martin Rapier
news:buoupo$mti$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
{snip}
> This rather reminds me of Billy Mitchell in the 1920s, the man who
> championed bombing. He tends to be favorably remembered nowadays,
I tend to remember him as played by John Wayne, trying to recover movement
in his legs after an accident (plane crash?). "I'm gonna move that toe".
Perhaps Quentin Tarantino saw that film as well....
Cheers
Martin
--
WalterM140
>in his legs after an accident (plane crash?).
That was "The Wings of Eagles". Wayne played the role of "Spig" Wead, a
pioneer of naval aviation.
Walt
Andrew Sanders
> Now Patton was a keen observer of the British. He had a chance at a
> posting in London as military attache before the war. He turned it
> down, to his wife's disappointment. He wrote her:
>
> "We have two marriageable daughters who...will be rich someday. If we
> go to London it stands to reason that one or both of them will marry
> an Englishman. Englishmen, well-bred Englishmen, are the most
> attractive bastards in the world, and they always need all the money
> they can lay their hands on to keep up the castle, or the grouse moor,
> or the stud farm, or whatever it is that they have inherited. I
> served with the British in the war, and I heard their talk. They are
> men's men and they are totally inconsiderate of their wives and
> daughters; everything goes to their sons, nothing to the girls. I
> just can't see Little Bee or Ruth Ellie in that role. Someday just
> tell them what I did for them and maybe they won't think I'm such an
> old bastard after all."
>
> --"Patton: a Genius For War" p. 345, by Carlo D'Este
As a newcomer, I hope I shall be forgiven for mistakes.
Somebody writes about marrying their daughters to Englishmen who are
described as inconsiderate; some truth in this, in the 1940`s; 60
years on, I have "married" 4 of my daughters to "Englishmen" , who are
considerate, house trained, brave, - and if they had to do a war
again, I think would be superb leaders. They are less hysterical than
the sort of US leaders we see today.
I have never seen more rubbish about the early part of the Normandy
campaign, 1944.
Somebody wrote of the "Villers Bocage" battle as lasting "several
days" before the Germans prevailed.
It was actually a "quick" fix; started at 14.00 on 12 June; US
forces had penetrated a juncture in German lines, orders to 22 Amd Bd
of (BR) 7 Amd Dv then, and advance from 16.00.
Early 13 June, took town; c/attack sch. Abt 101 (Tiger Co.) 1SS
Corps. Took out lead Sqn. (A Sqn CLY) + HQ Sqn. Battle all day; 101
held heights Pt. 213, and p.m c/attck went in. Failure. Tanks N/G in
built-up areas - they lost most; Brit short term tactical victory, but
long LOC, Germans holding commanding heights, arty danger, w/drew.
14 June, serious battle Amey, 8km. West VB, disaster for Germans.
Solidification front line ensued. Nuts, VB battle goes on
"several,days"
Monty and Patton both terrible prima-donnas; Patton never had to
really fight Germans until Metz. In June/July, Monty had 80% of
German Pz against his army; succeeded in provoking WW1 attrition
battles; very quick to change thrusts, e.g Goodwood to Bluecoat in 10
days, and then the "midnight march" - Totalize - within a week (7/8
August.
Silly to do football team competition over young men doing their best;
just remember, the Germans were very good at warfare; they thought
of little else, when most of their opponents just wanted to survive,
go home, and breed some beautiful daughters.
I had that chance, and did; many of them did not. I am very grateful
that I was born in 1942, and not in 1920, when I might have lost
that opportunity.
Daughters are more important than battles, (even if they are
British). Who do you think created the "great" British Empire, if not
the mothers?
Sincerely,
Andrew Sanders
--
Velovich03
Which Patton would readily admit.
>Patton never had to
>really fight Germans until Metz.
You assert that II Corps in Scicily was not a "fight"?
>Silly to do football team competition over young men doing their best;
Yes...
WalterM140
>Somebody writes about marrying their daughters to Englishmen who are
>described as inconsiderate; some truth in this, in the 1940`s;
Patton was writing in the 1930's. Probably worse then, huh? Aren't all English
men now like the guys in Monty Python? ;-)
>60
>years on, I have "married" 4 of my daughters to "Englishmen" , who are
>considerate, house trained
My dog is house trained.
>brave, - and if they had to do a war
>again, I think would be superb leaders. They are less hysterical than
>the sort of US leaders we see today.
Well, what about British leaders? Did your sons in law morph into Americans in
the middle of your post?
<snip>
>Monty and Patton both terrible prima-donnas; Patton never had to
>really fight Germans until Metz.
Well, that qualification "really fight", I guess covers a lot of ground. There
were really Germans in North Africa and there were really Germans in Sicily and
there were really Germans in France.
In North Africa, Patton proved he was also a superb trainer of men.
In Sicily, he probably did as much to hurt his chances at army group command by
ignoring the plan (albeit a bad one) as he did by slapping two soldiers.
In France, he attacked in all four cardinal directions at once. He used air
power to screen his movements and protect his flanks in a way for which no
manual existed. He read the situation perfectly. He took risks that no other
Allied commander would probably have even contemplated.
You know, when the CW forces moved towards Antwerp, they had a secure left
flank and were not moving directly away from the tactical air based in England.
Patton was moving directly away from that support (although a goodly number of
tacair groups were on the continent by then) and had open flanks everywhere. I
can think of a certain other Allied general who wouldn't have ever considered
doing what Patton did.
> In June/July, Monty had 80% of
>German Pz against his army;
Well, that wasn't very clever, was it?
Dr. Weigley has shown that Montgomery planned to break out on the CW sector as
late as June 30. Montgomery said that GOODWOOD promised to be "decisive".
Instead it was like WWI with WWII technologies.
>succeeded in provoking WW1 attrition
>battles;
Yep. Not very clever. Buit Montgomery had a WWI mindset, so I guess it's no
surprise.
