If you read this book, the author suggests that Monty's tactical ideas advanced not at all from 1918 onward.

He is surely one of the most over-rated general of all times.

Walt

Perhaps more than half mad, Wingate was the Geoffrey D Miller of the British flag officer corps during WWII, although unlike Miller he contributed appreciably to Allied victory in his theater. Water and boards perhaps being short in the Burmese jungle, he extracted military information from Japanese prisoners by having handsful of mud jammed down their throats. He performed much of his generalship publicly naked and often wore a raw onion hanging on a rope round his neck. He believed his soldiers had been weakened by being allowed to see doctors in their civilian youth, and his eccentric training plans produced fabulous levels of medical dropouts within his forces. At one early point in his military career, he wilfully cut his own throat.

He was a master of PR and played politics vigorously in London, at a few points enlisting Winston Churchill to help him gain higher command. Churchill's physician met Wingate and thought him borderline mad.

His extraordinary career has earned him a Wikipedia page. This reveals that in the 1930s, while serving in (the then) Palestine, he trained young Jewish irregulars who later would battle with the British to establish the state of Israel. This he did in support of his unusual version of Christianity. So perhaps he was both a gentile honoured among nations, and the British Boykin.

Mr Donnelly's accurate account of what passed between Montgomery and Slim at the postwar handover of high command recalls the more recent changeover between McKiernan and McChrystal. What they said to each other on that occasion is not general knowledge, but photographic evidence made clear that the two men were wearing what looked like the uniforms of two different national armies. A puzzling sight.

I am not sure what point Tom Donnelly is trying to make? If he is saying that British military leadership in the Second World War was generally inferior at the tactical or even operational level than German then one could hardly disagree. However, at least in one area the British were superior and that was in the planning and management of logistics, which in itself was no small thing.

Perhaps only in the handling of artillery were the British the peers of the Germans in its quality and tactical use. It has been said that the entire tank production and its use by the United Kingdom during the Second World War probably did not shorten the war by a single day. This had nothing to do with the courage of the tankers but rather with an out of touch armored doctrine, a resistance to learn and a lack of effective command and control of armored units that persisted right through to the end of the war.

The British and with less excuse the Americans never really caught on to the true essence of ground combined arms until the war was essentially over. In neither army was there a capacity to form ‘Kampfgruppen’ (ad-hoc combined arms) of diverse units and personnel in the manner of the Wehrmacht and perform effectively in sustained and violent combat. But to both their credit they developed a tactical air support capability vastly superior to Germans best efforts at that key skill.

The fact is that British and American units on the ground generally could not successfully engage and defeat (whether in offense or defense) Wehrmacht units of similar size and quality. They required a buildup of mass and fire superiority and most importantly command of the airspace above the battlefield in order to prevail. This was less a reflection on the quality of their manpower and more a reflection on the lack of realistic doctrine, robust training and first-rate tactical leadership.

Churchill, Dill, and Alanbrooke (even Montgomery who fully appreciated the limitations of his forces hence his preference for the set piece battle) would not (at least privately) disagree with Donnelly’s contention either. All (as early as the fiasco in Norway) recognized that the British Army’s professional leadership, equipment, training and most importantly doctrine were not competitive with that of the Wehrmacht. This motivated their desire to engage the Wehrmacht in periphery theaters where their advantages in logistics and air power could play a more decisive result.

Understanding this it is not too difficult to see why they did not relish the American idea to invade continental Europe in 1942 via ‘Sledgehammer’ and ‘Roundup’. Considering they had yet to achieve air superiority or even realize numerical superiority at the potential landing site a massacre was the likely outcome. This did not seem to bother the Americans since both operations would have to be composed of almost entirely British troops.

All in all the British Army did not have a good war largely because of a pre-war failure to institutionalize excellence by cultivating a core of first-rate military leadership. An acute lack of pre-war funding and political indifference was obviously a factor but even more important was the intellectual decline of the officer corps reflected in its incapacity to formulate effective operational doctrine and select innovative talent for its own ranks.

A good lesson is to be had here for future generations!

Flagging morale had also become a serious issue for British ground forces by 1944. Veteran units that had performed splendidly in North Africa and Sicily stumbled quite badly in the early Normandy battles. Senior officers attributed this to exhaustion (many of these units had been engaged since 1941). Regiments earmarked to take a leading role in the D-Day landings were not shy in voicing their discontent to their officers. In fact, Monty was embarrassed on one occasion in England prior to D-Day, when, addressing a regiment of desert veterans, he highlighted their key role in the invasion. He was met by a very audible groan from the ranks. Apparently, he was much struck by this.

Added to the "morale issue" was a pressing need to conserve lives. Replacements for ground forces were being cannibalized from superfluous RAF and RN personnel hastily trained as riflemen. As units were bled white through attrition, battalions were amalgamated and brigades and divisions were disbanded. Although not intended as an apology for Monty's well-known flaws, it gives credence to his insistence on every more cautious and meticulously planned operations as the war wore on.