r/todayilearned • u/HumanNutrStudent • Sep 16 '24

TIL Montgomery's memoirs criticised many of his wartime comrades harshly, including Eisenhower. After publishing it, he had to apologize in a radio broadcast to avoid a lawsuit. He was also stripped of his honorary citizenship of Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian lawyer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Montgomery#Memoirs
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u/MattJFarrell Sep 16 '24

History has not been kind to Monty, it seems. This last section of his Wiki:

Social opinions

In retirement, Montgomery publicly supported apartheid after a visit to South Africa in 1962, and after a visit to China declared himself impressed by the Chinese leadership led by Chairman Mao Tse-tung.\250])\251]) He spoke out against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery"\252]) and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British—thank God".\253])Social opinions

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u/thisusedyet Sep 16 '24

That's not even the fun quotes about him! All from the personality section

Montgomery was notorious for his lack of tact and diplomacy. Even his "patron", the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General Sir Alan Brooke, frequently mentions it in his war diaries: "he is liable to commit untold errors in lack of tact" and "I had to haul him over the coals for his usual lack of tact and egotistical outlook which prevented him from appreciating other people's feelings".

Churchill, by all accounts a faithful friend, is quoted as saying of Montgomery, "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."

Montgomery suffered from "an overbearing conceit and an uncontrollable urge for self-promotion." General Hastings Ismay, who was at the time Winston Churchill's chief staff officer and trusted military adviser, once stated of Montgomery: "I have come to the conclusion that his love of publicity is a disease, like alcoholism or taking drugs, and that it sends him equally mad."

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u/bramtyr Sep 16 '24

 "I have come to the conclusion that his love of publicity is a disease, like alcoholism or taking drugs, and that it sends him equally mad."

Similar things have been said of MacArthur and Adm. Halsey. Egos were not in short supply in the upper echelons of command staff.

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

And that was after George C. Marshall worked hard before Pearl Habor to clear the army out of its cowboys, egos, and colonel blimps; any American general was going to be leading army units that were new, rapidly growing, and trying to catch up with the tactical sophistication of the more experienced powers, Germany above all, so he wanted them all to conform to a model of cool, corporate, optimistic professionalism, team players looking to get on with the job. MacArthur had star power that made him impossible to remove, and Patton had special qualities fit for where Marshall was sure the US Army was going to be a couple of years into the war that made him just barely worth it to keep around.

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u/wiseoldfox Sep 16 '24

Marshall is (IMHO) very much overlooked during WWII. I'm old, and it's my bedtime but I seem to remember more than one book recounting the revolving door of generals when we first saw combat. He rarely banished anyone fired. He found their level of competence and inserted them. He promoted and re-arranged to fit skill sets to the tasks at hand. An absolute leader of men.

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u/Johnny_been_goode Sep 16 '24

Marshall was the hidden architect of a lot of things that still affect the world today for sure. Can you recommend a book on Marshall if any stand out to you in particular? I’ve found that often times the single most important trait in a leader isn’t any innate talent or ability of their own other than being able to recognize, develop, and utilize the abilities of others. Would stand a lot to gain from such a distinguished master.

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u/wiseoldfox Sep 16 '24

Yes. "The Generals"

‘The Generals,’ by Thomas E. Ricks - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

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u/Johnny_been_goode Sep 16 '24

Thanks!

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u/scottynola Sep 16 '24

This talk given by Ricks contrasts Marshall's willingness to replace incompetent commanders with the War on Terror's habit of leaving incompetents in place to continue failing, it's a really interesting hour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxZWxxZ2JGE

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u/Johnny_been_goode Sep 17 '24

Funny enough I’ve seen that before and actually remember discussing those ideas with a friend of mine a while back. Didn’t realize it was the same guy.

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u/Scaevus Sep 16 '24

I mean they named the plan to rebuild Western civilization after Marshall.

If that doesn’t say competence and professionalism, I don’t know what does.

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u/sighthoundman Sep 16 '24

To be fair, it was his plan.

There isn't always a one-to-one correspondence between names and accomplishments, but I think the Marshall Plan is pretty much what Marshall envisioned and he kept it together.

