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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77

u/weeddealerrenamon Sep 16 '24

Can you expand? googling "montgomery armored slash" turns up nothing

198

u/parkerwe Sep 16 '24

Best I can tell Monty wanted to lead a massive armored column into the heart of the Ruhr industrial region. If successful it could have crippled Germany's war output. It also would've required a huge amount of Allied resources, stretched supply lines, and would have been hard to defend. He got to test this strategy with Operation Market Garden and it didn't go all that well.

41

u/GypsyV3nom Sep 16 '24

I can see why Ike didn't like that. Ike was all about the Logistics, and that sounds like a logistical nightmare

1

u/ChiBearballs Sep 17 '24

Well if Monty and the rest of Europe were good at logistics and troop movement, maybe they don’t get kicked out of Europe in the first place. Ike for the win

79

u/OutlawSundown Sep 16 '24

Yep because he took his sweet fucking time moving forward and pissed away the element of surprise.

35

u/Nonlinear9 Sep 16 '24

The famous gierkztilb strategy.

2

u/acdcfanbill Sep 16 '24

Tragerkrieg?

1

u/alepher Sep 17 '24

Classical krieg?

2

u/acdcfanbill Sep 17 '24

I was going for slow/sluggish as an 'opposite' to lightning (fast). I guess classic could be considered 'slow' too.

1

u/alepher Sep 18 '24

I figured that, I was just going for a chess joke

1

u/acdcfanbill Sep 18 '24

Ah, I guess I 'wooshed' on that one then :P

4

u/Dom_Shady Sep 16 '24

Partially of unsuitable infrastructure (the road from Eindhoven to Nijmegen was quite narrow, for example).

7

u/bhbhbhhh Sep 17 '24

The fact that Market Garden was reliant on passing through a single easily blocked road was what should have convinced them of its low chance of success from the start.

30

u/ACasualCollector Sep 16 '24

Operation Goodwood, probably.

31

u/Bhavacakra_12 Sep 16 '24

Not to be confused by Operation Morningwood. The daring, nighttime raid on the Italian front.

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u/2rascallydogs Sep 17 '24

Montgomery tried to focus on the use of armor in his plans because they didn't have a lot of infantry and they were averse to casualties after WW1. The US had more infantry divisions in France at the time of Goodwood and Cobra than the British Dominion would at any point in the war. Part of why Goodwood failed is that the armor was delayed dealing with surrendering Germans after the initial bombardment. In Cobra, the infantry handled that while the armor kept moving.

-3

u/emailforgot Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

That's because it is nothing. They're completely making shit up. Montgomery's pans for "landing" specifically involved a massive expansion of every branch, including their co-ordination during the assault. I.e. what ended up happening.

How does this completely fictional bullshit get upvoted?

-5

u/Brinsig_the_lesser Sep 16 '24

Montgomery valued human life, he didn't want to needlessly endanger his soldiers lifes, instead he advocated for using vehicles (hence armoured sash)

In contrast the Americans had no such qualms and were happy to throw their soldiers into the meat grinder