El Alamein and earlier offensive

I recall that Churchill demanded Monty to attack earlier, perhaps in September. Monty refused and wanted to gather more troops/tanks so that he´d be ready the way he wanted it himself.

What if the attack had been started earlier? Could Monty have succeeded?

Why did Churchill this time give up his demands?

Thanx!

 

Monty always claimed (his memoirs) that after his defensive battle 'his stocks were high, and there was no more talk about an early offensive'.

Monty did have talks with the PM and explained to him why he did not want to rush into battle.
Churchill was always screaming for offensive operations. Just look at the beginning of the commandoes. As the british were booted out of europe he wanted 'hands of steel' to cross the channel to harass the germans. Likewise the bomber offensive. The British public needed a victory. And Vinnie was willing to gamble just about everything to see it through.

An earlier battle would have resulted in a stalemate. Looking at the immense preperations for Montys offensive it would not have succeeded in September. The 'new' divisions coming from england had to learn how to operate in the desert. The divisions in the line were all understrength both in men and materiel. They needed to charge their batteries so to speak. The 50th and the 7th Armd had been split up and needed reorganisation and new equipment. The tankers needed to train on operating the 300 new shermans etc.

 

Simple. Montgomery was waiting for Operation Uranus to start so the Germans would pull Panzer Divisions out of his front, said he with his tongue implanted in his cheek

 

Kai a good book on this question is 'Pendulum of battle, three battles at El-Alamein' Cannot remember the name of the writer at the moment. An easy find at Amazon.

Za

As a side note, comerade Stalin put gray hairs on Churchill regarding his plans (or lack of communications on them) for his southern front. The British were in the end forced to gamble on the red army holding out against the germans. The British prepared to shift a lot of forces to Iraq, to stop the germans...

 

Churchill was always pushing his Generals for an earlier attack. Most ignored him or provided enough data to put him off for a while.

As above, the 8th Army wasnt ready for an attack in September, but with the succesful defense of Alam el Halfa and 2 more months of re-equipping and training saw them capable of defeating DAK.

I would imagine a Sept attack would have seen 15 & 21 Pz sit back and do a reverse Alam el halfa on the still undertrained British tankers.