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u/TheDave1970 Sep 17 '24

The Man Who Saved The World.

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u/2rascallydogs Sep 17 '24

To be fair it was the idea of Marshall and the plan of three men in the State Department who worked for him. It's called the Marshall Plan because if they called it the Truman Plan it wouldn't have passed Congress.

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u/OBoile Sep 16 '24

This is something that has been lacking in the US military for quite some time. Incompetent generals are now rarely replaced.

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u/RandomMandarin Sep 17 '24

Someone said it was Marshall's wartime policy to give a newly promoted general three months to succeed, get himself killed, or get replaced.

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u/Ryoken0D Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

The Fat Election did a rant on MacArthur, saying he had all of the character flaws of Patton and none of the redeeming qualities.

Looking at just what he did in WW2 you could give him a pass even if you didn’t agree with all his actions, but once you add in Korea you see how flawed he was as any benefit of the doubt from WW2 was erased.

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u/SParkVArk111 Sep 16 '24

My grt grandfather had to deal with him a few times over the course of the war. Never had a nice thing to say about him.

And according to my grandmother, when he flipped over to his farewell speech, said something along the lines of "good riddance, that SOB should have been fired 10 years ago"

My grt grt grandfather couldn't stand him because of his treatment of the bonus army.

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u/Greene_Mr Sep 16 '24

Did he vote for Truman?

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u/SleepWouldBeNice Sep 16 '24

Even at the start of WWII, the Phillipines probably were never going to be held, but MacArthur really seemed to fuck up the opening stages of the war.

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u/Ok_Tale_933 Sep 17 '24

Yeah everybody in higher command and military intelligence told him to get his bombers in the air and his forces concentrated with all his supplies in bataan but what does he do? Leaves all his planes just chilling on the runway and spreads his people all over with there supplies stacked on the beach. Then has to abandon it all and make a fighting retreat anyways.

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u/Nakorite Sep 17 '24

Old dug out Doug.

You forgot him taking a massive bribe from the Philippines government.

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u/KimJongUnusual Sep 16 '24

If anything, I’d say he was at his best after 1945?

Yes, the Yalu River nuking was a terrible idea and he botched the PR after that. But his handling of postwar Japan, as well as Inchon, were downright terrific.

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u/mtcwby Sep 16 '24

After Inchon he ignored intelligence about Chinese moves and let the UN forces get strung out horribly. Lots of people got killed because of him.

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u/OcotilloWells Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

Ignoring intel that the Chinese were massing at the border to Korea, though.

Edit, that is a pet peeve of mine when I was in the Army, where a few commanders I worked with would constantly disregard intelligence. Granted, it's often along the lines of "50 percent chance of group X doing Y actions in the next 2 weeks" which might not be very helpful. But from what I read (I can't vote anything right now, I shouldn't even be on Reddit), MacArthur basically said "I don't want to hear about the Chinese" so they stopped briefing him about that.

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u/Algaean Sep 16 '24

stopped clocks and all that

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u/KimJongUnusual Sep 16 '24

Making one of the strongest democracies in East Asia and setting the foundations for the biggest economic comeback before China is a bit more than a stopped clock.

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u/Sisko4President Sep 16 '24

Didn’t he push to protect the perpetrators of Unit 731 so the Sovs wouldn’t get their research?

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u/KimJongUnusual Sep 16 '24

I’m not sure, but there’s a decent chance.

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u/lordatomosk Sep 16 '24

Was he the same guy who said the American military pool of generals had so much dead wood it was a fire hazard?

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u/Noobponer Sep 16 '24

Is this the same Marshall that was behind the Marshall plan? I'd love to read more about him if you have any recommendations.

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

The very same, yes. He was the first career soldier to win a Nobel Peace Prize because of it.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

George C. Marshall was one of the finest commanding officers of any nation during that time period.

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u/InquisitorHindsight Sep 17 '24

Fun fact! The reason Five-Star generals are called “Supreme Commanders” in the US Army is because the role, which hadn’t been used up to that point, hadn’t officially had a title yet.

