Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG, GCB, DSO, PC ( ; 17 November 1887 24 March 1976), often referred to as "Monty", was an Anglo-Irish British Army officer. He successfully commanded Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein, a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign during World War II, and troops under his command played a major role in the expulsion of Axis forces from North Africa. He was later a prominent commander in Italy and North-West Europe, where he was in command of all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord until after the Battle of Normandy, and was the principal commander for Operation Market Garden.

Early life

Montgomery was born in Kennington, London in 1887, the fourth child of nine, to an Anglo-Irish Anglican priest, the Reverend Henry Hutchinson Montgomery and Maud Montgomery (née Farrar). Henry Montgomery, at the time the Vicar of St Mark's, Kennington, was the second son of the noted Indian administrator, Sir Robert Montgomery, who died a month after Bernard's birth. Bernard's mother Maud was the daughter of the well-known preacher Frederic William Farrar, and was eighteen years younger than her husband. After the death of Robert Montgomery, Henry inherited the Montgomery ancestral estate of New Park at Moville, County Donegal.

However, there was still £13,000 to pay on the mortgage, a large amount of money in the 1880s, and Henry was at the time still only a parish priest. Despite selling off farms at Ballynally, "there was barely enough to keep up New Park and pay for the summer holiday" (i.e., at New Park). It was a financial relief that in 1889 Henry was made Bishop of Tasmania, then still a colony. He considered it his duty to spend as much time as possible in the outlying country of Tasmania and was away six months at a time. While he was away his wife, still in her mid twenties gave her children "constant" beatings, then ignored them most of the time as she performed the public duties of the bishop's wife. Of his siblings, Sibyl would die prematurely in Tasmania, and Harold, Donald and Una would all emigrate. In the absence of her husband, Maud Montgomery took little active interest in the education of her young children other than to have them taught by tutors brought across from England. The loveless environment made Bernard something of a bully, as he himself later recalled "I was a dreadful little boy. I don't suppose anybody would put up with my sort of behaviour these days."Later in life Montgomery refused to allow his son David to have anything to do with his grandmother and he refused to attend her funeral in 1949.

The family returned home once for the Lambeth Conference in 1897, and Bernard and his brother Harold were educated for a term at The King's School, Canterbury. In 1901, Bishop Montgomery became secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the family returned to London. Montgomery went to St Paul's School and then the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, from which he was almost expelled for setting fire to a fellow cadet during a fight with pokers. On graduation he joined the 1st Battalion, The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in September 1908 as a second lieutenant, first seeing service in India until 1913. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1910.

First World War

The First World War began in August 1914 and Montgomery moved to France with his regiment that month. He saw service during the retreat from Mons, during which half his battalion was destroyed. At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an Allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper and was injured seriously enough for his grave to be dug in preparation for his death. A Platoon sergeant came to assist him but was killed. He fell on Montgomery. The German sniper fired at him until sunset. The body of the sergeant protected Montgomery and took most of the enemy fire. Montgomery was hit once more though, in the knee. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for gallant leadership. The citation for this award, published in the London Gazette in December 1914 reads:

After recovering in early 1915, he was appointed to be brigade major training Kitchener's New Army and returned to the Western Front in early 1916 as an operations staff officer during the battles of the Somme, Arras, and Passchendaele. During this time he came under IX Corps, part of General Sir Herbert Plumer's Second Army. Through his training, rehearsal, and integration of the infantry with artillery and engineers, the troops of Plumer's Second Army were able to achieve their objectives efficiently and without unnecessary casualties.

Montgomery served at the battles of the Lys and Chemin-des-Dames before finishing the war as General Staff Officer 1 and effectively chief of staff of the 47th Division, with the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel. A photograph from October 1918 shows the then unknown Lt.-Col. Montgomery standing in front of Winston Churchill (Minister of Munitions) at the victory parade at Lille.

Between the wars

After the First World War Montgomery commanded 17th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, a battalion in the British Army of the Rhine, before reverting to his substantive rank of captain (brevet major) in November 1919. He wrote up his experiences in a series of training pamphlets and manuals. He then attended the army's Staff College, Camberley, before being appointed Brigade Major in the 17th Infantry Brigade in January 1921. The brigade was stationed in County Cork during the Irish War of Independence. A cousin of Montgomery's, Lt Col. Hugh Montgomery, had been assassinated by the IRA in 1920 (see the Cairo Gang). IRA officer Tom Barry said that he "behaved with great correctness". Montgomery came to the conclusion that the conflict could not be won without harsh measures, and that self-government was the only feasible solution; in 1923, after the establishment of the Irish Free State and during the Irish Civil War, Montgomery wrote to Percival of the Essex Regiment: "Personally, my whole attention was given to defeating the rebels but it never bothered me a bit how many houses were burnt. I think I regarded all civilians as 'Shinners' and I never had any dealings with any of them. My own view is that to win a war of this sort, you must be ruthless. Oliver Cromwell, or the Germans, would have settled it in a very short time. Nowadays public opinion precludes such methods, the nation would never allow it, and the politicians would lose their jobs if they sanctioned it. That being so, I consider that Lloyd George was right in what he did, if we had gone on we could probably have squashed the rebellion as a temporary measure, but it would have broken out again like an ulcer the moment we removed the troops. I think the rebels would probably [have] refused battles, and hidden their arms etc. until we had gone."

In 1923, Montgomery was posted to the Territorial 49th Division, eschewing the usual amounts of drill for tactical training . He returned to the 1st Royal Warwickshires in 1925 as a company commander and captain. In January 1926 having been promoted to major in 1925, he was appointed D.A.A.G. at the Staff College, Camberley in the temporary rank of lieutenant-colonel, a position he held until January 1929 by which time he had been made a (brevet lieutenant-colonel).

In 1927, he met and married Elizabeth Carver, widow of Oswald Carver, Olympic rowing medalist who was killed in the First World War. Their son, David, was born in August 1928. Elizabeth Carver was the sister of WWII commander Percy Hobart.

In 1931 Montgomery became lieutenant-colonel commanding the 1st Battalion of The Royal Warwickshire Regiment in 1931, and saw service in Palestine, Egypt, and India. He was promoted to full colonel in 1934 and became an instructor at the Indian Army Staff College in Quetta, India. As was usual, Montgomery maintained links with the Royal Warwickshires, taking up the honorary position of Colonel-of-the-Regiment in 1947. Montgomery stirred up the resentment of his superiors for his arrogance and dictatorial ways, and also for his disregard of convention when it obstructed military effectiveness. For example, he set up a battalion brothel in Tripoli, Libya during World War II, regularly inspected by the medical officer, for the 'horizontal refreshment' of his soldiers rather than forcing them to take chances in unregulated establishments. He was quoted as saying that his men "deserved it".

