Antithetical readings of Anglo-American relations

Army, Apr 1997 by Martin Blumenson

Eisenhower versus Montgomery: The Continuing Debate. G.E. Patrick Murray. Praeger, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881. 202 pages; photographs; bibliog- raphy; notes; index; $59.95.

The conflicting Eisenhower and Montgomery interpretations have always troubled and complicated an understanding of the European campaign of 1944-45. A pro-Eisenhower attitude has usually led to an anti-Montgomery outlook; being pro-Montgomery has ordinarily produced an anti-Eisenhower state of mind. Most Americans accept the Eisenhower line; most Britons follow the Montgomery lead.

Briefly stated, the argument runs as follows: either Eisenhower won the war as expeditiously as was possible, or Montgomery was denied the opportunity to end the war sooner. The adherents of both commanders blame the errors of the other general officer for unnecessarily prolonging the conflict.

Among the salient points of the argument is whether Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, was right or wrong to assume the additional command of the Allied land forces in August 1944. Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery had formerly exercised the function of heading the Allied ground troops. He had done so on a temporary basis at Eisenhower's request at the beginning of 1944, five months before the crossChannel invasion. Montgomery also commanded the British 21st Army Group and, in that capacity, directed the 2nd British Army, the 1st Canadian Army and, later, the Ninth U.S. Army.

Promoted to field marshal on September 1, 1944, in order to dispel notions of demotion, Montgomery believed Eisenhower to be an amateur soldier who was ignorant of how to win a battle or run a campaign. He said so frequently, though privately, during the war. Eisenhower thought Montgomery was militarily competent, though privately he called him conceited

From September 1944 until the end of the year, Montgomery sought to regain the job of ground forces commander. The Americans refused to entertain the idea, for they had become disillusioned with Montgomery's prosecution of the war in Normandy. According to Montgomery's claim, the Americans, and specifically Eisenhower, were unable to grasp the method Montgomery had employed to conduct the campaign in Normandy.

Montgomery wished to displace Eisenhower in the land forces role in order to institute a narrow-front strategy; that is, an advance by a single, concentrated and strong group heading for the Ruhr or, later, for Berlin. Eisenhower's broad-front strategy, to attack all along the line, was supposed to stretch the German defenses and eventually permit a breakthrough to a vital objective, the Ruhr or Berlin. Montgomery considered this to be a mistake.

George S. Patton Jr., commanding Third U.S. Army, favored the single-thrust advance. He was thinking in terms of his army, which stood poised to plunge through the Saar and the Siegfried Line and to reach the Rhine River early in September. He received no gasoline to continue his drive, however, and had to remain immobile.

In contrast, Eisenhower approved Montgomery's launch of Operation Market-Garden in September-a singlethrust attempt, by means of airborne drops and an armored rush, to cross the lower Rhine at Arnhem, Holland. Montgomery's endeavor failed.

Through Montgomery's oversight or Eisenhower's unwillingness to instruct him forcibly to do so, Market-Garden prevented Montgomery from clearing the Germans from the Scheldt waterway and thereby making possible the use of the great port of Antwerp, Belgium, which Montgomery had captured on September 3. Not until late November was the harbor opened. Earlier Allied possession of the Antwerp port would have made a strong thrust to the Ruhr and Berlin logistically possible.

Although Montgomery refrained at the time from crying "I told you so," he saw the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes in December as the culmination of Eisenhower's ineptness. Because the German attack made it difficult for Omar N. Bradley, the 12th U.S. Army Group commander, to direct First U.S. Army, Eisenhower transferred First U.S. Army temporarily to Montgomery's command. At the end of the Battle of the Bulge, Montgomery incensed all Americans, and particularly Bradley, by claiming to have rescued them from disaster.

Finally, when Eisenhower communicated directly with Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, suggesting meeting the Russians along the Elbe and Mulde Rivers, he renounced interest in taking Berlin and Prague, Czechoslovakia. He saw entry into these capitals, along with Vienna, Austria, also in the Russian path, as a matter of national prestige. According to Eisenhower's reasoning, there was no need to expend American and British lives to conquer territory that the Allies, in accord with a wartime agreement on zones of occupation, would have had to turn over to the Russians.

For those who are concerned about the ongoing controversy, here sketched briefly, G.E. Patrick Murray, a professor of history at the Valley Forge Military College, has performed a valuable service. He has established the postwar inception of the debate. Bypassing the Eisenhower-Montgomery coolness already evident during the actual fighting in 1944 and 1945, but referring to the wartime actuality as he proceeds, Murray studies and comments on the memoirs of the important participants and the most immediate volumes of official history dealing with the problem.