Stillwell was know as "Vinegear Joe" so yes he was hard to get along with, Patton was a 1st rate "smooze" artist and to state that Patton did not have an engagin personality is to show your ignorance of the man!!That's because you've bought completely into the Saving Private Ryan etc propaganda myth.
Monty was not Britain best commander of WWII - that was Slim but he was better than any US commander (with the possible exception of McArthur). Both had personaility traits that made them difficult to work with.
Patton and Stillwell were not exactly well known for their engaging personalities either.
Montgomery abhorred the senseless slaughter of his men having been an eyewitness to the slaughter of WWI. You're talk of his "failure" to capture Caen is, I'm afraid, wrong. It was not "wide open" for capture at any time.
If you want to talk about taking wide open towns, talk about Clark's obsession with taking Rome rather than taking Germans prisoner. At least Montgomery's caution was to protect the lives of his troops and not to seek personal glory.
source please!! You are showing your ignorance once again. May I suggest a book for you to read:If you'd been a soldier in an allied army in Normandy, you'd want to be under Montgomery's cautious command rather than the gung-ho antics of Bradley who ignored the advice of his own army's experts on the need for shore bombardment and support armour in amphibious operations.
http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/ ... 100-11.htm Pay particular attention to the armor that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. If you search this site you will find the exact number of tanks that landed on Omaha Beach by a guy that goes by the title RichTO90.
See above!You want to talk about useless slaughter of men? Talk about Omaha beach!
How you get your "millions" is a mystery; Montgomery SAVED lives not squandered them. He conserved effort and he was right - Eisenhower's political fudge of a braoad advance prolonged the war - there is where your countless (though not millions) lives lie.
Eisenhower was a genius!! He had to command the greatest collection of egos ever assembled (which included Sir Winston S. Churchill), and he did it with out relieving anyone of his top commanders!!Eisenhower was a political go-between. A clerk, a political appointee with no grasp of tactics.
MikeMarket-Garden was a failure. But worth attempting - it was poor execution and bad luck that did for it. It seems you favour calculated risk when it works, and damn it when it doesn't.
Any fool can be agressive with armies - Hitler and Zhukov for example (or Haig in WWI), it takes a general to win with minimal cost. I would take anything written by a German general with a healthy dose of salt.
I would've liked to have seen Bradley take Caen with American lives against the 12 SS Pz Div etc in the Bocage and XXX corps swing round to the South....