British Expeditionary Force Phoney war Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939 and the 3rd Division, together with its new
General Officer Commanding (GOC), was deployed to France as part of the
British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by General
Lord Gort. Shortly after the division's arrival overseas, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his military superiors and the clergy for his frank attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers, but was defended from dismissal by his superior
Alan Brooke, commander of
II Corps, of which Montgomery's division formed a part. Montgomery had issued a circular on the prevention of venereal disease, worded in such "obscene language" that both the
Church of England and
Roman Catholic senior
chaplains objected; Brooke told Monty that he did not want any further errors of this kind, though deciding not to get him to formally withdraw it as it would remove any "vestige of respect" left for him. , GOC
4th Infantry Division, pictured here in either 1939 or 1940 Although Montgomery's new command was a Regular Army formation, comprising the
7th (Guards), and the
8th and 9th Infantry Brigades along with supporting units, he was not impressed with its readiness for battle. As a result, while most of the rest of the BEF set about preparing defences for an expected German attack sometime in the future, Montgomery began training his 3rd Division in
offensive tactics, organising several
exercises, each of which lasted for several days at a time. Mostly they revolved around the division advancing towards an objective, often a river line, only to come under attack and forced to withdraw to another position, usually behind another river. These exercises usually occurred at night with only very minimal lighting being allowed. By the spring of 1940 Montgomery's division had gained a reputation of being a very agile and flexible formation. By then the
Allies had agreed to
Plan D, where they would advance deep into Belgium and take up positions on the
River Dyle by the time the German forces attacked. Brooke, Montgomery's corps commander, was pessimistic about the plan but Montgomery, in contrast, was not concerned, believing that he and his division would perform well regardless of the circumstances, particularly in a
war of movement.
Battle of France Montgomery's training paid off when the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May 1940 and the 3rd Division advanced to its planned position, near the Belgian city of
Leuven. Soon after arrival, the division was fired on by members of the Belgian
10th Infantry Division who mistook them for
German paratroopers; Montgomery resolved the incident by approaching them and offering to place himself under Belgian command, although Montgomery himself took control when the Germans arrived. During this time he began to develop a particular habit, which he would keep throughout the war, of going to bed at 21:30 every night without fail and giving only a single order—that he was not to be disturbed—which was only very rarely disobeyed. The 3rd Division saw comparatively little action but, owing to the strict training methods of Montgomery, the division always managed to be in the right place at the right time, especially so during the
retreat into France. By 27 May, when the
Belgian Army on the left flank of the BEF began to disintegrate, the 3rd Division achieved something very difficult, the movement at night from the right to the left of another division and only 2,000 yards behind it. This was performed with great professionalism and occurred without any incidents and thereby filled a very vulnerable gap in the BEF's defensive line. On 29/30 May, Montgomery temporarily took over from Brooke, who received orders to return to the United Kingdom, as GOC of II Corps for the final stages of the
Dunkirk evacuation. The 3rd Division, temporarily commanded by
Kenneth Anderson in Montgomery's absence, returned to Britain intact with minimal casualties. Operation Dynamo—codename for the Dunkirk evacuation—saw 330,000 Allied military personnel, including most of the BEF, to Britain, although the BEF was forced to leave behind a significant amount of equipment.
Service in the United Kingdom 1940−1942 On his return Montgomery antagonised the
War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF He was made a
Companion of the Order of the Bath. These invasion plans also did not go ahead. Montgomery was then ordered to prepare plans for the invasion of neutral Ireland and to seize
Cork,
Cobh and Cork harbour. He was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general in July, overseeing the defence of Kent,
Sussex and
Surrey. In December Montgomery was given command of
South-Eastern Command. He renamed his command the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he further developed and rehearsed his ideas and trained his soldiers, culminating in
Exercise Tiger in May 1942, a combined forces exercise involving 100,000 troops.
