History’s best industrial warfare generals: Bernard “Monty” Montgomery

Here’s a contribution from GringoLost reader Ralph. This is Ralph’s second entry into the series on greatest industrial warfare generals, his first was on Helmuth Von Moltke.

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Field Marshal Bernard “Monty” Montgomery was Britain’s Army commander during World War II.  He was the British version of Patton, an inspiration for his troops and the allies.  Beginning with El Alamein, he would push the Nazis back to the Rhine.

Montgomery makes the list of 8 best industrial warfare generals because he exemplifies the truism that success occurs not only because of the skills of the military leadership but also by the circumstances of the time and the competence of their political counterparts – and the industrial production capabilities they have at home.

There would be no Helmuth Von Moltke without Otto Von Bismarck, no Vo Nguyen Giap without Ho Chi Minh, and no Montgomery without Winston Churchill. Additionally, their victories relied on the successes of blockades and the harnessing of industrial war production. For example, Montgomery’s victorious North Africa campaign would not have happened if the allies had not deciphered Erwin “the Desert Fox” Rommel’s coded war plans and choked his supply lines. This combined with aerial bombing contributed to the allied victory.

Montgomery had a great ability to build morale when prepping his troops for combat. His compassion for them was first rate. He would explain the allies war aims in a way that gave the common soldier an understanding of why he fights. He would listen to their complaints. *He even set up a  brothel for them in Tripoli. Tactically, Montgomery would develop master plans which utilized force flexibility to counter unexpected enemy movement.

Critics said he was too cautious against enemy forces, but his contributions outweigh these criticisms. His command and control of the British military and his skill on the general staff contributed to turning the Nazi’s back in North Africa and taking Northern Germany. He was also an effective organizer working collaboratively with other allied commanders.

Here are some righteous quotes and circumstances which reflect Montgomery’s personality and astute leadership style.

• Speaking to officers while in command of the 8th Army in North Africa, Montgomery said “I have cancelled the plan for withdrawal. If we are attacked, then there will be no retreat. If we cannot stay here alive, then we will stay here dead.”
• After repelling an attack from Erwin Rommel at Alam el Halfa, Montgomery attacked the Germans at El Alamein on October 23rd 1942 while still waiting for resupply. This victory turned the war in the Allies favor. “Before Alamein we never had a victory,” said Winston Churchill, “after Alamein we never had a defeat.”
• Relying on the might of the Allied industrial base behind him, Montgomery led forces to push the Desert Fox out of Africa, invade Sicily, get a “toehold” on the boot of Italy, and, post-Normandy, force the Nazis to surrender Northern Germany to him personally on May 4th 1945.

Despite some post-WWII political disagreements with other allied commanders and some questionable actions later in life, Montgomery command style fit well with the Allied war plans. He was able to utilize the resources he had, including the fighting man, with great skill to drive a large portion of one of the greatest armies the world has seen to surrender. While some may contend that once the US entered the War a Nazi defeat was inevitable, it would be hard to envision this victory without that ole’ chap Monty.

Moltke’s influence on industrial war

Here’s a contribution from a reader. This is part III of the 8 part series on industrial warfare generals.

When discussing industrial military leaders, it is almost impossible to leave out Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder). This Prussian and Chief of the German General Staff took many of the practices of Napoleon and the theories of Clausewitz to utilize and institutionalize mobilization and, with the help of Albrecht von Roon and Otto von Bismarck, to unify Germany and change the face of Europe forever. His theory of warfare, clearly stated in the quote below and written in 1880, foreshadows what war would look like for the next 65 years and beyond (in the form of inter-state industrial warfare):

The greatest good deed in war is the speedy ending of the war, and every means to that end, so long as it is not reprehensible, must remain open. In no way can I declare myself in agreement with the Declaration of St. Petersburg that the sole justifiable measure in war is “the weakening of the enemy’s military power.” No, all the sources of support for the hostile government must be considered, its finances, railroads, foodstuffs, even its prestige.

Moltke built on the tactics of Napoleon in that he would mobilize his troops in smaller units (rather than one large force mobilizing to meet another large farce) so that his commanders could both conceal troop movements and react to a ever-changing battlefield. This gave his commanders the ability to coordinate in order to strike at weak points in an enemy’s position and divert an attack around enemy fortifications. Moltke’s ideas would inspire the Schlieffen Plan, Nazi Blitzkrieg, and the mobile warfare tactics of most nation-states thereafter.

The theories of strategy and tactics laid out here would influence a new paradigm of war fighting shown in, among others, the unification wars of Germany, the Franco-Prussian War, two World Wars. His theory of striking at a nation’s industrial base was most exemplified when two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Moltke was no less than the driving influence of how war was fought, what objectives were expected from it, and how the industrial base of states developed around it throughout the entire period of time that we are discussing here; Industrial militaries are still built on these principles and still try to fight wars using the methods he taught us. Whether good or bad, Moltke’s influence is undeniable.

Vietnam’s great war hero: General Vo Nguyen Giap

This is Part II of an 8 part series on great generals during the industrial warfare era. Part I covers Omar Bradley.

General Vo Nguyen Giap was forced into exile in 1939, fleeing to southern China where he met and learned guerrilla warfare from Mao Tse-Tung. Giap would later tailor Mao’s maxims on war to fit the conflicts and terrain of Vietnam. There he would defeat two of the world’s great powers: Overwhelming the French at Dien Bien Phu, pushing them to retreat past the 17th parallel (dividing Vietnam into Northern and Southern halves). Then after nearly a decade of conflict with American forces, Giap would break American containment and lead the reunification of North and South Vietnam under communist rule in 1975.

