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Hardcover book from 1986 about Field Marshall Montgomery. His promotion came after he had won the greatest victory of the war in Normandy and the German armies were in retreat. This is the third and final volume in Hamilton's monumental biography. It traces Monty's extraordinary career in the last nine months of WWII, the bitter disagreement over Allied strategy in the autumn of 1944, the tragedy of the battle of Arnhem, the American disaster in the Ardennes, the struggle to regain the initiative for the Allies, the triumphant crossing of the Rhine, Eisenhower's decision to surrender Berlin to the Russians, and the historic German surrender at Luneberg. Monty's work in post-war Europe is also covered including his role in founding NATO.
- Sales Rank: #1395711 in Books
- Brand: McGraw Hill
- Published on: 1986-12
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 996 pages
From Library Journal
The third and last volume of Hamilton's massive biography of Field Marshal Montgomery is even more interesting than its predecessors. It covers the period after the victory in Normandy when Monty was promoted to field marshal; the disaster of Arnhem (for which he deserves most of the blame); his feud with Ike and his low opinion of American generalship. Eisenhower had assumed the dual role of supreme commander. Monty wanted the ground commander job for himself and felt that Ike was unequal to the supreme commander job. The last half of the book details Monty's years as commander of the British zone in Germany and chief of the Imperial General Staff, and his part in the dissolution of the British Empire. By then Monty was an old man, and it would be charitable to ignore some of his decisions. For every comprehensive World War II collection. Stanley Itkin, Hillside P.L., New Hyde Park, N.Y.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Good but Biased
By Paul S. Teague, Major, US Army Retired
Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976, is the third volume of Nigel Hamilton's famous trilogy on the life of Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. The other two volumes are Monty: The Making of a General 1887-1942 and Master of the Battlefield: Monty's war Years 1942-1944. All three volumes have been praised for their accuracy of historical events; they were also criticized for their obvious pro-Montgomery bias. Hamilton was a friend of Montgomery in his youth and later became his official biographer. In Hamilton's preface to his book The Full Monty he admits that their relationship grew so close that Montgomery sent him over one-hundred loving and affectionate letters through the years. One might think that this close relationship between writer and subject would degrade objectivity, in the case of Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976, one would be right.
Hamilton's thesis is Montgomery's skill as a trainer and motivator as well as his high level of professionalism made him the best General of World War Two. Hamilton supports his thesis well if the reader has no military experience; however, to a military professional the thesis is somewhat full of holes. For instance, Hamilton attributes Montgomery's enduring opposition to General Dwight Eisenhower's broad front strategy to his professionalism. However, this opposition included claiming that Eisenhower was an unintelligent amateur who was in over his head and did not know what he was doing. Montgomery made these claims to several British Generals including General Alan-Brooke, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. While Hamilton may believe, Montgomery was acting this way because his professionalism dictated
that he do so, a military professional would look upon it as disloyalty, the most unprofessional act an officer can commit. There is an abundance of similar episodes in all of Hamilton's books. Because of Hamilton lack military experience, and because he is a biographer, not a historian, his
assessments of Montgomery's professionalism are often lacking. Hamilton uses personal diaries, notes, letters, interviews, and official messages, in addition he had access to Montgomery's personal papers to reinforce his thesis, yet his own written words discredit this same thesis.
Hamilton begins the book in the fall of 1944 where volume two of the trilogy ends, just before Montgomery's 21st Army Group begins its attack North in the direction of Antwerp. Supplying Montgomery's 21st Army Group and General Omer Bradley's 12th Army group had become an acute problem. Supplies were still being trucked from the beaches of Normandy. The opening of the channel ports was necessary to continue the allied attack over the Rhine. Montgomery was given the mission to secure the channel ports. He was allocated three divisions from the U.S. 1st Army to accomplish this. Antwerp was taken on 4 September 1944, but Antwerp was still useless as Montgomery had neglected to secure the Scheldt Estuary and deal with the German 15thArmy still operating in the vicinity of Antwerp. Hamilton defends Montgomery's negligence by writing that Eisenhower should have ordered Montgomery to secure the Port, and the Scheldt Estuary and to deal with the German 15th Army; then Montgomery would have done so. Here Hamilton once again betrays his ignorance of military matters and technique. The type of order Hamilton recommends is the type that is given by a Captain to a Second Lieutenant, the lieutenant is told everything he is expected to do. An officer of Montgomery's stature, experience and alleged professionalism surely could have been
expected to identify all the tasks pertaining to the successful completion of his mission.
