soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Gavin Bailey wrote:

> [re Alexander]
>
> >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.
>
> Oh, I think it's pretty clear Alexander could maintain his peace of
> mind in the most stressful circumstances, to the point that his
> critics make this one of the main charges against him.

And somewhat unoriginally, so do I even though my general assessment
is favorable.

I'm not aware of Alexander telling one of his subordinates "you can't
talk to me like that, I'm your boss", let alone "you can't act like
that, I'm your boss".

As far as I know (which isn't very far), Alexander wasn't appointed
because of his perceived hands off approach to leadership. So there
was no implicit assumption that he would keep people like Montgomery
and, later, American subordinates on a very loose rein. Therefore,
that he ended up doing so was his own personal choice.

> >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.
>
> I tend to feel that comes from his experience with Clark to a great
> extent, and Clark was going to be a problem for any British superior.
> I think he mishandled Juin, or more correctly the capabilities of
> Juin's forces, but then it would have taken an exceptional
> Anglo-American general not to do so.

No, his management of Montgomery was similarly nonexistant.

It turned out all right in North Africa because Montgomery was
basically doing the right thing and Alexander only had the one
important subordinate to manage so no personality clashes. But what
this means is that Alexander essentially lucked out, not that this is
evidence of sound "human resources management".

Further note that Montgomery feeling that he could essentially ignore
Alexander's guidance was one of the reasons behind Allied
disappointments in Sicily (though I would agree with Rich here that
the Germans also had something to do with it, and would have had
regardless of the Allied plan).

In Tunisia, Montgomery was too much a professional to play against his
own team (as Clark would have done) so after his own offensive had
essentially failed he cooperated by sending his best units north. But
again that is a case of Alexander lucking out with Montgomery, not one
of his successfully managing him.

> >Eisenhower did achieve a firm grip on his subordinates, including
> >Montgomery.
>
> Only thanks to de Guingand's diplomacy. Absent that and all bets are
> off (imagine Monty with Wigglesworth as a Chief of Staff?

Can't, I don't know him.

My impression is that de Guingand saved Montgomery's job, not
Eisenhower's. Absent his diplomacy, Monty would probably have been
kicked upstairs to another posting. A British Stillwell would
definitely have accomplished that.

> Eisenhower's performance in North Africa wasn't that good, although I
> tend to blame Anderson for much of that at the operational level.

Eisenhower's performance wasn't stellar in North Africa, though he did
get things his way regarding the management of his top subordinates.
Which seems to have been Alexander's main failing.

Additionally, if you decide that Eisenhower was an ordinary - if
gifted - human being as opposed to God of inter-Allied cooperation
then he becomes a valid yardstick to compare others with.

Let's bring this one step further. How many instances were there
during WWII of managing international forces? I'll consider British &
Commonwealth nationalities to be the same, and will also consider
minor allies (Poles, Belgians, Free French, Brazilians etc) as not
worth bothering with either. What I'm interested in is leadership at
army/ army group level where a significant part of the force under
command is from another nationality.

Here are some of the entrants, though I may be missing some and
readers are free to supply other examples.

French Army Group 1, with the BEF as one of the subordinate armies.
Management was generally poor. Things went very smoothly because both
Paris and London made it extra clear that things had to go smoothly,
also Gort was the kind of subordinate that anyone except a committed
sado-masochist would pick over Clark or Montgomery. On the other hand,
once things became awry and the need arose for a firm grip at army
group level, Gort found himself essentially on his own. So Billotte
was a lousy army group commander, which I'm sure will come as no great
scoop.

Panzerarmee Afrika. Rommel doesn't seem to have done a particularly
good job, though he treated his Italian subordinates only marginally
worse than he did his German ones. He did get the Italians to do what
he wanted them to (except the Regia Marina which wasn't his to
command) so I'd count that as successful, if not particularly
diplomatic, management.

Then we have Alexander's record in North Africa, Sicily and Italy:
generally not very satisfactory.

Clark as Alexander's successor was no better, but as with Billotte
this will come as no surprise.