On completion of his tour of duty in India, Montgomery returned to Britain in June 1937 where he became commanding officer of the 9th Infantry Brigade with the temporary rank of brigadier, but that year also saw tragedy for him; his wife was bitten by an insect while on holiday in Burnham-on-Sea. The bite became infected, and his wife died in his arms from septicaemia following an amputation. The loss devastated Montgomery, but he insisted on throwing himself back into his work immediately after the funeral. In 1938, he organised an amphibious combined operations landing exercise that impressed the new commander-in-chief, Southern Command, General Wavell. He was promoted to major-general in October 1938 and took command of the 8th Infantry Division in Palestine. There he quashed an Arab revolt before returning in July 1939 to Britain, suffering a serious illness on the way, to command the 3rd Infantry Division. On hearing of the rebel defeat in April 1939, Montgomery said, "I shall be sorry to leave Palestine in many ways, as I have enjoyed the war out here".

Second World War

Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. The 3rd Division was deployed to Belgium as part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). Montgomery predicted a disaster similar to that in 1914, and so spent the Phony War training his troops for tactical retreat rather than offensive operations. During this time, Montgomery faced serious trouble from his superiors for his attitude regarding the sexual health of his soldiers. He outraged the clergy by stating openly in a memo that in his opinion "when a man wanted a woman, he should have one". However, he was defended from dismissal by his superior Alan Brooke, commander of II Corps. 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 the River Dijle and then withdrew to Dunkirk with great professionalism, returning to Britain intact with minimal casualties. During Operation Dynamo—the evacuation of 330,000 BEF and French troops to Britain—Montgomery had assumed command of the II Corps after Alan Brooke had taken acting command of the whole BEF.

On his return Montgomery antagonised the War Office with trenchant criticisms of the command of the BEF and was briefly relegated to divisional command. He was however made a Companion of the Order of the Bath. In July 1940, he was appointed acting lieutenant-general, placed in command of V Corps and started a long-running feud with the new commander-in-chief, Southern Command, Claude Auchinleck. In April 1941, he became commander of XII Corps and in December 1941 South-Eastern Command which he renamed the South-Eastern Army to promote offensive spirit. During this time he 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

In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of commander-in-chief Middle East Command and commander Eighth Army. He had stabilised the Allied position at El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with Alexander and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert. After Gott was killed flying back to Cairo Churchill was persuaded by Alan Brooke to appoint Montgomery, who had only just been nominated to replace Alexander as commander of the British ground forces for Operation Torch.

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 is supposed to have said "I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about Rommel"

Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army. Taking command on 13 August 1942, he immediately became a whirlwind of activity. He ordered the creation of a mobile British armoured corps—similar to a German Panzer Corps—to reinforce the long front line at El Alamein, something that would take two months to accomplish. He asked his commander, Gen. Alexander, to send him two new British divisions (51st Highland and 44th) that were then arriving in Egypt and were scheduled to be deployed in defense 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", he told his officers at the first meeting he held with them in the desert. "If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead."

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 next to the British General Officer's badge) for which he became famous. The black beret had been offered to him by a soldier upon climbing into a tank to get a closer look at the front lines. 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.

First battles with Rommel

Rommel attempted to turn the left flank of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam Halfa from 31 August 1942. The German/Italian armoured Corps infantry attack was stopped in very heavy fighting. Rommel's forces had to withdraw urgently lest their retreat through the British minefields be cut off. 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 including British, Australian, South African, Indian, Greek and Free French units.

El Alamein

The Battle of El Alamein began on 23 October 1942, and ended twelve days later with the first large-scale, decisive Allied land victory of the war. Montgomery correctly predicted both the length of the battle and the number of casualties (13,500). He has been criticised for failing to capitalise immediately on his victory at El Alamein. However, soon after British armoured units and infantry broke through the German and Italian lines and were pursuing the enemy forces at speed along the coast road, a violent, unseasonable rainstorm burst over the region making rapid pursuit impossible, the tanks and support trucks bogged down in the desert mud. Montgomery had to call off the chase. Standing before his officers at headquarters, he was close to tears, but the Battle of El Alamein had been a great success. Over 30,000 prisoners were taken including the German second in command, General von Thoma (Rommel, who had been in a hospital in Germany at the start of the battle had been forced to return on 25 September 1942 after his replacement as German commander, Stumme died of a heart attack in the early hours of the battle.), and eight other general officers.

Tunisia

Montgomery was knighted and promoted to full general. The Eighth Army's subsequent advance as the Germans retreated hundreds of miles towards their bases in Tunisia used the logistical and firepower advantages of the British Army while avoiding unnecessary risks. It also gave the Allies an indication that the tide of war had genuinely turned in North Africa . Montgomery kept the initiative, applying superior strength when it suited him, forcing Rommel out of each successive defensive position. On 6 March 1943, Rommel's attack on the over-extended Eighth Army at Medenine (Operation Capri) with the largest concentration of German armour in North Africa was successfully repulsed. At the Mareth Line, 20 March 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.

This campaign demonstrated the battle-winning ingredients of morale (sickness and absenteeism were virtually eliminated in the Eighth Army ), co-operation of all arms including the air forces, first-class logistical back-up and clear-cut orders. For his role in North Africa he was awarded the Legion of Merit by the United States government in the rank of Chief Commander.

Sicily

The next major Allied attack was the Allied invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky). It was in Sicily that Montgomery's famous tensions with US commanders really began. Montgomery managed to recast plans for the Allied invasion, having Patton's Seventh US Army land in the Gulf of Gela (on the left flank of Eighth Army, which landed around Syracuse in the south-east of Sicily) rather than at Palermo in the west of Sicily as Patton had wished. Inter-Allied tensions grew as the American commanders Patton and Bradley (then commanding II US Corps under Patton), took umbrage at what they perceived as Montgomery's attitudes and boastfulness. They resented him, while accepting his skills as a general.

Italian Campaign

During the autumn of 1943, Montgomery continued to command Eighth Army during the landings on the mainland of Italy itself. In conjunction with the Anglo-American landings at Salerno (near Naples) by Mark Clark's Fifth Army and seaborne landings by British paratroops in the heel of Italy (including the key port of Taranto, where they disembarked without resistance directly into the port), Montgomery led Eighth Army up the toe of Italy. Some criticism was made of the slowness of Montgomery's advance. The Eighth Army, responsible for the eastern side of the Allied front, from the central Apennine mountain spine to the Adriatic coast, fought a succession of engagements alternating between opposed crossings of the rivers running across their line of advance and attacks against the cleverly constructed defensive positions the Germans had fashioned on the ridges in between. Eighth Army crossed the Sangro river in mid-November and penetrated the German's strongest position at the Gustav Line but as the winter weather deteriorated the advance ground to a halt as transport bogged down and air support operations became impossible. Montgomery abhorred the lack of coordination, the dispersion of effort, and the strategic muddle and opportunism he perceived in the Allied effort in Italy and was glad to leave the "dog's breakfast" on 23 December.

