soc.history.war.world-war-ii

On Thu, 03 Apr 2008 08:04:29 -0400, Louis C
wrote:

>I've edited out all points of agreement to keep this within more or
>less readable proportions.

My counter-offensive will soon change that.

>> The question is - how? A different style of rejection shouldn't mask
>> the fact that Alexander could and did deny Monty when he considered it
>> necessary.

[Tunisia]

>That Montgomery backed down on that issue can as easily be interpreted
>as evidence of his not being interested in arguing the point as of
>Alexander's steely resolve.

It could, except the Monty-Alex relationship is littered with more
dubious examples of Alex rubber-stamping Monty's wishes. In this
situation Alexander opted to back Anderson - despite his lack of
confidence in him - over Monty. That Monty accepted Alexander's
decision doesn't change the fact that Alexander made it.

>I do agree that Eisenhower in North Africa wasn't doing nearly as
>well. In all fairness, this was the first time that he was involved in
>operational command, particularly at that level, whereas Alexander was
>far more experienced at the time. Eisenhower improved later on, but to
>me that's not evidence that Alexander - who didn't improve as he
>already was experienced - was all that good for that level of command.

I'd agree that Eisenhower improved, but the issue is how to quantify
it. In Sicily and Italy Alexander had two armies to consider.
Eisenhower in NW Europe had several. The nationalist antagonisms were
accentuated in Sicily and Italy due to the binary nature of the
command - any decision between the two forces would automatically come
at the expense of one nationality.

Meanwhile I think it's perfectly legitimate to critique Alexander and
Eisenhower for their contemporary management of allied operations in
Tunisia; while Alexander had dealt with the Chinese in Burma, Tunisia
was his first experience of inter-allied command at army level as
well.

>The problem which you rightly outline is that it's difficult to
>compare people as if they were constant quantities.

I think this is entirely acceptable for the purposes of usenet
bickering.. err, I mean 'debate'.

[Alex and plausible deniability in the sackings of US subordinates]

>Again, I'm not all that impressed with the Fredendall affair, though
>I'll readily admit that I would have to refresh my memory about the
>specifics. My understanding is that Fredendall was so obviously
>incompetent (contrary to, say, Lucas) that everyone around him noticed
>and wanted him gone. Eisenhower wasn't involving himself too closely
>in command matters at the time, busying himself with political and
>administrative issues. He was also reluctant to sack his main
>subordinate, for obvious reasons: he had no experience in determining
>good and bad commanders, let alone in sacking them. Had he had several
>such subordinates, it would probably have been easier.

And I can produce rationales (and sometimes better ones) to excuse
Alexander as well; suffice it to say that despite the lack of
confidence evident in Fredendall, Alexander's influence appears to
have been decisive in prompting Eisenhower to sack him.

>All of this to say that maybe Alexander's recommendation was the last
>straw (I'll take your word for it) but it hardly seems evidence for
>your ruthless assassin theory.

Well, 'velvet-gloved assassin'. Even I have been compelled to
stealthily retreat from 'ruthless' in reference to Alexander's style
of command, although fortunately nobody has noticed yet.

>If Alexander was so keen on getting
>corps commanders fired, what's his score with British/Commonwealth
>ones?

He didn't need to, with Monty sacking Ritchie's Corps commanders with
gay abandon. My rather suspect thesis is that one yardstick to
measure a commander's 'grip' of a multi-national command is his
ability to sack allied subordinate commanders when he felt it
necessary. I'm not too bothered about his own nationality Corps
commanders, as he saw this as the Army commander's job, not the Army
Group commanders, and at least in 1942-43 Monty seemed to have no
problems getting rid of Gatehouse, Lumsden, Ramsden, et al. The point
here is the ability of an Army group commander to intervene to
compensate for the shortcomings of a subordinate allied commander.
This is something Alex managed to do considerably more often than any
other allied commander, and it deserves closer examination on those
grounds alone as it appears to contradict the orthodox appreciation of
his 'lack of grip'.

[Alex's role in Dawley's sacking.]

>Ok, I'll concede that one: so Alexander got Dawley fired. Is there
>evidence that he forced Clark's hand and, assuming there isn't, how
>does that demonstrate grip?

That depends on whether or not you accept the relevance of sacking
subordinate commander's as the ultimate sanction of a commander's
ability when persuasion and direction fail.

>Patton seems to have had plenty of grip with his subordinates but he
>doesn't seem to have sacked them all that much (he much preferred
>shouting at them). Bradley was someone who kept firing his generals
>but he wasn't that good as a commander.