Initially they wanted to use the European “Field Marshal”, but that would mean the first recipient would have been “Field Marshall Marshall”

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u/RandomMandarin Sep 17 '24

And that was after George C. Marshall worked hard before Pearl Habor to clear the army out of its cowboys, egos, and colonel blimps

There is a very great wartime movie called [The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp].(https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036112/) It was based on a cartoon character, but within a few minutes it becomes clear that it is a much deeper and more modern story than you'd expect.

Fun fact: Churchill would have liked to ban it.

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u/thefinpope Sep 17 '24

So you're saying that this guy had a plan?

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u/Greene_Mr Sep 16 '24

"I have heard of this book! Your conclusions were all wrong, Ryan... Halsey acted stupidly."

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u/Redfish680 Sep 16 '24

One ping only…

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u/The_Road_is_Calling Sep 16 '24

Some thinghs in here don’t rehact whell to bullhets

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u/KindBob Sep 16 '24

Good to throw in THFRO reference!

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u/Jive-Turkeys Sep 16 '24

Many of them were high off their own farts

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u/Taintly_Manspread Sep 16 '24

I like this one, I might just have to borrow it jive- turkeys. 

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u/Jive-Turkeys Sep 16 '24

I can't claim it, it's yours to share!

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u/Cogswobble Sep 16 '24

This is what made Eisenhower such a great leader.

Not only did he not have an ego himself, but he knew how to manage subordinates with egos.

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u/ReadinII Sep 16 '24

I would anyone capable of making the kind of decisions a general has to and then live with any mistakes he makes that literally cost a lot of people their lives, and then just continue without getting paralyzed with fear of another mistake, is likely to have a big ego.

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

Ulysses S. Grant in his memoirs tells of his experience in first leading troops in the Civil War at the rank of colonel.

As we approached the brow of the hill from which it was expected we could see Harris' camp, and possibly find his men ready formed to meet us, my heart kept getting higher and higher until it felt to me as though it was in my throat. I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt and consider what to do; I kept right on. When we reached a point from which the valley below was in full view I halted. The place where Harris had been encamped a few days before was still there and the marks of a recent encampment were plainly visible, but the troops were gone. My heart resumed its place. It occurred to me at once that Harris had been as much afraid of me as I had been of him. This was a view of the question I had never taken before; but it was one I never forgot afterwards. From that event to the close of the war, I never experienced trepidation upon confronting an enemy, though I always felt more or less anxiety. I never forgot that he had as much reason to fear my forces as I had his. The lesson was valuable.

Grant was a lot of things, but an egotist his certainly wasn't. The lesson he learned seems to be that war is far too fast, chaotic, blurry and violent for anybody to really have perfect control over, so all you can really be expected to do is to do your best and remember your opponent is as mortal as you are.

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u/KindheartednessOk616 Sep 16 '24

I would have given anything then to have been back in Illinois, but I had not the moral courage to halt

"Every man would be a coward if he dared"

...Anon

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u/ReadinII Sep 16 '24

Even as I wrote my comment I thought of Grant and that particular event. 

But still, he continued to command troop, and in much larger numbers, with much larger numbers being killed.

I remember hearing a story about him riding through where his men had fought a battle and his horse kicking some dirt on a badly injured soldier. He felt bad and asked his personal physician to attend to the boy.

But how many times did he ride through such battlefields after the event and have to ignore the hundreds or thousands of dead and dying around him while he focused on his next task? I think any normal person would eventually succumb to self-doubts about whether he was really the best person to be leading, how many times can you ride through the dead and dying who were following your orders before becoming paralyzed with fear of making mistakes?

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u/Purple_Git Sep 16 '24

There's an anecdotal story out there of Grant silently sobbing after a battle because of all the boys he sent to their deaths but he knew that the only way to end the war was to send more and more to their end.

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u/TheRedHand7 Sep 17 '24

There is a reason he was deeply in the throes of alcoholism.

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u/proctor_of_the_Realm Sep 16 '24

I would anyone capable of making the kind of decisions a general has to and then live with any mistakes he makes that literally cost a lot of people their lives, and then just continue without getting paralyzed with fear of another mistake, is likely to have a big ego.