Normandy

Montgomery returned to Britain to take command of the 21st Army Group which consisted of all Allied ground forces that would take part in Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy. Preliminary planning for the invasion had been taking place for two years, most recently by COSSAC staff (Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander). Montgomery quickly concluded that the COSSAC plan was too limited, and strongly advocated expanding the plan from a three-division to a five-division assault. As with his takeover of the Eighth Army, Montgomery travelled frequently to his units, raising morale and ensuring training was progressing. At St Paul's School on 7 April and 15 May he presented his strategy for the invasion. He envisaged a ninety day battle, ending when all the forces reached the Seine, pivoting on an Allied-held Caen, with British and Canadian armies forming a shoulder and the US armies wheeling on the right.

During the hard fought two and a half month Battle of Normandy that followed, the impact of a series of unfavourable autumnal weather conditions disrupted the Normandy landing areas and seriously hampered the tactical delivery of planned transportation of personnel and supplies which were being carried across the English Channel. Consequently, Montgomery argues in his literary account (WIP) that he was unable to follow his pre-battle plan precisely to the timescales planned outside of battle. It should be noted that the extension of the battle plan by one month was the cause of significant retrospective criticisms of Montgomery by some of his American peers, including the much respected Bradley and equally controversial Patton.

Montgomery's initial plan was, most likely, for an immediate breakout toward Caen. Unable to do so, as the British did not get enough forces ashore to exploit the successful landing, Montgomery's advance was checked. When it appeared unlikely that the British Second Army would breakout, Montgomery's contingency was designed to attract German forces to the British sector to ease the passing of United States Army through German defences to the west, during Operation Cobra. This series of battle plans by the British, Canadian and American armies trapped and defeated the German forces in Normandy in the Falaise pocket. The campaign that Montgomery fought was essentially attritional until the middle of July with the occupation of the Cotentin Peninsula and a series of offensives in the east, which secured Caen and attracted the bulk of German armour there. An American breakout was achieved with Operation Cobra and the encirclement of German forces in the Falaise pocket at the cost of British sacrifice with the diversionary Operation Goodwood.

Advance to the Rhine

[[Image:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-14059-0018, Berlin, Oberbefehlshaber der vier Verbündeten.jpg|thumb|The Supreme Commanders on 5 June 1945 in Berlin:Bernard Montgomery, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Georgy Zhukov und Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.]]The increasing preponderance of American troops in the European theatre (from five out of ten divisions at D-Day to 72 out of 85 in 1945) made it a political impossibility for the Ground Forces Commander to be British. After the end of the Normandy campaign, General Eisenhower himself took over Ground Forces Command while continuing as Supreme Commander, with Montgomery continuing to command the 21st Army Group, now consisting mainly of British and Canadian units. Montgomery bitterly resented this change, although it had been agreed before the D-Day invasion. Winston Churchill had Montgomery promoted to field marshal by way of compensation.

Montgomery was able to persuade Eisenhower to adopt his strategy of a single thrust to the Ruhr with Operation Market Garden in September 1944. It was uncharacteristic of Montgomery's battles: the offensive was strategically bold, but poorly planned. Montgomery either didn't receive or ignored ULTRA intelligence which warned of the presence of German armoured units near the site of the attack. As a result, the operation ended in an unmitigated disaster with the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division at the Battle of Arnhem and the loss of any hopes of invading Germany by the end of 1944. Montgomery's preoccupation with the push to the Ruhr had also distracted him from the essential task of clearing the Scheldt during the capture of Antwerp; and so, after Arnhem, Montgomery's group was instructed to concentrate on doing this so that the port of Antwerp could be opened.

When the surprise attack on the Ardennes took place on 16 December 1944, starting the Battle of the Bulge, the front of the U.S. 12th Army Group was split, with the bulk of the U.S. First Army being on the northern shoulder of the German 'bulge'. The Army Group commander, General Omar Bradley, was located south of the penetration at Luxembourg and command of the U.S. First Army became problematic. Montgomery was the nearest commander on the ground and on 20 December, Eisenhower (who was in Versailles) transferred Courtney Hodges' U.S. First Army and William Simpson's U.S. Ninth Army to his 21st Army Group, despite Bradley's vehement objections on national grounds. Montgomery grasped the situation quickly, visiting all divisional, corps, and army field commanders himself and instituting his 'Phantom' network of liaison officers. He grouped the British XXX Corps as a strategic reserve behind the Meuse and reorganised the US defence of the northern shoulder, shortening and strengthening the line and ordering the evacuation of St Vith. The German commander of the 5th Panzer Army, Hasso von Manteuffel said:

The operations of the American 1st Army had developed into a series of individual holding actions. Montgomery's contribution to restoring the situation was that he turned a series of isolated actions into a coherent battle fought according to a clear and definite plan. It was his refusal to engage in premature and piecemeal counter-attacks which enabled the Americans to gather their reserves and frustrate the German attempts to extend their breakthrough.

Eisenhower had then wanted Montgomery to go on the offensive on 1 January to meet Patton's army that had started advancing from the south on 19 December and in doing so, trap the Germans. However, Montgomery refused to commit infantry he considered underprepared into a snowstorm and for a strategically unimportant piece of land. He did not launch the attack until 3 January, by which point the German forces had been able to escape. A large part of American military opinion thought that he should not have held back, though it was characteristic of him to use drawn-out preparations for his attack. After the battle the U.S. First Army was restored to the 12th Army Group; the U.S. Ninth Army remained under 21st Army Group until it crossed the Rhine.

Montgomery's 21st Army Group advanced to the Rhine with operations Veritable and Grenade in February 1945. A meticulously-planned Rhine crossing occurred on 24 March. While successful it was weeks after the Ameicans had unexpected captured the Ludendorff Bridge and crossed the river. Montgomery's river crossing was followed by the encirclement of the German Army Group B in the Ruhr. Initially Montgomery's role was to guard the flank of the American advance. This was altered, however, to forestall any chance of a Red Army advance into Denmark, and the 21st Army Group occupied Hamburg and Rostock and sealed off the Danish peninsula.

On 4 May 1945, on Lüneburg Heath, Montgomery accepted the surrender of German forces in northern Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. This was done plainly in a tent without any ceremony. In the same year he was awarded the Order of the Elephant, the highest order in Denmark. On 26 October 1945 he was made a Freeman of Huddersfield.

