The Commanders: Montgomery

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Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit history.com/subscribe. It's the 13th of October, 1914, a terminal rain has turned the fields of French flounders into clinging mud, a low grey sky, presses down over the front here between France and Belgium.

Now, the village of Metre, just a few miles from the medieval cloth hole of EPR. The British expositionary force is bracing for yet another clash with the advancing German army. Among the officers moving forward through the hedgeros is a 26-year-old lieutenant of the first

“battalion, the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Bernard Lourne Montgomery, who's just one of”

countless junior officers trying to steady their exhausted men at the end of a long, punishing retreat. Since August, the small army of professionals at the British centre France, as the British expositionary force, has been fighting almost continuously. It has retreated from mons.

It turned and counterattacked at Le Cato. It fought along the marm. It surged north towards the coast, during the race to the sea, as both sides attempted to outflank each other at desperate scramble across northern France and Belgium.

By mid-October, that race has brought the war to Flanders, the first battalion of EPR

is beginning, a struggle that will within weeks, decimate what's left of the old regular army, and do its bit to transform the western front into a static line of trenches stretching from the north sea to the Swiss border.

“The fighting around Metre is part of that opening phase.”

German forces are pushing hard towards the channel ports, the British and their French allies are trying to hold them off. The countryside, hop fields, small farms, drainage ditches, tree-lined roads. It's pretty open, fairly fast. It offers little protection from rifle and machine gunfire.

In Gomerie is by now a veteran of a two-month campaign.

He was commissioned at Officer in 1908, he'd served an India before the war, and he's now

leading men, under fire in conditions that no peace-time exercise can have been. As his battalion advances that morning, German rifle fire lashes a Pedro's round. At some point, in the engagement, a bullet strikes him in the chest. He passes through his right lap, he crumbles through the ground. The wound is pretty catastrophic, which should have been fatal.

A penetrating gunshot that shest in 1914, far from a fully equipped hospital. Well, it was practically a guaranteed death sentence. Montgomery bleeds heavily. He gathers as the blood fills his chest cavity. According to later accounts, another officer who tends to help him is shot dead and falls

onto him, collapses onto his body, so he's now crushed between the weight of this corpse. A sniper senses that Montgomery is still alive, because a steady stream of bullets tear up the ground near him. Montgomery's hit again in the knee, but seems like his dead, comrade absorbs many of the rounds meant for him.

He lies that terribly wounded, exposed in the open, taking incoming fire, smothered by the corpse of a friend, or comrade. He must have been convinced he will die. He reportedly shouts out to his men to leave him, don't try to rescue him. He was concerned that if they made any attempt, others would share his fate.

Hours passed like that. The light fades over flanders, and only after night falls can his men venture out to come and find him to retrieve his wounded body. Montgomery miraculously still alive, he's carried back to addressing station. He relates to claim that his condition now is so dire that the grave was prepared in

the expectation of his death, and yet he survives. Against the odds, young Montgomery lives. He will spend months recovering back in England, he put himself through a strict training regiment, get himself fighting fit once more, for his conduct, in the action he's

Years later, critics, and admirers, will note his caution.

“Some biographers argue that his near-fatal wounding in 1914 helped to shape a certain outlook.”

Having seen how quickly men can be cut down and exposed ill-supported advances, he develops a command style that prioritizes preparation, and minimizes the kind of risks that he was exposed to as a young man. That field in Med Clown didn't make him famous, there were no headlines or legends, yet attached to his name, but on that cold October day in 1914, Bernard Montgomery came with

an inches of death. And that experience would become one of the defining episodes of his life, a moment that shaped the commander that he would become. Today's subject is one of the most controversial allied commanders of the mall, field martial-burned law Montgomery.

Now, he's got his supporters, to them, Montu is exactly the kind of general that Britain needed.

The man who restored confidence after years of defeat in the Second World War, victor of

the Battle of Alabama in Egypt, some of an architect of disciplined, methodical, reliable offensives, where others improvised, he prepared, where others gambled, he calculated. So to his admirers, he was the steady professional who turned the tide, but here to track it as well, he's cautious the point of timidity, he was slow to exploit success. He was gifted itself promotion, but that was his greatest asset.

They saw a man who's astonishing, he got alienated allies, who claimed credit for anything yet away with, but he's one grand gamble at Arnum, exposed the limits of his general ship. He's to track to his argument, Montcomre was overconfident, difficult, a commander who had many solid battlefield victories, but whose failures were costly. In this episode folks, we'll get into that, and more, we'll trace Montcomre's life from

his austere upbringing to the Battle of the North Africa and North first Europe, examining

not just what he achieved, but also how he fought and led, and why his reputation remains quite contested. This is the second episode not commander series with digging into the lives and decisions of five legendary World War II commanders, coming through the myth to examine what really shaped their styles of command, from daring gambles to meticulous planning.

We're going to ask whether their victories were won through brilliance, luck, or ruthless calculation. We're going to see if their reputation's holed up to scrutiny. Last week we started the series with Field Marshal Owen Rommel, and we're going to be releasing a new episode every Monday, so make sure to hit follow and check back in for those.

To dig into Montcomre, I'm very happy to be joined by Peter Caddett Adams, military historians

specialising in the second world, let's get started.

In 1880, the British Empire was pretty close to its zenithide, so London was a financial capture of the world. The Royal Navy was unrivaled, the pound sterling, anchored global trade. At home in Britain there was astonishing confidence, where I call it certainty about Britain's role as a guarantor of the global order.

“We've got to remember that Montcomre grew up inside that culture of imperial assurance.”

He did not question the Empire's legitimacy, he just assumed it. And that assumption, I think, would shape his strategic thinking decades later. Well, Montcomre was born in 1887, so that sort of when the British Empire was at its height, the Montcomre was very much sort of players in that. He was the sort of lad who was sent away to school for long periods of time to boarding

school, while his dad, who was originally a humble vicar, eventually became a bishop in Tasmania in Australia. So he divided his time in exotic parts of what was then the far-flung British Empire. And that's a really fashioned his view that Britain was first and foremost amongst several competitors who would be France and Germany, but certainly not the United States.

And those are sort of views I think he found it very difficult to divest himself of in later life.

“I think we look back at the lives of people born in the late 19th century, probably the”

wrong way. They were brought up with a whole series of assumptions, both political, geopolitical and personal the way Victorians and Edwardians treated their children who would be seen and not heard and sent away to school for as long as possible. And I think that does develop characters that are radically different to people's today

Montcomre's childhood was not one of great comfort or indulgent, he was not a sport, right?

“It was deeply religious, it was often austere.”

His mother was seemed to be strict, emotionally distant, he later described his upbringing as harsh. Now where that's entirely fair enough, it's clear that affection, loving vibes were not a defining feature of the Montcomre home. What was present in abundance was expectation, beauty, obedience, moral seriousness, themes

that would remain within for the rest of his life. Montcomre interestingly was not naturally a beadient of so it seems he was combative as independent-minded, he frequently clashed with his parents, it's tempting to see the shadows of his later personality there, self-reliance, resistance, criticism, this certainty that he was in the right.