Montgomery left the Antwerp mission uncompleted and immediately turned to an operation to force a crossing of the Rhine at Arnhem, the ill-fated Operation Market Garden. Many called Montgomery a master of the set piece battle, the battle of Arnhem was not set piece by any means and required quick decisions and flexibility, two areas where Montgomery was lacking. Before the last shots of this defeat were fired Montgomery was back at the throat of Eisenhower demanding support for a single thrust towards Berlin commanded by Montgomery. This required attaching the 9th and 1st US Armies to Montgomery's Army Group leaving Bradley's 12th Army Group with only one Army, Patton's Third. This time Eisenhower refused. Montgomery immediately went on an anti-Eisenhower campaign complaining about him to the Imperial General Staff. Hamilton supports Montgomery's disloyalty by treating Eisenhower in an extremely poor manner. This is a reoccurring theme throughout the Book. It was not until after his defeat at Arnhem that Montgomery decided to refocus on Antwerp. He finally ordered the 1st Canadian Army to clear the Scheldt Estuary of the German 15th Army. Now that a month had passed since the capture of Antwerp the 15th Army had been able to move 150,000 soldiers into the estuary in order to delay the opening of Antwerp for as long as possible. It took until 7 November 1944 to clear the estuary. Only now could the Port of Antwerp be opened and used to supply allied forces, over two months after the capture of Antwerp.
There were many criticisms of Montgomery as a General, his abrasive personality, his inability to get along with peers, disloyalty to superiors, lack of tactical flexibility and self
promotion just to name a few, and these criticisms have grown in intensity since the end of
World War Two. Hamilton spends a great deal of time confronting these issues; however he
uses a very distasteful method of doing so. He tries to make Montgomery look good by making other Generals look bad. In July 1942, the 8th British Army under General Claude Auchinleck stopped the Afrika Corps attack on Egypt at El Alamein. Prime Minister Winston Churchill wanted Auchinleck to counter attack immediately; Auchinleck responded that he would not be
able to do so until September. An annoyed Churchill fired him and replaced him with Montgomery. In the event, Montgomery did not counterattack until October. In September, Montgomery announced that Auchinleck had a plan to retreat to the Nile if the Afrika Corps attacked again. At this point to improve Montgomery's stature Hamilton commits what amounts to character assassination on Auchinleck. This whole story was a fabrication that Montgomery had to issue a televised apology for years later.
Hamilton is a bit more objective when covering Montgomery's time as Chief of the Imperial General Staff. He admits that Montgomery was not fully successful in that position, but he blames that on the inability of the Chiefs of the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy to match Montgomery's professionalism. In reality it was because Montgomery lacked the tact, understanding, and strategic knowledge, which is professionalism, required to do the job properly. Montgomery was so arrogant in this position that he took the unheard liberty to name his successor, General John Crocker. Prime Minister Clement Attlee told Montgomery that General William Slim was to be his successor. When Montgomery protested that he had already told Crocker that he was to replace him Attlee replied with his famous "Untell him."
Towards the end of the book, Hamilton gives a view of the old Field Marshal's final years. He destroyed his friendship with President Eisenhower by writing in his memoirs that Eisenhower extended the war with his broad front strategy. He alienated the American people,
by declaring that Robert E. Lee did not know his business while on a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. The city of Montgomery, Alabama withdrew his honorary citizenship of the city from him. An aspect of Montgomery's later years was his relationships with young boys. Hamilton must be given credit for broaching this topic. Montgomery would invite hundreds of boys to his estate in the summer so they might experience companionship. Indeed, Hamilton himself was one of these young men. With some of the boys Montgomery established strong bonds that lasted until his death, again, Hamilton was one of these chosen elect. In the end, however, Montgomery died a lonely, bitter man at the age of eighty-eight in his bed of natural causes in March 1976.
The strength of Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976 is Hamilton's excellent and accurate depiction of the events in Montgomery's life between 1944 and 1976. Indeed, this is a characteristic of all of the books Hamilton has written on Montgomery, there were eight at the last count. Hamilton's description of the military actions are most significant, they are well written, detailed, accurate, and important for students of military history or professional soldiers to study. They are so well written that the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College have placed all three volumes of Hamilton's trilogy on their official World War Two reading list.
The weaknesses of the work are Hamilton's lack of military understanding and his blatantly biased assessments of Montgomery as a commander and as a professional. Hamilton
will describe an action of Montgomery, which is an example of unabashed unprofessionalism,
and claim it to be an example of Montgomery's high level of professionalism. Hamilton's lack of objectivity almost destroys the entire work as it does destroy his thesis. However, taken on
the whole, the book's pros just outweigh the cons.
