Latest conspiracy theory.....

[SASless]

Listening to the History Channel while catching up on e-mail....D-Day and later events in Europe was being discussed.

Fact: Montgomery made a wager with Eisenhower.....Ike said war over by Christmas 1944.....Montgomery put a Fiver at risk.

Fact: Montgomery was never accused of being agressive in his plans....liked the set piece battle with a minimum of 3:1 superiority of his forces over the enemy. Market-Garden was very risky...and did not have that usual trademark superiority in forces.

Conspiracy theory....Montgomery seeing his Fiver was at risk....convinced Ike to approve Market-Garden...knowing it would fail...and thus ensure the war would last longer than Christmas and ensuring his winning the Fiver from Ike.

[Ginseng]

So Monty persuaded Ike to launch a risky operation, likely to involve extensive loss of life, and prolong the war, with even greater loss of life, to win a fiver.

Yes, and my name is Mickey Mouse.

Regards

Ginseng

[An Teallach]

Am I missing something here? I took it that Sasless was just reporting the theory. His post does not seem to endorse the theory to me.

Hardly worthy of personal abuse, no matter how much of an extended (if clipped) member you seem to complement him with, skybiggles.

12/7 09:23. Edited to explain: rather loses something now the abusive post above has been removed.

[Letsby Avenue]

There seem to be quite a few people in this forum that have been so indoctrinated with PC crap that they can't see further than what it says in their little HR handbook - They clearly don't belong here.:rolleyes:

[Captain Sand Dune]

How about the one that the Vietnam war was a result of a bet made between JFK and Aristotle Onassis?:E :E

[GeeRam]

So Monty persuaded Ike to launch a risky operation, likely to involve extensive loss of life, and prolong the war, with even greater loss of life, to win a fiver.

Who knows......maybe he did, maybe he didn't:hmm:

But it wouldn't have been much different to that numpty Mark Clark prolonging the war in Italy by up to year, just to massage his own ego....:(

[moggiee]

Market Garden would not have occured if Eisenhower had listend to Churchill and pushed north from Italy, into Germany from the south.

The main reason for this plan, though, was that Churchill wanted to stop the Russians grabbing eastern Europe.

Eisenhower said "don't worry, they're on our side......................."

[BillHicksRules]

SASless,

What is your opinion on what you posted?

Cheers

BHR

[Tigs2]

Think youre all being a little bit sensitive over SASless's post.

SASless who knows, you could be right, i reckon looking at the history books that Gen Hague used to decide in a morning whether he would send 5, 10 or 20 thousand men to their deaths fighting for 1.5metres of real estate that day, on whether nanny brought eggs, scones or kippers for breakfast that day. He made Gen Melchitt on Blackadder look sane (dont know if you have seen the ' BlackAdder goes Forth' series in the states - well worth buying on vid or DVD). It all lends weight to your 'lets win a fiver' conspiracy.

It would almost be as bizzarre as some american guy, maybe a president, sending thousands of american troops to their death so that he and his mates, could secure his families oil business for good, and make all of them billions of dollars in the construction and arms companies that they own. Not possible really is it! but hey if it could happen for a plate full of kippers and a fiver??

[Onan the Clumsy]

make all of them billions of dollars in the construction Tigs, that's really unfair. After all, once the Pentagon got a look at Haliburton's bills they decided to not pay them...

[SASless]

Tigs,

I don't hold with conspiracy theories in general....I would suggest the Fiver thing is more than a bit far fetched....as are most conspiracy theories....God knows the past few years have been rife with them....as evidenced by some of the conjecture in this thread already.

One would have to assume there was complete folly at the highest levels of the SHAEF command in order to even remotely think the wager was the reason for the MG Op Plan.

I personally have other issues with that operation that would challenge why it was even considered viable....the intelligence reports of the two Panzer Divisions being in the area being ignored by Montgomery alone would give rise to some questions. The tactical plan to road march armor up a single road across six bridges without considering problems....also makes one wonder just what was in their teapot. Add in the fact the Air Lift assets required three days of drops to get all the Allied forces inserted....argues against the basic plan itself.