But you won't be surprised, though, how far this or steer childhood shaped him, why is up for debate?

“There's only a limited value in delving into that, because simply that's what affects”

an entire generation, that's the way people were brought up, no one would have thought it was particularly unusual, not to see very much of your parents, and to be kept on a very very tight reign, and most of your upbringing was done by nannies or by school masters at your school and you learnt to be resilient and tough on your own, where you learn how to be self-resilience, how you don't ask for help, you learn by the tough standards of living

of the day, and if you're a tall, powerful, you use your fists or your legs on the sports

field, but also amongst your colleagues to assert yourself, and this is what Birnabank Gomerie was doing, so he didn't have a great brain, he knew that, he wasn't going to be a lawyer or linguist or diplomat or anything else like that, so he could throw himself around, so when the time came to go to soundhurst, he arrives at 1907, he's the great sort of roughian who asserts himself by frankly being a bully, and it takes a little while

for him to learn from other older adults, that actually that isn't the way he had, and he needs to wind his neck in. In 1907 Montgomery entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, founded in 1801 by the early 20th century to become the British Army's principal officer Academy, it was not

built folks to produce revolutionary thinkers, it was designed to turn out reliable, chaps,

officers for a professional imperial army, roughly speaking men who could command small detached sort of independent units across a great global empire who could maintain their discipline, their sense of what was right under pressure. Sandhurst has unchanged a bit, I went there and I've reported from there for the BBC when the Royal Princess were going through their programme of education, which wasn't that

different, frankly, from what Montgomery went through in 1907, 1908, and Winston Churchill had been through a little earlier, Douglas Hague, and everybody you can possibly think of, and it is a great level, and that's the point, it is about teaching people leadership, which is arguably what a lot of education was or should be, and in this case, leadership in a far remote fun corners of the empire to make decisions on your own, to make informed decisions

about what could or should happen, because you didn't always have recourse to London via

far-flung telegraph or whatever it was. And that was really the name of the game, and the what an award on when Montgomery was at Sandhurst, and the what an award on the horizon,

“and I think that's really important, in a compared with a slightly later generation”

where you could see war galloping towards you at a rapid rate of knots. So this was simply going to be a comfortable career that would pay him, keep him out of trouble, he would see the world in the empire, he might reach the a heady rank of left-handed Colonel before he retired, and then settled down in Thumbridge Wells as a sort of former Colonel of the British Army, slightly tan from time in the empire. By temperament Montgomery was serious and driven,

but as I said he wasn't necessarily naturally compliant, so he wasn't really a star student at Sandhurst, he ain't got a bit of trouble, but he was commissioned, he passed out, and in 1993 he became a second lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he experienced largely routine early career, he went to India, and of course the jewel of the British Empire and he observed the machinery of British Imperial at close quarters, except it is natural that this Imperial framework was

stabilizing, it was necessary, and that was the common view among officers of his generation. By the early 1910s the world was changing quite rapidly, Britain's Imperial Supremacy was being seriously challenged. Her economy was being overtaken by industrial giants,

and Germany, and all that took place as on the continent of Europe, the European Alliance system was hardening, and thanks to that Alliance system, the assassination of Archuit Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, triggered a chain reaction that few in the British Army would have

“comprehended at its start. 1914 is actually hugely important for the British Army,”

it hadn't really planned what to do in the event of a war on the continent, hopefully the French were going to look after that, possibly the Belgians, but British policy was largely to stay out of any continental land commitment to use the Royal Navy to, governor, police, or influence a European war, and we would have been thinly stretched because

we had the empire to look after as well. So there was basically the regular army of which

Burnham Montgomery was part, all the available divisions in the regular army went over the France and Belgium to fight the Germans. So Montgomery is surrounded by a complete generation of people he knew, reserve a soldier who had been recalled to the colours, and it was they who sort of clashed with the Germans. The important thing about the First World War is how deeply it's imbued even to our generation, because we've both got links to it, and so you can't really

get away from it, and that is why Burnham Montgomery's career is so fascinating, because everybody focuses on the Second World War, and particularly in the Western Deserts, and Normandy, and his battles in 1940. But it's the First World War that made him, it's the First World War that decides how he's going to think, command men, and lead. It's not after, because everything is set in stone

“by 1918. And so the First World War was actually the most important part of the making of Burnham”

Montgomery as a soldier and a general. And most people have no idea what he did in the First World

War, and a surprise, perhaps that he's even part of it. But I mean, the essential arithmetic

is he takes part in a battle of like Hato, where the British fight the Germans to a standstill, but then have to retreat, and they beat her, a fighting retreat of which Montgomery is part. But it's a very exhausting one with the Germans at their heels for many days, and it's very like Dunkirk for the British in 1940, and it's very like the Ardenne for the Americans in 1944. And you know, it teaches him all sorts of lessons about managing men in adverse circumstances. But that's

actually not the most important part of his life, because in October, he confronts the Germans with his regiment again on October the 13th, 1914, as winter is coming on, outside of a

“electrical veteran, a sniper nebs him. He falls down with a sniper's bullet to his lung. And”

for the rest of the day, the sniper used this him as target practice and any soldiers who try and crawl out to get him. And here you've got a show of loyalty, because here he is a young person, Kamana, and his men are willing to risk their lives to go out and get him, and he has to shout with all his strength. Don't come and get me, wait till nightfall. And that's eventually what happens. They roll him on to some sort of door or ladder, pull him back to the trenches.

And he's left for dead. He says that a grave is dug for him, but whatever it is, he's shipped back to England very, very quickly. And it's assumed that he will retire out of the military, because he's got a severe wound to the lung. He won't recover. He won't be combat fit.

The next part of the story is the incredible bit, although the army has written him off as unfit

for further combat. He then puts himself through a regime of fitness, gets himself past several medical boards, first few fail him. But eventually, he is labelled combat fit, promoted to be the chief of staff of a British infantry brigade, and goes back out to France. But I mean, it's a considerable sort of responsibility. So you're dealing with this enormous organization for which you've got absolutely no training. You're putting your superior commanders ambitions into action through all

the paperwork. You're managing your own safety and security. And you and the Brigadier are really the two people responsible for this four or five thousand man organization. And you've got to go and visit them. So they visit them on alternative days. But make sure every day there's a visit from one of these two. So they are certainly not remote staff officers as we tend to think of First World War leaders and generals today. So those are his responsibilities and it is exhausting.

But the first World War sees him climb through the sort of promotional ladder. And so his rise is

understanding the nuts and bolts of an army at Battalion Brigade and divisional and core level,

“he's got a unique toolset that very few other contemporaries are ever given in the British army.”

