It's 13th October 1914. Autumnal rain has turned the fields of French Flanders into clinging mud. A low gray sky presses down over the frontier between France and Belgium. Near the village of Maitre, just a few miles from the medieval cloth hall of Ypres, the British Expeditionary Force is bracing for yet another clash with the advancing German army. Among the officers moving forward through the Hedgerows is a 26 year old lieutenant of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Bernard Law Montgomery. It is one of the countless junior officers trying to steady their exhausted men at the end of a long, punishing retreat. Since August, a small army of professionals that the British had sent to France, known as the British Expeditionary Force, has been fighting almost continuously. It has retreated from Mons, it turned and counterattacked Lekato, it fought along the Marne. It surged north towards the coast during the race to the sea as both sides attempted to outflank each other in a desperate scramble across northern France and Belgium. By mid October, that race has brought the war to Flanders. The first battle of Ypres, beginning a struggle that will within weeks decimate what's left of the old regular army and do its bit to transform the Western Front into a static line of trenches stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss border. The fighting around Metron is part of that opening phase. German forces are pushing hard towards the Channel port. The British and their French allies are trying to hold them off. The countryside, hop fields, small farms, drainage ditches, tree lined roads. It's pretty open, fairly flat. It offers little protection from rifle and machine gun fire. Montgomery is by now a veteran of a two month campaign. He was commissioned an officer in 1908. He'd served in India before the war and he's now leading men under fire in conditions that no peacetime exercise can prepare them for. As his battalion advances that morning, German rifle fire lashes at the hedgerows around them. At some point in the engagement, a bullet strikes him in the chest. It passes through his right lung. He crumbles to the ground. The wound is pretty catastrophic, probably should have been fatal. A penetrating gunshot to the chest in 1914, far from a fully equipped hospital. Well, it was practically a guaranteed death sentence. Montgomery bleeds heavily. He gasps as the blood fills his chest cavity. According to later accounts, another officer who tends to help him is is shot dead and falls onto him, collapses onto his body. So he's now crushed between the weight of this corpse. A sniper senses that Montgomery is still alive because a steady stream of bullets tear up the ground near him. Montgomery is hit again in the knee, but seems like his dead comrade absorbs many of the rounds meant for him. He lies there, terribly wounded, exposed in the open, taking incoming fire, smothered by the corpse of a friend or comrade. He must have been convinced he will die. He reportedly shouts out to his men to leave him, don't try to rescue him. He was concerned that if they made any attempt, others would share his fate. Hours passed like that. The light fades over Flanders and only after night falls can his men venture out to come and find him. To retrieve his wounded body. Montgomery, miraculously still alive, he's carried back to a dressing station. He would later claim that his condition now is so dire that a grave was prepared in expectation of his death. And yet he survives. Against the odds, Young Montgomery lives. He will spend months recovering. Back in England, he put himself through a strict training regimen to get himself fighting fit once more. For his conduct in the action, he's awarded the Distinguished Service Order, a decoration for gallantry under fire. Years later, critics and admirers will note his caution. Some biographers argue that his near fatal wounding in 1914 helped to shape a certain outlook. Having seen how quickly men can be cut down and exposed ill supported advances, he develops a command style that prioritizes preparation and minimizes the kind of risks that he was exposed to as a young man. That field in Metron didn't make him famous. There were no headlines or legends yet attached to his name. But on that cold October day in 1914, Bernard Montgomery came within inches of death. And that experience would become one of the defining episodes of his life. A moment that shaped the commander that he would become. Today's subject is one of the most controversial Allied commanders of them all. Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. He's got his supporters. To them, Monty was exactly the kind of general that Britain needed. The man who restored confidence after years of defeat in the Second World War. Victor of the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt. Sort of an architect of disciplined, methodical, reliable offensives. Where others improvised, he prepared. Where others gambled, he calculated. So to his admirers, he was the steady professional who turned the tide. But his detractors, well, he's cautious to the point of timidity. He was slow to exploit success. He was gifted at self promotion. But that was his greatest asset. They saw a man whose astonishing ego alienated allies, who claimed credit for anything he could get away with, but whose one grand gamble at Arnhem exposed the limits of his generalship. His detractors argue that Montgomery was overconfident, difficult. A commander who had many solid battlefield victories, sure, but whose failures were costly. In this episode, folks, we'll get into all that and more. We're going to trace Montgomery's life from his austere upbringing to the battlefields of North Africa and Northwest Europe, examining not just what he achieved, but also how he fought and led. And why his reputation remains quite contested. This is the second episode in our Commanders series. We're digging into the lives and decisions of five legendary World War II commanders, cutting through the myth to examine what really shaped their styles of command, from daring gambles to meticulous planning. We're going to ask whether their victories were won through brilliance, luck or ruthless calculation. We're going to see if their reputations hold up to scrutiny. Last week, we started the series with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, and we're going to be releasing a new episode every Monday, so make sure to hit follow and check back in. For those to dig into Montgomery, I'm very happy to be joined by Peter Caddick Adams, military historian specializing in the Second World War. Let's get started. In 1880, the British Empire was, well, pretty close to its zenith, I'd say. London was the financial capital of the world. The Royal Navy was unrivaled. The pound sterling anchored global trade. At home in Britain, there was an astonishing confidence, I'd call it certainty, about Britain's role as guarantor of the global order. We've got to remember that Montgomery grew up inside that culture of imperial assurance. He did not question the Empire's legitimacy, he just assumed it. And that assumption, I think, would shape his strategic thinking decades later.