>very quick to change thrusts, e.g Goodwood to Bluecoat in 10
>days, and then the "midnight march" - Totalize - within a week (7/8
>August.
That's not very quick in some circles.
Walt
Martin Rapier
news:402cb38b...@news.pacific.net.au...
> >I tend to remember him as played by John Wayne, trying to recover
movement
> That was "The Wings of Eagles". Wayne played the role of "Spig" Wead, a
> pioneer of naval aviation.
Ooops - I was sure it was a bio of Billy Mitchell. Well, it was a long time
ago that I saw it!
Cheers
Martin
WalterS
>
> In summary, there was a crisis of confidence in Montgomery
> founded mainly on misunderstanding of the plan (necessarily
> secret) which was in the process of being implemented and
> fomented by anti-British and anti-Montgomery prejudice. To
> try to paint this up into a real failure by Montgomery which
> justified his dismissal is absurd.
>
This is rubbish. Mr Clark would have us swallow the line that poor
Monty was the victim of an anti-British smear campaign (presumably by
Americans) and that he had things in hand all along. The fact is that
there was a genuine crisis in Monty's leadership in Normandy in early
July 44 and that the most vocal critics of Monty were British
officers. (Please also note that, once again, Mr Clark has provided no
sources to support his apologia)
"What has been called a 'crisis of confidence' in Montgomery grew and
reached almost intolerable intensity in July. Simply put, the Normandy
campaign had failed to develop. Why were the ground forces unable to
get rolling? The trouble was, as Eisenhower's Naval aide, Commander
Harry Butcher, recorded in the diary he kept for his boss, 'Monty has
been too slow to attack.' According to Carlo D'Este, 'Suspecting that
the US forces were being used as sacrificial lambs while the British
dallied around Caen, American critics began to voice their opinion
that the campaign was being badly managed by the British commander who
ought to be replaced.' Tedder [a BRITISH Air Marshal], who was
Montgomery's 'most vocal critic' wrote in his diary, 'The problem is
Monty who can neither be removed nor moved to action.'"
---- Martin Blumenson, "The Battle of the Generals- The
Untold Story of the Falaise Pocket" p. 110
And then there's this:
"And by now [July 44], Tedder [a BRITISH Air MArshal] had moved to the
forefront. Back from Normandy, Eisenhower had asked Tedder, now on
record against Montgomery's 'dilatory' methods, 'too keep in the
closest possible touch' with the 21st Army Group, not only to see that
Montgomery's requests were satisfied but also 'to see that he had
asked for every practicable kind of air support.' He also asked Tedder
to remain in touch with Portal and the Air Ministry, to hear out
complaints about the conduct of the battle and to keep Eisenhower
informed . After Eisenhower's Normandy visit, Tedder, according to
Butcher, began to 'pressure' Eisenhower to form the US 12th Army Group
and to assume personal overall command of the land battle- in effect,
to demote Montgomery."
------ David Eisenhower, "Eisenhower at War, 1943-45"
pp.357-8
And this:
"Tedder warned Eisenhower that Montgomery would never commit his
entire mobile force in a coordinated action unless ordered to do so.
But ordered by whom? That night [9 July] Tedder, with Eisenhower's
consent, phoned Air Chief Marshal Portal, just back from the
Continent, to solicit his opinion about Montgomery's 'victoy' at Caen.
Portal agreed that he was deeply concerned about the 'stagnation'
setting in at the bridgehead, attributable, he thought, to Montgomery,
'who could neither be removed nor moved to action.'"
--------- David Eisenhower, op cit p.358
And this:
"GOODWOOD [Monty's mid-July offensive] was close to being a disaster.
Montgomery's post-battle protestations that it had not really been
expected to produce a break-out were treated with impatience by both
Churchill and Eisenhower. Churchill's patience in any case had been
wearing thin at the slow pace of the advance inland. It was D+43 on 20
July, the day the GOODWOOD fighting finally spluttered out, and the
'phase lines' drawn on the planners maps before D-Day had forecast
that Allies should be halfway to the Loire by that date. As it was
they had not yet reached the projected line for D+17. Montgomery had
to argue at length to Churchill to persuade him that his grand design
retained its logic and that a result would not now be long delayed."
------John Keegan "The Second World War" p.392
So, can we dispense with the notion of Montgomery as a poor victim?
The fact is that in July of 44 things were not going as well for the
Allies in Normandy as they had hoped. Monty, as the man in charge of
the ground operations, was responsible to his superiors for this lack
of progress, whether actual or perceived. The "crisis in confidence"
in Monty's leadership was genuine, and not merely the result of some
anti-British campaign. Two of Britain's most senior officers, Tedder
and Portal, were openly critical of Montgomery, as was the Prime
Minister, which is why he told Eisenhower he could sack Monty if he
deemed it appropriate. If, as Mr Clark claims, Churchill and Ike
didn't understand Monty's plan, then the responsibility for that falls
on Monty as well for not explaining it and making sure they were
onboard with it. Monty brought the crisis onto himself by continuously
making claims that he couldn't support with results on the ground.
Walter S
--
Velov...@aol.com
>of
>tacair groups were on the continent by then) and had open flanks everywhere.
His secret, other than the XIX Tac Air CMD, was OSS/SOE and the maquis.
The partisans would set up roadblocks against German forces moving into position
on 3rd Army's flanks, delay them long enough that Patton's follow-on units
could then plug the holes.
Andrew Clark
"WalterS" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
> This is rubbish. Mr Clark would have us
> swallow the line that poor Monty was the
> victim of an anti-British smear campaign
> (presumably by Americans) and that he
> had things in hand all along.
I have neither said nor implied that Montgomery was a victim
of an anti-British smear campaign. It is presumably easier
and less intellectually undemanding to criticise people for
things they haven't said.