The first World War ended in November 1918. Burnham Montgomery was 31 years old.

If the pre-war British army had prized offensive spirit above all, Montgomery emerged from the trenches to the very different conclusion. In enthusiasm and spirit was no substitute for preparation. Courage without coordination was a careless waste. Now for those of you who joined us on our first episode on Irwin Rommel last week, it's interesting really to compare what's contrast the two men's world-one experiences with each other. Rommel had built a reputation as a daring leader, a

tip of the spear, he laid aggressive infantry assaults, volunteered for a different war. He'd gained a deep understanding of and a respect for planning, coordination, kit, firepower, logistics. And it's fascinating that these were two men who would eventually go head to head in North Africa in 1942 and then again in Normandy in 1944. And the very essence of their contrasting command outlooks have been defined by the same conflict, Montgomery, analytical, building strength,

refusing premature action, Rommel, Manuva, improvisation, seeking opportunity despite constraint.

And the second World War would be the arena in which their first World War lessons would collide.

Let's have a long story short here from 1918 on which Britain rapidly demobilised, the country's exhausted, public appetite for another continental war as you can imagine, non-existent. So for ambitious officers, promotion prospects were narrow, advancement required patients and it visibility, being in the right place the right time, meeting the right people, catching the right eye. Montgomery chose a path that would define it as into a career, professional education and training

reform. In 1920, he went to the staff college at Cambly. A few years later, he served in North Island during the Irish War of Independence, as an instructor and later as a brigade and divisional commander, so as he's climbing the ranks become a general in the 1930s, he built a reputation as a demanding trainer focused on preparation and morale. He was abrasive, he was blunt, he prioritised competence over charm, but he did earn respect, he was certainly clear on what

he wanted and expected and he spoke plainly. Montgomery was alarmed by Hitler's rise and German armband in the 1930s. He argued that Britain must avoid the mistakes of 1914 through better

preparation. By 1939, age 51 and commanding the third division, which was one of the army's best

trained infantry outfits, he developed a distinct professional identity. He was enormously self-confident, he would direct the point of bluntness, but he was widely respected as a competent trainer and leader of men. So in war, once again, came knocking in 1939. Montgomery found that he was in exactly the right place. He could put his battlefield philosophies to the test. The British Army then was considered absolutely tiny, even though it's 250,000 or 300,000 strong.

But these are the survivors of the First World War who then gone on to staff college where they've all met shared intellectual ideas about what a future army should be like. What the nature of war

“is and how they should meet it. Staff college is absolutely the key. What Montgomery goes through”

there is a student very early on after the war and then returns as an instructor. So he will know so many of the people that he later selects his own staff officers because he's taught the mass students in the interwar period. And that's extremely important. People forget that the army when it grows as quickly as it does after the Declaration of War in 1939 suddenly has to find lots of leaders and you lean towards the people you know. Among Montgomery has risen to the

top as a major general. He then finds himself in France, leading the third British division, and they're caught up in the German invasion, the retreat to Dunkirk and of all the divisions that retreat to Dunkirk, his moves back in the best order with the most discipline loses the fewest amount of people. And when the Dunkirk perimeter is shrunk, think of a sort of packet of

“crisps that slowly deflates and shrivels, that's what the Dunkirk perimeter is like. And left”

keeping an eye on it is Montgomery when his superior Alan Brock has recalled back to England and then Montgomery himself goes. And of all the people who are associated with Dunkirk,

extraordinary, really difficult circumstances, but it teaches him not to rely on allies. Right, we're on our own, and it's far better to rely on what you know and the people you know and your own gut instincts, rather than leaning on people who may turn out to be flaking allies like the Belgians and the French. Now he's seen enough now Peter, as you've sort of been played,

“we can start to see a difference between his unit and the unit next door. What can we say now?”

What is Montgomery doing differently? How can we start to see that he is forging a particular style of way of doing? Well, he's being effective. What are some of the takeaways here? Okay, well, I mean the important thing to remember is that Montgomery, as with those people, has a mentor and a patron who thinks the world of him and he's been the senior instructor at the Staff College. And this is Lieutenant General Futurefield Marshall, Alan Christian name,

Brock Sername, who will be later chief of the Imperial General Staff Church's principal military adviser from early 1942, and therefore Montgomery is in exactly the right place. I mean, he's seen as a sort of slightly eccentric, loner. He had married, but his wife had died. He's almost monk-like in his military obsession, reading, teaching, really feeling that

“he's been lucky. He has to pass on his knowledge to other more junior officers. And so it's all”

work, no player with him. The interwar army looks a bit of scans of that. But it does mean he's a bit of a martinette. He demands total physical fitness from those serving with him. So if we're looking for some unique traits about his organizations, his units, his division in France, and then the core that he commands of several divisions in southeast England, immediately after Dunkirk, he demands that all the officers and all the other ranks go out for runs. And that wasn't unusual.

And when a colonel sort of complains, Montgomery says, "Well, good, you're coming out on a run and if you're threatening to die of a heart attack better, it happens on my run rather than

on the battlefield." And he has a point. And again, this goes back to the first world war where

fitness really has got him through and over that lung disease. And we are talking the shock. I mean, the physical fitness thing, I think, is probably quite gentle. It's taken, you know, as read today. But it would have been as revolutionary as imposing SAS fit a standards onto the British army at the time. And so a hallmark of Montgomery's army commands, whatever level, is that he demanded fitness from everybody under him. And he's sort of only got

one lung. I mean, he that works fully because the other lung wound that he got in 1914 has healed. But, you know, the still scar tissue there. So he's not quite a hundred percent, but he insists on going out with them. So his attitude to fitness, physical fitness equals mental fitness.

And battle is always stressful. It's a young man's game. So the older you are, the more attention

you have to pay to your own mental fitness on the battlefield. And this is really what he's getting at.

“And that's what I think makes him unique in terms of British commanders, even in 1941, 1942,”

that this is not simply roleplaying at a certain rank and leaning on the education you've had. There's a always a sense of personal commitment and learning new ideas and technologies and concepts. While events were unfolding at Dunkirk in 1940, the war was shifting dramatically in North Africa. In June, fascist Italy into the war and advanced from Libya into British control Egypt, aiming at the Suez Canal, Britain's vital imperial lifeline to India in the Far East.

At first, the fighting was purely between Italy and Britain. And in December, the smaller,

but more mobile, British Western Desert Force launched an astonishing counter offensive, driving the Italians back across Souranica, capturing tens of thousands of prisoners. It was a stunning success, but it didn't last. Alamed by Italy's collapse, Hitler intervened. In early 1941, the German Africa Corps arrived under Irwin Rommel, soon to become Montgomery's great adversary. Rommel immediately transformed the campaign.