I would assert....the plan was fatally flawed from the start....the Allies had a huge investment in the Airborne Army.....and needed something for it to do and that was the real reason the plan was accepted....and why the Commander sold it so hard....and overlooked the shortcomings of the plan and ignored the intelligence data.

But that Montgomery sold the plan over a Fiver being at risk...no....that did not happen.

I also think if those assets had been alllocated to Patton's area....where he was advancing 50 miles a day.....and a break through had been done where we had highly mobile and aggressive armored forces that were already on the move....those Airborne resources could have been better utilized than on the MG Plan.

The lure of being in the Ruhr might have been the deciding factor for the MG plan....but I fear the politics of the time might have argued against Patton getting those assets. Montgomery was never know for his pace of advance as was Patton.

It might be argued the Broad front strategy of Eisenhower amongst other things ensured the political embarassment of one nations forces was avoided by getting all forces into Germany at one time....whereas throwing the majority of resources in one direction or the other would have set the stage for political problems amongst the Allies. We should also recall the US forces outnumbered the British by a 3:1 ratio at that point in the war....thus by sheer numbers our forces would be in a more advantagous position to capitalize on tactical successes due to unity of command if no other reason.

[CarltonBrowne the FO]

Montgomery is the subject of widely differing views as to his competence; these views seem largely to vary with nationality. In the US, as far as I can tell, Monty is seen as overly cautious; his unwillingness to begin an attack before achieving overwhelming superiority of forces is seen as a sign of weak will. In the UK this caution is seen as part of his great concern for the welfare of his men. Incidentally achieving an overwhellming superiority of forces has since become standard doctrine for the US! ;)
IMO the British Army of the Second World War was better led than at any time in its history. Almost without exception, its senior officers were professionals, selected for ability rather than social background, and veterans of the slaughter that was the Western Front in the Great War (I use their own term for the First World War). They had seen the massive losses caused by bad command decisions, and just how badly things can go wrong when you trust to luck. They had also seen the devastating effect on the country by the loss of the larger part of a generation of young men- even in a victorious war.
It is ironic that in Market Garden, when Monty finally gambled- he lost. It should not, however, tarnish his reputation, or the reputation of the other British generals of that war.
Please note: I am not a historian, except on a purely amateur basis. All the above is purely opinion. If anyone challenges my view on this subject, I would be interested to hear their view- either in this thread or as a PM.

[Tigs2]

SASless
jeez, there really is no pleasing some people sometimes. i know your not a conspiracy theorist, ref all our previous discussions. you posted an amusing, flippant post, met with an unbelievable amount of seriousness. i back you up with an equally flippant post and you get as serious with me as the rest did with you. lighten up everybody!

[X-QUORK]

Max Hasting's excellent book Armageddon looks into the downfall of the Third Reich from D-Day onward. He thinks the US forces had very little regard for the British senior officers, especially Monty. It's difficult to know whether this was deserved, but I think it's fair to say that the rather snooty and superior attitude held by many British officers against the US forces was unfair and made for bad blood at a time when unity was needed.

[SASless]

Carleton,

The History Channel made note of the fact that MG was the only time that Montgomery seemed to step out of his usual approach towards battle, that being using a set-piece approach. It is a well known fact that Eisenhower and Montgomery had their moments....and Patton and Montgomery really had their moments. The account of how hard it was to keep the acrimony between "friends" at a level that the coalition of US/UK forces could be successful is in itself a very interesting study.

Senior commanders are not always known for their small egos....on either side. It speaks well of Churchill, Roosevelt, and their senior military leaders that the alliance worked as well as it did.

Tigs,

No problem.....arguing about Montgomery seems to be a never ending situation between the Brits and the Yanks.....needless to say I prefer the Patton types to the Montgomery types...and neither are typical of either military system....and both were great military leaders.

