8th army advance in north africa.

i reckon the distance the 8th army covred between alamain to mareth is approx 1200 miles.we all know how well jerry scorched the earth,blown harbours etc,but the 8th army still advanced on average 150miles a week.do you think,considering all that jerry did to slow monty,that the 8th army and monty were too methodical?.

 

I think Monty was naturally a cautious general but also 8th army had been bitten by Rommel more than once and that does create caution.

It,s no different to a boxing match when you have no fear or respect for your opponent you will just bore in on them coming forward with no fear of them but if they land some good shots on you and hurt you you will tend to come forward a bit slower and with more caution because you respect there ability.

 

Seeing how a lot of both Americans and British wet their pants whenever Rommel came within a couple of thousand miles(and they had a right to), they had good reason to dig in.

 

Fair to say 8th army didn,t wet there pants in Crusader the men fought hard as they also did at Alamein and our guys certainly weren,t wetting there pants in the Minqar Qaim breakout.

As for the Americans they got smashed at Kasserine but it was always going to happen you had a battle hardened enemy with 3 years of hard combat experience against a bunch of novices going in for the first time the U.S army was neglected between the two world wars to the point where it practically had to be rebuilt from the ground up,they were always going to have a rough beginning.

 

Come on. Do you think the anti-Monty camp will react to facts?

They hate Monty, and there is no way in hell they are ever going to acknowledge that he in any way contributed to winning the war, nor was agressive.

In fact the only reason for the 8th Army, and later 21st Army Group advanced, was that Monty held the map inverted so his timely retreat turned out to be a withdrawal.

If you want a decent discussion about Monty I suggest we do it in "the other place".

Over here there is no chance of that happening, just search the threads.
Monty was a timid old lady who never advanced unless at gun point.

 

Jaeger

It's worthwile to try to debunk miths here, we sank Bismark and cut down to size the late war panzers (maybe swinging a bit too much in the opposite direction in the second case) so why not give Monty a go?
IMO Monty in North Africa wasn't the most aggressive of generals but I see no reason for him to be, he was doing fine without taking high risks, over 20 miles a day is not bad at all and probably the best keeping the spearheads supplied allowed, the axis could retreat faster as they were moving towards their supply sources "eating up the pipeline" as they retreated. Time was on his side, he was getting stronger while his enemy was getting weaker so why gamble? He did gamble (and unfortunately lost) with Market Garden when the prize at stake was worth the risk but risking high losses to shorten the African campaign by a couple of months makes no sense.

BTW 4th Wilts how do you "scorch the earth" in the desert? I think the sun is already doing that.
The axis didn't leave stockpiles to be captured as often as the better supplied allies, mostly because they had very little to start with anyway, but didn't have the capability to perform extensive demolitions and mining of the ports as they did in mainland Europe.

 

if you look at or have any geographical knowledge of north africa,you might see that the terrain is in fact very different from most peoples perception of it.it was by no means flat,with a nice italian road all the way from tripoli to alamain.

 

Didnt the opposite apply though were rommel relied on brits not to scorch the earth.. He made good use of our kit and fuel. Maybe scorhing was a good idea... But im with jaeger, monty wont get a fair hearing here... He is already down as wetting his pants...

 

Slip

I was talking about the anti-monty camp and they have followers here.

There are plenty of American posters on this forum that have been around long enough to have a balanced view on Monty.

However there is a tendancy of younger posters with heavy bias from Hollywood, rather than rigorous study, to have a go along the lines you describe.

 

There is much not to like about Monty, but he was still one of the best generals in NW Europe. Monty missed the chance to destroy Afrika Korps, but Bradley let slip the German West Army in Falaise. Market-Garden was a bloodletting, but was not Roer, Aachen and Huertgenwald for the Americans?

 

Monty wasn,t a bad general he didn,t get everything right but who does in a long hard war you are going to get things wrong sometimes.

When you look at market Garden it failed and he gets slagged off for it with people quick to say it was to risky but if they had captured all the bridges and the operation had been a success those same people would be singing his praises.