> The fact is that there was a genuine crisis in Monty's
> leadership in Normandy in early July 44 and that
> the most vocal critics of Monty were British
> officers.
This is perfectly true. There was a genuine crisis of
confidence in Montgomery's strategy and leadership, for
which Montgomery himself was mostly to blame. My point is
that however genuine may have been the fears of others,
those fears were misconceived and unfounded. There was no
genuine military crisis justifying the crisis of confidence.
(snip quotes)
> So, can we dispense with the notion of Montgomery
> as a poor victim?
As you introduced this idea, you can also withdraw it, if
you like.
(snop wholly agreed statement)
> If, as Mr Clark claims, Churchill and Ike
> didn't understand Monty's plan, then the
> responsibility for that falls on Monty as
> well for not explaining it and making sure
> they were onboard with it.
Absolutely true. Montgomery made a noose for himself by
exceptionally poor communications about his plans,
intentions and thinking. He simply couldn't play the
military monk in Europe, however excellent (and they were
excellent) his actual military skills might be. And having
made a noose, there were plenty of people who couldn't wait
to hang this difficult, vain and rude man with it.
> Monty brought the crisis onto himself by
> continuously making claims that he couldn't
> support with results on the ground.
The written orders and plans approved and issued by
Montgomery almost invariably were far more modest in their
ambitions than Montgomery's oral statements. He simply
couldn't stop himself talking up the situation, even when -
as the paperwork proves - he didn't really have that high a
degree of confidence in results. In this he was very like
Patton, who also made lavish oral claims which were not
reflected in his actual orders, and which similarly often
failed to be achieved.
allowed people to
>
> Walter S
> --
>
--
Andrew Clark
"David Thornley" <thor...@visi.com> wrote
> Have you any definite reasons for this?
Yes. While the facts are usually correct, the interpretation
in usually skewed so far in Patton's favour as to make it
useless as a balanced source.
> Or any reasons for thinking
> it is wrong in *this* *particular* *case*?
Yes. The facts are that Patton was not relieved of command
but merely given a private written reprimand, which
Eisenhower withheld from Patton's personnel file (and from
the knowledge of most senior officers in the US Army) until
the US press reported the Sicilian incidents some months
afterward.
> Andrew, "Crusade in Europe" is a *memoir*. It is
> not a work of history in any reasonable
> sense of the word. .. You're straining at d'Este
> and swallowing Eisenhower.
(space snips)
I'm aware of the status of Crusade in Europe as a memoir, of
course, and I'm treating Eisenhower's account of his dealing
with Patton appropriately. However, in this case, the facts
reported in the book square with those reported elsewhere in
biographies of Patton.
--
Drazen Kramaric
<acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>On purely military grounds, Patton had hardly shone in
>Africa or Sicily.
Such statement requires an explanation with some sources, if possible.
The defense of Montgomery's military abilities does not require
denigration of Patton's and vice versa.
It is strange how two generals (contrary to the film) had genuine
mutual respect for each other, while sixty years later some people
can't praise the one without criticising the other.
Drax
remove NOSPAM for reply
--
WalterS
> "WalterS" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
>
> > This is rubbish. Mr Clark would have us
> > swallow the line that poor Monty was the
> > victim of an anti-British smear campaign
> > (presumably by Americans) and that he
> > had things in hand all along.
>
> I have neither said nor implied that Montgomery was a victim
> of an anti-British smear campaign. It is presumably easier
> and less intellectually undemanding to criticise people for
> things they haven't said.
You are running away from your own words. In your previous post you
said:
"Andrew Clark" <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:<4015d43e...@news.pacific.net.au>...
"In summary, there was a crisis of confidence in Montgomery
founded mainly on misunderstanding of the plan (necessarily
secret) which was in the process of being implemented and
fomented by anti-British and anti-Montgomery prejudice. To
try to paint this up into a real failure by Montgomery which
justified his dismissal is absurd."
I read the words "fomented by anti-British and anti-Montgomery
prejudice." to mean that you are stating Montgomery was being unjustly
criticized simply because he was British, or because people didn't
like him because he was Montgomery, and not because there were genuine
concerns about the progress, or lack thereof, in his area of
responsibility. I can't see what other message you could have been
trying to convey.
>
> > The fact is that there was a genuine crisis in Monty's
> > leadership in Normandy in early July 44 and that
> > the most vocal critics of Monty were British
> > officers.
>
> This is perfectly true. There was a genuine crisis of
> confidence in Montgomery's strategy and leadership, for
> which Montgomery himself was mostly to blame. My point is
> that however genuine may have been the fears of others,
> those fears were misconceived and unfounded. There was no
> genuine military crisis justifying the crisis of confidence.
>
That's debatable, and as usual you provide no sources to support
anything you say. A lot of folks in high places, and several
historians who wrote about them (I quoted a few), sure thought that
there was a crisis.
Walter S
--
Tarjei T. Jensen
> Yep. Not very clever. Buit Montgomery had a WWI mindset, so I guess it's
no
> surprise.
Not really. The British understood the issues, but just did not have a good
battle doctrine (workable, yes, but not close to good). The people in the
command chain were not good enough either. Probably due to inadequate
training. Monty is credited with getting the battle doctrine to actually
work.
The basic British problem was that the military demanded and got too much
loyalty from the officers (this is certainly not an exclusively British
problem, we have it in spades). You can never be openly critical of your
superiors. The Germans decided early that they wanted the truth and that it
was more valuable than a few ruffled feathers. They also liked to discuss
the problems without regard for rank. The German General Staff (at least in
WW1) interviewed very junior commanders to get their assessment after
battles. All this made the Germans good with regards to learning.
At least in Europe, the British never seems to have understood the dynamics
of fighting. They seemed unable to understand what you could get away with
if you won a battle.
The Germans compensated for their battle powess by finding other ways to
screw up.