Sure; but the issue here is whether their failings required sacking to
resolve. In the cases of Ward, Frendendall, Dawley and Lucas
Alexander evidently was able to operate by creating/exploiting a
consensus of agreement amongst contemporaries that the sackings were
justified.

>So basically you're crediting Alexander with the skill set required of
>a good courtier.

Yes, except that the courtier's judgement in this case was both
militarily justified and politically attainable.

>That would have made him a very successful Byzantine
>eunuch (along, again, with Gamelin) but how does that really help his
>record as a commander?

Because it addresses the political requirements of allied command,
which are constraints habitually ignored in the customary critiques of
allied commanders in relation to one another in WW2. To extend the
Byzantine parallel to ridiculous extremes, think more of a Belisarius
than an Androchus.

[Anzio]

>I don't know if Alexander should be blamed for letting it happen or
>not. Pros include trusting his subordinates to know what they were
>doing, Cons include not checking about the prospects of the operation
>and toadying to Churchill.

Actually, Alexander did stand up to Churchill on occasion; for example
over the political and strategic consequences of alienating the Greeks
in December 1944 or over Churchill's apparent desire for a clash with
Tito over Trieste in early '45.

>Overal, I'd tend to exonerate him from
>blame on that score. On the other hand, sacking Lucas isn't really a
>case of grip because this was the third major operation that Clark was
>bungling and each time Alexander was the one having to suggest that
>subordinate X be fired.

Third? Who was fired as a result of the Rapido debacle? (Although
even I would agree it should have been Clark)

>So either Alexander was consistently unable to
>see the flaws in Clark's plans, or he was unable to identify Clark as
>the problem. Either way that's not a particularly good mark.

I certainly agree that Alexander can be justifiably criticised for
failing to deal with Clark's mistakes. The issue I want to address is
how far it was realistically within his power to sack Clark, even if
we accept Alexander's failure to intervene at the operational level
with Clark's plans (e.g. over the seperation of the landing areas at
Salerno). My suggestion is that sacking army commanders was not a
trival proposition, and we can't necessarily criticise Alexander for
not doing it without taking into account the difficulties other Army
Group commanders had with that issue (e.g. Ike vs Monty).

>> The point about
>> sackings is that they do demonstrate the ability to implement a
>> commander's will
>
>Ok, exactly what will was being implemented here? What did Alexander
>will and how did sacking Lucas bring him closer to what he wanted?

I think it's clear that Alexander's original plans for Shingle were
more ambitious than Lucas's performance at the time; even when the
speed and strength of the German response is taken into consideration.
I think it's plausible that Lucas could have secured a larger
bridgehead (without indulging any ridiculous fantasies about taking
Rome) before the inevitable progression to positional attrition which
followed Clark's failure to break through in the south in late January
1944.

Having said that, Alexander could have exerted more pressure on Lucas
to that end in the first few days of establishing the bridgehead, but
the main failure there was Clark's, plus the limitations on shipping
lift restricting the size of the beach-head force.

>Laissez-faire... laizzez-faire is the accent one tends to get after
>spending too much time sampling Alexander's prizes.

Mea culpa.

>See above on the asserting his will thing. I would agree if Lucas and
>Alexander had clashed over something in which case firing Lucas would
>be a way for Alexander to assert his preferred policy. But I'm not
>aware that this is what happened.

I think that requires that we discount Alexander's style of command,
which was to avoid open clashes were possible and not to press a
change of command upon Clark until it was clearly essential (at least
that's what Harding indicates about Alex's lack of confidence in Lucas
before the landings). Nonetheless, Alexander did over-rule Lucas on
occasion, e.g. when the latter requested a delayed start date for
SHINGLE.

>Nor am I convinced that Montgomery never managed something like that.
>Offhand, the only instance I can remember of a subordinate defying
>Monty's orders would be his "corps de chasse" at El Alamein.

I think Lumsden and Gatehouse were both sacked for this; although
Alexander did reveal a more nuanced appraisal of Gatehouse's approach
in his report to Brooke than people might suspect. At least he
understood what Gatehouse's approach was, which I'm not sure Monty
did.

>I don't have a problem with the notion that Ritchie was a competent
>corps commander, and also agree that Gazala wasn't just a case of his
>being out of his depth (which he was) but also of the British Army
>being insufficiently (and inadequately) trained as well as of the
>opposition being pretty good.

I think the Corps and Divisional commanders at Gazala deserve more
criticism than Ritchie for losing the battle myself.

>That being said, Auchinleck was expected to replace his army commander
>(Cunningham, then Ritchie) if things were bad. I'm not aware that
>Alexander had an explicit mandate to the contrary i.e. a loose-rein
>approach to managing Montgomery.