Later life

After the war Montgomery became the C-in-C of the British Forces of Occupation and the British member of the Allied Control Council. He was created 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein in 1946. He was Chief of the Imperial General Staff from 1946 until 1948, succeeding Alanbrook, but was largely a failure as it required strategic and political skills he did not possess. He was barely on speaking terms with his fellow chiefs, sending his VCIGS to attend their meetings and he clashed particularly with Arthur Tedder, who as Deputy Supreme Commander had intrigued for Montgomery's dismissal during the Battle of Normandy, and who was by now Chief of the Air Staff. When Montgomery's term of office expired, the Prime Minister Clement Attlee appointed General (later Field-Marshal) William Slim as his successor; when Montgomery protested that he had already promised the job to his protegé General Crocker, a former corps commander from the 1944-5 campaign, Attlee is said to have given the memorable retort "Untell him".

Montgomery was then appointed Chairman of the Western European Union's commanders-in-chief committee. Volume 3 of Nigel Hamilton's Life of Montgomery of Alamein gives a good account of the bickering between Montgomery and his land forces chief, a French general, which created splits through the Union headquarters. He was thus pleased to become Eisenhower's deputy in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's European forces in 1951. He was an effective inspector-general and mounted good exercises, but out of his depth politically, and his exacting manner and emphasis on efficiency created ill-feeling. He continued to serve under Eisenhower's successors, Matthew Ridgway and Al Gruenther, until his retirement, aged nearly 71, in 1958. His mother died in 1949; Montgomery did not attend the funeral, claiming he was "too busy". He was chairman of the governing body of St John's School, Leatherhead, Surrey from 1951 to 1966 and a generous supporter.



In 1953, the Hamilton Board of Education in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, wrote to Montgomery and asked permission to name a new school in the city's east end after him. Viscount Montgomery Elementary was billed as "the most modern school in North America" and the largest single-storey school in Hamilton, when the sod was turned on 14 March 1951. The school officially opened on 18 April 1953, with Montgomery in attendance among almost 10,000 well-wishers. At the opening, he gave the motto "Gardez Bien" from his own family's coat of arms.

Montgomery referred to the school as his "beloved school" and visited on five separate occasions, the last being in 1960. On his last visit, he said to "his" students:

Let's make Viscount Montgomery School the best in Hamilton, the best in Ontario, the best in Canada. I don't associate myself with anything that is not good. It is up to you to see that everything about this school is good. It is up to the students to not only be their best in school but in their behaviour outside of Viscount. Education is not just something that will help you pass your exams and get you a job, it is to develop your brain to teach you to marshal facts and do things.

Before retirement, Montgomery's outspoken views on some subjects, such as race, were often officially suppressed. After retirement these outspoken views became public and his reputation suffered. He supported apartheid (although such views were more common in the 1960s than subsequently) and Chinese communism under Mao Zedong, and spoke against the legalisation of homosexuality in the United Kingdom, arguing that the Sexual Offences Act 1967 was a "charter for buggery" and that "this sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British — thank God." However, several of Montgomery's biographers, including Chalfont (who found something "disturbingly equivocal" in "his relations with boys and young men" ) and Nigel Hamilton (2002) have suggested that he may himself have been a repressed homosexual; in the late 1940s he conducted an affectionate friendship with a 12-year-old Swiss boy.



Montgomery's memoirs (1958) criticised many of his wartime comrades in harsh terms, including Eisenhower, whom he accused, among other things, of prolonging the war by a year through poor leadership—allegations which ended their friendship, not least as Eisenhower was still US President at the time. He was stripped of his honorary citizenship of Montgomery, Alabama, and was challenged to a duel by an Italian officer. He was threatened with legal action by Field-Marshal Auchinleck for suggesting that Auchinleck had intended to retreat from the Alamein position if attacked again, and had to give a radio broadcast (20 November 1958) expressing his gratitude to Auchinleck for having stabilised the front at the First Battle of Alamein. The 1960 edition of his memoirs contains a publisher's note (opposite page 15) drawing attention to that broadcast, and stating that in the publisher's view the reader might assume from Montgomery's text that Auchinleck had been planning to retreat and pointing out that this was in fact not the case.

Montgomery was never raised to an earldom, although unlike his wartime contemporaries Harold Alexander, Louis Mountbatten and even Archibald Wavell, he had never been a Theatre Supreme Commander or held high political office. An official task he insisted on performing in his later years was bearing the Sword of State during the State Opening of Parliament. His increasing frailty, however, raised concerns about his ability to stand for long periods while carrying the heavy weapon. Ultimately, those fears were borne out when he collapsed in mid-ceremony in 1968 and did not perform this function again. A favourite pastime of the British press during these years was to photograph Montgomery cashing his old age pension cheque at the local social security office. Due to his eminence, many assumed Montgomery was wealthy and did not need the money. In fact, he had always been a man of modest means and it caused him great anguish that many believed he was taking taxpayer money he did not need. Another blow was a break-in at his home. Despite making a televised appeal for the return of his possessions, the items were never recovered.

Death

Montgomery died in 1976 at his home Isington Mill, Isington near Alton, Hampshire, aged 88. After a funeral ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor, he was interred in the Holy Cross Churchyard, Binsted.

Legacy

His portrait (by Frank O. Salisbury, 1945) hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.

A statue of Viscount Montgomery can be found outside the Defence Ministry in Whitehall, alongside those of William Slim and Alan Brooke. Another statue of Viscount Montgomery can be found in Brussels, Belgium, watching a Montgomery Square.

Montgomery gave his name to the French commune Colleville-Montgomery, Normandy.

The Imperial War Museum holds a variety of material relating to Montgomery in its collections. These include Montgomery's Grant command tank (on display in the atrium at the Museum's London branch), his command caravans as used in North West Europe (on display at IWM Duxford), and his papers are held by the Museum's Department of Documents. The Museum maintains a permanent exhibition about Montgomery, entitled Monty: Master of the Battlefield

Popular Culture

Prior to D-Day, M.E. Clifton James, an actor who bore a resemblance to Montgomery, was used by the British Army to impersonate the field marshal. His book and the later movie, I was Monty's Double, recount this work.

Montgomery appears in the 1970 movie Patton as a rigid and unpleasant character whom the title's American general out manoeuvres in Sicily. His service in France and Germany is briefly mentioned.

Character and controversy

Montgomery did not get on with his contemporaries and mostly associated with junior officers. He was insensitive, conceited, and boastful. He was not an easy man to know socially and not loyal to the staff officers serving immediately under him. His dismissive and occasionally insulting attitude to others often soured opinions about his abilities and personality. His failures happened when he allowed his desire for personal glory to taint his planning, causing him to abandon his usual caution.