Giap is well-regarded for countering superior technology and firepower from the French and American side with his effective combination of conventional and guerrilla tactics.  His doctrine for the use of force fell into three stages: 1) guerrilla insurgency and unconventional assaults during the initial stage of contention; 2) mix of guerrilla and mobile-conventional warfare during equilibrium stage/protracted war; and 3) increase mobile warfare with conventional forces in order to exploit the loss of the will to fight by opposing forces. Using these three principles, Giap orchestrated the French defeat by isolating then overpowering French forces. Against the U.S., he effectively supplied and augmented the Vietminh insurgency while holding key positional ground in the northern border regions of South Vietnam.

But lastly the reason Giap makes our list of top 8 industrial war era generals is because he understood, perhaps more than anybody, the connections between political goals and military strategy. Giap practiced grand strategic political warfare. On war, Giap has written “not only did we fight in the military field but in the political, economic and cultural fields.” In this regard, he timed the siege of Dien Bien Phu to coincide with rising French disillusionment in Indochina and their growing willingness to have conciliatory talks with Ho Chi Minh. And he countered America’s strategy of attrition with an ability to harness local disenfranchisement and prolong the battle beyond the American public’s will to fight.

Industrial Warfare’s Best Generals, Part I: Omar Bradley

He was known as the “soldiers-general” because of his ability to communicate with enlisted and officer alike. Omar Bradley was a consummate professional who had another personality trait that set him apart: he was a reluctant warrior. He served stateside during World War I as a junior officer. Taught at West Point during the interbellum. He would go on to lead American operations in North Africa and Sicily during the early phases of America’s entry into World War II. Later, Dwight Eisenhower would make him commander of U.S. ground forces during the D-Day beach invasion of Normandy, France.

While considered an adept tactician, Bradley did not fancy himself a strategist. He did understand the intangibles of command however, including the importance of troop morale and logistics. As he once said “amateurs study strategy, professionals study logistics.”

There are other qualities which warrant Bradley’s placement on our esteemed list of the 8 best generals of industrial warfare. For one, he was a strong proponent of Veterans Affairs and pushed for the Montgomery GI Bill (thanks, btw).

But perhaps more importantly, Bradley was a reflective leader. For years after World War II had ended, Bradley would lament the causes and consequences of that war. Many lessons can be gleaned from his speeches and writings, such as those proffered in his Armistice Day speech of 1948. Although it was written to commemorate the end of World War II, it is still profound enough to read today. Below it is quoted in part (with my highlights in bold).

Tomorrow is our day of conscience. For although it is a monument to victory, it is also a symbol of failure. Just as it honors the dead, so must it humble the living.

Armistice Day is a constant reminder that we won a war and lost a peace.

It is both a tribute and an indictment: A tribute to the men who died that their neighbors might live without fear of aggression. An indictment of those who lived and forfeited their chance for peace.

Therefore, while Armistice Day is a day for pride, it is for pride in the achievements of others—humility in our own.

Neither remorse nor logic can hide the fact that our armistice ended in failure. Not until the armistice myth exploded in the blast of a Stuka bomb did we learn that the winning of wars does not in itself make peace. And not until Pearl Harbor did we learn that non-involvement in peace means certain involvement in war.

We paid grievously for those faults of the past in deaths, disaster, and dollars.

It was a penalty we knowingly chose to risk. We made the choice when we defaulted on our task in creating and safeguarding a peace.

It is no longer possible to shield ourselves with arms alone against the ordeal of attack. For modern war visits destruction on the victor and the vanquished alike. Our only complete assurance of surviving World War III is to halt it before it starts.

For that reason we clearly have no choice but to face the challenge of these strained times. To ignore the danger of aggression is simply to invite it. It must never again be said of the American people: Once more we won a war; once more we lost a peace. If we do we shall doom our children to a struggle that may take their lives.

Armed forces can wage wars but they cannot make peace.

[…]

With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it. We have many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Man is stumbling blindly through a spiritual darkness while toying with the precarious secrets of life and death. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

This is our twentieth century’s claim to distinction and to progress.

In our concentration on the tactics of strength and resourcefulness which have been used in the contest for blockaded Berlin, we must not forget that we are also engaged in a long-range conflict of ideas. Democracy can withstand ideological attacks if democracy will provide earnestly and liberally for the welfare of its people. To defend democracy against attack, men must value freedom. And to value freedom they must benefit by it in happier and more secure lives for their wives and their children.

Throughout this period of tension in which we live, the American people must demonstrate conclusively to all other peoples of the world that democracy not only guarantees man’s human freedom but that it guarantees his economic dignity and progress as well. To practice freedom and make it work, we must cherish the individual; we must provide him the opportunities for reward and impress upon him the responsibilities a free man bears to the society in which he lives.*

*Bradley, General Omar N. “An Armistice Day Address.” The Collected Writings Of General Omar N. Bradley. Vol. 1. 584-589.

The 8 best industrial war generals

A friend and I were discussing Thomas Ricks’ list of the worst generals in American history when we decided to make a list of our own. Our list isn’t ranked and it doesn’t focus solely on the U.S., instead we try to cover generals from around the world, and only those who commanded during the industrial warfare era (the time from the Civil War to before the end of the Cold War).

Additionally, our list only covers land generals so there are no Navy and Air commanders (nothing against them). The list is in alphabetical order. Please add in the comments any you think are missing.

• Omar Bradley
• Vo Nguyen Giap
• Helmuth Von Moltke (the Elder)
• Bernard Montgomery
• George S. Patton
• Ariel Sharon
• William Sherman
• Geory Zhukov