Peter Caddick Adams (17:28)
1914 is actually hugely important for the British Army. It hadn't really planned what to do in the event of a war on the continent. Hopefully, the French were going to look after that, possibly the Belgians. But British policy was largely to stay out of any continental land commitment and use the Royal Navy to govern or police or influence a European war. And we would have been thinly stretched because we had the empire to look after as well. So there was basically the regular army, of which Burnham Montgomery was part. All the available divisions in the regular army went over to France and Belgium to fight the Germans. So Montgomery is surrounded by a complete generation of people he knew, reservist soldiers who'd been recalled to the colours, and it was they who sort of clashed with the Germans. The important thing about the First World War is how deeply it's imbued, even to our generation, because we've both got links to it and so you can't really get away from it. And that is why Bernard Law Montgomery's career is so fascinating, because everybody focuses on the Second World War, and particularly in the Western desert and Normandy and his battles in 1940. But it's the First World War that made him. It's the First World War that decides how he's going to think, command men and lead. It's not after, because everything is set in stone by 1918. And so the First World War was actually the most important part of the making of Bernard Montgomery as a soldier and as a general. And most people have no idea what he did in the First World War and are surprised, perhaps, that he's even part of it. But, I mean, the essential arithmetic is he takes part in a battle, Le Cateau, where the British fight the Germans to a standstill, but then have to retreat and they beat a fighting retreat of which Montgomery is part. But it's a very exhausting one, with the Germans at their heels for many days. And it's very like Dunkirk for the British in 1940, and it's very like the Ardennes for the Americans in 1944. And, you know, it teaches him all sorts of lessons about managing men in adverse circumstances. But that's actually not the most important part of his life, because in October, he confronts the Germans with his regiment again. On October 13, 1914, as winter is coming on outside a village called Meteren, a sniper nabs him. He falls down with a sniper's bullet to his lung. And for the rest of the day, the sniper uses him as target practice. And any soldiers who try and crawl out to get him, and here you've got a show of loyalty, because here he is a young pursuing commander and his men are willing to risk their lives to go out and get him. And he has to shout with all his strength, don't come and get me. Wait till nightfall. And that's eventually what happens? They roll him onto some sort of door or ladder, pull him back to the trenches and he's left for dead. He says that a, a grave is dug for him, but whatever it is, he's shipped back to England very, very quickly and it's assumed that he will retire out of the military because he's got a severe wound to the lung, he won't recover, he won't be combat fit. The next part of the story is the incredible bit. Although the army has written him off as unfit for further combat, he then puts himself through a regime of, of fitness, gets himself past several medical boards. First few fail him, but eventually he is labelled combat fit, promoted to be the Chief of Staff of a British infantry brigade and goes back out to France. But I mean, it's a considerable sort of responsibility. So you're dealing with this enormous organization for which you've got absolutely no training. You, you're putting your superior commander's ambitions into action through all the paperwork, you're managing your own safety and security. And you and the Brigadier are really the two people responsible for this four or five thousand man organization. And you've got to go and visit them. So they visit them on alternative days, but make sure every day there's a visit from one of these two. So they are certainly not remote staff officers, as we tend to think of First World War leaders and generals today. So those are his responsibilities and it is exhausting. But the First World War sees him climb through the sort of promotional ladder and so his rise is. It's not valor on the battlefield in terms of winning Victoria Crosses, but in terms of understanding the nuts and bolts of an army at battalion, brigade and divisional and corps level. He's got a unique tool set that very few other contemporaries are ever given in the British Army.
Dan Snow (22:26)
The First World War ended in November 1918. Bernard Montgomery was 31 years old. If the pre war British army had prized offensive spirit above all, Montgomery emerged from the trenches with a very different conclusion. Enthusiasm and spirit was no substitute for preparation. Courage without coordination was a careless waste. Now, for those of you who joined us on our first episode on Erwin Rommel last week, it's interesting really to compare, or to contrast the two men's World War I experiences with each other. Rommel had built a reputation as a daring leader at the tip of the spear. He led aggressive infantry assaults. Monty had fought a very different war. He'd gained a deep understanding of and a respect for planning, coordination, kit, firepower, logistics. And it's fascinating, these were the Two men who would eventually go head to head in North Africa in 1942 and then again in Normandy in 1944. And the very essence of their contrasting command outlooks have been defined by the same conflict. Montgomery analytical, building, strength, refusing premature action. Rommel maneuver, improvisation, seeking opportunity despite constraint. And the Second World War would be the arena in which their First World War lessons would collide. Let's cut a long story short here. From 1980 onwards, Britain rapidly demobilized the country's exhausted public appetite for another continental war. As you can imagine, non existent. So for ambitious officers, promotion prospects were narrow. Advancement required patience and visibility. Being in the right place, the right time, meeting the right people, catching the right eye. Montgomery chose a path that would define his interwar career, professional education and training reform. In 1920, he went to the Staff College at Camberley. A few years later, he served in Northern Ireland during the Irish War of Independence as an instructor and later as a brigade and Divisional commander. So as he's climbing the ranks to become a general in the 1930s, he built a reputation as a demanding trainer focused on preparation and morale. He was abrasive, he was blunt, he prioritized competence over charm. But he did earn respect. He was certainly clear on what he wanted and expected. And he spoke plainly. Montgomery was alarmed by Hitler's rise and German rearmament in the 1930s. He argued that Britain must avoid the mistakes of 1914 through better preparation. By 1939, aged 51 and commanding the 3rd Division, which was one of the army's best trained infantry outfits, he developed a distinct professional identity. He was enormously self confident. He was direct to the point of bluntness, but he was widely respected as a competent trainer and leader of men. So when war once again came knocking in 1939, Montgomery found that he was in exactly the right place. He could put his battlefield philosophies to the test.