Bull, fast moving, willing to completely ignore orders, he'd counter attacks within weeks and a push British forces back across much the ground they've just taken. So North Africa then became a sea-saw war of vast distances, fragile supply lines and armoured maneuver. The British advance, Rommel would strike back by mid-1942, Axis Forces had driven deep into Egypt and threatened the Nile and the Suez Canal.

This was no side-show. If Egypt fell, Britain's strategic position would be gravely weakened.

He really was nervous about another humiliating defeat here.

“But it was clear now, to those engaged in massive industrial war, that victory needed”

overwhelming stuff, it needed force. Men, tanks, guns, aircraft, fuel, more of everything. We've had a whole series of battles with the Italians and the Germans in an all-African desert, and each time Rommel, with not very many resources, because Hitler's main ambitions are in Russia. So Rommel is useful for propaganda reasons, and he manages to do quite a lot with not very much under his command, and making British petrol and equipment as well. That is not a recipe for success,

but Churchill realizes that the North African theatre has to be reinforced massively. And by now, of course, the Americans are in the war. They have been since the end of 1941. So two things happen. Roosevelt realizes that this is the theatre that the British need to

win to begin with. And so agreed to divert, basically a whole armoured division's worth of brand-new Sherman tanks,

which will come out across the Atlantic to reinforce the British 8th Army. But with them will be wings of American pilots flying Curtis planes. So Alamayne is partly for with American help, both in terms of tanks, but American manned aircraft, strafing the Africa Corps. But a huge influx, as you say, of not just manpower, but logistics, which is hugely important in the Western desert, because there's no water, there's no petrol, so everything has to be

“trucked, huge long distances here there and everywhere, and everything you need to fight and thrive”

and survive in those really inhospitable climates. And that's, I think, more than anything. Really swings the balance against Rommel and the Africa Corps, because they don't have the same kind of backup, because everything for the Germans is going to Russia. With America's industrial might behind them, victory in North Africa was a probability. But you've still got to get out there and make it happen. It requires more than just material superiority. The Allies needed the right

commander to stitch it all together. And so in August 1914, Churchill appointed Bernard Montgomery to command the 8th Army and reverse British fortunes in North Africa. Well, this is hugely important because sort of management students and leadership students look at what Montgomery achieved even today, because he arrives would no previous experience of that theatre. That's really important. He finds a demoralised British organisation there who've been beaten by Rommel several times,

and within six weeks, he's essentially fighting the second battle of El Alameen over the

same ground and wins. And it's not just superior numbers. To fight and win, you need a mindset first and foremost, and Montgomery realized that. So that came partly from training. It also came partly from commanders instilling, not just a will to win, but the belief that you can win.

“And that hadn't I think been around before, under Montgomery's predecessors. And it's the”

time within which he achieves this sort of complete turnaround from her. I won't call the British Army rag tag, but they were at a low-air when Montgomery appears. You know, he writes very dramatically in his memoirs about finding all plans for further retreat and that his first order is all plans for retreat or surrender will be burnt, and hence forward we will only need to think in terms of victory movements forward. When you turn up and you say that to your man, it makes them sort of

sit up and think. He also tries to visit all the forces under his command to show them who he is and how he's going to turn things around. And that makes a difference, because commanders have been

quite reticent. And that's one thing he picks up from the First World War. He's a staff officer,

and he recognises the inclination I think of senior officers to stay back for very sensible reasons that the larger the body of men you come on, the further back from them you've got to be at the sort of center of a fan from which you can communicate to everyone further forward. And if you're further forward, you can't sort of really communicate to everybody else. So the further back you are the better picture you have at the battle, the quicker you can react to unforeseen circumstances,

and the quicker you can order everyone to do what it is that they need to do. So Montgomery's delicate balance is being able to move forward, meet everybody at the front, instill in them, enthusiasm and confidence, but be able to move back issue all the orders he needs so that he can direct reinforcements and logistics supplies from behind him forward, but also to steer the battle to understand when the Germans are collapsing and to manage everything. And now ability to move

And so Montgomery comes up with the idea of using trucks in which his headquarters has been established. Some of these have been nicked from the Germans and the Italians. And so he has

“the idea and he's really the first British general who develops this. And I think that's what”

one of the sort of secrets of a very Bernard Montgomery approach to warfare. It's not that something he necessarily anticipated doing, but he realized it was necessary pretty much straight away. And that then becomes a hallmark of his leadership all the way through the Western desert, Tunisia Sicily, Italy, and then North West Europe, and it's something particularly associated

with him. And it's never been dropped since and it's been adopted by every other army. And if you

look at how other armies in the world were commanding at the time, this is not how they do it. They tend to have one huge headquarters that does all the logistics stuff as well. And what Montgomery can do is just say, right, what I need is a chosen few people who can do the sort of combat orders and handle the intelligence. And I need them to move with me with a little security detail. And everyone else ordering up the shells and how many tins of strawberry jam and needed and

sandbags and all the rest of it, they can stay behind in a big blob to the rear and we'll call

“that main headquarters. And that's what Montgomery develops in North Africa, almost sort of comes”

into its own straightaway at Alameen. And thereafter, and we still have this today. And that's part of his genius. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam, who was Paul Revere, and did the Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman. And on American history, it, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate

floors for the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch, and count the votes that have changed the direction of our laws and leadership. Find American history at twice a week every week wherever you get your podcasts. American history here, a podcast from history here. I think this perhaps is where Montgomery's critics and supporters disagree very fiercely.

In his campaign against Romal and North Africa, admirers saw discipline, they saw him caring for his men, husband and his resources, they saw meticulous planning, but critics saw the delays

and the excessive caution of the First World War General. They saw him relying over well

mainly on artillery to smash an enemy and only then cautiously move forward. So the question does Lincoln, was Montgomery's restraint, but actually, I attribute it was at the secret of his success. What did it limit? What he might have achieved? It's certainly a criticism that's made and it's certainly a criticism that's very valid, that he's a cautious general. But against that, we have to set the fact that Churchill himself, brief Montgomery, is essentially to remind him that the British

Army is much smaller than it was in the First World War and is only one of it compared with what's going on in South East Asia, you are the British Army. And if you break it or you lose it, there isn't another that to replace it. We don't have masses and masses more of reinforcements,

“so you have to be careful. And I think Montgomery's own observations and experience from the First World”

War put him off risking huge numbers of lives in the way that First World War generals did for

whatever reason. So he is cautious by experience from a moral, almost a Christian point of view. Don't forget, he is a Bible Bashar. He reads his Bible twice a day. His family was a bishop. He prose regularly. He issues orders of the day, laced with quotes from the Bible. So he's very much, you know, places himself in the hands of the Almighty and does as much as possible to mitigate British casualties because he doesn't want to go down in history as the Slayer of another

generation of British youth. So, you know, he's got that hanging over him. But more to the point, yes, I mean, he reaches for the solutions. He saw that worked in the First World War and at the end of the First World War, massive artillery bombardments supported by armor, supported by air,

the infantry to advance with his little casualties as possible, still quite high. And that's what he does at Alameen. So a huge gun line. But the important thing to say is the British army couldn't have deployed that gun line before Alameen. The weren't enough guns in Egypt to be able to do that. The weren't enough shells. The wasn't enough ammunition. So Montgomery's lavish use of artillery before Alameen and later on in all his other battles is an expression of the logistical support.

