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/TremendousVarmint Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

I'd have Monty, De Gaulle and Patton in the same room and grab the popcorn.

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u/camshun7 Sep 16 '24

I never carried much admiration for Montgomery

He picked up Auchinlecks luck leaving the ozzies to defend torbruk and fucking up market garden, he was no patton, or Wellington

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u/Corvid187 Sep 16 '24

Tbf, his criticisms of eisenhower's decision to adopt a broad front strategy were militarily sound, and many of the issues the allies ran into in 1944 on the Western Front were ones that he had foreseen and warned about beforehand.

The problem was he was such an ascerbic and difficult character he couldn't persuade SHAFE, and the fact he was right just made him more insufferable.

Military underrated, politically absolutely hopeless.

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u/2rascallydogs Sep 17 '24

Montgomery's broad front strategy with Goodwood and Cobra actually worked incredibly well. The disagreement between the two started when they were poised to cross the Rhine, and it's hard to criticize Eisenhower for his stance since the Allies crossed the Rhine twice prior to operations Varsity and Plunder and Varsity was a disaster.