In stark contrast to Fourteenth Army commander in East Asia, William Slim, Montgomery rarely if ever admitted to making a single mistake during the Second World War. Slim was far more candid about his own mistakes, even in his wartime memoirs, than Montgomery.

Often it was Montgomery's statements about battles, as much as his actual conduct of them, that formed the basis of controversy. In his career, Montgomery's orders to his subordinates were clear and complete, yet with his superiors his communications would be opaque and incomplete. In Normandy, he gave the impression to Eisenhower and others that he was attempting a breakout, while playing down this possibility in his actual orders to his subordinates. For example, shortly before Operation Goodwood he removed Falaise as an objective, but did not forward these new orders to SHAEF. Throughout his career, he enraged his superiors and colleagues, partly because he would not allow convention to disrupt military effectiveness, partly because of a contempt for authority and an unwillingness to be in a situation where he was not in control, and partly because he could be quite a strange person. Walter Bedell Smith once said to him "You may be great to serve under, difficult to serve alongside, but you sure are hell to serve over!". He also found it difficult to publicly admit his operations had not gone to plan, irrespective of whether they were ultimately successful (Normandy) or unsuccessful (Market Garden, where he claimed that it had been a 90% success).

In the United Kingdom, Montgomery is remembered particularly for his victorious campaign in North Africa, which, with the Battle of Stalingrad, was very much seen as the turning point of World War II. The different nature of the war for the United States means that his reputation there is very much coloured by the controversies in the later stages of the war in Europe, especially around the Battle of the Bulge. At the end of 1944, there was tension between the Allies owing to a campaign by the British press for Eisenhower to appoint a deputy and for Montgomery to be made the overall Allied ground commander. Immediately after the Battle of the Bulge, on 7 January 1945, Montgomery held a press conference in which he downplayed the role of the American generals, especially Patton, in the Allied victory at the Battle of the Bulge and focused on his own generalship. Many of his comments were ill-judged, particularly his statement that when the situation "began to deteriorate", Eisenhower had placed him in command in the north, and they were inflammatory to Patton, implying that he needed to be rescued by Montgomery "with a bang". In the press conference Montgomery said that he thought the counter-offensive had gone very well and did not explain his delayed attack on 3 January. According to Churchill, the attack from the south under Patton was steady but slow and involved heavy losses, and Montgomery claimed to be trying to avoid this situation. Montgomery also gave the impression that substantial British forces had been involved in the fighting that repelled the German attack (an impression explicitly corrected by Churchill in the House of Commons). A slanted version inserted by Germany within an Allied radio broadcast added to American resentment.

In a memo to Eisenhower, Montgomery proposed that he should again be made Commander Ground Forces and implicitly criticised recent conduct of the war while American confidence had been shaken and nerves were raw. Eisenhower, encouraged by the Deputy Supreme Commander, Air Marshal Tedder (another person with a long running feud with Montgomery), was on the point of dismissing Montgomery, when Bedell Smith and Montgomery's chief-of-staff, Major-General Freddie de Guingand, pointed that it would be both politically unwise and difficult to justify removing a general who had just won a battle, over generals who had come so close to losing one. De Guingand was able to convince Montgomery of the impact of his words (of which he was apparently unaware) and Montgomery wrote an apology to Eisenhower. The moment passed. Eisenhower commented in his memoirs: "I doubt if Montgomery ever came to realise how resentful some American commanders were. They believed he had belittled them — and they were not slow to voice reciprocal scorn and contempt".

Alan Brooke said of Montgomery:

Assessment of Montgomery as a military commander

Any assessment of Montgomery is immediately entangled in his sometimes difficult, boastful personality, harshness towards those he felt did not measure up, and issues of Anglo-American national pride. Nevertheless this section attempts a balanced summing up of his general leadership from a military perspective. Was he primarily a ponderous set-piece general or was he indeed one of the most brilliant commanders of recent history, a true heir to Marlborough, at least from the British perspective? The truth lies somewhere in between. It is helpful to analyse Montgomery's generalship by looking at some central aspects of his successes and failures.

Positive aspects

As a trainer of men and mentor of subordinates

Montgomery deserves his due as an outstanding trainer of men. His record in Palestine, North Africa, Sicily and Northern Europe shows this. His meticulous preparation of his troops, ranging from the usual physical necessities, to painstaking explanation of his vision and plans down to relatively low levels, to well articulated exercises and drills, to his insistence that formations like divisions "should fight as divisions" (i.e. gain proficiency in "big picture" coordination and integration) show the mind and skill of a keen organiser. None of this is earth-shattering for any competent military commander (though many of his contemporaries, including many remembered better by history, showed great deficiencies in this regard), but Montgomery demonstrated a great level of proficiency and made it one of his special trademarks.

Montgomery was a keen advocate of physical fitness and hard training: in the desert he had all ranks from brigadier down doing daily physical training; any man, no matter what rank, was expected to be fit to fight, and if any officer could not keep up on daily runs, he was sent home—Montgomery once observed that if a middle-aged officer was going to have a heart attack, better for it to happen on a training run than in action. Montgomery was also a critic of Battle Drill Training, which he felt was a crutch used by unit commanders. His personal view, put into action during the Phony War and afterwards, was that company and battalion training in the phases of war—relief in place, passage of obstacles, hasty attack, etc.—was ignored in favour of simple drilling at the section and platoon level.

Montgomery had a deep technical understanding of how the Army operated, at all levels from the infantry company to the Army Group. He helped to shape the Canadian army through assisting the formation of the fledgling First Canadian Army while they were under his command in South-Eastern Army. Montgomery personally visited most Canadian units, down to the battalion level, and assisted Canadian Army commander Harry Crerar in weeding out poor officers, giving direct criticism of battalion commanders, company commanders, and even regimental sergeants-major. Montgomery indirectly shaped the Canadian Army that saw action in Italy and NW Europe.

As a strategist and tactician

Montgomery's hallmark as a strategist was a detailed analysis of his enemy and development of a clear vision as to how that enemy was to be fought and defeated. Two words sum up the approach of the British commander: clarity and organisation. These were put into practice through careful preparation of what he termed a "master plan", to which all subsequent effort was to be subordinated. The "master plan" embodied the vision, and the strategic and tactical approaches that would be used. Montgomery held that, far from being rigid, the flexibility or "balance" was one of the keys to his overarching structure. Indeed, one recent scholar has described his approach as using "massive set-piece battles, based on concentration of force, massed artillery fire power... and [the] integrated use of tactical air power", designed to pummel the enemy with alternate thrusts until they lost their own sense of "balance" and "cracks" began to form in their defences. Montgomery regarded the German Army as one of hard-core professionalism, and held that wishful thinking and foggy concepts against such an opponent was a recipe for dismal failure.

