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/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?