North Africa and Italy Montgomery's early command tank in North Africa, November 1942 In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of C-in-C of
Middle East Command and commander
Eighth Army. He had stabilised the Allied position at the
First Battle of El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with General Sir
Harold Alexander and
William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the
Western Desert. However, after Gott was killed flying back to
Cairo, Churchill was persuaded by Brooke, who by this time was
Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), to appoint Montgomery, who had only just been nominated to replace Alexander, as commander of the
British First Army for
Operation Torch, the invasion of
French North Africa. A story, probably apocryphal but popular at the time, is that the appointment caused Montgomery to remark that "After having an easy war, things have now got much more difficult." A colleague is supposed to have told him to cheer up—at which point Montgomery said "I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about
Rommel!" He ordered the creation of the
X Corps, which contained all armoured divisions, to fight alongside his
XXX Corps, which was all infantry divisions. This arrangement differed from the German Panzer Corps: one of Rommel's Panzer Corps combined infantry, armour and artillery units under one corps commander. The only common commander for Montgomery's all-infantry and all-armour corps was the Eighth Army Commander himself. Writing post-war the English historian
Correlli Barnett commented that Montgomery's solution "was in every way opposite to Auchinleck's and in every way wrong, for it carried the existing dangerous separatism still further." Montgomery reinforced the long front line at El Alamein, something that would take two months to accomplish. He asked Alexander to send him two new British divisions (
51st Highland and
44th Home Counties) that were then arriving in Egypt and were scheduled to be deployed in defence of the Nile Delta. He moved his field HQ to Burg al Arab, close to the Air Force command post in order to better coordinate combined operations. Montgomery was determined that the army, navy and air forces should fight their battles in a unified, focused manner according to a detailed plan. He ordered immediate reinforcement of the vital heights of Alam Halfa, just behind his own lines, expecting the German commander, Erwin Rommel, to attack with the heights as his objective, something that Rommel soon did. Montgomery ordered all contingency plans for retreat to be destroyed. "I have cancelled the plan for withdrawal. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead", he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert, though, in fact, Auchinleck had no plans to withdraw from the strong defensive position he had chosen and established at El Alamein. , the new GOC XIII Corps, discussing troop dispositions at 22nd Armoured Brigade HQ, 20 August 1942. The brigade commander, Brigadier
George Roberts is on the right (in beret). Montgomery made a great effort to appear before troops as often as possible, frequently visiting various units and making himself known to the men, often arranging for cigarettes to be distributed. Although he still wore a standard British officer's cap on arrival in the desert, he briefly wore an Australian
broad-brimmed hat before switching to wearing the black beret (with the badge of the
Royal Tank Regiment and the British General Officer's
cap badge) for which he became notable. The black beret was offered to him by Jim Fraser while the latter was driving him on an inspection tour. Both Brooke and Alexander were astonished by the transformation in atmosphere when they visited on 19 August, less than a week after Montgomery had taken command. Montgomery was criticised for not counter-attacking the retreating forces immediately, but he felt strongly that his methodical build-up of British forces was not yet ready. A hasty counter-attack risked ruining his strategy for an offensive on his own terms in late October, planning for which had begun soon after he took command. He was confirmed in the permanent rank of lieutenant-general in mid-October. The conquest of
Libya was essential for airfields to support
Malta and to threaten the rear of Axis forces opposing Operation Torch. Montgomery prepared meticulously for the new offensive after convincing Churchill that the time was not being wasted. (Churchill sent a telegram to Alexander on 23 September 1942 which began, "We are in your hands and of course a victorious battle makes amends for much delay.") He was determined not to fight until he thought there had been sufficient preparation for a decisive victory, and put into action his beliefs with the gathering of resources, detailed planning, the training of troops—especially in clearing minefields and fighting at night—and in the use of 252 of the latest American-built
Sherman tanks, 90
M7 Priest self-propelled howitzers, and making a personal visit to every unit involved in the offensive. By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had 231,000 men on its ration strength.
El Alamein in a posed photograph during the
Second Battle of El Alamein The
Second Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October 1942, and ended 12 days later with one of the first large-scale, decisive Allied land victories of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500). Historian Correlli Barnett has pointed out that the rain also fell on the Germans, and that the weather is therefore an inadequate explanation for the failure to exploit the breakthrough, but nevertheless the Battle of El Alamein had been a great success. Over 30,000
prisoners of war were taken, including the German second-in-command, General
Ritter von Thoma, as well as eight other general officers.
Tunisia with military leaders during his visit to Tripoli. The group includes: Lieutenant-General Sir
Oliver Leese, General Sir
Harold Alexander, General Sir
Alan Brooke and General Sir Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery was advanced to
KCB and promoted to full
general. At the
Mareth Line, 20 to 27 March, when Montgomery encountered fiercer frontal opposition than he had anticipated, he switched his major effort into an outflanking inland pincer, backed by low-flying
RAF fighter-bomber support. For his role in North Africa he was awarded the
Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander. Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders, Patton and
Omar Bradley (then commanding
US II Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they saw as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness.