Montgomery sought changes along these lines in the plan for the Allied invasion of Sicily. His influence however was more limited and his own less-than-spectacular gains in the difficult terrain, were unfavourably compared by some to the thrusting mobility of US General George Patton—a foreshadowing of controversies to come. Operation Husky was a success, but the Germans were able to extract tens of thousands of troops from Sicily to fight elsewhere, indicating that Montgomery's concerns about concepts, planning and execution were not totally off the mark.

His approach can be seen in his insistence on recasting or adjusting the invasion plans of Normandy, generally strengthening initial shock forces and insisting on a clear vision and method of how subsequent battles were to be fought. The success of the D-Day landings owed a great debt to Montgomery's planning. After the war, Eisenhower and his chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Walter Bedell Smith told the American military correspondent, Drew Middleton that "No one else could have got us across the Channel and into Normandy... Whatever they say about him, he got us there".

Montgomery felt his approach vindicated at the Second Battle of El Alamein. His strategic vision ushered in much needed clarity, and his defensive preparations (drawing in part on the prior work of his predecessor Auchinleck) also envisioned a decisive counterattack. During the most critical point of the battle his concept of "balance" or flexibility within the confines of a master plan held, and the British were able to shift forces to see off Rommel's thrust, and mount their own riposte that shattered the back of the Axis formations.

The Battle of Normandy saw similar success. He insisted on more forces for the initial landing and a clear vision for the further campaign against some planners who were primarily concerned with just getting on the beach. Despite the failure of all but the Canadians to gain the ambitious targets on D-Day, and the subsequent improvisations, his strategy of attritional battle on the left drawing in German forces and allowing a breakthrough on the right was successful. This approach could not be broadcast on the nightly news and the public perception of the struggle was typically one that saw both Allies equally attempting to break out of the beachhead, with progress being "slow". Montgomery however persisted, and deflecting pressure from his superiors (who remained in England) for quicker results, retained mastery of the developing battle. Overall, he achieved victory well within the originally planned ninety days. Normandy and El Alamein cement Montgomery's place as one of the greatest of the modern British generals in the view of some historians, and vindicate his concept of "balance" within the overall structure of a dominant "master plan".

As a builder of morale

Montgomery also deserves credit as a builder of morale, both that of his soldiers and that of the general public. A large part of his reputation has been sustained by the people who served under him. After his experiences in the First World War he had determined not to waste soldiers' lives: as Haig persisted in attritional battles, Montgomery wrote to his brother Donald, on seeing Canadians sent to assault Passchendaele Ridge that they were 'magnificent', but 'they forget that the whole art of war is to gain your objective with as little loss as possible', which was a doctrine that Montgomery subsequently lived by.

He displayed a genuine concern for the welfare of the men serving under him: for example, at one time he jeopardised his career by illegally hiring out land to a fair to raise welfare funds; he arranged for female nurses at forward casualty clearing centres in the desert war in 1943; he took a very pragmatic view towards sexual health; directly after the Battle of Medenine he was lobbying Brooke to allow long-serving soldiers to return to England. Coupled with this was his belief that soldiers must actually understand why they were fighting, and that they deserve to have things properly explained to them. Montgomery thought that one of the most important roles for a military commander was to motivate his men to fight, that military command is "a great human problem". In addition, Montgomery's experiences in the First World War led him to despise generals who led from the rear, well away from any fighting, and so was visible in his campaigns.

The early years of World War II saw a series of humiliating defeats and military reverses for Britain. Montgomery was not the first to unequivocally reverse. His experiences in Ireland had shown him the importance of public support in a war. Montgomery was sometimes ungracious, but he was able to painstakingly articulate a vision for victory and couple with it a good sense for publicity (the use of his distinctive black beret with two badges, for example). He continued these same methods in England prior to the invasion, insisting on a clear concept of battle beyond the beaches, all united under a powerful master plan. Later on, Montgomery was not the only leader who struck a distinctive chord for morale prior to the great invasion, but he was certainly one of the most influential, ensuring not only the troops that stepped ashore on 6 June were thus men confident in their leaders, their plans, their equipment and their cause, but so were the public. His speaking tour of British munitions factories before D-Day had made Churchill worry that he would be "filling The Mall" with adoring crowds if he was allowed to receive his field marshal's baton at Buckingham Palace.

Criticisms of Montgomery's generalship

Montgomery's record has also been extensively criticised. The criticism of his actions tends to be bound up with his difficult personality and relationships with superiors (see "Character and controversy" above) but generally two areas in particular can be separated out, which are summarised here.

Slowness and over-caution

Montgomery was often accused of being slow and overcautious. Examples cited include before El Alamein, afterwards in the pursuit of Rommel, the Battle of Normandy, and in the counter-offensive in the Ardennes. In North Africa, prior to Montgomery taking command, the history of the campaign in North Africa had see-sawed as each offensive outran its supply lines: both sides won battles but neither gained a decisive advantage.

Similarly, during the Battle of Normandy, the fear of stalemate made the supreme command in Britain pressure Montgomery to push harder. At one point in July 1944, it was thought that Churchill was flying to France to personally sack Montgomery at Eisenhower's request. Air Marshal Tedder complained that Montgomery had not captured suitable airfields from which to operate. Much is made of the fact that many of Montgomery's initial targets were not met, especially the failure to capture Caen on the first day or even for weeks after D-Day (criticism that was compounded after the war when Montgomery insisted that all elements had gone "according to plan", which clearly was not the case, although it should be noted in fairness that the bulk of the German panzer divisions, including SS units, were stationed on the Caen sector). However his predictions, the so called "phase lines" on the maps, were never intended to be a rigid guarantee but a guide, as would be clear from previous opposed landings at Salerno and Anzio. Much of the criticism resulted from Montgomery giving his superiors and the press the impression that he was trying to achieve large-scale breakouts while actually fighting an attritional campaign. However, in the end Montgomery's success was achieved in less time than planned.

Montgomery was not a dashing general, and deliberately methodical, usually not willing to sacrifice military effectiveness for other people's agendas. The realities of wartime Britain must also be remembered. It had seen severe early defeats, an economy almost crippled, shortages caused by constant German U-boat attacks, and dwindling supplies of manpower to fight on fronts ranging from the Far East to the Mediterranean. There simply were no more big armies to commit wholesale in Normandy or elsewhere. Montgomery thus carefully husbanded the troops he had left. Furthermore, much of his apparent caution sprang from his regard for human life and a desire not to throw the lives of his troops away in the manner of the generals of the First World War. Therefore, for El Alamein, Normandy and the Ardennes, he was not prepared to go into an offensive until there was complete readiness of both men, equipment, and logistics. This approach sometimes exasperated his superiors, but it generally brought success, and ensured his popularity with his men.