In Normandy it becomes quite clear that the British fighting doctrine is not
working well. Units make all sorts of basic mistakes and fail to work
flexibly. There was no "autoroute function" which causes troops to
bypass/outflank strongpoints. They end up with plain old brute force and
that seldom work well against the Germans. What is worse, is that the
British should have discovered this a long time ago and taken steps to
rectifiy it.
One wonders what would have happened to the Allies if the Germans could use
the forces fighting in Italy in France. I think we should be very thankful
that Churchill got his diversion.
greetings,
--
Drazen Kramaric
<acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>> --"Patton A Genius for War" p. 566 by Carlo D'Este
>
>A highly partisan source (again).
Why do you think D'Este's book is partisan? Have you got anything
specific to show and what is your source for that?
D'Este was critical of Patton on many places throughout the book and
did not fail to mention any of his several failings including the less
known incidents such as sending a task force to liberate US POWs from
the camp where his son-in-law was imprisoned.
Drazen Kramaric
wrote:
>Now I don't recall the exact numbers mentioned by LH in his theories,
>but it seems to me that they also involved thousands of tanks, a sort of
>cavalry division except that the horses would be replaced by tanks. The
>price of such units would definitely fall in the "prohibitive" category.
While idea about tank heavy army might have been unworkable for
France, I wonder whether Britain whose security depended upon Home
Fleet and Fighter Command could not afford a professional army of say
five armoured divisions?
How much more would have cost five armoured instead of five regular
divisions that formed the core of the BEF sent to France?
Drax
Martin Rapier
news:bvmr01$e0k$1...@nntp6.u.washington.edu...
{snip}
> In Normandy it becomes quite clear that the British fighting doctrine is
not
> working well. Units make all sorts of basic mistakes and fail to work
> flexibly. There was no "autoroute function" which causes troops to
> bypass/outflank strongpoints. They end up with plain old brute force and
> that seldom work well against the Germans. What is worse, is that the
> British should have discovered this a long time ago and taken steps to
> rectifiy it.
This had been noted in the Sicilian Campaign in a lengthy report by Lt
Colonel Wignam to the War Office. British troops repeatedly made frontal
assaults against the lightly manned German outpost line, which inflicted
heavy losses with interlocked machinegun positions covered by pre-registered
mortars and which withdrew under pressure. He found that much better success
was to be had in using inflitration tactics to unhinge such positions, but
could only find a handful of men in each battalion who were able to carry
this out effectively. He also had much to say about the inability of the
troops to apply Battle Drill to the tactical problems they faced, it was
just too complex for use in action. The method they more commonly employed
(a frontal assault by the platoon commander accompanied by the half dozen
men who could be encouraged to go with him) usually worked, but if it
failed, it killed the best men in the platoon.
Cheers
Martin
--
David Thornley
Drazen Kramaric <soc.history.war.world-war-ii> wrote:
>
>While idea about tank heavy army might have been unworkable for
>France, I wonder whether Britain whose security depended upon Home
>Fleet and Fighter Command could not afford a professional army of say
>five armoured divisions?
Probably not, partly because British security depended on the Navy
and Air Force. Those are capital-intensive services, as warships
and aircraft are very expensive, and it seems to me that it might
be asking too much for Britain to also build a large capital-intensive
armoured force. Britain wasn't the industrial giant it had been in
the Nineteenth Century.
>How much more would have cost five armoured instead of five regular
>divisions that formed the core of the BEF sent to France?
>
The British had three armoured divisions* in combat in 1944,
together with (in NWE) one Polish and one Canadian. These divisions
had considerably fewer tanks than the 1940 model, three armoured
regiments and one recon regiment (effectively another armoured
regiment) per division as opposed to six for the 1940 organization.
This is at a time where the bulk of British tanks were US-supplied
Shermans and Stuarts.
I don't think they could have done it in 1940. Even the single
division they sent then was seriously understrength.
*79th Armoured Division doesn't count here, as it was basically
an administrative headquarters for the "funnies", and never fought
as a division.
--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
da...@thornley.net | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-
--
WalterM140
>> Have you any definite reasons for this?
>
>Yes. While the facts are usually correct, the interpretation
>in usually skewed so far in Patton's favour as to make it
>useless as a balanced source.
Ah, but the devil is in the details. You have no backup for your claim. Surely
it would be easy to substantiate?
I won't hold my breath until you do.
Walt
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"David Thornley" <thor...@visi.com> wrote
>
>> Have you any definite reasons for this?
>
>Yes. While the facts are usually correct, the interpretation
>in usually skewed so far in Patton's favour as to make it
>useless as a balanced source.
>
In order to believe this more than ordinary bias, I'd have to be
shown examples.
For example, d'Este does go into some of Patton's mistakes.
>> Or any reasons for thinking
>> it is wrong in *this* *particular* *case*?
>
>Yes. The facts are that Patton was not relieved of command
>but merely given a private written reprimand,
That is, in fact, the formal punishment. He was also told to
apologize to his men (which he did in a thoroughly unconvincing
way, according to the account in d'Este).
Moreover, he had overrun much of Sicily while in command of Seventh
Army. That was the last thing Seventh Army did until it was
revived later with the transfer of VI Corps from the Italian theater.
The invasion of Sicily was conducted by Fifth Army under the command
of Mark Clark, and the Normandy invasion was conducted by First
Army under Bradley.
For practical purposes, that constitutes relief. Patton's army
was removed out from under him. He was not a real army commander
for about a year. Moreover, he was not assured that he would
command another army. His status was up in the air. When he was
appointed to command Third Army, he was unwilling to rock the boat
and jeopardize his command (see Russell Weigley) until his dash
across France had gotten his reputation back.