Italy aircraft (location and date unknown) ,
Harry Broadhurst, Montgomery, Sir
Bernard Freyberg,
Miles Dempsey and
Charles Allfrey Montgomery's Eighth Army was then fully involved in the
Allied invasion of Italy in early September 1943, becoming the first of the Allied forces to land in
Western Europe. Led by Lieutenant General Sir
Miles Dempsey's XIII Corps, the Eighth Army landed on the toe of Italy in
Operation Baytown on 3 September, four years to the day after
Britain declared war on Germany. They encountered little enemy resistance. The Germans had made the decision to fall back and did what they could to stall the Eighth Army's advance, including blowing up bridges, laying mines, and setting up booby-traps. All of these slowed the Army's advance north on the awful
Italian roads, although it was Montgomery who was later much criticised for the lack of progress. On 9 September the
British 1st Airborne Division landed at the key port of
Taranto in the heel of Italy as part of
Operation Slapstick, capturing the port unopposed. He was assigned to command the
21st Army Group consisting of all Allied ground forces participating in
Operation Overlord, codename for the Allied invasion of
Normandy. Overall direction was assigned to the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower. However Montgomery's patron, General Sir Alan Brooke, firmly argued that Montgomery was a much superior general to Alexander and ensured his appointment. Montgomery attempted to take Caen with the 3rd Infantry Division, the
50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division and the
3rd Canadian Division, but was stopped from 6–8 June by the
21st Panzer Division and
12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend, who hit the advancing Anglo-Canadian troops very hard. The 12th Waffen SS Division
Hitlerjugend, as its name implies, was drawn entirely from the more fanatical elements of the
Hitler Youth, and commanded by the ruthless
SS-
Brigadeführer Kurt Meyer, aka "Panzer Meyer". Rommel followed up this success by ordering the
2nd Panzer Division to Caen while Field Marshal
Gerd von Rundstedt received permission from Hitler to have the elite
1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and
2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich sent to Caen as well. Broadly, there has been a "British school" which accepts Montgomery's post-war claim that he never intended to take Caen at once, and instead the Anglo-Canadian operations around Caen were a "holding operation" intended to attract the bulk of the German forces towards the Caen sector to allow the Americans to stage the "break out operation" on the left flank of the German positions, which was all part of Montgomery's "Master Plan" that he had conceived long before the Normandy campaign. Letters written by Eisenhower at the time of the battle make it clear that Eisenhower was expecting from Montgomery "the early capture of the important focal point of Caen". Later, when this plan had clearly failed, Eisenhower wrote that Montgomery had "evolved" the plan to have the US forces achieve the break-out instead. , GOC
50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division, pictured here in Normandy, 20 June 1944 As the campaign progressed, Montgomery altered his initial plan for the invasion and continued the strategy of attracting and holding German counter-attacks in the area north of Caen rather than to the south, to allow the U.S. First Army in the west to take
Cherbourg. A memo summarising Montgomery's operations written by Eisenhower's chief of staff, General
Walter Bedell Smith, who met with Montgomery in late June 1944 says nothing about Montgomery conducting a "holding operation" in the Caen sector, and instead speaks of him seeking a "breakout" into the plains south of the Seine. On 12 June, Montgomery ordered the
7th Armoured Division into an attack against the
Panzer Lehr Division that made good progress at first, but ended when the Panzer Lehr was joined by the 2nd Panzer Division. At the
Battle of Villers-Bocage on 13 June, the British lost twenty
Cromwell tanks to five
Tiger tanks led by SS
Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann, in about five minutes.
