The Churchill Series – Sept.12 , 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

Churchill once said, quoting his friend, General Spears, that of all the crosses he had to bear during WW II “the heaviest was the Cross of Lorraine,” Gen. de Gaulle.

For General Eisenhower, “the heaviest cross” was without a doubt Field Marshal Montgomery, commander of Allied ground forces during the Normandy invasion, and later commander of all British ground forces in Northwest Europe.

Ike was often dissatisfied with what he saw as Montgomery’s hesitant use of British forces, but he kept his dissatisfaction private. Montgomery, in turn, felt Eisenhower was a diplomat rather than a skilled general.

Montgomery let the press know he had a battle strategy far more effective than Ike’s; and what’s more, Monty left the press in no doubt who he thought was the proper person to implement his strategy.

Eisenhower more than once was on the verge of asking his superiors, who included Churchill, to replace either him or Montgomery. At each crisis point in the Ike-Monty relationship, Churchill was ready, if necessary, to let Monty go. But the crises were in each case worked through.

Montgomery was known to be outspoken and headstrong, with a low opinion of just about everyone except himself. So how did he ever get so critical an appointment on a joint Anglo-American team on which cooperation would be essential for victory?

The great military historian, Russell Weigley, answers the question:

[With Eisenhower’s selection as Supreme Commander] the choice of [the senior ranking] British officer was Prime Minister Churchill’s to make, and in response to the spirited urgings of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, Churchill selected Brooke’s favorite subordinate, the hero of the Battle of El Alamein and commander of the British Eighth Army, General Sir Bernard Montgomery.

It was an almost inevitable decision. Montgomery had not a trace of [Field Marshal] Alexander’s conciliatory talents, which was too bad for the alliance; but the man who had turned back Rommel and the Panzerarmee Afrika from the gates of Alexandria, the winner of the only major all-British ground victory of the war, could hardly be denied.

Besides, there is every reason to believe in retrospect, as Brooke believed then, that Montgomery not only surpassed Alexander as an operational commander but was altogether Britain’s ablest general of the war.

On the question of the ablest British general of the war I’m not qualified to dispute Weigley, but I’ve heard some fine military historians say a very strong case can be made that Field Marshal William Slim was Britain's ablest WW II general.
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Russell F. Weigley, Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945. (pgs. 36-37)