Peter Caddick Adams (25:29)
The British army then was considered absolutely tiny, even though it's, you know, 250,000 or 300,000 strong. But these are the survivors of the First World War who've then gone on to Staff College, where they've all met shared intellectual ideas about what a future army should be like, what the nature of war is and how they should meet it. Staff College is absolutely the key. Montgomery goes through there as a student very early on after the war and then returns as an instructor. So he will know so many of the people that he later selects as his own staff officers because he's taught them as students in the interwar period. And that's extremely important. And people forget that the army, when it grows as quickly as it does after the declaration of War in 1939, suddenly has to find lots of leaders and you lean towards the people you know. And Montgomery has risen to the top as a major general. He then finds himself in France leading the third British Division, and they're caught up in the German invasion, the retreat to Dunkirk. And of all the divisions that retreat to Dunkirk, his moves back in the best order, with the most discipline, loses the fewest amount of people. And when the Dunkirk perimeter is shrunk, think of a sort of packet of crisps that slowly sort of deflates and shrivels. That's what the Dunkirk perimeter is like. And left keeping an eye on it is Montgomery when his superior, Alan Brooke, is recalled back to England. And then Montgomery himself goes, and of all the people who are associated with Dunkirk, Montgomery comes out smelling with roses. Because he has done not a bad job under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But it teaches him not to rely on allies. Right, we're on our own. Actually, it's far better to rely on what you know and the people you know and your own gut instincts, rather than leaning on people who may turn out to be flaky allies like the Belgians and the frat.
Peter Caddick Adams (27:52)
Okay, well, I mean, the important thing to remember is that Montgomery, as with most people, has a mentor and a patron who thinks the world of him. And he's been the senior instructor at the Staff College. And this is Lieutenant General future Field Marshal Alan Christian, name Brooke, surname, who will be later Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Churchill's principal military Advisor from early 1942. And therefore Montgomery is in exactly the right place. I mean, he's seen as a sort of slightly eccentric loner. He had married, but his wife had died. He's almost monk like in his military absurd session, reading, teaching, really feeling that he's been lucky, he has to pass on his knowledge to other more junior officers. And so it's all work, no play with him. The interwar army looks a bit askance at that, but it does mean he's a bit of a martinet. He demands total physical fitness from those serving with him. So if we're looking for some unique traits about his organizations, his units, his division in France, and then the corps that he commands of several divisions in southeast England immediately after Dunkirk, he demands that all the officers and all the other ranks go out for runs. And that wasn't unusual. And when a colonel sort of complains, Montgomery says, well, good, you're coming out on a run and if you're threatening to die of a heart attack, better it happens on my run rather than on the battlefield. And he has a point. And again, this goes back to the First World War where fitness really has got him through and over that lung disease. And, you know, we are talking the shock. I mean, the physical fitness thing I think is probably quite gentle, but it's taken, you know, as red today. But it would have been as revolutionary as imposing sort of SAS fitness standards onto the British army at the time. And so a hallmark of, of Montgomery's army commands, at whatever level, is that he demanded fitness from everybody under him. And he's sort of only got one lung. I mean, that works fully because the other lung wound that he got in 1914 has healed, but, you know, there's still scar tissue there. So he's not quite 100%, but he insists on going out with them. So his attitude to fitness, physical fitness equals mental fitness. And battle is always stressful. It's a young man's game. So the older you are, the more attention you have to pay to your own mental fitness on the battlefield. And this is really what he's getting at. And that's what I think makes him unique in terms of British commanders, even in 1941, 1942, that this is not simply role playing at a certain rank and leaning on the education you've had. There's always a sense of personal commitment and learning new ideas and technologies and concepts.
Dan Snow (30:58)
While events were unfolding at Dunkirk in 1940, the war was shifting dramatically in North Africa. In June, Fascist Italy entered the war and advanced from Libya into British controlled Egypt, aiming at the Suez Canal, Britain's vital imperial lifeline to India and the Far East. At first, the fighting was purely between Italy and Britain. And in December, the smaller but more mobile British Western Desert Force launched an astonishing counteroffensive, driving the Italians back across Cyrenaica, capturing tens of thousands of prisoners. It was a stunning success, but it didn't last. Alarmed by Italy's collapse, Hitler intervened. In early 1941, the German Afrika Korps arrived under Erwin Rommel, soon to become Montgomery's great adversary. Rommel immediately transformed the campaign. Bold, fast moving, willing to completely ignore orders, he counterattacked within weeks and had pushed British forces back across much of the ground they'd just taken. So North Africa then became a seesaw war of vast distances, fragile supply lines and armoured manoeuvre. The British would advance, Rommel would strike back. By mid-1942, Axis forces had driven deep into Egypt and threatened the Nile and the Suez Canal. This was no sideshow. If Egypt fell, Britain's strategic position would be gravely weaker. Winston Churchill knew it. He followed the Desert War obsessively. He demanded action. He really was nervous about another humiliating defeat here. But it was clear now to those engaged in massive industrial war that victory needed overwhelming stuff. It needed force, men, tanks, guns, aircraft, feel more of everything.