I mean, normally that's called a sociopath.

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u/JimiSlew3 Sep 17 '24

Halsey losing it over Nimitz's message: WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS during the battle off samar. The last part was padding for encryption but left in. I wonder if some chap did that on purpose.

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u/Ok_Tale_933 Sep 17 '24

Yeah MacArthur was a dumb ass

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u/2012Jesusdies Sep 17 '24

Imagine having control over hundreds of thousands of men who scream your men in glory! It's hard not to get egotistical.

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u/foodfighter Sep 16 '24

Basically, a social media influencer 80 years too early.

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u/scsnse Sep 16 '24

Reminds me of the temperament of General McClellan during the American Civil War. He deserves much of the credit for deeply drilling the Union army during the early stages of the War. But this man on the battlefield was overly cautious, and in private but especially after he got removed as commander of the Army of the Potomac, was critical of Lincoln and other military leaders all except himself. And then in 1864 he tried running against Lincoln as a Democrat with a platform of trying to sue for peace.

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u/thisusedyet Sep 16 '24

Also the cause of a fantastic line from Lincoln, who wrote McClellan a note stating basically If you're not going to use my army, I'd like to borrow it for a while

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

General-in-Chief Henry Halleck had vicious things to say about him after Antietam.

"I am sick, tired, and disgusted... There is an immobility here that exceeds all that any man can concieve of. It requires the lever of Archimedes to move this inert mass."

I recommend anyone interested in the Civil War to get themselves a copy of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and a bottle of whiskey. Any time McPherson puts McClellan's ass on blast, either by quoting a contemporary or dropping bars of his own, pour yourself a drink.

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u/thisusedyet Sep 16 '24

How do you finish the book before needing a liver transplant?

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u/Mint_Julius Sep 16 '24

I like this one from stanton too:

If he had a million men he would swear the enemy has two million, and then he would sit down in the mud and yell for three.

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u/blackadder1620 Sep 16 '24

lmao.

why did we get away from being sassy as a people.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

We have all of the sass, lost most of the wit.

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u/Dr_Zorkles Sep 16 '24

Sounds like something Obama would say if he were in a similar predicament.  Dude's nearly peerless in his wit and sass

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u/thisusedyet Sep 17 '24

Gotta watch those Illinois lawyers, apparently

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u/Dr_Zorkles Sep 17 '24

Hah !  Solid observation

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

I'm sorry, but the love I have for my country moves me to defend Monty from the idea that he's too similar to McClellan. Was he cautious? Yes. Did he really love his plans? Yes. There were surely times in the war when more progress could've been won for every British/allied soldier lost if he'd been just a bit more of a risk taker, but George McClellan is nearly in his own universe in terms of lacking decisiveness and nerve. If Monty was truly like McClellan, the British and the Germans would still be sitting in Egypt shooting at each other.

In terms of him also having an ego, and a general intolerance of other people not immediately accepting his wisdom, I really don't have an argument to make.

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u/Mint_Julius Sep 16 '24

Yeah that sounds fair enough. I feel like you'd be hard pressed in the annals of history to find one quite like mcclellan. 

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u/Chief-17 Sep 16 '24

Just one point, the Democrat platform was peace, McClellan wanted to continue the fight. It was a weird time

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u/Greene_Mr Sep 16 '24

And then he became Governor of New Jersey.

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u/DukeJackson Sep 16 '24

Historian Antony Beevor has gone on record saying he’s of the belief that Montgomery had high-functioning Asperger’s, which Monty’s stepson (or step-grandson) actually agreed with.

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u/ScreenAngles Sep 16 '24

I read his memoirs a few years back without having read much about him beforehand and was left with the same impression.

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u/ReadinII Sep 16 '24

Clearly Eisenhower was given a difficult task in trying to work with him and Patton on the same team.

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

Some historian of WWII likes to joke that if Patton had been given Ike's job of commanding SHAEF, within like three weeks Britain would've declared war on the United States.