The criticism of slowness and caution has been taken further with Montgomery being called primarily a "general of matériel": one who emerged at the right time and place to take advantage of the massive outpouring of American and British war production, ensuring the Allies local material superiority against their opponents. But this charge is hard to maintain in a war during which material weight counted above almost all factors. It was a mass production war in every theatre, and the same "matériel" criticism of Montgomery must then need to apply to the great Russian commanders of the Eastern Front like Zhukov or Konev, as well as to the American effort. Equally, it ignores the successful improvised actions in North Africa, Normandy, and the Ardennes, and yet as stated above, Montgomery did not have the manpower or equipment to achieve those scale victories; so in essence one could say he was doing more with what he had, than any other general in Europe.

The Montgomery cocktail is a martini mixed at a ratio of 15:1, facetiously named that because Montgomery supposedly refused to go into battle unless his numerical advantage was at least that high. Montgomery himself never smoked or drank.

Market Garden and the Scheldt estuaries

A second great area of criticism centres around Montgomery's only defeat of the Second World War, the failure of Operation Market Garden at Arnhem. Three broad areas of concern have been raised in relation to Montgomery's performance as a commander in this operation.

Some historians have criticised the level of risk that Montgomery was prepared to accept in the operation. In comparison to many of Montgomery's battles, Operation Market Garden was uncharacteristically bold. One writer has put it that:

The conception of such a plan was impossible for a man of Montgomery's innate caution... In fact, Montgomery's decision to mount the operation aimed at the Zuider Zee was as startling as it would have been for an elderly and saintly bishop suddenly to take up safe-cracking and begin on the Bank of England.

While one of his military contemporaries noted that upon hearing the details of the plan:

Had the pious, teetotalling Montgomery wobbled in SHAEF with a hangover, I could not have been more astonished...

The motivation for Montgomery's willingness to take increased risk in this instance has been put by some down to interpersonal friction and competition with the American generals, as well as other personality traits Others, more sympathetically, have argued that against the intelligence backdrop before the operation, and the wider political requirement to regain time and space following the delayed breakout from Normandy, Montgomery and Eisenhower's decision to pursue Market-Garden at risk appears more reasonable.

While the tactical shortcomings of the airborne landings at Arnhem may not be directly attributable to Montgomery, his operational level approach to the use of airborne forces during this part of the campaign has been questioned. Montgomery was not a natural supporter of the airborne; he had suffered some bad experiences in Sicily, and had spoken out against the somewhat risky proposal to drop the 81st Airborne into Rome. Some contemporaries in the Allied Airborne headquarters criticised Montgomery's unwillingness to concentrate airborne forces in sufficient numbers, and his willingness to retain them in the line after drops, leading one to complain to Eisenhower of his "evident misconception of the use of airborne forces". Nonetheless, as some writers have highlighted, there was a powerful political driver, particularly in Washington, for the use of the expensive airborne in just this sort of operation.

Another area of criticism focuses on the opportunity cost of Market Garden. As a result of the concentration on Market Garden, the Scheldt estuary, which surrounded the vital port of Antwerp was not cleared. In the autumn of 1944 the Allies required a port to shorten their supply lines and allow supplies to be brought in for the advance into Germany. It also meant that the Germans could reinforce their defensive lines in Holland, blocking one main axis of advance into their homeland. Montgomery pleaded the difficulties of continual fighting in prior weeks and logistical problems, but one side effect of the of Market Garden was the escape of the German 15th Army and lengthy operations to clear the Scheldt. Critics have termed it "Montgomery's most agonising failure", although other writers have concurred with Montgomery's own estimate that by late 1944, Eisenhower's "broad front" policy was already unravelling in the face of changing circumstances and that bolder initiatives like Market Garden were inevitable. Nonetheless, even Montgomery himself later noted that this was "a bad mistake—I underestimated the difficulty of opening up the approaches to Antwerp ... I reckoned that the Canadian Army could do it while we were going for the Ruhr. I was wrong."

Weakness as a strategist

In Eisenhower's Lieutenants, historian Russell F. Weigley offers this criticism of Montgomery as a strategist:

Field Marshal Montgomery almost never paid so much as lip service to the dictum that the destruction of the enemy forces is the object of military strategy.

...

Montgomery's aggressiveness was that of the energetic fencer, not that of the general who annihilates enemy armies, of Napoleon, of Grant, or of Moltke.

A 1984 Encyclopedia Britannica article sums up Montgomery's generalship in ambiguous terms, reflecting both the perception of his 'over-cautious' approach, but also his reputation for leadership and popularity as a 'soldier's general':

A cautious, thorough strategist, Montgomery largely eschewed military innovation.

Instead he insisted on complete readiness of both men and material before attempting a strike, a policy that exasperated his superiors, but produced several successes in battle, and his ensured popularity with the men.

Quotation

• "The US has broken the second rule of war. That is, don't go fighting with your land army on the mainland of Asia. Rule One is don't march on Moscow. I developed these two rules myself."

(spoken of the US approach to the Vietnam War) Quoted in Chalfont's Montgomery of Alamein.

• "Well, now I must go to meet God and try to explain all those men I killed at Alamein."

(Field Marshal Montgomery in 1976 quoted in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition)

See also

• Afrika Korps
• M. E. Clifton James (Montgomery's double during the war)
• Famous military commanders
• Irish military diaspora
• North African Campaign
• Panzer Army Africa
• Western Desert Campaign

References

Bibliography

• Bierman, John & Smith, Colin. Alamien: War without hate. Penguin Group. 2002 ISBN 0-670-91109-7
• Brett-James, Anthony, Conversations with Montgomery, Irwin Pub., 1984. ISBN 978-0718305314
• Bungay, Stephen, Alamein, Auram, 2002. ISBN 978-1854109293
• Chalfont, Arthur Gwynne Jones, Montgomery of Alamein, Atheneum, 1976. ISBN 978-0689107443
• D'Este, Carlo. Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign. London: William Collins Sons, 1983. ISBN 0002170566.
• Barnett, Corelli, The Desert Generals, Cassell, 1960. ISBN 978-0304352807
• Dixon, Norman, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, Pimlico, 1976. ISBN 978-0712658898
• Fraser, David, And We Shall Shock Them: The British Army in World War II, Sceptre, 1988. ISBN 978-0340426371
• Heathcote, Tony, The British Field Marshals 1736–1997, Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 1999. ISBN 0-85052-696-5
• Hastings, Max, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944–1945, Knopf, 2004. ISBN 0375414339
• Lattimer, Jon, Alamein, John Murray, 2002. ISBN 978-0674013766
• McKee, Alexander, Caen: Anvil of Victory, 1984. ISBN 978-0333383131
• Montgomery, Bernard Law,A Concise History of Warfare, 1968. ISBN 978-1840222234
• Montgomery, Bernard Law, The Path to Leadership, 1957.
• Neillands, Robin, The Battle for the Rhine 1944, 2005. ISBN 978-1590200285
• Sheehan, William, British Voices from the Irish War of Independence, 2005. ISBN 978-1905172375
• Schultz, James. A framework for military decision making under risks. Thesis, Air University, Maxwell Airforce Base, Alabama, 1998.
• Weigley, Russel F., Eisenhower's Lieutenants, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1981. ISBN 0-253-13333-5