Hamilton's Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976 is up to the standard of most works on Montgomery simply because Nigel Hamilton wrote so many of those works. Hamilton has written besides this work, Monty: The Making of a General 1887-1942, Master of the Battlefield: Monty's War Years 1942-1944, Monty: The Field Marshal 1944-1976, Monty: The Battles of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Monty: The man Behind the Legend, The Full Monty, and Montgomery: D-Day Commander. Of these only The Full Monty contains new information, specifically new information on Montgomery's suppressed homosexuality and his involvement with the raid at Dieppe, France in 1942. Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976 does not compare well with The Desert Generals by Correlli Barnett. Barnett's book only covers Montgomery in North Africa, and the quality of the information is as good as Hamilton's book. However, Barnett is much more objective, making The Desert Generals more enjoyable to read. On the other hand, R. W. Thompson's work Churchill and the Montgomery Myth is as bad as Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976 for objectivity. Where Hamilton sees no wrong in Montgomery, Thompson sees no right. Thompson clearly has an axe to grind.
If the reader has enough military knowledge and can read this book without too much passion or rather anger, then Monty: Final Years of the Field Marshal 1944-1976 is well worth reading.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Nigel Hamilton and the Montgomery Legend
By Bill Weidner
MONTY, Final Years of the Field Marshal, 1944-1976, by Nigel Hamilton, McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1986
After the Battle of Second Alamein, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill created a national hero from the general who had won the battle: Bernard Law Montgomery. After the war, the huge prize for journalists was access to Montgomery's papers. The prize was awarded to Sir Denis Hamilton, who later passed it on to his son, Nigel. The young Mr. Hamilton has more than fullfilled his father's promise for the proper care and nurture of those legendary tales surrounding Great Britain's most field marshal. In fact, Mr. Hamilton has killed off a small rain forest (some ten (10) books on Montgomery by latest count) in support of the Montgomery legend. Hamilton can be forgiven for going easy on his family's most lucrative benefactor. Stephen Ambrose in the United States did the same thing for General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The problem is that Hamilton is creating history when he writes; and when he bends history to make it conform to the Montgomery legend, he is creating bad, (biased) history.
"MONTY, The Final Years of the Field Marshal, 1944-1976," is not Hamilton's best effort in his trilogy on Montgmery's life despite its wrist bending 996 pages. "Monty: The Making of a General, 1887-1942" and "Monty: Master of the Battlefield, 1942-1944" were both better books. "Master of the Battlefield" was probably the best for both historical research and the flow of the narrative. In "the Final Years" the storyline seems to be patched together and rather disjointed at times and it is hard to follow. That said, it is also a treasure trove of historical facts and insights about Montgomery's life that the reader can get no where else. Mr. Hamilton has made a great contribution to our understanding of the events surrounding the world's most destructive war in history and he deserves much credit for doing the work. The British bias is simply part of the historical minefield the reader must navigate. Being aware of it mitigates, but does not eliminate, the problem.
Hamilton never tires of criticising the Americans. The higher in rank the commnder, the more vicious and frequent the criticism. As one might expect, US General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander comes in for severe criticism throughout the book. Hamilton quotes a Montgomery letter in November 1944, "As a commander in charge of the land operations, Eisenhower is quite useless. There must be no misconception on this matter; he is completely and utterly useless." p. 152. Hamilton then proceeds to throw his own bile Eisenhower's way, "Yet it was Eisenhower's miserable performance as a field commander that reduced Monty to exasperation."
This is rich stuff. Hamilton then proceeds to explain how Montgomery had won a great victory in Normandy and how the incompetent Eisenhower had thrown the victory away. "Monty had landed two million Allied soldiers on a hostile shore and inflicted upon the German armies in Normandy their greatest defeat in World War II. Since assuming overall field command Eisenhower had frittered away this advantage and adopted an American tactical strategy of bullying ahead with thrusts on all fronts simultaneously ... This policy had failed - and in condemning Eisenhower Monty was careful to emphasize the consequences of Eisenhower's policy..." p. 152. Those incompetent Americans were going to let the war run into 1945 after the great British field marshal won a huge victory in Normandy.