Air Chief Marshal Sir
Arthur Tedder complained that it was impossible to move fighter squadrons to France until Montgomery had captured some airfields, something he asserted that Montgomery appeared incapable of doing. The first
V-1 flying bomb attacks on London, which started on 13 June, further increased the pressure on Montgomery from Whitehall to speed up his advance. Epsom began well with O'Connor's assault force (the British
15th Scottish Division) breaking through and with the
11th Armoured Division stopping the counter-attacks of the 12th SS Division. Montgomery told General Sir Miles Dempsey, the commander of Second British Army: "Go on hitting, drawing the German strength, especially some of the armour, onto yourself—so as to ease the way for Brad [Bradley]." The Germans had deployed twelve divisions, of which six were Panzer divisions, against the British while deploying eight divisions, of which three were Panzer divisions, against the Americans. This was broadly as Montgomery had planned, albeit not with the same speed as he outlined at St Paul's, although as the American historian
Carlo D'Este pointed out the actual situation in Normandy was "vastly different" from what was envisioned at the St. Paul's conference, as only one of four goals outlined in May had been achieved by 10 July. On 7 July, Montgomery began
Operation Charnwood with a
carpet bombing offensive that turned much of the French countryside and the city of Caen into a wasteland. The British and Canadians succeeded in advancing into northern Caen before the Germans, who used the ruins to their advantage and stopped the offensive. On 10 July, Montgomery ordered Bradley to take
Avranches, after which U.S.
Third Army would be activated to drive towards Le Mans and Alençon. On 14 July 1944, Montgomery wrote to his patron Brooke, saying he had chosen on a "real show down on the eastern flanks, and to loose a Corps of three armoured divisions in the open country about the Caen-Falaise road ... The possibilities are immense; with seven hundred tanks loosed to the South-east of Caen, and the armoured cars operating far ahead, anything can happen." The
French Resistance had launched Plan Violet in June 1944 to systematically destroy the telephone system of France, which forced the Germans to use their radios more and more to communicate, and as the code-breakers of
Bletchley Park had broken many of the German codes, Montgomery had, thanks to "
Ultra" intelligence, a good idea of the German situation. Montgomery thus knew German
Army Group B had lost 96,400 men while receiving 5,200 replacements and the Panzer Lehr Division now based at
Saint-Lô was down to only 40 tanks. An American break-out was achieved with
Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the
Falaise pocket at the cost of British losses with the diversionary
Operation Goodwood. On the early morning of 18 July 1944, Operation Goodwood began with British heavy bombers beginning carpet bombing attacks that further devastated what was left of Caen and the surrounding countryside. A British tank crewman from the
Guards Armoured Division later recalled: "At 0500 hours a distant thunder in the air brought all the sleepy-eyed tank crews out of their blankets. 1,000
Lancasters were flying from the sea in groups of three or four at . Ahead of them the
pathfinders were scattering their flares and before long the first bombs were dropping." A German tankman from the 21st Panzer Division at the receiving end of this bombardment remembered: "We saw little dots detach themselves from the planes, so many of them that the crazy thought occurred to us: are those leaflets? ... Among the thunder of the explosions, we could hear the wounded scream and the insane howling of men who had [been] driven mad." The British bombing had badly smashed the German front-line units. Initially, the three British armoured divisions assigned to lead the offensive, the 7th, 11th and the Guards, made rapid progress and were soon approaching the Borguebus ridge, which dominated the landscape south of Caen, by noon. If the British could take the Borguebus Ridge, the way to the plains of northern France would be wide open, and potentially Paris could be taken, which explains the ferocity with which the Germans defended the ridge. One German officer, Lieutenant Baron von Rosen, recalled that to motivate a
Luftwaffe officer commanding a battery of four
88 mm guns to fight against the British tanks, he had to hold his handgun to the officer's head "and asked him whether he would like to be killed immediately or get a high decoration. He decided for the latter." The well dug-in 88 mm guns around the Borguebus Ridge began taking a toll on the British Sherman tanks, and the countryside was soon dotted with dozens of burning Shermans. One British officer reported with worry: "I see palls of smoke and tanks brewing up with flames belching forth from their turrets. I see men climbing out, on fire like torches, rolling on the ground to try and douse the flames." "Ultra" decrypts indicated that the Germans now facing Bradley were seriously understrength, with Operation Cobra about to commence. During Operation Goodwood, the British had 400 tanks knocked out, with many recovered returning to service. The casualties were 5,500 with of ground gained. Power noted that Goodwood and Cobra were supposed to take effect on the same day, 18 July 1944, but Cobra was cancelled owing to heavy rain in the American sector, and argued that both operations were meant to be breakout operations to trap the German armies in Normandy. American military writer Drew Middleton wrote that there is no doubt that Montgomery wanted Goodwood to provide a "shield" for Bradley, but at the same time Montgomery was clearly hoping for more than merely diverting German attention away from the American sector. British historian
John Keegan pointed out that Montgomery made differing statements before Goodwood about the purpose of the operation. Keegan wrote that Montgomery engaged in what he called a "hedging of his bets" when drafting his plans for Goodwood, with a plan for a "break out if the front collapsed, if not, sound documentary evidence that all he had intended in the first place was a battle of attrition". Again Bradley confirmed Montgomery's plan and that the capture of Caen was only incidental to his mission, not critical. The American magazine
LIFE quoted Bradley in 1951: With Goodwood drawing the Wehrmacht towards the British sector, U.S.
