Freeboy said:
"The strategic aim in Normandy was for Montgomery to hold the line in the east and allow the Americans to break out in the west. In general, that's how it played. He had many problems. He created a rod for his own back by assigning Caen as a target for the first day. It was 10 miles inland, and never on bearing in mind what stood before Sword beach in the city." IronDuke
I don't see this as true, and you also did not justify your claim that Monty won... and didn't Patton in this same light win?
Monty was threatened by Ike with removal, read Ambrose... at Normandy for sitting on his ass. And Goodwood, sorry about Godwin mistake was hardly a victory...
So please answer the ?, Where did monty win? I can accept you don't want to credit Patton, but really stating Monty won anything after a North Africa is absurd... again what victories are you refering too?
Freeboy,
I see a few issues here.
Exactly what Monty's plan was pre-D-Day.
Whether Caen was attainable on day one.
My claim that Monty usually won (which by the way was made to illustrate how even Average Allied Generals could not fail with overwhelming material)
Monty's plan
The crucial part of the operational planning documents is reproduced in a couple of sources:
"...assault to the west of the R. Orne and to develop operations to the south and south east, in order to secure airfield sites and protect the eastern flank of the US First Army while the latter is capturing Cherbourg. In its subsequent operations the Second Army will pivot on it's left (Caen) and offer a strong front against enemy movement towards the lodgement area from the east."
In broad outline, this happened. The problem with Monty and all his subsequent fans (a problem familiar to those who've studied Patton and his fans) is that they used this to attempt to explain everything, including things which were not part of Monty's original intention at all. In other words, their inability to admit anything bad happened, and their attempt to paint everything in gold, meant a controversy which wasn't really required got started.
To begin with Monty envisaged Second Army front to be a good 10 miles beyond Caen, perhaps as far as Falaise when it began to hold off the bulk of the German reinforcements. He also (with his inability to admit any attack he planned had problems) began to continually paint each new assault before, during and after as going well and hinting it would be the climatic battle. On the one hand he continually claimed he was merely trying to write down the enemy armour and mechanised forces on 2nd Army front, but on the other he launched large scale assaults that were clearly designed to take Caen (Charnwood) take Caen again (Epsom-albeit via envelopment) and break out in to the plain beyond Caen (Goodwood).
When these failed, and he fell back on the "tie enemy armour down" argument, Ike lost patience, because he and SHAEF felt they were being taken for fools, in addition to general dissatisfaction at lack of progress.
Had Monty just said, look, I've failed to get Caen, the basic principle remains the same, but we're going to have to adjust a bit, then be honest about what he was attempting there would have been no room for controversy.
The shame is that he called the basic operational plan right. He recognised Caen was where the reinforcements would converge; he recognised that the bulk of the German elite would deploy to meet him, because a breakthrough on his front would cut off all German forces in Normandy; and he probably realised that the fighting abilities of the two sides, together with the number of troops likely to be employed in a relatively small area fairly quickly, meant it was going to be hard going.
In refusing to admit this in case it showed weakness, he stumbled from one piece of nonsense to the next.
In other words, the battle went roughly according to plan, but no one was fooled that it had gone exactly to plan in any sense, and Monty's reputation nosedived partly because he continually asserted that everything was going completely to plan. His ego wouldn't allow him any other option.
Whether Caen was attainable on day one.
I just don't see this. The plan was clear that Caen was day one objective for Sword beach. The second wave included an armoured Brigade for this purpose if memory serves. However, 10 miles was a lot by the standards of sea borne assaults to date, and the British infantry thus far in the war had not shown any marked speed when enlarging the beachhead in the hours after landing. Indeed, in general on D-Day, a number of beaches took time to get moving inland (Utah, Omaha (albeit with some extenuating circumstances) etc, so 10 miles was a not inconsiderable distance.
There were a series of good strongpoints inland, the defences in this sector were strong compared to elsewhere in Normandy, and when the plan was developed, 21st Panzer were not head quartered on Caen. I think they arrived in May (although the info didn't reach the division whose objective Caen was, which is unusual and a little suspicious in itself) at which point the basic plan could not really be changed with D-Day only a couple of weeks away.
What's more, a battalion of them were astride the axis of advance from Sword to Caen, and in conjunction with the local strongpoints would have made this exceptionally difficult ground to cover in the circumstances.
Remember that 21st Panzer had successfully concentrated a large portion of the division at Lebisey wood by 15.00, and any serious threat to Caen would have had to go through them first. I don't think in the circumstances this is realistic. Particularly since the attacking troops had spent the previous few days cramped aboard rolling ships.
As for Monty, he won set piece battles during the African pursuit, eventually ground out victory in Sicily, taking on the strongest of the enemy positions and arriving in Messina only a few hours after you know who, although the German withdrawal dictated the speed of advance to some degree for both drives.
He lost individual battles in Normandy, in no way could Epsom and Goodwood be considered victories, but in the end he won the campaign and arrived on the Seine 2 days earlier than predicted. This was something else that was worked into the Monty legend, completely ignoring the fact that the way he reached the Seine in 90 days was nothing like the plan envisaged.
Rune makes some comments about late war operations. He eventually cleared the area around Antwerp and the Scheldt estuary, stormed across the Rhine etc. Like all late war
Regarding
Monty was threatened by Ike with removal, read Ambrose... at Normandy for sitting on his ass.
I think the problems with Ike were less that Monty was doing nothing (the casualty returns from Charnwood, Epsom and Goodwood indicate he was indeed doing something serious) but because all his efforts weren't achieving too much too quickly. Monty exacerbated the situation by refusing to admit anything was going awry. Ike was no fool, and to listen to Monty explain why his succession of stalemated battles were not as bad as it seemed only angered him as he felt he was being talked down to. He felt Monty was treating him like an idiot.
Patton did indeed win in the same fashion. He played his part successfully in the bulge, he even won at Metz after all the killing was finished. My problem with these individuals is that I don't think they won as well as they should given the advantages they had. I don't think their plans exhibited the same degree of quality as is sometimes claimed. It wasn't all about Generals, Allied tactical performance re infantry has been questioned and debated fiercely for the last 60 years as well. However, the fact that a select number of German Commanders have emerged from the war with little criticism, but hardly any (Slim springs to mind as a possible exception) of the Allied Commanders have emerged without much criticism (Bradley also has a number of critics) suggests the performance of Allied senior officers was not as clear cut as it might have been, or final victory suggests it was.
As for Monty, ultimately he commanded in Normandy. How it worked out on the ground is discernible in the plan. Had he just admitted all of this, plan was broadly right, but a lot of the detail didn't happen as I had planned, he'd have been better off because few plans of this magnitude work out the way they were intended anyway, because to quote the military maxim, they don't survive contact with the enemy. However, he and his legend demanded that everything did, and it does him a disservice, because few talk or concentrate on those things he didn't do all that badly, all talk concentrates on what he did poorly.
Regards,
IronDuke
Hedgerows favour dug-in defenders, not advancing tanks/infanty.