>> Andrew, "Crusade in Europe" is a *memoir*. It is
>
>I'm aware of the status of Crusade in Europe as a memoir, of
>course, and I'm treating Eisenhower's account of his dealing
>with Patton appropriately. However, in this case, the facts
>reported in the book square with those reported elsewhere in
>biographies of Patton.
>
OK, but you could cite the other sources. I wasn't arguing with
the facts, but it seems very incongruous to me to claim d'Este
is biased and quote Eisenhower.
David Thornley
Andrew Clark <acl...@starcottDELETETHISBIT.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"WalterS" <walte...@aol.com> wrote
>
>confidence in Montgomery's strategy and leadership, for
>which Montgomery himself was mostly to blame. My point is
>that however genuine may have been the fears of others,
>those fears were misconceived and unfounded. There was no
>genuine military crisis justifying the crisis of confidence.
>
In July, the Normandy beachhead was becoming increasingly cramped.
The Allies had more forces they could throw in than space to deploy
them, and it seemed that the offensives were going basically nowhere.
It was necessary to expand the beachhead, and that wasn't happening.
It was not clear that the Germans couldn't contain the beachhead
indefinitely. In the meantime, the troops couldn't be supplied
indefinitely, since their main supply route was over the beaches.
There simply weren't enough ports in Normandy to supply two army
groups once the beaches had to be closed.
With 20/20 hindsight, we know that the Germans were containing the
beachhead at a cost higher than they could keep paying, and that
something was going to give somewhere (historically, the Cobra
offensive). However, it certainly didn't look certain at the
time.
>Absolutely true. Montgomery made a noose for himself by
>exceptionally poor communications about his plans,
>intentions and thinking.
I suspect that his practice of claiming things had gone according
to plan in battle was working against him here. This was intended
to reassure the troops, but meant that he was denying his considerable
ability to change plans in mid-battle and win.
More specifically, here, people had copies of the plan, and the
invasion sure wasn't going to plan. If he had worked on a reputation
for pulling plans out of a hat like rabbits, such as substituting
Supercharge for Lightfoot at Second El Alamein, he'd have looked
much better at a time when things were not going according to his
original plan.
>degree of confidence in results. In this he was very like
>Patton, who also made lavish oral claims which were not
>reflected in his actual orders, and which similarly often
>failed to be achieved.
>
Patton and Montgomery both worked hard at their public personas,
as ways to inspire their troops. They used different approaches,
and both seem to have worked well.
Martin Rapier
> >While idea about tank heavy army might have been unworkable for
> >France, I wonder whether Britain whose security depended upon Home
> >Fleet and Fighter Command could not afford a professional army of say
> >five armoured divisions?
One problem with the 1920s/30s concept of the 'tank fleet' type armoured
division was that the vehicles were still appallingly unreliable and had an
extremely short lifespan of usefulness - look at the price the Russians paid
in 1941 for overinvesting in the T26/BT series. Noone could afford an army
of five tank fleets, they could however manage five or more armoured
divisions, with a much smaller tank complement than that proposed by BLH,
along with the infantry riding in trucks rather than having dedicated
infantry carrying tanks and having towed guns rather than SP. In 1940
Britain managed to deploy two such Armoured Divisions, the Germans (with a
much smaller navy to support) only managed to deploy ten - a much smaller
proportion of their Army.
> >How much more would have cost five armoured instead of five regular
> >divisions that formed the core of the BEF sent to France?
They had two already, 1st Armoured didn't do terribly well, but the Mobile
Div annihilated a large part of the Italian Army with minimal infantry
support. They had a divisions worth of I tanks as well, but these were
designated for infantry support. Mechanising all the infantry had already
proved extremely expensive (converting all the 18pdrs to motorised carriages
etc), something which the Germans didn't even attempt. Even if the British
had sent five armoured divisions to France, they didn't have an effective
tactical doctrine for European combat (the Mobile Div did have an effective
doctrine for desert warfare which was sadly later lost), and would have
mainly provided more exciting propaganda shots for Signal magazine as German
infantry hustled past their blazing wrecks.
> The British had three armoured divisions* in combat in 1944,
> together with (in NWE) one Polish and one Canadian.
You forget Italy and the Far East, there were rather more armoured divisions
in 1944 than just the three in France. There were also several divisions
worth of I Tanks.
> These divisions had considerably fewer tanks than the 1940 model, three
armoured
> regiments and one recon regiment (effectively another armoured
> regiment) per division as opposed to six for the 1940 organization.
The optimal ratio of tank battalions to infantry battalions was recognised
to be 1:1 by 1944, I'm sure they could have have had six battalions per
division should they have wished - the Allies had more tanks than they could
use in 1944, their major problem was infantry.
> I don't think they could have done it in 1940. Even the single
> division they sent then was seriously understrength.
No, probably not. But then again, neither could anyone else, certainly not
the 'everything on tracks' BLH philosophy - the only formation which came
anything close to that in WW2 was the US Armored Division, and even then,
the logistic elements were still wheeled even if the infantry, engineers and
artillery were on tracks. In 1940 Britain still was an industrial giant (how
else did it put up a strategic bomber fleet to rival that of the US?), but
at the end of the day it was still a small island with a limited population
and limited natural resources. Letting Vauxhall design & build tanks
probably wasn't a great idea either...;-)
Cheers
Martin
--
Ken Young
m.ra...@sheffield.ac.uk (Martin Rapier) wrote:
> He also had much to say about the inability of the
> troops to apply Battle Drill to the tactical problems they faced,
> it was just too complex for use in action.
WW2 Battle Drill had originated in the lessons of WW1 where troops
were trained to outflank or infiltrate enemy positions and had the
equipment to do this. Unfortunately the large majority of these troops
were veterans by WW2 standards. By 1944 a large majority of British
troops were draftees who had either not seen much action or far to
much. In the former case remembering applied lessons was not easy in
the latter the troops tended to lack elan.