First Army enjoyed a two-to-one numerical superiority. Bradley accepted Montgomery's advice to begin the offensive by concentrating at one point instead of a "broad front" as Eisenhower would have preferred. Operation Goodwood almost cost Montgomery his job, as Eisenhower seriously considered sacking him and only chose not to do so because to sack the popular "Monty" would have caused such a political backlash in Britain against the Americans at a critical moment in the war that the resulting strains in the Atlantic alliance were not considered worth it. Montgomery expressed his satisfaction at the results of Goodwood when calling the operation off. Eisenhower was under the impression that Goodwood was to be a break-out operation. Either there was a miscommunication between the two men or Eisenhower did not understand the strategy. Bradley fully understood Montgomery's intentions. Both men would not give away to the press the true intentions of their strategy. (left) and
Omar Bradley (centre) at 21st Army Group HQ, 7 July 1944 Many American officers had found Montgomery a difficult man to work with, and after Goodwood, pressured Eisenhower to fire Montgomery. An American officer wrote in his diary that Tedder had come to see Eisenhower to "pursue his current favourite subject, the sacking of Monty". With Tedder leading the "sack Monty" campaign, it encouraged Montgomery's American enemies to press Eisenhower to fire Montgomery. The success of Cobra was aided by
Operation Spring, when the
II Canadian Corps under General
Guy Simonds (the only Canadian general whose skill Montgomery respected) began an offensive south of Caen that made little headway, but which the Germans regarded as the main offensive. Once Third Army arrived, Bradley was promoted to take command of the newly created
12th Army Group, consisting of U.S. First and Third Armies. Following the American breakout, there followed the Battle of Falaise Gap. British, Canadian, and Polish soldiers of 21st Army Group commanded by Montgomery advanced south, while the American and French soldiers of Bradley's 12th Army Group advanced north to encircle the German Army Group B at Falaise, as Montgomery waged what Urban called "a huge battle of annihilation" in August 1944. A dissatisfied Montgomery sacked Bucknall for being insufficiently aggressive and replaced him with General
Brian Horrocks. On 11 August, Montgomery changed his plan, with the Canadians to take Falaise and to meet the Americans at Argentan. In view of the slow Canadian advance, Patton requested permission to take Falaise, but was refused by Bradley on 13 August. This prompted much controversy, many historians arguing that Bradley lacked aggression and that Montgomery should have overruled Bradley. The so-called
Falaise Gap was closed on 22 August 1944, but several American generals, most notably Patton, accused Montgomery of being insufficiently aggressive in closing it. About 60,000 German soldiers were trapped in Normandy, but before 22 August, about 20,000 Germans had escaped through the Falaise Gap. The successful conclusion of the Normandy campaign saw the beginning of the debate between the "American school" and "British school" as both American and British generals started to advance claims about who was most responsible for this victory. About Montgomery's conduct of the Normandy campaign, Badsey wrote:
Replaced as Ground Forces Commander ,
Georgy Zhukov and
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny Eisenhower took over Ground Forces Command on 1 September, while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery vehemently opposed this change, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion, instead proposing that either he or Bradley should remain in the job of Ground Forces command. He argued that the two roles were fundamentally different and that Eisenhower possessed the skillset for the former but not the latter; as such, he was liable to neglect the duties of one or the other, rendering the force off-balance. Instead, there was a need for a single decisive master plan under a leader free from the more administrative and political duties of the Supreme Commander - Montgomery felt he was the best equipped to deliver this, but was clear that he would also have been willing to work under Bradley. Eisenhower and many others failed to grasp this however, and would misinterpret this as Montgomery's pride being wounded at having command removed. As such, they would attempt to placate him by reassuring him of the areas remaining under his command, and Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to
Field Marshal by way of compensation.