[Flatus Veteranus]

Max Hastings's superb book "Armageddon" is a "must read". I think it would be fair summary of his assessments of the armies that fought in the West from D-Day onwards that :-

a. The Brits were risk-averse. They were a "citizen -army" with somewhat pedestrian leadership still obsessed with the catastrophies of 1914-18 (Somme etc).

b. The Americans, for all the flamboyance of some of their leaders, were equally amateurish, although some of their formations (eg, the Airborne divisions) were brilliant.

c. The Sovs were totally committed, fought like tigers under some magnificent generals, and really won the war.

d. The Germans, particularly, the SS, were highly professional, brilliantly led , superbly equipped, punched way over their weight, and were collectively "men of the match".

Max was not very kind about the RAF - particularly Bomber Command. One of the main factors of the Allied victory was the attrition of the Luftwaffe in the air by the US 8th Air Force escort fighters.

Not very comfortable reading for a light-blue partisan, but the man is an outstanding historian. The in-fighting between allied leaders was scandalous. One wonders how Ike put up with Monty!

[SASless]

Flat,

The better question is how did Montgomery put up with Eisenhower......the answer is because Churchill backed Eisenhower and Eisenhower told Montgomery as much.....which led to that very apologetic letter from Montgomery after IKE showed him where the cow ate the cabbage.

One of the reasons the British were so risk averse after D-Day is the amount of losses that had been incurred before then....there just were not the replacements available and the American's were beginning to show up with new divisions as the training pipeline began to pump out the units.

We went from 1.6 million in uniform in 1941 to over 18.0 millin by the end of the war.

[CarltonBrowne the FO]

Another theory for the less aggressive nature of British forces by 1944 is the "special forces paradox."
Since 1940, so many volunteers had been called for, to serve in various specialist units, that the regular line units had been, to an extent, stripped of their more aggressive troops.
Just to quote the units I can think of at the moment, there were the Commandos, the Parachute Regiment, the SAS, the SBS, the Chindits, the Small Scale Raiding Parties, the Long Range Desert Group, the Special Operations Executive, Popski's Private Army... not to mention the more general "volunteers for hazardous duty" within all the arms of service.
All of these units achieved results out of proportion to their size- but it is arguable that the loss of those soldiers with the most initiative and drive damaged the effectiveness of their "donor" units.
It is not that the regular line forces lacked courage- far from it. The loss shows more as a loss of flexibility, both in responding to setbacks, and siezing opportunities when they were presented.

[SASless]

Carl...

If you add up the dead, wounded, missing, and captured....and compare it to the numbers of troops serving in special units....you might find the numbers telling. The argument that by taking the best of one's troops and putting them into special units thereby harming the conventional unit's has been the crutch used by those who do not like "unconventional units".

The British Army had fought a long hard war since '39 and had been bled white....conscription was drawing from the very last resources....enlistments were tailing off due to the lack of men available to serve.

One source suggests the British (including the colonial armies) had lost 519,000 dead or missing....and 488,000 wounded...and no telling how many being held POW by the Axis powers.

Just how many were Special troops?

[Pontius Navigator]

There was another interesting facet that I only found out about from an old naval association.

During the battle of the Atlantic naval forces were continually replacing losses and increasing the number of escorts. From end 1943 onwards the need for sailors declined markedly.

Of four sailors in particular they were told they would not be given new berths. Two were given signals billets at Hellfire Corner, one was trained as an RM Commando and appointed to an Assault Unit (an Ian Flemming invention and nothing to do with Assault - they operated ahead of the assault troops) and another was retrained as a Para and dropped at Arnhem.

[CarltonBrowne the FO]

SASless... just to make it clear, I do not know if the "special forces paradox" is true; I mention it here only because I found it an interesting possibility.
Certainly I have read 1980s RAF material implying that elite squadrons are a waste of manpower; not in this case because other squadrons are weakened, but because squandering the most experienced crews on suicide missions weakens the whole force! The later missions of the Dambusters were given as a case in point; repeated attempts to bomb the Dortmund-Ems canal killed most of the survivors of the Dams raid. The RAF view that I read suggested that it would be better to just pick a squadron at random and train it for a mission. However, it is entirely possible that this was written with the prejudice against unconventional units slanting the argument.

[tarbaby]

The latest conspiracy is that the real Lions team did not travel to N.Z. Evidently Woodward had them all cloned. However the clones did not have time to learn how to play rugby. Why else would a so-called tour cost 9 million pounds?