However this was not confined to British troops. The US was stopped
dead at the Huetenberger Wald. The British infantry shortage did not
help either in 1944.
Ken Young
ken...@cix.co.uk
Maternity is a matter of fact
Paternity is a matter of opinion
a425couple
"Martin Rapier" <m.ra...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote in message
> to be 1:1 by 1944,
Wow!! Thanks for that piece of information.
May I ask for clarification to be sure I understand it?
My experience is with a light & mobile force,
(one Tank Platoon ((5 tanks)) to support a BLT(+),
with it's 3 Rifle Companies ((9 Infantry Platoons)).
So does this really mean (or nearly so), that if evenly
dispersed across the Area of Operation, each platoon
(40-50 men) would be working with 5 tanks?
Wow!!, what a target rich environment.
Sure liked the 50+ ton monsters at times,
But also agree with Bill Mauldin's Willie
in a shooting hole as a tank rolls by,
"I'd rather dig. A moving foxhole attracks th' eye."
David Thornley
a425couple <soc.history.war.world-war-ii> wrote:
>
>"Martin Rapier" <m.ra...@sheffield.ac.uk> wrote in message
>> The optimal ratio of tank battalions to infantry battalions was recognised
>> to be 1:1 by 1944,
>
>Wow!! Thanks for that piece of information.
>May I ask for clarification to be sure I understand it?
Sure. The Western Allies thought, by the end of WWII, that an
armored/armoured division should have equal numbers of tank and
infantry battalions/regiments. The 1943 model US armored division
had three tank battalions and three armored infantry battalions.
The standard British armoured division in 1944 had one armoured
brigade with three armoured regiments and one motor battalion
(equivalent to US armored infantry), and one lorried infantry
brigade with three battalions. However, in France and Germany
the reconnaisance regiment became a de facto armoured regiment,
with an armoured car regiment taking on the recce function.
>My experience is with a light & mobile force,
>(one Tank Platoon ((5 tanks)) to support a BLT(+),
>with it's 3 Rifle Companies ((9 Infantry Platoons)).
>
That is essentially what the US practice of attaching one
tank battalion to one infantry division amounted to. This
turned out to be a problem for the tankers, since they would
get split up badly, in any case what it got the US was a
better supported infantry division.
>So does this really mean (or nearly so), that if evenly
>dispersed across the Area of Operation, each platoon
>(40-50 men) would be working with 5 tanks?
>
Yes. This provides plenty of firepower and plenty of infantry
cover.
>Wow!!, what a target rich environment.
For whom? A tank is something of a target, but it's also hard
to take out and has a lot of firepower. It's very, very useful
in mobile warfare.
So an army needs tanks, and tanks need infantry support. Early
armored divisions had considerably more tank battalions than
infantry battalions, and this turned out to be a mistake.
>But also agree with Bill Mauldin's Willie
>in a shooting hole as a tank rolls by,
>"I'd rather dig. A moving foxhole attracks th' eye."
>
To use actual statistics, a tanker was a heck of a lot safer on
the battlefield than a rifleman. People like Willie and Joe died
in greater proportion than anybody else in the army. (I am
excluding air and naval forces here; being a rifleman was a lot
safer than being part of a U-boat crew, for example.)
Martin Rapier
news:40306bc...@news.pacific.net.au...
{snip}
> > The optimal ratio of tank battalions to infantry battalions was
recognised
> > to be 1:1 by 1944,
>
> Wow!! Thanks for that piece of information.
> May I ask for clarification to be sure I understand it?
> So does this really mean (or nearly so), that if evenly
> dispersed across the Area of Operation, each platoon
> (40-50 men) would be working with 5 tanks?
Yes.
In 1944 US & British armoured divisions (and the '40 & '44 pattern panzer
divisions) the ratio of tank to infantry battalions was 1:1. This allowed
the pairing of subunits down to platoon level if necessary, but more
commonly task organisation by cross attaching companies. The greater
prevalance of hand held infantry anti-tank weapons, and their relative
effectiveness vs contemporary armour (vastly more so than modern LAWs etc)
made close infantry support essential for effective armoured operations in
1944. The Russians found that out the hard way as they entered the more
heavily urbanised areas of eastern Germany in1945 and had to restructure
their armoured formations. Red Army Tank Corps had nine tank battalion
supported by six infantry battalions, but the tank 'battalions' were small -
only 20-30 vehicles each, however the infantry units were small by western
standards as well.
I believe that modern armoured divisions (well, NATO, mid 80s) have a
similar ratio of armoured to infantry battalions - no idea what all these
strange twenty first centruy units do though;-)
Infantry units wouldn't get anything like this level of armoured support, US
infantry divisions generally had a tank battalion attached (enough for one
platoon per infantry battalion if spread evenly, which is unlikely) whereas
British infantry units usually had a brigade of tanks attached for offensive
purposes, enough for one squadron per battalion if spread evenly. Germans
had an organic company of SP guns per division by 1944, but may have had
extra armour attached ad-hoc for offensive purposes. Russians used
specialist assault gun and heavy tank units for infantry support, allocated
according to whatever priority STAVKA put on that particular operation,
although the field regs laid down various norms for armoured and artillery
support.
> Wow!!, what a target rich environment.
Armoured divisions do generally take up a fair bit of space, so do modern
ones. British early war armoured divisions often had _nine_ battalions of
tanks, supported by a handful of infantry, four battalions if they were
lucky. Now that really is a target rich environment.
> Sure liked the 50+ ton monsters at times,
{snip}
> "I'd rather dig. A moving foxhole attracks th' eye."
Tanks tend to attract the fire of every weapon in range - the infantry found
that out in WW1. They do stop all those pesky shell splinters though.