He's been given and he's been given by Churchill. And this is a trade-off between Montgomery and Churchill. Essentially Montgomery is saying, I'll deliver to the best of my ability what you want.

“But you have to bank me up. And the best of my knowledge, my predecessors in the Western Desert”

never had that kind of commitment from you, Mr. Churchill, in terms of tanks and aircraft

and fuel and all the logistics we need and manpower. And so Montgomery really was the first recipient of all of that. So Montgomery was a very good exploiter of the kit he was given, but he knew what he needed and he wouldn't go until he had it. So yes, that probably does equal caution. But that was a very valid caution at the time. And don't forget, Romo has an incredible reputation of appearing where he's not expected of being able to turn round and sort of bite you

in the backside exactly when you're not expecting it and he can hit you very hard indeed. And that's his reputation for two years before Montgomery ever appears in the desert. So there's a bit of anxiety still about the Africa core who are by no means a spent force. An imbil personal caution for which he's much criticized by the Americans. And that brings me on to a point which is different countries fight in different ways. There is a British way of war which in general terms

“is reluctance to get involved and then a slow ponderous build up to learn the lessons you need to”

learn and particularly logistical ones. And you can't become a large army and you can't sustain a large army until you've got the industries at home that are making the uniforms and the shells and the vehicles and the ships that will get them out to you wherever you are. And you can't wave a magic wand and make that happen overnight. It's too easy to sit back as an armchair general waving at a saber and a gin and tonic and say Montgomery, you know, what a shower terribly

cautious where I there this is what I would have done. Yes, I think he's cautious but I don't think that's a bad thing just to sing loud a single general and say he's cautious. Yeah, fine, Montgomery's very open to criticism because he didn't accept criticism very readily. And we might say he's a flawed character in that respect. But at the end of the day, where are some of the pressures?

He knew how to juggle the factors. He understands logistics from the First World War and he was

a strong enough character to resist Churchill and I think that was quite necessary because the pressure Churchill put people under. Montgomery was one of the very few to be able to stand up to it. He was his own man and there are a lot more weaker generals who would have not stood up to

“Churchill in the same way at all and I think that's really, really important. By early 1943,”

Axis forces in North Africa were trapped between Montgomery's army advancing for the east and the other allied, the Anglo-Norman forces pressing in from the west following the landings of Operation Torch in November 1942. Montgomery was now operating with a broader coalition framework.

In May 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered nearly quarter a million German Italian troops

were captured. Montgomery, obviously paid his central role in this reversal. He was a national figure in Britain. He was an international figure. He'd delivered victory where others had failed. But he was less successful at maintaining cordial relations within the allied coalition. His relations with American commanders were professional, mostly, but certainly not warm, differences in tempo and style were very visible. And these differences are matter more and more

in the months ahead, as allied leaders grappled with a big strategic choice, where to strike next. So we come on to sort of 1943 and the decision to go to, Sicily, there is a huge, great geos strategic debate about whether we should go to Normandy, France in 1943. That's how to Montgomery's hands. Churchill's basic position is stop the Americans going early to France at any cost in case they get it wrong. And I think he's absolutely right.

and don't forget their first brush with the Africa Corps and the Casserine Pass was disastrous

and resulted in effectively an American defeat and a corps commander being sent from the US Army.

“So they come into battle with a dubious track record. And that is important because Montgomery,”

who really had no experience with the Americans, didn't fight with them alongside them in the First World War. They were on the same side, but he didn't really come into any contact with them. They are a complete unknown and very soon he's going to have to be under American command, but he doesn't understand this strange beast of Americans and he has a lingering suspicion of their military ability and they certainly don't do things in the way that he would do them

in terms of staff college and they take risks. So that's a problem that's got to be ironed out. Anyway, Montgomery finds himself invading Sicily on the September 9th, July 1943 with a naval plan that's been put together by an admiral who commanded the Dunkirk operation, but from Ramsey and he'll be very important the next year putting together the Normandy as well. And alongside Patton, now Patton commands an American force that's landed in French, North Africa,

which is basically an armored corps, but on the night they invade Sicily, this large armored

beast that Patton is commanding is retitled, the American 7th Army and that's where his army command comes from. And so we have two armies landing on Sicily, 8th Army in the East America, Army in the West and history tells us there's them enormous competition between the two and a race to the north east corner of Sicily, which takes about a month, which is the town of Messina,

“which looks onto the Italian mainland. I don't think it was ever a race. I think it's”

suited historians and certainly newspaperman at the time to put the two army commanders against each other and compare and contrast their different methods of commanding a field army and inevitably Montgomery is portrayed as sort of a little slow and ponderous and Patton is far more dashing, but that's the terrain that's dictated that. That isn't the two army commanders fighting in radically different ways in competition with each other. It's the strength of the German

opposition using terrain as much as they can and Montgomery and the 8th Army with Canadians under command in the east going up the coast from places like Syracuse and Augusta and Katania have a plain to roll over, but it's fiercely defended by the cream of the German armed forces which can reinforce from Italy very easily. Patton has less to go, but he has more mountainous terrain, which is hugely difficult and no troops trained in mountain warfare and, of course, over Sicily,

July August 1943, there's local air parity, so the blinding effects of air power on Rommel's forces in North Africa, isn't present over Sicily and it's a battle that's fought very much on equal terms for the month that it lasts. What's the judgment on how Monti performs? Monti does very well in Sicily. I mean, we've been talking about his alleged caution, the campaign takes a month. I mean, that's remarkably quick for an operational level campaign

against a hostile shore when you're attacking effectively the mainland of one of the Axis partners,

“and you aren't necessarily outnumbering them. I think they did very well and the the”

costing casualties was not insignificant and we lost a lot of ships never mind a lot of personnel.

We chased the Axis off the island, but I think 30 days, give all take, was a remarkably good performance. And don't forget, the Americans and Brits haven't worked terribly well together in Tunisia in the the first army under Anderson where you've got an American corps in an British corps, an army level, Patton and Monti, yes, they're different people and they fight different campaigns. But I think, you know, it goes pretty well for both of them. Having completed

the conquest of Sicily, he jumped across the Italian mainland. Are we seeing the beginnings now of friction, tension emerging within his relationship with the Americans? Is he, is he chafing? Is does he feel that he ought to be given more responsibilities? What can we start to look see when we look at this period? At the end of the Sicily campaign, which is August 1943, it's blindingly obvious that the Allies are going to invade northern France sometime in 1944.