Peter Caddick Adams (32:33)
We've had a whole series of battles with the Italians and the Germans in the North African desert, and each time Rommel with not very many resources, because Hitler's main ambitions are in Russia. So Rommel is useful for propaganda reasons, and he manages to do quite a lot with not very much under his command and micking British petrol and equipment as well. That is not a recipe for success. But Churchill realizes that the North African theatre has to be reinforced massively. And by now, of course, the Americans are in the war. They have been since the end of 1941. So two things happen. Roosevelt realizes that this is the theatre that the British need to win to begin with, and so agree to divert basically a whole armored division's worth of brand new Sherman tanks, which will come out across the Atlantic to reinforce the British 8th Army. But with them will be wings of American pilots flying Curtiss planes. So Alamein is partly fought with American help, both in terms of tanks, but American manned aircraft strafing the Afrika Korps. But a huge influx, as you say, of not just manpower, but logistics, which are hugely important in the Western desert because there's no water, there's no petrols, everything has to be trucked huge long distances here, there and everywhere. And everything you need to fight and thrive and survive in those really inhospitable climates. And that, I think, more than anything, really swings the balance against Rommel and the Africa Corps, because they don't have the same kind of backup, because everything for the Germans is going to Russia.
Peter Caddick Adams (34:38)
Well, this is hugely important because sort of management students and leadership students. Look at what Montgomery achieved even today, because he arrives with no previous experience of that theatre. That's really important. He finds a demoralized British organization there who've been beaten by Rommel several times. And within six weeks, he is essentially fighting the Second Battle of El Alamein over the same ground and wins. And it's not just superior numbers. To fight and win, you need a mindset first and foremost. And Montgomery realized that. So that came partly from training. It also came partly from commanders instilling not just a will to win, but the belief that you can win. And that hadn't, I think, been around before under Montgomery's predecessors. And it's the time within which he achieves this sort of complete turnaround from a. I won't call the British 8th army ragtag, but they were at a low ebb. When Montgomery appears, you know, he writes very dramatically in his memoirs about finding all the plans for further retreats. And his first order is, all plans for retreat or surrender will be burnt. And henceforward we will only think in terms of victory and movements forward. When you turn up and you say that to your men, it makes them sort of sit up and think. He also tries to visit all the forces under his command to show them who he is and how he's going to turn things around. And that makes a difference because commanders have been quite reticent. And that's one thing he picks up from the First World War. He's a staff officer, and he recognized the inclination, I think, of senior officers to stay back for very sensible reasons, that the larger the body of men you command, the further back from them. You've got to be at the sort of center of a fan from which you can communicate to everyone further forward. And if you're further forward, you can't sort of really communicate to everybody else. So the further back you are, the better picture you have of the battle, the quicker you can react to unforeseen circumstances, and the quicker you can order everyone to do what it is that they need to do. So Montgomery's delicate balance is being able to move forward, meet everybody at the front, instill in them enthusiasm and confidence, but be able to move back, issue all the orders he needs so that he can direct reinforcements and logistics, supplies from behind him forward, but also to steer the battle, to understand when the Germans are collapsing and to manage everything. And Our ability to move forward and back means that you have to have a very special kind of headquarters that can be mobile. And so Montgomery comes up with the idea of using trucks in which his headquarters has been established. Some of these have been nicked from the Germans and the Italians. And so he has the idea, and he's really the first British general who develops this. And I think that's one of the sort of secrets of a very Bernard Montgomery approach to warfare. It's not something he necessarily anticipated doing, but he realized it was necessary pretty much straight away. And that then becomes a hallmark of his leadership all the way through the Western desert, Tunisia, Sicily, Italy, and then northwest Europe. And it's something particularly associated with him. And it's never been dropped since. And it's been adopted by every other army. And if you look at how other armies in the world were commanding at the time, this is not how they do it. They tend to have one huge headquarters that does all the logistics stuff as well. And what Montgomery can do is just say, right, what I need is a chosen few people who can do the sort of combat orders and handle all the intelligence. And I need them to move with me with a little security detail and everyone else ordering up the shells and how many tins of strangers strawberry jam are needed and sandbags and all the rest of it. They can stay behind in a big blob to the rear. And we'll call that main headquarters. And that's what Montgomery develops in North Africa, almost sort of comes into its own straightaway at Alamein and thereafter. And we still have this today. And that's part of his genius.