There are more than a few things wrong with that scenario. First Montgomery did not win a great victory in Normandy. His British Army failed to take Caen, their D-day, objective for nearly a month and a half. The Germans gutted Montgomery's infantry divisions so badly at Caen that they were incapable of offensive operations. On August 14th a very despressed Montgomery wrote to Alan Brooke, his boss in London, "Regret time has come when I must break up one infantry division. My infantry divisions are so low in effective rifle strength that they can no - repeat NO - longer fight effectively in major operations..." (Montgomery cable M-92 to War Office, from Carlo D'Este, Decision in Normandy, p. 262.) The Americans broke out during Operation Cobra and succeeded in surrounding the Germans in Normandy, Patton's people got to Argentan at 1900 hours on the evening of August 12th. North of Argentan was reserved for Montgomery's British Army, they failed to close on Argentan until nearly the 20th - allowing over 100,000 Germans to escape through the so-called Falaise Gap. Nor would Montgomery allow Patton's Army to move north from Argentan, a tragic blunder caused mainly by Montgomery's jealousy of the Americans. (See F. DeGuingand's "Operation Victory," p. 407. Carlo D'Este's "Decision in Normandy", pp. 449 to 452, and Antony Beevor's "D-Day, The Battle for Normandy," p. 478.) Despite letters from Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay and General Eisenhower both dated September 4, 1944 and begging him to open Antwerp, Montgomery had his eye fixed on the glory a Rhine crossing at Arnhem would add to his resume. It was a fool's errand, costing the Allies 17,500 casualties and the total destruction of British First Airborne Division in Arnhem. While Montgomery was arguing with Eisenhower -- he allowed nearly 100,000 German soldiers from General Gustav von Zangen's Fifteenth German Army to walk off the Pas de Calais.(J.L. Moulton, "Battle for Antwerp," p.46.)
Hamilton's accusation that Eisenhower was attacking all along the front is another feint to cover for Montgomery's manpower problems. Montgomery had to break-up one British Infantry Division in Normandy - he broke up another one, the 50th Infantry Division, in November 1944. Supreme Allied Headquarters had recognized British manpower problems before the invasion and had designated the American drive through Metz, France and into Germany via the Frankfurt Gap as the main Allied thrust. But the politically astute British played on the fact that they were short of men, and had convinced the Combined Chiefs of Staff in DC that the Germans were killing more people in England than they were killing on the battlefield. They asked Eisenhower to change the priority and give Montgomery's drive to the north the priority so they could destroy those V-weapon sites that were supposedly killing so many civilians in England. It was a total ruse, intended solely to cancel the American drive south of the Ardennes. The British wanted to give the American Armies a new task, nursemaid for Montgomery's 21st British Army Group north of the Ardennes.
Eisenhower agreed and moved all of Ninth and most of First US Armies north of the Ardennes beside Montgomery's British Army. Indeed, Eisenhower had moved so much American strength north, he warned Montgomery in a September 24th letter that they may have created a problem. Eisenhower wrote to Montgomery, "... We must not blink to the fact that we are getting fearfully stretched south of Aachen and may get a nasty little 'Kasserine' if the enemy choses at any place to concentrate a bit of strength..." Chandler, "The D.D. Eisenhower Papers, The War Years," Vol. IV, 2187. The Germans did choose to concentrate 'a bit of strength.' It was called the Battle of the Bulge, for which the Nigel Hamilton, B. L. Montgomery and the British press all blamed Eisenhower and the Americans for getting themselves so badly stretched. Eisenhower goes out of his way to support the offensive capacity of the British Army, and gets stabbed in the back for his trouble. The fact that the Americans were stretched to accomodiate a critical British manpower shortage apparently did little to mitigate their utter incompetence. Is the phrase "Perfidious Albion" an apt connotation?
It was official British policy to be critical of foreign generals. If their reputations could be ruined it would enhance the opportunity for British generals to assume the role of commander, and with the help of British journalists, assist in creating those wonderfully biased, but untruthful accounts of the battle for which the British have become so famous. D.K.R. Crosswell wrote, "...of the relentless British press campaign that elevated Montgomery to the station of Britain's greatest general since Wellington and correspondingly denigrated Eisenhower to affable chairman of the board." D.K.R. Crosswell, "Beetle, The Life of General Walter Bedell Smith," p. 588. It drove Eisenhower crazy, but as the 'good ally,' there was nothing he could do about it.
You wouldn't read any of this in Hamilton's account. While Mr. Hamilton's account of Montgomery's life is a historians dream of new facts and revelations about the war's most popular British general, it is dangerous history for the novice. The truth does not often match the Montgomery legend. Nigel Hamilton and legend have it that Montgomery was a great commander. Legend has it wrong. The truth about Montgomery is hard to find. Correlli Barnett, Russell A. Hart, Carlo D'Este, R.W. Thompson, Timothy Harrison Place, D.K.R. Crosswell, Sir Francis Tuker and Lord Tedder are a few historians who get most of it right. The truth, with apologies to Mr. Nigel Hamilton, is that Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery was almost certainly the most incompetent senior commander of any of the major combatants during World War II.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I was disappointed in this book by Nigel Hamilton
By Donald True
I was disappointed in this book by Nigel Hamilton. I've read his other books about Monty and liked them for the fairness with the author treated Monty, warts and all, and the other people associated with him. However, in this book, Hamilton was, in my opinion, way overboard in his treatment of Gen. Eisenhower. His writing of Eisenhower treats him as an incompetent General in over his head, and one who was accused of being disingenuous in his dealings with his subordinates.
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