Cheers
Martin
--
Louis Capdeboscq
> On 19 Jan 2004 20:09:28 GMT, Louis Capdeboscq=20
>=20
>>Now I don't recall the exact numbers mentioned by LH in his theories,=20
>>but it seems to me that they also involved thousands of tanks, a sort o=
f=20
>>cavalry division except that the horses would be replaced by tanks. The=
=20
>>price of such units would definitely fall in the "prohibitive" category.
> While idea about tank heavy army might have been unworkable for
> France, I wonder whether Britain whose security depended upon Home
> Fleet and Fighter Command could not afford a professional army of say
> five armoured divisions?
I'm afraid you miss the point.
My point is that what Liddel Hart and other armour enthusiasts called an=20
armoured division would be the equivalent of 2-3 "normal" armoured=20
divisions with the infantry riding in APC's.
5 such armoured divisions would amount to maybe 4,000 tanks. The French=20
- which devoted serious resources to building large numbers of tanks,=20
even though they consciously sacrificed quality for quantity - only had=20
3,500. The BEF had 600 in France, with perhaps as many left everywhere el=
se.
Basically, following Liddel Hart's wise advice would have led to=20
fielding a tank fleet comparable to what SHAEF and the Soviets had in=20
1944. I'm saying that was probably beyond the financial and industrial=20
capacity of European countries.
> How much more would have cost five armoured instead of five regular
> divisions that formed the core of the BEF sent to France?
It's not a case of "instead of" because the French would most definitely=20
and very firmly insisted that Britain contribute more than 5 divisions,=20
armoured or not.
And so would the British press. I mean, France had 90 or so divisions,=20
Germany had 135 in the West, Belgium 22, Holland 8 or 9, and Britain=20
would contribute... 5 ? The press and political opposition were going to=20
have some good fun...
Louis
--=20
Remove "e" from address to reply
Martin Rapier
news:40256b8...@news.pacific.net.au...
> > He also had much to say about the inability of the
> > troops to apply Battle Drill to the tactical problems they faced,
{snippity}
> much. In the former case remembering applied lessons was not easy in
> the latter the troops tended to lack elan.
Well the solution was that commonly adopted - to forget about rifle groups
and gun groups and to manouvre the entire platoon in two large groups:
i) fire group - everyone who could be pursuaded to shoot, along with most of
the Brens & the 2" mortar under command of the Platoon Sergeant.
ii) assault group - the platoon CO and however many men could be encouraged
to follow him, usually not more than half a dozen.
With two decent leaders, this worked quite well. There was a third group,
men who were so unreliable they were either left out of battle altogether or
just ran away/skulked at the first sign of trouble. Obviously they were not
much use in an assault.
> However this was not confined to British troops. The US was stopped
> dead at the Huetenberger Wald. The British infantry shortage did not
{snip}
Sure, even the line German infantry was not great by 1943 - Wignam commented
on their appalling standard of markmanship (whether armed with rifles or
MG42s) and their generally poor morale. Some of the infantry assaults
mounted during the Bulge were virtually Napoleonic with dense masses of men
herded into the US machineguns by their officers and NCOs. Same problem as
the British - war weariness and an over rapid expansion with induction of
half trained recruits.
Cheers
Martin
Michael Emrys
a425c...@hotmail.com wrote on 2/6/04 2:27 AM:
> So does this really mean (or nearly so), that if evenly dispersed across the
> Area of Operation, each platoon (40-50 men) would be working with 5 tanks?
No, he means that *within the armoured division* the optimal ratio of tank
battalions to infantry battalions was 1:1. The Americans must have arrived
at the same conclusion, because after 1943 their armored divisions were
organized to the same ratios (except for 2nd. and 3rd. Armored, which
retained the old 2 tank regiments/1 infantry regiment organization).
In the more numerous infantry divisions of the US army, there were 9
battalions of infantry and usually one battalion of tanks or TDs. I believe
the ratio of tanks to infantry in the Commonwealth armies may have been
slightly higher in the ETO. This would have been partly due to the shortage
of infantry.
Michael
a425couple
> >Absolutely true. Montgomery made a noose for himself ...
> I suspect that his practice of claiming things had gone according
> to plan in battle was working against him here. This was intended
> ability to change plans in mid-battle and win.
> when things were not going according to his original plan.
I'm off on a little tangent here,
but related to your statements re. Montgomery,
and certainly an idea that effects WWII
(probably all wars, even workplaces, & families).
Found in yesterdays reading of Robert Leckie's
"The Wars of America", pg 772,
"...the Americans broke up Yamamoto's strikes
and inflicted serious loses on the enemy... However
those Japanese pilots who did get back to base
reported great success. Such deception, born of the
Oriental fixation on saving face, was to occur again
and again in the Pacific War, to the great benefit of
the Allies and the grave detriment of Japan. From
the high command reporting personally to Tojo or
Hirohito, down to riflemen and seamen coming back
from patrol, the Japanese habitually exaggerated their
successes, or at least minimized their failures."
Concerns of this directly led to Yamamoto's death.
page 775, "At Tarawa were made certain mistakes
which the Americans, with their characteristic ability
to learn from error, were not to repeat."
The issues of
"openness", (okay, did not go well, how?, Why?)
and "defensiveness" (I did not error, I'm perfect)
have long interested me.
No one way/approach is always perfect.
In my experience the military (and others) have
often promoted the strong self-ego. But at times,
the more open individuals looking for honesty
and improvement in all, rise to the top.
Certainly command in combat needs a very strong
view of self. But openly seeking improvement
should not be seen as a weakness.
The USN in wwii Pacific had a number of cases
where Admirals were seen to have made mistakes,
told so, then put back in command again.
I think the same with Patton & Montgomery,
recognize mistakes, reflect, then back to work to win!
WalterS
(snipping quotes)
> The issues of
> "openness", (okay, did not go well, how?, Why?)
> and "defensiveness" (I did not error, I'm perfect)
> have long interested me.