And I think foremost in Montgomer's own mind is his absolute determination to be part of that

the Mediterranean. What he hopes is the Italian campaign will be wrapped up incredibly quickly,

Italy will collapse. The Germans will bug out and Montgomer will be left in command with the Americans of Italy and then can transition to Normandy very quickly. But his worry is that the campaign is prolonged, which is exactly what happens. The Italians do collapse, they switch signs in September 1943, just as the Allied landings at Salerno take place and the Germans fight a very vicious regard for the next year and a half. And Montgomer is deep down, if he were honest,

is passionately worried that he's going to get stuck in Italy, and isn't going to be part of what will be the main campaign, which will be North West Europe, not just part of it, but the senior man. And I think he wants overall control. He's very unhappy when Eisenhower is appointed because I think deep down he feels he's the better man. But he's only a land force commander, Eisenhower's in charge of every aspect, naval and air as well. And Montgomer is not equipped mentally to work

at that level, but what he would like his overall ground control. For the last three months of 1944, he does have an eye on what's happening elsewhere. He is lobbying and he's absolutely certain that he wants to get out of the Mediterranean. The invasions of Italy had shown the Allies could break into fortress Europe. It was a hard grinding campaign, but it did produce victories that Allied publics could see that they were doing this. They were winning.

“And as his success is mounted, Montgomer, when he got a taste for the fame,”

he was no longer just a senior officer. He was Monty, he was a household name. In a war that was a war of propaganda as much as anything else, he was publicized extensively because newspapers and newsreels celebrity mattered. For many like Montgomer, reputation became a weapon, it's own right. Well, I think everybody at this stage is aware that the Second World War is a publicity war

in the way that the First World War wasn't, that newsmen are asking for stories all the time. They're asking for photographs. Montgomer has already been on the front cover of time magazine, as a man of the month or man of the year or whatever. You know, these things matter. And they are red and digested. Montgomer becomes a sort of household name in a way that not only none of his predecessors had, but British generals hadn't in the past. And he sort of rather likes that.

“I think the sort of quite a steer repressed Englishman who was brought up not to blow his own”

trumpet and certainly never did in the First World. I was actively discouraged in the interwar

years. Suddenly finds, you know, he rather likes his name in the newspapers and his image being well known. This is when his bury starts to be popularized and he clings to it. I mean, you know, it's rather like politicians discovering the props are quite helpful to them, Churchill, with his cigar and his bow tie and his walking cane and his array of hats. It's no accident. It's the era when visual effects are used to sort of promote people's characters,

probably stems from the Germans doing this in the 1930s. And when you take it into a military sphere, it's very difficult to, you know, find a uniform prop that everyone isn't using, but the bury sort of suddenly comes to Montgomer's rescue. And that promotes an image far beyond

“the name or the small army relatively small army that he's commanding. So PR publicity, I think”

becomes very, very important. There are things like the 8th Army newspaper and magazines where he appears. And we might say if we were politicians looking at Montgomer from the safety of white all or Westminster, he's getting a bit big for his boots. And on one hand, this was necessary. This is how the British army recovers itself, finds its morale and all or estimate. But in Montgomer's case, there's an element of looking down on other people. And that's his upbringing, British

superiority at the height of empire. He has the good fortune to be born in Englishman and he looks down on everybody else. That's quite a serious thing that a lot of people think about. And so injected into Monty's psyche is this ability to look down on other national players. And that hamper's his ability to offer as much as he can do in coalition warfare. And what happens, I think, in 1943, particularly with the invasion of Sicily,

is that coalition warfare arrives to stay in the Mediterranean Stoke European theatre.

And both sides realize that they can't do it on their own. America can't win the Second World War

partners and so on. At the top level, Eisenhower, Alan Brook, the politicians get that.

“I'm not sure Montgomer ever does. And that's, if he has a black mark in 1943,”

that's probably a major one that he acquires. And I don't think he ever quite sheds. As the Allies get up for the long-awaited invasion of Northwest Europe, Monty was obviously determined to give himself a central role. In late 1943, he got exactly that. He was chosen to take him out of the 21st Army group, which was the British and Canadian force that would land on the Normandy beaches. But initially, he would also be in charge of all the land forces that took

part in the invasion. It was an extraordinary responsibility, not just a leading man in battle,

but really shaping the entire plan for the assault. Monty's essential contribution to

DDA is not in the execution of it, because once you decide to go and that's not his decision, that's Eisenhower's, there's nothing you can do. All your plans then just roll out. So Montgomer's contribution is too full. One is in training, the force that will go to France, on the experience that he's already gained. And the second is in terms of looking at the plan. So Montgomer he looks at the plan right at the end of December 1943, beginning of 1944, and says, "This plan is not

powerful enough. We need far more upfront invading more beaches with more troops and more air

“on troops if we can get them." And that's what's going to make all the difference. And he's”

absolutely right. So the planners go back, they actually draw up existing plans for raids across the

channel on the Sherbel Peninsula. They look at other plans and they come up with the invasion plan that we know. But Montgomer is driven that the campaign then unfolds, not as planned, but it works. And it wouldn't have worked. I'm sure in my own mind if the original plan had been adhered to. So Montgomer in terms of planning is absolutely on message, gets it right. And of course he has the credibility. And the personal drive obstinacy insistence to the point of being obnoxious,

that only his plan will work and everything else just won't. And he's right. He delivers.

“In terms of raising morale, in terms of training the troops, this is his other great contribution.”

Training the land force has already started before he takes over. But he does underline the rigor that's needed in invading France with adequate training and preparation. And my personal contention is that more people die in training for a day than actually die on the day itself, particularly drowning in cornwall assaulting clifftop positions in bad weather where landing craft a sunk. A lot of people perish in practice airborne jumps and gliders crashing.

And if you look at all the battalions that take part in the assault wave, whether storming from the sea or jumping from the sky, they've all received pretty large casualties in the training from accidents and whether this is aircraft crashing, whether this is explosives blowing up, whether this is straining into real mind fields, whether this is drowning in amphibious operations, every single unit, practicing whether they're infantry, armour, artillery, whether of their

logistics units, they all suffer. But you know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We have lower casualties than we should have expected. The alloy planners are expecting to lose 20,000 people on D-Day and our losses are barely a quarter of that and that is down to the rigorous training everybody receives before D-Day and a lot of that is down to Montmore's personal touch and drive. What started the Civil War? What ended the conflict in Vietnam? Who was Paul Revere and did the

Vikings ever reach America? I'm Don Wildman and on American history it, my expert guests and I are journeying across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made America. We'll visit the battlefields and debate floors for the nation was formed, meet the characters who have altered it with their touch and count the votes that have changed the direction

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“By the end of August 1944, despite determined German resistance, the Allied armies had broken”

out of Normandy. Paris was liberated. The Germans retreated towards the sand, allied columns advance across northern France and to Belgium, it appeared. Or be it sadly briefly, we now know. As if the war in the West might be over before the end of 1944. So the question turned to what next. Montgommry argued for concentration. He believed that the Allies should to live at a single

powerful thrust into northern Germany, a narrow front strategy with guests who, in command of it.