Peter Caddick Adams (42:30)
It's certainly a criticism that's made, and it's certainly a criticism that's very valid, that he's a cautious general. But against that we have to set the fact that Churchill himself brief Montgomery essentially to remind him that the British army is much smaller than it was in the First World War, and there's only one of it compared with what's going on in Southeast Asia. You are the British Army. And if you break it or you lose it, there isn't another to replace it. We don't have masses and masses more of reinforcements, so you have to be careful. And I think Montgomery's own observations and experience from the First World War puts him off risking huge numbers of lives in the way that First World War generals did, for whatever reason. So he is cautious by experience, from a moral, almost a Christian point of view. Don't forget he is a Bible basher. He reads his Bible twice a day, his father was a bishop, he prays regularly, he issues orders of the day laced with quotes from the Bible. So he very much places himself in the hands of the Almighty and does as much as possible to mitigate British casualties, because he doesn't want to go down in history as the slayer of another generation of British youth. So he's got that hanging over him. But more to the point, yes, I mean, he reaches for the solutions he saw that worked in the First World War. And at the end of the First World War, massive artillery bombardments, supported by armour, supported by air, lots of engineers, were the way forward to smash through the German lines and then allow the infantry to advance with as little casualties as possible, still quite high. And that's what he does at Alamein. So a huge gun line. But the important thing to say is the British army couldn't have deployed that gun line before Alamein. There weren't enough guns in Egypt to be able to do that. There weren't enough shells, there wasn't enough ammunition. So Montgomery's lavish use of artillery before Alamein and later on in all his other battles, is an expression of the logistical support he's been given. And he's been given by Churchill. And this is a trade off between Montgomery and Churchill. Essentially, Montgomery is saying, I'll deliver to the best of my ability what you want, but you have to back me up. And to the best of my knowledge, my predecessors in the Western Desert never had that kind of commitment from you, Mr. Churchill, in terms of tanks and aircraft and fuel and all the logistics we need and manpower. And so Montgomery really was the first recipient of all of that. So Montgomery was a very good exploiter of the kit he was given, but he knew what he needed and he wouldn't go until he had it. So, yes, that probably does equal caution, but that was a very valid caution at the time. And don't forget, Rommel has an incredible reputation of appearing where he's not expected of being able to turn round and sort of bite you in the backside exactly when you're not expecting it. And he can hit you very hard indeed. And that's his reputation for two years before Montgomery ever appears in the desert. So there's a bit of anxiety still about the Afrika Korps, who are by no means a spent force, an inbuilt personal caution for which he's much criticized by the Americans. And that brings me onto a point which is different countries fight in different ways. There is a British way of war, which in general terms is reluctance to get involved and then a slow, ponderous build up to learn the lessons you need to learn, and particularly logistical ones. And you can't become a large army and you can't sustain a large army until you've got the industries at home that are making the uniforms and the shells and the vehicles and the ships that will get them out to you wherever you are. And you can't wave a magic wand and make that happen overnight. It's too easy to sit back as an armchair general waving a sabre and a gin and tonic and say, Montgomery, you know, what a shower. Terribly cautious. Were I there, this is what I would have done. Yes, I think he's cautious, but I don't think that's a bad thing. Just to single out a single general and say he's cautious. Yeah, fine. Montgomery is very open to criticism because he didn't accept criticism very readily. And we might say he's a flawed character in that respect. But at the end of the day, aware of some of the pressures, he knew how to juggle, the factors. He understands logistics from the First World War and he was a strong enough character to resist Churchill. And I think that was quite necessary because the pressure Churchill put people under. Montgomery was one of the very few to be able to stand up to it. He was his own man. And there are a lot more weaker generals who would have not stood up to Churchill in the same way at all. And I think that's really, really important.
Peter Caddick Adams (48:48)
So we come on to sort of 1943 and the decision to go to Sicily. There is a huge great geostrategic debate about whether we should go to Normandy, France in 1943. That's out of Montgomery's hands. Churchill's basic position is stop the Americans going early to France at any cost in case they get it wrong. And I think he's absolutely right. They're on a rapid learning curve and they've only just learned how to deal with the Germans. And don't forget, their first brush with the Afrika Korps and the Kasserine Pass was disastrous and resulted in effectively an American defeat and a corps commander being sacked from the U.S. army. So they come into battle with a dubious track record. And that is important because Montgomery, who really had no experience of the Americans, didn't fight with them, alongside them in the First World War. They were on the same side, but he didn't really come into any contact with them. They are a complete unknown. And very soon he's going to have to be under American command. But he doesn't understand this strange beast of Americans and he has a lingering suspicion of their military ability. And they certainly don't do things in the way that he would do them in terms of staff college. And they take risks. So that's a problem that's got to be ironed out. Anyway, Montgomery finds himself invading Sicily on 10 July 1943 with a naval plan that's been put together by an admiral who commanded the Dunkirk operation, Bertram Ramsay, and he'll be very important the next year putting together Normandy as well, and alongside Patton. Now, Patton commands an American force that's landed in French North Africa, which is basically an armoured corps. But on the night they invade Sicily, this large armoured beast that Patton is commanding is retitled the American 7th Army. And that's where his arm, Army Command comes from. And so we have two armies landing on Sicily, 8th army in the east, American army in the west. And history tells us there's then enormous competition between the two and a race to the north east corner of Sicily, which takes about a month, which is the town of Messina, which looks onto the Italian mainland. I don't think there was ever a race. I think it's suited historians and certainly Newspapermen at the time. Time to put the two army commanders against each other and compare and contrast their different methods of commanding a field army. And inevitably, Montgomery is portrayed as sort of a little slow and ponderous and Patton is far more dashing. But that's the terrain that's dictated that that isn't the two army commanders fighting in radically different ways in competition with each other. It's the strength of the German opposition using terrain as much as they can. And Montgomery and the 8th army, with Canadians under command in the east, going up the coast from places like Syracuse and Augusta and Catania, have a plane to roll over. But it's fiercely defended by the cream of the German armed forces, which can reinforce from Italy very easily. Patton has less to go, but he has more mountainous terrain, which is hugely difficult, and no troops trained in mountain warfare. And of course, over Sicily, July, August 1943, there's local air parity. So the blinding effect of air power on Rommel's forces in North Africa isn't present over Sicily. And it's a battle that's fought very much on equal terms for the month that it lasts.