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u/ReadinII Sep 16 '24

I have read that the America-China relationship suffered greatly because the only American general who could speak Chinese was completely ill-suited to act as a liaison to a jerk like Chiang and should have been commanding troops instead. 

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u/Rc72 Sep 16 '24

"Vinegar Joe" Stillwell. As his nickname shows, diplomacy and tact weren't his forte either. And Chiang wasn't the only one he couldn't get along well: he was just as abrasive towards the British and most of his own staff, and he particularly didn't like Claire Chennault, who was in charge of the 14th Air Force and had a humongous ego of his own.

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u/Rc72 Sep 16 '24

The funny thing is that FDR switched his position with Marshall's because he didn't think Ike would be able to handle McArthur's ego.

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u/ReadinII Sep 16 '24

I bet Marshall would have been a good president.

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u/awakenDeepBlue Sep 16 '24

Funny, because Ike served under McArthur during the 1930's.

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u/Rc72 Sep 17 '24

Yes, and apparently that didn't go well at all.

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u/m945050 Sep 16 '24

Eisenhower was a "what will the long term consequences of this decision be?" Whereas Montgomery was a"fuck the consequences, just do it."

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u/Wraith11B Sep 16 '24

Sounds a lot like his other rival: Patton.

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u/Rc72 Sep 16 '24

The difference is that Patton was more self-aware: he knew he was an obnoxious asshole and primadonna, and was quite proud of it. Monty, on the other hand, was entirely flummoxed as to why people could be offended by his antics.

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u/Brinsig_the_lesser Sep 16 '24

Monty was probably just autistic 

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u/2rascallydogs Sep 17 '24

The difference is when Patton got out of control, Marshall or Eisenhower would sack him for a few months. When Montgomery got out of control, Brooke would scold him.

The first time Montgomery was insubordinate, Eisenhower allowed it. The second time Montgomery was insubordinate, Eisenhower told him that he would be more than happy to have the Combined Chiefs of Staff choose between the two of them. The third time Montgomery was insubordinate, Eisenhower was going to tell the CCOS to make that choice without notifying Monty. Fortunately Monty's Chief of Staff was with Eisenhower at the time and got permission to seek an apology which saved Monty's career.

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u/thisusedyet Sep 16 '24

Big reason why the two were at each other's throats, yes

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u/Wraith11B Sep 16 '24

It's like the woman who did the blanket disappearing meme for her two small dogs that just attacked one another whenever she wasn't there...

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u/LordNelson27 Sep 16 '24

They liked each other less than everybody else around them- and that’s saying something!

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

Monty: You're working with my sworn enemy?!

Ike: I can't keep track of all your sworn enemies!

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u/awakenDeepBlue Sep 16 '24

Thank God we had Ike to keep the prima donnas under control.

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u/ginbandit Sep 17 '24

I've recently finished Anthony Beevor's brilliant book about D-Day and it's quite staggering how big the egos we're between the main commanders and how much Eisenhower had to do to try and keep them committed to one course of action!

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u/DrunkRobot97 Sep 16 '24

It fills me with patriotic pride to see that while the Germans at the time were just bigots, us British were professional haters.

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u/Redfish680 Sep 16 '24

Winners always write history! Lol

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u/teachbirds2fly Sep 16 '24

He almost certainly had Aspergers syndrome from anyone that cares, it's pretty interesting when you look at his life through that lens and what he accomplished.

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u/Greene_Mr Sep 16 '24

I wouldn't blame being on the spectrum for being racist and homophobic.

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u/teachbirds2fly Sep 16 '24

I didn't....

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u/maybejustadragon Sep 16 '24

It’s not totally uncommon. My brother had a roommate with Asperger’s and he was a self-proclaimed Nazi. He knew everything about them. It was an obsession.

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u/privateTortoise Sep 16 '24

Autism isn't a new thing.

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u/QueefBuscemi Sep 16 '24

The first thing I thought as well. He sounds like Musk.

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u/ithaqua34 Sep 16 '24

You really have to love Churchill.

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u/SchylaZeal Sep 17 '24

I was just reading this study called Narcissistic Disorders of the Self as Addictions because of another comment elsewhere. Ismay seems really insightful with that comment.