Advance to the Rhine By September, ports like
Cherbourg were too far away from the front line, causing the Allies great logistical problems. Antwerp was the third largest port in Europe. It was a deep water inland port connected to the North Sea via the river
Scheldt. The Scheldt was wide enough and dredged deep enough to allow the passage of ocean-going ships. On 3 September 1944 Hitler ordered
Fifteenth Army, which had been stationed in the Pas de Calais region and was withdrawing north into the Low Countries, to hold the mouth of the river Scheldt to deprive the Allies of the use of Antwerp. Von Rundstedt, the German commander of the Western Front, ordered General
Gustav-Adolf von Zangen, the commander of 15th Army, that: "The attempt of the enemy to occupy the West Scheldt in order to obtain the free use of the harbor of Antwerp must be
resisted to the utmost" (emphasis in the original). Rundstedt argued with Hitler that as long as the Allies could not use the port of Antwerp, the Allies would lack the logistical capacity for an invasion of Germany. The
Witte Brigade (White Brigade) of the Belgian resistance had captured the
Port of Antwerp before the Germans could destroy key port facilities, and on 4 September, Antwerp was captured by Horrocks with its harbour mostly intact. The British declined to immediately advance over the
Albert Canal, and an opportunity to destroy the German Fifteenth Army was lost. and to clear the Scheldt, a task that Crerar stated was impossible as he lacked enough troops to perform both operations at once. Montgomery refused Crerar's request to have British XII Corps under Neil Ritchie assigned to help clear the Scheldt as Montgomery stated he needed XII Corps for
Operation Market Garden. On 6 September 1944, Montgomery told Crerar that "I want Boulogne badly" and that city should be taken no matter what the cost. After an attempt to storm the
Leopold Canal by the
4th Canadian Division had been badly smashed by the German defenders, Simonds ordered a stop to further attempts to clear the river Scheldt until his mission of capturing the French ports on the English Channel had been accomplished; this allowed the German Fifteenth Army ample time to dig into its new home on the Scheldt. The only port that was not captured by the Canadians was Dunkirk, as Montgomery ordered the 2nd Canadian Division on 15 September to hold his flank at Antwerp as a prelude for an advance up the Scheldt. in his mobile headquarters. Montgomery pulled away from the First Canadian Army (temporarily commanded now by Simonds as Crerar was ill), the British
51st Highland Division,
1st Polish Division, British
49th (West Riding) Infantry Division and
2nd Canadian Armoured Brigade, and sent all of these formations to help the Second British Army to expand the Market Garden salient with Operations
Constellation,
Aintree, and towards the end of October
Pheasant. However, Simonds seems to have regarded the Scheldt campaign as a test of his ability, and he felt he could clear the Scheldt with only three Canadian divisions, despite having to take on the entire Fifteenth Army, which held strongly fortified positions in a landscape that favoured the defence. Simonds never complained about the lack of air support (made worse by the cloudy October weather), shortages of ammunition or having insufficient troops, regarding these problems as challenges for him to overcome, rather than a cause for complaint. As it was, Simonds made only slow progress in October 1944 during the fighting in the
Battle of the Scheldt, although he was praised by Copp for imaginative and aggressive leadership who managed to achieve much, despite all of the odds against him. Montgomery had little respect for the Canadian generals, whom he dismissed as mediocre, with the exception of Simonds, whom he consistently praised as Canada's only "first-rate" general in the entire war.
Operation Market Garden Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to allow him to test his strategy of a single thrust to the
Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. The offensive was strategically bold, for SHAEF (
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) considered Montgomery's narrow-thrust strategy to be "logistically unrealistic", Both Churchill and Montgomery claimed that the operation was nearly or 90% successful, "since they had got nine-tenths of the way to Arnhem", prompting Air Chief Marshal Tedder to derisively comment that "one jumps off a cliff with an even higher success rate, until the last few inches." , GOC
U.S. XVI Corps. Behind are Lieutenant General Bradley and Field Marshal Brooke.