Eisenhower, however, favored a broad front strategy so that you would apply pressure everywhere, which prevents the Germans from concentrating their reserves. And it probably better reflected the coalition realities. The idea was that American British Canadian armies all advancing in parallel. Montgommry was, as usual, direct, unrelenting. He pressed his case. He believed that clarity of command required clarity of decision. He was not inclined to soften his arguments.

And to me who's colleagues and some politicians, he came across as presumptuous. The problem

was that Montgommry never quite internalised the fact that he wasn't operating in a British

dominated theater. This was not the 1880s anymore. Heck, this wasn't even 1942 anymore. The United States was fielding an ever larger share of the troops in northwest Europe. American industry was sustaining the Allied war efforts at this massive scale. Figures such as General George S. Patton, the nomar Bradley, commanded large American formations, which were also advancing rapidly across France. So it was inevitable that the Allied strategy would have to, in some ways,

reflect these material realities. But I say inevitable, but Montgommry certainly didn't seem to

“think so. This is where Montgommry's swollen head, I think, works against him. He's had several”

run-ins with different fellow commanders. One is with Eisenhower and one of the problems is Montgommry sees himself really as the rightful air from Eisenhower's job, the overall land force commander and commanding everybody else. And with his coalition partners, particularly the Canadians,

he feels he should be able to choose the senior Canadian commanders and basically wants to be surrounded

by yes men. And that doesn't endure him to any of the coalition partners that he has to fight alongside. So that's one of the problems that Montgommry brings to the party. And that's a problem because he really doesn't understand coalition politics. He's not prepared to and that all comes from the fact that he feels he's the only person for the job that he's irreplaceable. So the issue then goes up beyond Eisenhower, who sort of says, "I can't carry on with Montgommry." He's

constantly trying to pull the rug from under me, thinks he's better than me and wants my job. And effectively, when Montgommry is confronted with this, Montgommry's view is that, well, I'm irreplaceable so I can say what I want and I can behave how I want. And that's where Montgommry does need other people around him who can temper his wild enthusiasm and his arrogance. And the only person really who's there who really can do that is Freddy DeGangol, who's his chief of stuff.

And so most of the time when Montgommry just is uncontrollable on the battlefield, DeGangol is

“there to really sort of calm him down. And these are all Montgommry's inferiorities and I think”

the stems from difficult relations with his parents, particularly his mother who was very, very dominant. And Montgommry now being top-dogan who can decide not only who his friends and enemies are, but who his opponents are and he perceives the Americans as trying to steal his glory and it's not the case. But this is why Montgommry seems to make commanding the British 21st Army group, or Anglo-Canadian 21st Army group in 1944 and 45 more difficult than it should have

been. There shouldn't have been the tensions in Allied High Command largely generated by Montgommry that the were. It's a clash of personalities, but it's driven largely by Montgommry and no one else.

his gamble. He argued that a single concentrated decisive thrust through the Netherlands would outflank Germany's Western defences, cross the Rhine River system and just lay open the route into Northern Germany, the Industrial River. If successful, this might end the war before winter. This plan became Operation Market Garden. The market part was an airborne assault, so British and American Airborne Division dropped deep behind enemy lines to seize a

series of bridges, most infamously the bridge in the town of Arnhem, then Garden, Market Garden, the Garden part would be the ground advance. A British armoured thrust charging up a narrow corridor to link up with all these bridges and things that have been seized by airborne troops. It was bold, it was ambitious. It really did depart from Montgommry's usual caution, and the question

“has been hotly debated ever since. Was this a an overly risky gamble? We have to remember an”

Eisenhower's on record as having said this, that the North West European campaign was anticipated to have two bloody moments. One would be landing an opposed landing on the French coast and the

second would be crossing the river Rhine, which is I always portrayed as the nervous system of the

third Reich. So crossing it is an enormous thing, even going back to the Romans, no one had ever really managed to get across the Rhine and stay across. So for the Allies, this is a huge logistical undertaking and a big psychological one as well. Montgommry realizes this, understands that actually a quickest way might be to duck round the northern edge of the Rhine and take a series of bridges, because behind the river Rhine is the German secret line of bunkers and the two

together, just spelled doom and gloom and disaster. And that's the reason for the September 1944 attempt at Arnhem, Nymegen and Einhofen. So if you look at Arnhem, it's Operation Market Garden, one is an army plan, and the other is an Air Force plan, and the conjunction of the two is an

“unhappy marriage, and that's because it's been thrown together very, very quickly. I think when”

it was first devised, it was quite practical and probably would have worked, because the Germans

had nothing. But in that three week period before the troops were actually launched, the Germans managed to sort of cobble together a resistance and circumstances changed, but none of the Allied intelligence community really understood the things had changed that quickly. And of course, once Montgomery backs a plan, it's very difficult to then back down, and so on, we won't do this because things have changed. Once the military planning machine sort of, it's a bit like a

a giant industrial machine with an on button and no off button. And in that sense, it's a bit like the battle of the storm in 1916. Once you convince yourself that this thing is a workable plan,

“and you press the go button, it's almost impossible to stop. And that was really the essence of”

market garden, but it's not Montgomery's fault. It's Eisenhower's fault. One stage above, with the ability to look over the whole front, see what the Americans are doing, see where the Germans are weak, privy perhaps to more intelligence than Montgomery had. It was Eisenhower's responsibility to say yes or no, and Eisenhower said yes. So I'm not a fan of operation market garden, having walked the ground, I can see all the drawbacks. Montgomery backed it at the operational

level. So he bears some responsibility. I'm not absorbing him of blame. I don't think Montgomery should have approved it, but at the end of the day, the buck up for that operation stops with Eisenhower, not Montgomery. And it is a disaster. We know the way it unfolds to thirds of it does work, but on him turns out to be beyond British reach for all sorts of reasons, but be that as it may. We end up with a bloody nose by the end of September, arguably something that we should have seen

happening to us, but that's the nature of war and the success of the allies is that they bounce back very quickly from what's been a tactical failure. After the failure of market garden, the war in Western Europe slowed down at hardened until 16th December, when very surprisingly German forces, for their part, launched a massive surprise offensive through the Arden, the Battle of the Bulge had begun. The attack struck primarily American forces.

There was some confusion. Some units were forced back, and for a brief moment, this was the

most dangerous crisis the Western allies had faced since those first few days on the Normandy beaches.