Neither am I, nonetheless he was appointed to be C-in-C before Monty
was appointed to the 8th Army in place of Gott. Alexander was not
expected to command 8th Army, and it was a failing of Auchinleck that
he had been twiced forced to do that. Meanwhile Alexander himself
admitted that his approach was to support the Army commanders who
actually managed the battle, not to perform what he saw as their job.

>That would have implied impressive
>farsight on the part of London: after several generals had been
>offered as winners only to end up as disappointments or failures,
>Montgomery was known to be the right item?

Montgomery was expected to manage the actual battle; not Alexander,
who was expected to give him the required support. This was not
perceived as another Ritchie/Auk relationship where London positively
wanted more operational meddling from Auchinleck to compensate for the
shortcomings of his subordinates.

>You implied that the Alexander/Montgomery team was appointed with the
>specific understanding that the former would let the latter do his
>job. As far as I'm concerned, there is no difference between that team
>and the previous ones.

My point is that Alexander was not appointed to meddle in Monty's
operations unless it was obviously necessary to do so. It was
obviously not required because a stronger army commander than
Auchinleck's previous candidates was chosen. Meanwhile the appointmen
of McCreery to be Alexander's chief of staff offers a parallel example
of the orchestrated attempt to improve the C-in-C's subordinate
commanders.

>Frankly, I still don't understand how Alexander can be said to have
>managed Montgomery more (or less) successfully than anyone else. As
>far as I know, he practically never managed him at all.

I think it's evident that there was some level of management; equally,
I think it was insufficient and easily ignored or discounted by Monty
because of Alexander's diffident approach and his habit of commanding
by suggestion. But the fact that there was any management at all is
the point I'm making, alongside the fact that the style of command at
issue was calculated to work in an allied army group command as much
as it was an extension of Alexander's own personal preference. I may
regret the use of the word 'calculate', as it implies a level of
analytical thought that even I would have difficulty attributing to
Alexander, but what the hell.

>So Patton - whose subordinates lacked the personal experience of being
>thrashed by the Germans -

Oh, I think one or two managed it although to their credit seldom at
the scale the British had achieved previously.

>> Something like that
>
>If so, then I'm unsnipping the question that was following: how is
>that evidence of Alexander exercizing grip as opposed to his lucking
>out on having but the one unruly subordinate. Doubly lucking out in
>fact as his unruly subordinate also happened to be successful.

It's not a question of Alex having grip, but knowing (or 'lucking
out') on when a looser rein would pay off.

>> Meanwhile, why should
>> Alexander be critiqued for rewarding the initiative of one of the few
>> commanders to display any? (yes, I'm asking for it here...)
>
>This can be copied verbatim and used as a very bold defense of
>Alexander's (in)action when Clark decided to head for Rome after
>breaking out of Anzio.

Indeed. Except it avoids the issue of the available sanctions which
could be employed. Was Clark sackable? What, short of sacking, would
have compelled Clark's obedience to the lastest plan of Harding's to
come out of one of Alexander's briefings?

>What made Alexander such a cultured person is precisely that, while
>British, he could appreciate Italian reds as opposed to just the
>sugary stuff and white wines that British & American types go for
>initially. None of this Chardonnay and Chablis stuff, which is good
>enough in the right circumstances but not nearly as good with Italian
>cooking.

I am horrified at the unfounded implication that I would drink sweet
wine. I may be compelled to resort to an artillery barrage in a
considered and reasonable response.

>> How did his treatment of Bradley and Simpson actually
>> compare with how Alexander would have treated them?
>
>A fair point.
>
>What it comes down to is that if I go back to my list of multi-
>national army & army group commanders, only a few had unruly foreign
>subordinates. So MacArthur, Rommel and Montgomery drop out of the
>picture because their foreign subordinates didn't raise a fuss. This
>leaves Devers (de Lattre), Eisenhower (Montgomery) and Alexander
>(Clark). The first two generally managed their unruly subordinate, the
>latter didn't.

You could add Devers/Clark to that list at a stretch. Clark certainly
seems to have hated him as well. Did anybody ever get Clark and
Brooke alone in a room and stand bets on who would be left standing
after ten minutes?

>Obviously, a sample of three is insufficient to draw statistical
>evidence from so one can always argue - as you do - that Clark really
>was a one of a kind proposition.

I don't think Truscott gave Clark the same problems Clark had given
Alexander; although I'm not sure about McCreery - he had a fractious
personality, and I don't think in all fairness I can attribute the bad
blood between him and Clark entirely to Clark.

>> It looks like a
>> case of uncharacteristic Monty tactfulness in the first instance,
>
>How tactful did he need to be?