SHAEF believed the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of launching a major offensive, and that no offensive could be launched through such rugged terrain as the
Ardennes Forest. Because of this, the area was held by refitting and newly arrived American formations. If the attack were to succeed in capturing Antwerp, the whole of 21st Army Group, along with U.S. Ninth Army and most of U.S. First Army would be trapped without supplies behind German lines. The attack initially advanced rapidly, splitting U.S. 12th Army Group in two, with all of U.S. Ninth Army and the bulk of U.S. First Army on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The 12th Army Group commander, Bradley, was located in Luxembourg, making command of the U.S. forces north of the bulge problematic. As Montgomery was the nearest army group commander on the ground, on 20 December, Eisenhower temporarily transferred command of U.S. Ninth Army and U.S. First Army to Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Bradley was "concerned because it might discredit the American command" but that it might mean Montgomery would commit more of his reserves to the battle. In practice the change led to "great resentment on the part of many Americans, particularly at Headquarters, 12th Army Group, and Third Army". With the British and American forces under Montgomery's command holding the northern flank of the German assault, General Patton's Third Army, which was to the south, turned north and fought its way through the severe weather and German opposition to relieve the
besieged American forces in Bastogne. Four days after Montgomery took command of the northern flank, the bad weather cleared and the
USAAF and RAF resumed operations, inflicting heavy casualties on German troops and vehicles. Six days after Montgomery took command of the northern flank, Patton's Third Army relieved the besieged American forces in Bastogne. Unable to advance further, and running out of fuel, the Wehrmacht abandoned the offensive. in the Ardennes, January 1945 Morelock states that Montgomery was preoccupied with leading a "single thrust offensive" to Berlin as the overall commander of Allied ground forces, and that he accordingly treated the Ardennes counteroffensive "as a sideshow, to be finished with the least possible effort and expenditure of resources." Montgomery subsequently wrote of his actions: After the war
Hasso von Manteuffel, who commanded the
5th Panzer Army in the Ardennes, was imprisoned awaiting trial for war crimes. During this period he was interviewed by
B. H. Liddell Hart, a British author who has since been accused of putting words in the mouths of German generals, and attempting to "rewrite the historical record". After conducting several interviews via an interpreter, Liddell Hart in a subsequent book attributed to Manteuffel the following statement about Montgomery's contribution to the battle in the Ardennes: However, American historian
Stephen Ambrose, writing in 1997, maintained that "Putting Monty in command of the northern flank had no effect on the battle". Ambrose wrote that: "Far from directing the victory, Montgomery had gotten in everyone's way, and had botched the counter-attack." General Omar Bradley blamed Montgomery's "stagnating conservatism" for his failure to counter-attack when ordered to do so by Eisenhower. Command of U.S. First Army reverted to 12th Army Group on 17 January 1945, whilst command of U.S. Ninth Army remained with 21st Army Group for the coming operations to cross the Rhine.
Crossing the Rhine Sir
Arthur Coningham (centre) and the Commander of the
British Second Army, Lieutenant-General Sir
Miles Dempsey, talking after a conference in which Montgomery gave the order for the Second Army to begin
Operation Plunder on 5 June 1945.
Dwight Eisenhower,
Georgy Zhukov and Sir
Arthur Tedder were also present. In February 1945, Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine in
Operation Veritable and
Operation Grenade. It crossed the Rhine on 24 March 1945, in
Operation Plunder, which took place two weeks after
U.S. First Army had crossed the Rhine after capturing the
Ludendorff Bridge during the
Battle of Remagen, and two days after Patton's Third Army crossed the Rhine at
Oppenheim. 21st Army Group's river crossing was followed by the encirclement of the
Ruhr Pocket. During this battle, U.S. Ninth Army, which had remained part of 21st Army Group after the Battle of the Bulge, formed the northern arm of the envelopment of German
Army Group B, with U.S. First Army forming the southern arm. The two armies linked up on 1 April 1945, encircling 370,000 German troops, and on 4 April 1945, Ninth Army reverted to Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group. By the war's end, the remaining formations of 21st Army group, First Canadian Army and British Second Army, had liberated the northern part of the Netherlands and captured much of north-west Germany, occupied
Hamburg and
Rostock and sealed off the
Jutland peninsula. On 4 May 1945, on
Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the
surrender of German forces in north-west Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. Stephen Hart has argued Montgomery and the British high command were not only concerned about winning the war, but also conserving sufficient manpower to maintain British leadership and prestige within its empire and in post-war Europe in particular. This led to a strategy of "casualty conservation" and "excessive caution". Other academic commentators have suggested that the British strategy was "to avoid the heavy casualties of the major battles of the First World War"." ==Later life==