Peter Caddick Adams (56:27)
Well, I think everybody at this stage is aware that the Second World War is a publicity war in the way that the First World War wasn't that newsmen are asking for stories all the time. They're asking for photographs. Montgomery has already been on the front cover of Time magazine as man of the Month or Man of the Year or whatever. You know, these things matter and they are read and digested. And Montgomery becomes a sort of household name in a way that not only none of his predecessors had, but British generals hadn't in the past. And he Sort of rather likes that. I think the sort of quite austere, repressed Englishman who was brought up not to blow his own trumpet and certainly never did in the First World War and was actively discouraged in the interwar years, suddenly finds, you know, he rather likes his name in the newspapers and his image being well known. This is when his beret starts to be popularized and he clings to it. I mean, it's rather like politicians discovering that props are quite helpful to them. Churchill, with his cigar and his bow tie and his walking cane and his array of hats is no accident. It's the era when visual effects are used to sort of promote people's characters. Probably stems from the Germans doing this in the 1930s. And when you take it into a military sphere, it's very difficult to, you know, find a uniform prop that everyone isn't using. But the Berry sort of suddenly comes to Montgomery's rescue and that promotes an image far beyond the name or the small army, relatively small army that he's commanding. So PR publicity, I think, becomes very, very important. There are things like the 8th army newspaper and magazines where he appears. And we might say if we were politicians looking at Montgomery from the safety of Whitehall or Westminster, he's getting a bit big for his boots. And on one hand, this was necessary. This is how the British army recovers itself, finds its morale and all the rest of it. But in Montgomery's case, there's an element of looking down on other people. And that's his upbringing, British superiority at the height of empire. He has the good fortune to be born an Englishman and he looks down on everybody else. That's quite a serious thing that a lot of people think about. And so injected into Monty's psyche is this ability to look down on other national players. And that hampers his ability to offer as much as he can do in coalition warfare. And what happens, I think, in 1943, particularly with the invasion of Sicily, is that coalition warfare arrives to stay in the Mediterranean European theater. And both sides realize that they can't do it on their own. America can't win the Second World War in Europe on its own, but neither can Britain. And they need each other and their various other partners and so on at the top level. Eisenhower, Alan Brook, the politicians get that. I'm not sure Montgomery ever does. And that's if he has a black mark in 1943, that's probably a major one that he acquires. And I don't think he ever quite sheds.
Peter Caddick Adams (60:20)
Monte's essential contribution to D Day is not in the execution of it, because once you decide to go, and that's not his decision, that's Eisenhower's, there's nothing you can do. All your plans then just roll out. So Montgomery's contribution is twofold. One is in training the force that will go to France on the experience that he's already gained. And the second is in terms of looking at the plan. So Montgomery looks at the plan right at the end of December 1943, beginning of 1944, and says, this plan is not powerful enough. We need far more up front invading, more beaches with more troops and more airborne troops if we can get them, and that's what's going to make all the difference. And he's absolutely right. So the planners go back. They actually draw up existing plans for raids across the Channel on the Cherbourg peninsula. They look at other plans and they come up with the invasion plan that we know. But Montgomery has driven it. The campaign then unfolds, not as planned, but it works. And it wouldn't have worked, I'm sure, in my own mind, if the original plan had been adhered to. So Montgomery, in terms of planning, is absolutely on message, gets it right. And of course, he has the credibility and the personal drive, obstinacy, insistence to the point of being obnoxious, that only his plan will work and everything else just won't. And he's right. He delivers in terms of raising morale, in terms of training the troops. This is his other great contribution. Training. The land force has already started before he takes over, but he does underline the rigour that's needed in invading France with adequate training and preparation. And my personal contention is that more people die in training for D Day than actually die on the day itself, particularly drowning in Cornwall, assaulting clifftop positions in bad weather where landing craft are sunk, a lot of people perish in practice, airborne jumps and gliders crashing. And if you look at all the battalions that take part in the assault wave, whether storming from the sea or jumping from the sky, they've all received pretty Large casualties in the training from accidents. And whether this is aircraft crashing, whether this is explosives blowing up, whether this is straying into real minefields, whether this is drowning in it, amphibious operations, every single unit practicing, whether they're infantry, armor, artillery, whether they're logistics units, they all suffer. But, you know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have lower casualties than we should have expected. The Allied planners are expecting to lose 20,000 people on D day, and our losses are barely a quarter of that. And that is down to the rigorous training everybody receives before D Day. And a lot of that is down to Montgomery's, you know, personal touch and drive.
Peter Caddick Adams (67:08)
This is where Montgomery's swollen head, I think, works against him. He's had several run ins with different fellow commanders. One is with Eisenhower. And one of the problems is Montgomery sees himself really as the rightful heir from Eisenhower's job, the overall land force commander and commanding everybody else. And with his coalition partners, particularly the Canadians, he feels he should be able to choose the senior Canadian commanders and basically wants to be surrounded by yes men. And that doesn't endear him to any of the coalition partners that he has to fight alongside. So that's one of the problems that Montgomery brings to the party. And that's a problem because he really doesn't understand coalition politics. He's not prepared to. And that all comes from the fact that he feels he's the only person for the job, that he's irreplaceable. So the issue then goes up beyond Eisenhower, who sort of says, I can't carry on with Montgomery. He's constantly trying to pull the rug from under me, thinks he's better than me and wants my job. And effectively, when Montgomery is confronted with this, Montgomery's view is that, well, I'm irreplaceable, so I can say what I want and I can behave how I want. And that's where Montgomery does need other people around him who can temper his wild enthusiasms and his arrogance. And the only person really who's there who really can do that is Freddie Degan, who's his chief of staff. And so most of the time, when Montgomery just is uncontrollable on the battlefield, De Gangaun is there to really sort of calm him down. And these are all Montgomery's inferiorities. And I think this stems from difficult relations with his parents, particularly his mother, who was very, very dominant, and Montgomery now being top dog and who can decide not only who his friends and enemies are, but who his opponents are. And he perceives the Americans as trying to steal his glory, and it's not the case. But this is why Montgomery seems to make commanding the British 21st Army Group or the Anglo Canadian 21st Army Group in 1944 and 45 more difficult than it should have been. There shouldn't have been the tensions in Allied High Command, largely generated by Montgomery that there were. It's a clash of personalities, but it's driven largely by Montgomery and no one else.