Considering we're talking about Monty, I'd say superhuman in
comparison with his usual efforts.

>Did Bradley disobey or ignore some of
>his orders or instructions?

More importantly, was he blamed for any shortcomings on the
battlefield? Or was he fast enough to sacrifice unfortunate US Corps
commanders as scapegoats to pre-empt the Alexander-esque Night of Long
Knives which would have followed in the MTO?

[Monty's instructions over Goodwood exploitation]

>IIRC it gave a more limited objective to one of Dempsey's divisions so
>in effect yes, it pretty much ruled it out. Contrast that with the
>ambitious objectives laid out for D-Day.

I disagree with that, based on my reading of D'Este on the matter;
Dempsey didn't seeem to appreciate it as critical at the time, and it
seems more of a CYA initiative by Monty even though he didn't use it
as such. I think it's clear Dempsey still expected a reasonable
chance of a breakthough which could be exploited, although he was
quick enough to shut it down for justifiable reasons in the event.

[roads in Sicily again]

>So Alexander isn't guilty of lack of grip, he is guilty of lacking the
>tactical acumen to realize that Montgomery's was a bad idea?

Yes. Well, I don't think it as necessarily a bad idea at the time,
but it was only justifiable if the 8th Army converted it into progress
on the battlefield, which they didn't. It was certainly a mistake in
hindsight.

>Ok, I can go with that.
>
>Are you sure this makes Alexander a better commander, though?

Only if there was a manifestly better contemporary alternative. If
there was a mistake in judgement on military grounds, it was Monty's.
Alexander's failure was in failing to appreciate the political
significance of it.

[1940 and the inter-allied brilliance of Bilotte, Gort, etc]

>The BEF was kept on a fairly loose rein anyway because the French,
>while a majority, were keenly sensitive to the multi-national angle as
>well as viewing the British as generally equal partners.

The British were certainly operating on a 'don't rock the boat'
approach with regard to the French command at the time as well.

>Another reason for the lack of Anglo-French friction until May 19,
>1940 is that Ironside, Gort and everyone else on the British side
>substantially agreed with the French.

Well, mostly. The British seem to have saved their venom for Ironside
and Hoare-Belisha and his perfidious and perilous pillbox plot, which
is legimitate enough when you consider how easily they might have
otherwise been diverted on to trivial irrelevances such as 'How to
stop an overwhelming German attack in the West'.

>This was definitely not a relationship along the same lines as the
>Rommel-Italian one even though combat power was unequally distributed
>in both cases.

There's a difference, though - the French correctly understood the
political importance of the BEF as opposed to it's microscopic
military importance; the Italians really needed Rommel to fend off
imminent defeat

>> I'm more sceptical; I really don't think Patton did outstandingly well
>> at any level.
>
>This is something that you need to take up with David. I haven't read
>d'Este's bio of the man, nor am I likely to in the near future.

I'm just throwing it in there to increase the irritant value.

>> That was his hysterical reporting after the fact; Patton was much more
>> pro-active when it came to strutting about the forward edge of the
>> battle area to validate his own personal issues.
>
>You mean like when Rommel stepped to the front and hijacked part of
>5th panzer division in support of his own 7th panzer to make the Meuse
>crossing? Without his playing exalted sergeant, the German crossing
>would probably have been delayed.

Oh, I don't doubt that Rommel's personal interventions were more
tactically significant than Patton's.

>Rommel was also very much at the forward edge of the battle area
>during the dash to the wire, so much so in fact that he almost got
>himself captured in the process.

But he was compelled to see reality in the end. Mostly down to some
good staff officers applying his philosophy towards siezing
responsibility when required.

>There is abundant evidence of Rommel leading from the front, and I'm
>not sure if Patton even compares in that regard (nor that he would
>need to in order to be ranked a good general).

I'd say the difference was that Rommel's tactical judgement about
exposing himself at the front (if you'll forgive the expression) was
better than Patton's. And even Alexander's, if you want.

>> That was impetuous and vainglorious, sure enough. But at least Rommel
>> had the good taste to avoid doing it with a pearl-handled Luger on his
>> belt, and it wasn't _wildly_ impetuous considering the state of the
>> British forces at the time.
>
>Well, you could argue that Patton was impetuous at times when German
>forces really were in a parlous state.

My argument is that he retained that impetuousity long after the point
at which Rommel would have been convinced to see facts.

>And Patton was alledged to carry a pair of ivory handled Colt .45's,
>not a pearl handled Luger! Talk about poor taste...

And even here Alex was secure enough to restrict himself to a
fly-whisk for his personal weapon when confronting the Afrika Korps.

Gavin Bailey

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