> No one way/approach is always perfect.
> In my experience the military (and others) have
> often promoted the strong self-ego. But at times,
> the more open individuals looking for honesty
> and improvement in all, rise to the top.
>
> Certainly command in combat needs a very strong
> view of self. But openly seeking improvement
> should not be seen as a weakness.
> The USN in wwii Pacific had a number of cases
> where Admirals were seen to have made mistakes,
> told so, then put back in command again.
> I think the same with Patton & Montgomery,
> recognize mistakes, reflect, then back to work to win!
You bring up a very interesting point. When the US entered WWII the
military as a whole was not prepared for the struggle that lay ahead,
and the learning curve was very steep. America's adversaries, Germany
and Japan, had tough, seasoned, battle tested armies and navies. The
combat effectiveness of American troops early in the war was seriously
questioned by America's British allies, and with some justification.
British General Alexander, the theater commander in the Med, was so
concerned, particularly after the American defeat at Kasserine, that
he routinely relegated Patton's troops (II Corps in N Africa and 7th
Army in Sicily) to supporting roles. Some, including Patton, accused
Alexander of wanting to give the Brits all the glory for victory in N
Africa and Sicily, but I think he [Alexander] had some legitimate
concerns. As American troops proved themselves in battle, Alexander
became more open to allowing them greater freedom of action.
American commanders made many mistakes and suffered defeats, but few
were actually fired for losing a battle [neither General Hodges nor
General Bradley, for example, were relieved because the Americans were
caught by surprise by the Germans during the Bulge attack]. Rather,
those that were relieved early in the war were relieved because they
either exhibited incompetence (General Fredendall at Kasserine) or
failed to inspire their commands and effectively employ the forces at
their disposal (Admiral Ghormley in the SW Pacific/ Guadalcanal
operation). Admiral Fletcher, for example, was not fired because he
lost a carrier and had another one badly damaged in what was
considered at the time at best a draw at the Coral Sea. Instead, he
was sent back out in overall command of US forces at Midway and won a
great victory (with a lot of help from Spruance).
Several of the naval engagements in and around Guadalcanal ended in
draws or US defeats. The Navy absorbed those lessons, modified its
tactics, particularly night fighting and the use of radar, went back
out and defeated the Japanese efforts to reinforce that island in some
of the most horrific, toe-to-toe surface slugging matches of the war.
Gradually, the Americans conquered that learning curve.
Walter S
Chris Manteuffel
> Same problem as
> the British - war weariness and an over rapid expansion with induction of
> half trained recruits.
And all of them (the Western Allies plus the Germans) put a lot of
their "better" recruits into things other than normal army infantry-
for the West it was navies, strategic bombing offensives, paras,
commandos/rangers, PPA, SAS, etc., while for the Germans it was the
competition from the SS, Luftwaffe, KM, etc. with their infantry
having good troops and good equipment, but poor training and poor
leadership (for example, I doubt that Sepp Dietrich could have
generalled his way out of a paper bag).
Chris Manteuffel
--
Merlin Dorfman
...
: The USN in wwii Pacific had a number of cases
: where Admirals were seen to have made mistakes,
: told so, then put back in command again.
Nimitz had a policy of "giving a dog two bites." An admiral
or other commander would be permitted one (presumably serious)
mistake, without being removed from command. On the second
mistake, however, he was gone.
a425couple
> on their appalling standard of markmanship ..r generally poor morale.
> Same problem as the British - .. and an over rapid
> expansion with induction of half trained recruits.
Can someone give some ideas of just how short
the different countries cut their recruit training cycles?
(a rough idea of when (year) it was the worst would
also be nice.
I can understand when the enemy is on the offensive,
and your country is desperate to survive, the terrible
temptation to push out and waste raw young men.
(i.e. Germany in Dec. 1944 etc.) But it is a waste.
A little short term help, but lose in long term.
I know USA has also shortened the cycles at times
and faced the problems.
I am most familiar with 10-12 weeks recruit training
(including 2 weeks at range, one dry firing, one live),
followed by another period for each specialty,
before sent to regular units.
a425couple
> in article a425c...@hotmail.com wrote on 2/6/04
> > does this really mean (or nearly so), that if evenly dispersed across
the
> No, he means that *within the armoured division* the optimal ratio of tank
> battalions to infantry battalions was 1:1. .Americans ..same conclusion,
) after 43 their arm. div. organized to the same ratios (except for
2nd.&3rd
) Armored, which retained the old 2 tank reg/1 infantry reg
organization).
Thank you for responding Michael,
but I am afraid your response has me a bit confused.
(thanks also to David T. & Martin R. - I am working
on a response to yours' also)
Michael says "No", but verbage seems similar to what
I understand. Maybe unclear terms? Out of context?
My 2 lines (at top that you kept for posting) were in
reference to these 'armored up' units for ETO (1 to 1)
What I am used to is:
One Tank Platoon has 5 tanks,
and about 10 trucks for their supply, support
& maintence,
about 45 troops (20 tankers + 25 support)
((so internal to Tank Plt., there are NO ground troops
to protect it from infantry anti-tank close in kill weapons
such as bazookas, 3.5", RPGs, mines, LAWs, 106s etc.))
One Infantry Platoon (reinforced) has about
40-60 troops (3 squads + weapons sections +C&C)
> In the more numerous infantry div. of the US army, there were 9
> battalions of infantry and usually one batt. of tanks or TDs. I believe
> ratio of tanks to infantry in the Commonwealth armies may have been
> slightly higher in the ETO. This .. partly due to the shortage of
infantry.
Yes, that (9 to1 ratio) is what I am familiar and worked with.
It seems a quite good general mix for most / many missions
and areas (esp. forests, scrub, jungle etc.).
From the many posts, now I understand this 9 to 1,
general purpose mix, was changed to 1 to 1, for
areas in WWII ETO.