Peter Caddick Adams (71:01)
We have to remember, and Eisenhower is on record as having said this, that the Northwest European campaign was anticipated to have two bloody moments. One would be landing an opposed landing on the French coast, and the second would be crossing the river Rhine, which is. I always portray it as the nervous system of the Third Reich. So crossing it is an enormous thing. Even going back to the Romans, no one had ever really managed to get across the Rhine and stay across. So for the Allies, this is a huge logistical undertaking and a big psychological one as well. Montgomery realizes this, understands that actually the quickest way might be to duck round the northern edge of the Rhine and take a series of bridges, because behind the river Rhine is the German Siegfried line of bunkers, and the two together just spell doom and gloom and disaster. And that's the reason for the September 1944 attempt at Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven. So if you look at Arnhem, it's Operation Market Garden. One is an army plan and the other is an Air Force plan. And the conjunction of the two is an unhappy marriage. And that's because it's been thrown together very, very quickly. I think when it was first devised, it was quite practical and probably would have worked because the Germans had nothing. But in that three week period before the troops were actually launched, the Germans managed to sort of cobble together a resistance and circumstances changed. But none of the Allied intelligence community really understood that things had changed that quickly. And of course, once Montgomery backs a plan, it's very difficult to then back down and say, oh, we won't do this, because things have changed once. The military planning machine, sort of, it's a bit like a. A giant industrial machine with an on button and no off button. And in that sense, it's a bit like the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Once you convince yourself that this thing is a workable plan and you press the go button, it's almost impossible to stop. And that was really the essence of Market Garden. But it's not Montgomery's fault, it's Eisenhower's fault. One stage above, with the ability to look over the whole front, see what the Americans are doing, see where the Germans are weak, privy perhaps to more intelligence than Montgomery had, it was Eisenhower's responsibility to say yes or no, and Eisenhower said yes. So I'm not a fan of Operation Market Garden. Having walked the ground, I can see all the drawbacks. Montgomery backed it at the operational level, so he bears some responsibility. I'm not absolving him of blame. I don't think Montgomery should have approved it. But at the end of the day, the buck for that operation stops with Eisenhower, not Montgomery, and it is a disaster. We know the way it unfolds, two thirds of it does work. But Arnhem turns out to be beyond British reach for all sorts of reasons. But be that as it may, we end up with a bloody nose by the end of September, arguably something that we should have seen happening to us. But that's the nature of war. And the success of the Allies is that they bounce back very quickly from what's been a tactical failure.
Dan Snow (74:29)
After the failure of Market Gun, the war in Western Europe slowed down. It hardened until the 16th of December, when, very surprisingly, German forces, for their part, launched a massive surprise offensive through the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge had begun. The attack struck primarily American forces. There was some confusion, some units were forced back, and for a brief moment, this was the most dangerous crisis the Western Allies had faced since those first few days on the Normandy beaches, the German breakthrough widened and Dwight D. Eisenhower made a pragmatic decision. He temporarily placed American forces north of the Bulge, north of the German advance, under Bernard Montgomery's command. Montgomery played a stabilising role. He reorganised defensive lines, he imposed clearer command arrangements. He ensured counterattacks were coordinated rather than improvised. True to his character, he refused to rush. He insisted on preparation before major strikes and Allied forces moved on onto the front foot. They counterattacked and by January 1945, the German offensive was crushed. Militarily, Montgomery's handling of that northern sector was effective. Nothing to write home about for military historians. But he helped to restore order out of a bit of chaos. And it's precisely the kind of situation in which his strengths were most visible. However, in classic Montgomery fashion, or Monty fashion, I should say, he immediately began overstating his role and just provoked the ire of his American colleagues.
