soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Gavin Bailey wrote:

> I'd defend Alexander on the following grounds: Despite the assertions
> of stupidity and lack of grip made about his style, he was astute
> enough to recognise that any attempt at a firm grip on his
> subordinates would achieve nothing beyond increased whining and
> back-stabbing.

He was supposed to be a war-fighting general. War is a nasty business,
there can be casualties, and a general's peace of mind is usually one
of them.

I like Alexander and consider him a fairly good general myself. On the
other hand, managing prima dona's is definitely part of the job when
you reach high rank, if for no other reason that the people likely to
reach the kind of rank that an army group & theater commander will
have to manage are going to be prima dona's. Alexander failed at that,
period.

Eisenhower did achieve a firm grip on his subordinates, including
Montgomery. So did Montgomery and the German army group commanders.
Alexander didn't, so he fails to make the A team.

> But I advance him as the first
> general to successfully grasp the fundamental _political_ reality of
> combined Anglo-American operations - benign neglect of jealous and
> competitive subordinates.

He was well-aware of the political reality, but his handling of it was
suboptimal.

In all fairness, a British army group commander with Clark as a US
Army commander would have faced a very difficult task. I do believe
that Montgomery would have managed it better: Clark would doubtless
have written volume upon volume of pure hatred directed at him in his
postwar memoirs, but at least he would have been made to play as part
of a team.

> Dempsey seemed to manage positional/attritional battles better than
> Patton, and was certainly capable of similar speed of exploitation.

Dempsey wasn't truly bad, but he failed too many times IMO. Even when
as e.g. during Goodwood some of the blame can be laid at Montgomery's
feet for interfering with the battle plan, it was part of Dempsey's to
take a firmer stand (no easy matter against Montgomery, I know, but
see my comments on Alexander: war is hell).

> There are
> numerous less-celebrated US generals who were considerably better than
> Patton IMO - Truscott, Devers, even Simpson.

I'm not sure that they were "considerably better" but they were
clearly contenders for the "better than Montgomery" award, not to
mention the coveted "best WWII Allied general" one.

> But the whole 'argue
> about the personalities of the generals' thing seems a handy way of
> avoiding more useful historical debate to me.

Having fun can be useful, too.


LC