Notes

Explanatory notes

1. Hamilton, p. 3 (1981)
2. Hamilton, p. 31 (1981)
3. Hamilton, p. 5 (1981)
4. Chalfont, p. 29 (1976)
5. Bierman & Smith, p. 223 (2002)
6. Hamilton, p. 36 (1981)
7. Bierman & Smith, p. 224 (2002)
8. Sheehan. British Voices, pp. 151-52
9. the Peerage,com
10. Harrison, p. 104 (2004)
11. Bierman & Smith, p. 227 (2002)
12. Bierman & Smith, p. 226 (2002)
13. Bierman & Smith, p. 228 (2002)
14. Bierman & Smith, pp. 229-30 (2002)
15. Playfair, Vol. III, pp. 367-369.
16. Playfair, Vol. III, p. 370.
17. Moorehead, Alan, Montgomery, pp. 118-27 (1946)
18. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, v.4 pp. 546-48
19. Playfair, Vol. III, p. 388.
20. Churchill, p. 588
21. Playfair, Vol IV, pp. 13-14.
22. Playfair, Vol IV, p. 9.
23. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 16.
24. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 78.
25. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 79.
26. Churchill, p. 591
27. Moorehead, pp. 140-41
28. D'Este, p. 202 (1983)
29. Patrick Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge — Hitler's Final Gamble (2004)
30. Mead, p.309.
31. History of Viscount Montgomery School
32. Was Bernie a Bertie?, The Times Online, David Aaronovitch, 5 May 2006
33. The General of Love who was one of the boys, The Independent, Nicholas Fearn, 14 October 2001
34. NPG L165 Portrait of Montgomery
35. In pictures: Tribute to Montgomery
36. Dixon, p. 373 (1976)ff
37. Dixon, p. 361 (1976)
38. N. Hamilton, Monty. vol. 2.xxv (1981–86)
39. Eisenhower, p. 389 (1948)
40. Hart, p.10
41. Dixon, p. 358 (1976)
42. Dixon, p. 359 (1976)
43. Dixon, p. 277 (1976)
44. Montgomery, Bernard Law, Nigel Hamilton, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP (2004)
45. Dixon, p. 374 (1976)
46. A.Bryant, Triumph in the West, 1943–1946 (1959)
47. Montgomery's Memoirs, chapter on Operation Overlord
48. Hart, chapter 3; Hamilton (1984),
49. Chalfont, (1976),
50. Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W. Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969), p. 201
51. General Omar Bradley, cited Ryan p. 94
52. Dixon, pp. 360–61 (1976)
53. Schultz, chapter three.
54. Hamilton, Monty II, p. 311
55. Hamilton, Monty II, p. 399
56. Brereton, p. 391
57. Ryan, p. 89
58. Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W. Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969)
59. See for example Ryan, p. 71
60. Weigley, p. 566 (1981)
61. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 ed, Micropedia, 1984 "Montgomery, Bernard, 1st Viscount of Alamein,"

Citations

1. Hamilton, p. 3 (1981)
2. Hamilton, p. 31 (1981)
3. Hamilton, p. 5 (1981)
4. Chalfont, p. 29 (1976)
5. Bierman & Smith, p. 223 (2002)
6. Hamilton, p. 36 (1981)
7. Bierman & Smith, p. 224 (2002)
8. Sheehan. British Voices, pp. 151-52
9. the Peerage,com
10. Harrison, p. 104 (2004)
11. Bierman & Smith, p. 227 (2002)
12. Bierman & Smith, p. 226 (2002)
13. Bierman & Smith, p. 228 (2002)
14. Bierman & Smith, pp. 229-30 (2002)
15. Playfair, Vol. III, pp. 367-369.
16. Playfair, Vol. III, p. 370.
17. Moorehead, Alan, Montgomery, pp. 118-27 (1946)
18. Winston Churchill, The Second World War, v.4 pp. 546-48
19. Playfair, Vol. III, p. 388.
20. Churchill, p. 588
21. Playfair, Vol IV, pp. 13-14.
22. Playfair, Vol IV, p. 9.
23. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 16.
24. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 78.
25. Playfair, Vol. IV, p. 79.
26. Churchill, p. 591
27. Moorehead, pp. 140-41
28. D'Este, p. 202 (1983)
29. Patrick Delaforce, The Battle of the Bulge — Hitler's Final Gamble (2004)
30. Mead, p.309.
31. History of Viscount Montgomery School
32. Was Bernie a Bertie?, The Times Online, David Aaronovitch, 5 May 2006
33. The General of Love who was one of the boys, The Independent, Nicholas Fearn, 14 October 2001
34. NPG L165 Portrait of Montgomery
35. In pictures: Tribute to Montgomery
36. Dixon, p. 373 (1976)ff
37. Dixon, p. 361 (1976)
38. N. Hamilton, Monty. vol. 2.xxv (1981–86)
39. Eisenhower, p. 389 (1948)
40. Hart, p.10
41. Dixon, p. 358 (1976)
42. Dixon, p. 359 (1976)
43. Dixon, p. 277 (1976)
44. Montgomery, Bernard Law, Nigel Hamilton, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, OUP (2004)
45. Dixon, p. 374 (1976)
46. A.Bryant, Triumph in the West, 1943–1946 (1959)
47. Montgomery's Memoirs, chapter on Operation Overlord
48. Hart, chapter 3; Hamilton (1984),
49. Chalfont, (1976),
50. Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W. Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969), p. 201
51. General Omar Bradley, cited Ryan p. 94
52. Dixon, pp. 360–61 (1976)
53. Schultz, chapter three.
54. Hamilton, Monty II, p. 311
55. Hamilton, Monty II, p. 399
56. Brereton, p. 391
57. Ryan, p. 89
58. Montgomery the Field-Marshal R.W. Thompson, Allen & Unwin (1969)
59. See for example Ryan, p. 71
60. Weigley, p. 566 (1981)
61. Encyclopedia Britannica, 15 ed, Micropedia, 1984 "Montgomery, Bernard, 1st Viscount of Alamein,"

External links

• Retrieved on 2009-03-04
• Biography: Bernard Law Montgomery: jewishvirtuallibrary.org