Peter Caddick Adams (75:58)
He ruffles a lot of feathers amongst the Allies, particularly the Americans, at a post battle press conference where he implies that this was a very easy thing for him to do and perhaps the trickiest battle he ever fought, but he really rather enjoyed doing it and implied that the Battle of the Bulge was largely a British fought battle when it was almost exclusively American. And this causes such outrage throughout the American forces and the American public back home that even Winston Churchill criticizes Montgomery and he does so in the House of Commons by saying this was a hugely significant American battle and care must be taken to not claim credit for something where credit is entirely due to our American allies. If we come on to March 1945, this is the Allied Rhine crossings. And Eisenhower had always promised the British would get the lion's share of Allied resources to cross up in the north after having cleared the forests leading up to the River Rhine, the Reichsfeld. And that's exactly the case. Most of the German defenders, who would have done a very good job of massacring the Allies as they crossed the River Rhine or landed on the eastern bank, of course, had been sacrificed in the Battle of the Bulge. So crossing the Rhine, Eisenhower always thought would be a horrendous and very bloody affair, turns out to be a damp squib. But the crossing of the River Rhine, the naval and land aspect, is Operation Plunder. There is an airborne landing as well, Operation Varsity. The two of them use everything that Montgomery has learned to do all the way through the second war. This is his final swan song. He knows it. He knows that the Third Reich really, genuinely is now on its uppers will be shot in a few months. Militarily incapable. And he's determined to use everything in his toolbox, his train set that he's picked up ever since Alamein. Massive artillery support, landing craft, and a wide range of amphibious craft used in the Rhine crossing itself. Masses of engineers to build ramps and rafts, other engineers to use searchlights to create artificial moonlight. All sorts of innovations that have come in. And the integration of airborne bombers to soften up German defenders before the Allies cross. Commandos going in, followed by infantry, swimming, tanks, everything that you see in D day and even before, right, going back to the Western Desert and Alamein are suddenly presented with the crossing of the Rhine. It's a massive sledgehammer to crack a nut. But Montgomery does it because he can. And some people present this probably as a case of massive caution. I think he just does it because he can and he can see the end of the war around the corner. And it is incredibly impressive. So much so that Churchill comes along to witness the crossing of the Rhine with brook. Churchill actually creeps across on one of the destroyed bridges over the river Rhine and comes under sniper fire. And his escorting generals are hugely worried by this, not Churchill. And I think Churchill is then, what, 70? And one of the reasons why he's there is to come under fire for his last battle in his 70th year. There aren't many politicians like that, but that is Churchill. The old war horse Monty is furious. But the point is, Montgomery has laid on this massive, massive attack across the river Rhine that cannot fail and does not fail, and that really is his swan song. And the end of the Northwest European campaign. I mean, there are two months more of very heavy fighting before the campaign winds down. We mustn't overlook the fact that Montgomery then has a very successful year as the military governor of northern Germany, of the British patch. And in some ways he proves himself remarkably successful. He doesn't attach much importance to it, and historians haven't, perhaps because it's not a warlike activity. But actually he governs Germany very well indeed, without being too vindictive. Saves the Germans from the potential of massive famine in the winter of 1945, 46, distributes a lot of aid to the stricken communities and really starts to get Germany back on its feet when the Americans are being far more vindictive, and certainly so are the French. And Montgomery's attitude to civil military relations actually proved very inspired. And I think he really did that job extraordinarily well. But again, this tends to get left out of history. For the, the flash and the bang of the military campaign in the Second
Peter Caddick Adams (81:23)
Well, that's a very, very good question. And it is important that we go back and we look at Montgomery and measure him, because we need to make sure that our commanders today and tomorrow won't make the same mistakes. I think if you served under him, you thought the world of him. And I don't think I've ever met a veteran who was really highly critical of Monty. They loved fighting under him and they loved the fact that he would visit battalions and tell people to break ranks and gather round and he would tell them how they're going to win the war and beat the Germans for six. And that really made a difference and was a huge contrast to the way stuffy commanders led their men in the First World War. And likewise, I think if you were on his staff, you know, they worshipped him. But I think if you were a contemporary, same sort of generation, same sort of level, or even one of his superiors, whether a military figure or a politician, Montgomery saw you as a threat. And I think part of the makeup of Monty and the reason why he fell out with people, people is he didn't like threats. He was hugely proud of what he'd achieved, and he knew he was a high flyer, but he was also very, very vulnerable to all of that glory being taken away from him. And he saw threats in fellow commanders, people of his age group, his generation, and the politicians. And that's why he fell out with them. He thought they were trying to take away his glory. I don't think that was over the coast, but that was his vulnerability, his flaw, and that's why we have to be aware of it. So I'm always wary of criticizing him too much, but I do think we have to be objective. While saying good old Monty, we have to say, yes, but because otherwise we'll be in danger of promoting another Monty and another war in the future which won't help the British cause.
Dan Snow (83:20)
Bernard Montgomery's life traced the arc of Britain, 20th century. Born at the height of empire, forged in the trenches of the First World War, tempered in the lean interwar years and tested in the decisive campaigns of the second, we might add. Never entirely at home with the post war realities of Britain's diminished role in the world, Montgomery embodied a particular kind of soldier. He was disciplined, he was methodical, he was unyielding. Before and during the second Battle of Alamein, he restored belief that had been waning. He led the charge during the invasion of Sicily. He helped to ensure the success of the Normandy campaign. During the Ardennes crisis, he steadied a shaken front at the Rhine, he delivered a final set piece blow that he'd long advocated for. But on the other side, at Market Garden, well, he overreached. Meanwhile, in politics, he was I think, at best a hindrance, at worst a threat to the stability of the coalition. He was more abrasive and difficult than any other Allied commander, and his swaggering overconfidence, well, let's just say it alienated people. He was not a commander in the audacious mould of Erwin Rommel or an aggressive showman quite like George S. Patton. He was something more restrained, perhaps representative of modern industrial war and certainly the Britain that he'd come from. Is he one of the greatest commanders of the Second World War, or just one of its most competent professionals? Historians continue to debate, but this much is certain. When Britain needed a general who would not retreat, Bernard Montgomery was there to rise to the task. Thanks for listening, folks. Next week we got our third episode in the Commander series. We're gonna look at that master of coalition warfare, Monty's long suffering senior, the supreme Allied commander himself, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a commander unlike any other. We'll hear about how he rose from relative obscurity to take charge of arguably the largest military machine the world has ever seen. Make sure you hit follow in your podcast player so you don't miss it. Bye for now folks.