He temporarily placed American forces north of the bulge, north of the German advance,

“under Bernard Montgomery's command. Montgomery played a stabilising role. He”

reorganized offensive lines. He imposed clear-up command arrangements. The ensured counter-attacks were coordinated rather than improvised. True to his character, he refused to rush he insisted on preparation before major strikes, and allied forces moved onto the front foot. They counter-attacks by January 1945. The German offensive was crushed. Military Montgomery's handling of that northern sector was effective. Nothing to write home

about for military historians, but he helped to restore order out of a bit of chaos, and it's precise the kind of situation in which his strengths were most visible. However, in classic Montgomery fashion or monkey fashion, I should say, he immediately began overstating his role and just

“provoked the eye of his American colleagues. He ruffles a lot of feathers amongst the allies,”

particularly to the Americans at a post-battle press conference, where he implies that this was a very easy thing for him to do, and perhaps the trickiest battle he ever fought, but he really at rather enjoyed doing it, and implied that the Battle of the Bulge was largely a British fought battle when he was almost exclusively American. And this causes such outrage throughout the American forces, and the American public back home that even Winston Churchill criticises

Montgomery, and he does so in a house of commons. By saying this was hugely significant, American battle and care must be taken to not claim credit for something where credit is entirely due to our American allies. But if we come on to March 1945, this is the Allied Rhinocrossings,

and Eisenhardt always promised that British would get the lion share of Allied resources to cross

up in the north after having cleared the forest leading up to the river Rhinocross felled, and that's exactly the case. Most of the German defenders who would have done a very good job of massacring the allies as they crossed the river Rhinocross all landed on the eastern bank. Of course, have been sacrificed in the Battle of the Bulge. So crossing the Rhinocross, Eisenhardt always thought would be a horrendous and very bloody affair, turns out to be a damp squid. But the

crossing of the river Rhinocross naval and land aspect is Operation Plunder. There is an airborne landing as well, Operation Vacity. The two of them use everything Montgomery has learnt to do

all the way through the Second World. This is his final swansong. He knows it. He knows that the third

Reich really genuinely is now on its upper will be shot in a few months, militarily incapable, and he's determined to use everything in his toolbox, his train set, that he's picked up ever since Alame, massive artillery support, landing craft and a wide range of amphibious craft used in the Rhinocrossing itself, masses of engineers to build ramps and rafts, other engineers to use search lights to create artificial moonlight, all sorts of innovations that have come in

and the integration of airborne bombers to soften up German offenders before the allies cross. Come on, those going in followed by infantry swimming tanks, everything that you see in D-Day and even before Reich going back to the western desert and Alame, are suddenly presented with the crossing of the Rhinocrossing. It's a massive sledgehammer to crack a knot, but Montgomery does it because he can, and some people present this probably as a case of massive caution.

“I think he just does it because he can, and he can see the end of the war around the corner,”

and he is incredibly impressive. So much so that Churchill comes along to witness the crossing of the Rhinocrossing with Brooke. Churchill actually creeps across on one of the destroyed bridges over the river Rhinocrossing and comes under sniper fire, and he's escorting generals, a huge worry by this, not Churchill, and I think Churchill is then what's 70, and one of the reasons why he's there is to come under fire for his last battle in his 70th year. There aren't many politicians like

that, but that is Churchill, the old wars, and Monty is furious, but the point is Montgomery is laid on this massive, massive attack across the river Rhinocrossing that cannot fail and does not fail, and that really is his swan song, and the end of the Northwest European campaign. I mean,

overlook the fact that Montgomery then has a very successful year as the military governor of northern Germany of the British patch, and in some ways he proves himself remarkably successful. He doesn't attach much importance to it, and historians haven't, perhaps because it's not a war-like activity, but actually he governs Germany very well indeed, without being too vindictive, saves the Germans from a "the potential of massive famine" in the winter of 1945-46. Distributes a lot of aid to the

stricken communities, and really starts to get Germany back on its feet when the Americans are being far more vindictive and certainly so at the French, and Montgomery's attitude to civil military relations,

“actually proved very inspired, and I think he really did that job extraordinarily well. But again,”

this tends to get left out of history for the flash and the bang of the military campaign in the Second World War. Can we do a fun exercise of comparing Montgomery to other great commanders? How would you rate him in the great span of history? Well it's a very, very good question, and it is important that we go back and we look at Montgomery and measure him, because we need to make sure that our commanders today and tomorrow won't make the same mistakes.

I think if you served under him, you thought the world of him, and I don't think I've ever met

a veteran who was really highly critical of Monti. They loved fighting under him and they loved the fact

that he would visit battalions and tell people to break ranks and gather round, and he would tell them how they're going to win the war and beat the Germans for six, and that really made it different, so it was a huge contrast to the way stuffy commanders led their men in the first war. And likewise, I think if you're on his staff, they worshipped him. But I think if you were a contemporary, same sort of generation, same sort of level, or even one of his superiors, whether a military

figure or a politician, Montgomery saw you as a threat, and I think part of the make-up of Monti and the reason why he fell out with people is he didn't like threats. He was hugely proud of what he achieved, and he knew he was a high-flier, but he was also very, very vulnerable to all of that glory being taken away from him. And he saw threats in fellow commanders, and people of

“his age group, his generation, and the politicians, and that's why he fell out with them. He thought”

they were trying to take away his glory. I don't think that was over the case, but that was his

vulnerability, his flaw, and that's why we have to be aware of it. So I'm always wary of

criticizing him too much, but I do think we have to be objective, while saying good old Monti, we have to say yes but, because otherwise we'll be in danger of promoting another Monti and another war in the future which won't help the British cause. Burn up Montgomery's life, trace the arc of Britain's 20th century. Born at the height of Empire, forged in the trench of the first world war, tempered in the lean into war years, and tested in the decisive campaigns of the second.

We might as, never entirely at home, with the post-war realities of Britain's diminished role in the world. Montgomery embodied a particular kind of soldier, a discipline. He was

methodical, he was unyielding. Before and during the second battle of Alameen, he restored belief

that had been waning. He led the charge during the invasion of Sicily. He helped to ensure the success of the Normandy campaign. During the Arden crisis, he steadied a shaken front. At the Rhine, he delivered a final set piece below the long advocated for. But, on the other side at market

“garden, while he overreached. Meanwhile in politics, he was, I think, at best a hindrance at”

worst, a threat to the stability of the coalition. He was more abrasive and difficult than any other allied commander, and he swaggering over confidence. Well, let's say it alienated people. He was not a commander in the audacious mold of her in rumble. Or an aggressive showman quite like George S. Patton. He was something more restrained. Perhaps representative of modern industrial war, and certainly the Britain that he'd come from. Is he one of the greatest commander of the second world war? Or

just one of its most competent professionals? Historians continue to debate. But this much is sudden when Britain needs a general who would not retreat. Burn and Montgomery. Was there?

series. We're going to look at that master of coalition warfare, Monti long-suffering senior,

“the supreme allied commander himself Dwight D. Eisenhower. A commander unlike any other will hear”

about how he rose from relative obscurity to take charge of arguably the largest military

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