Not sure how Montgomery rates as an army group commander in Normandy.
He didn't really try to manage Bradley, on the other hand Bradley
wasn't someone like Clark or Patton he just bid his time until he
could be free. I think that if Clark had been Montgomery's main
American subordinate then Monty wouldn't have shirked from a fight,
but that may be optimistic of me.

Eisenhower's management is generally described as good.

We should also hear it for Devers who had to manage a very difficult
French subordinate. De Lattre wanted equal status for his army though
he lacked most of the support assets that an American army had, and as
such the man was a pain. 6th Army Group was successfully managed,
though. Some of the credit should go to Patch who was very sympathetic
to the plight of his French counterparts and went out of his way to
help them out when he could. De Lattre, like Montgomery, also
benefited from staff members with greater diplomatic skills. In that
case, the language barrier was actually helpful.

I'm not sure that Burma should count here, though anyone wishing to
compare Slim / Stillwell with Alexander / Clark would be welcome.

Then we have MacArthur with his Australians, but then again there was
no Australian Clark or Montgomery to manage so he had it easy.

The bottom line is that few Allied commanders had to manage inter-
Allied forces with difficult subordinates. It seems clear that
military leaders were not prepared for that kind of task, as
illustrated by the attitude of those like Billotte, Stillwell and
Clark to mention but the better-known though the list of suspects is a
long one. A lot of the commanders who did have a successful record
lucked out thanks to easy to command subordinates (Billotte until 15
May 1940, MacArthur), so we can't know if someone like MacArthur would
have done a better job than Alexander. I would tend to say the same of
Devers because even De Lattre was no Clark, more like a Montgomery:
the man was a pain but ultimately he was still a team player.

So there are really two ways to look at it. According to the score
card, there were 5 Allied commanders at army level and above and based
on his success Alexander ranks fourth, before Billotte but behind
Eisenhower, Devers and MacArthur. Another point of view is to assume
that Clark was a one of a kind proposition, only Eisenhower and
Alexander ever had to manage him though Eisenhower didn't have to deal
with battlefield friction and he, too, was a one of a kind
proposition. Unsurprisingly, this leads to more favorable an
assessment of Alexander :)

I don't subscribe to the generous view, but I agree with you that
Alexander was one of the few generals to grasp that multi-national
commands were not the same as traditional ones.

> Possibly; but I really do think Clark's vanity and ego issues were
> even worse than Patton's. And that's saying something.

You'll find no argument from anyone that Clark was worse than Patton
on almost every count (logistics being a likely exception).

On the other hand, Bradley managed Patton while Alexander didn't
manage Clark. As I like Alexander better than Bradley, please don't
drive me to the conclusion that Bradley was the better army group
commander of the two.

> I think he comes out relatively well from Goodwood, in a manner I
> don't think the much-vaunted O'Connor does.

He comes out fairly well from Goodwood, what I blamed him for wasn't
his conduct of the battle but his allowing Montgomery to interfere
(with negative consequences, as it turned out) with his battle plan.

Dempsey doesn't come out nearly as well from other Normandy
engagements like the various attempts to outflank the Germans. I'm not
sure that successful management of a tactical situation with very few
options (i.e. frontal attritional attack) is sufficient to rate as a
good general.

> Sure; the real secret of this debate is that the binary Patton/Monty
> fixation distorts the reality.

I think that Montgomery was the better army group commander, Patton
was the better corps commander.

The interesting comparison would be between Patton and Rommel. Patton
would have been a very successful panzer commander had he served in
Wehrmacht uniform. He had the proper operational worldview.

> Which I expect this thread
> will soon revert to as soon as I've defended Alexander's neglect as
> superior generalship which allowed him to concentrate on the more
> important qualities of a commander, such as conducting agreeable
> dinner conversation about the campaigns of Belisarius over a
> suprisingly palatable light Italian white wine.

This is a clever defense, the only problem with it is that it pits
Alexander against another high level commander who was excellent at
making cultured conversation over a good dinner with good wines.

I'm not sure that demonstrating that Alexander was the same kind of
person as Gamelin is going to help your case, though...


LC