Bernard Montgomery, "Monty" to his troops, was the most famous British general of the Second World War. Careful, confident and often abrasive, he took command of a beaten army in the desert1, beat Rommel at El Alamein, and went on to lead the Allied ground forces ashore on D-Day2. He won by preparation, insisting on overwhelming strength before he struck.
Compare: Eisenhower vs Montgomery, Patton vs Montgomery
Command in the desert
Born in 1887, Montgomery was a professional soldier3 shaped by the horrors of the First World War, which left him determined never to waste his men's lives. In 1942 he took command of the British Eighth Army in North Africa1, restored its shaken morale, and refused to attack until he had built a decisive advantage2.
El Alamein
At the Second Battle of El Alamein in late 1942, Montgomery's carefully massed army ground down Rommel's Afrika Korps in a punishing set-piece battle4 and drove it into a long retreat. It was the first decisive British offensive victory over the Germans1 in the war, and Churchill hailed it as a turning point.
D-Day and beyond
Montgomery commanded the Allied ground forces for the Normandy landings of June 1944. By his own account, the plan drew the German armour onto the British and Canadian sector around Caen while the Americans broke out, though historians still debate how deliberate that was5. Later that year his ambitious airborne plan, Operation Market Garden, aimed to end the war quickly but failed at Arnhem.1
A difficult great man
Montgomery was as famous for his ego and his quarrels with his American allies as for his victories, and historians still debate his caution and his claims. But his hold over his soldiers and his record, above all El Alamein, secured his place as Britain's best-known commander of the war. He died in 1976, a field marshal and a viscount.1
See his desert triumph at El Alamein, or meet his peers in the greatest British commanders.
Sources and notes
Numbered notes in the text point to the works below.
- English Heritage, “Montgomery, Bernard Law, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887-1976)” ↩ a b c d e
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery” ↩ a b
- Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Making of a General, 1887-1942 (Hamish Hamilton, 1981). ↩
- Niall Barr, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein (Jonathan Cape, 2004). ↩
- Carlo D'Este, Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign (Collins, 1983). ↩
- World History Encyclopedia, “Bernard Montgomery, Encyclopedia of World History”
- Wikipedia, “Bernard Montgomery, Wikipedia”