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Or, sometimes, failure.

Ribtorus wrote:

sturner wrote:

Yes, he did. However, he made up for it to some degree for his presence as the Commander for the Phantom Army before D-Day. And for his conduct of the 3rd Army from Normandy through the Battle of the Bulge.

That's a tribute to Ike's managerial genius, not really to Patton.

What should've been Monty's fate, then?

Market Garden. Win the war in a week, except...

A little less warring between generals, and the Falaise Pocket might have snapped completely shut. Victory in '44 after all, perhaps, before that debacle.

Attempting something of that type, untried on that scale, in the time allowed to pull it together, with the inadequate resources likewise wasn't bad generalship? How could it have been other than a failure?

Intel failures compounded it. British armor fighting up single lane forest tracks vs. the 10th SS Panzer's Tiger IIs was futility and waste embodied. I've seen the pictures.

Ribtorus wrote:

I didn't say it was a good plan, but it itself is not an example of incompetence, it's an example of failure. Not the same thing.

I realize that. But it's difficult to consider these things, many of which were evident to others, and see it as anything short of incompetence. Monty let ego, ambition and uncharacteristic optimism carry him away when to that point he'd been overly careful, reportedly mindful of his troops. Even discounting the unpredictable like the reserves mentioned, he should've seen it couldn't have been done with what was available in the short time available to marshall it.

Take away a few of those, it's inspired. With them, it was a disaster, and predictably so.

Ribtorus wrote:

Montgomery demonstrated an almost complete incompetence in '44. His best days were in North Africa and he should have been retired to a desk after that. The Brits (Churchill) could have put forward any number of better (less ego-driven) generals to carry their load in '44.  But politics carried the day.

Market Garden is not actually an example of his incompetent generalship at that time. Its failure was one of execution of the plan, not the plan itself. His real failure was in not fully supporting the important, yet seemingly plodding and unexciting work of clearing the ports leading North to the frontier. He wasn't interested in the real work.

I've read that military people well-versed with that particular terrain knew a plan like Market Garden was very unlikely to work.  As in, Dutch military thinkers.

If you like, we can chalk it up to temporary insanity or 'irrational exuberance' after a period of success. He wasn't generally that bad, more by '44 a prima donna- but one who allowed it all to go to his head on a grand scale. "Temporary incompetence?"

I think we're nearly on the same page, but I'm perhaps less willing to judge this a reasonable plan with good prospects of success.