Personally, I have always thought Tedder the RAF’s equivalent of Monty and Dickie.

"The Right of the Line" and the Role of the RAF in WW2 ​

An appreciation by Dr. John Peaty in BRITISH COMMISSION FOR MILITARY HISTORY hmmm, so I'm not the only one who thinks that Tedder was a reptile.

 

As an ex-Army man myself, I would start by saying that I make no claims for intensive research into RAF matters other than when I spent almost two years researching the death of my own dear Air-Gunner brother in what were questionable circumstances.

I do however have the happy knack of being able to spot those who I believe would denigrate their betters purely for the sake of denigration.

Whilst browsing the internet I came across this site: 2003 History Conference - Air War Europe and read with interest this evaluation of Tedder by Liddel-Hart.

"The second action concerns the preparations for the Normandy invasion of 6 June 1944. General Eisenhower’s deputy supreme commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, believed the most important contribution air power could make to the invasion would be the disruption of the transport system in France. Because Fighter Command had established air superiority over France, Allied bombers were able to achieve Tedder’s aim relatively free from attack. Basil Liddell Hart later concluded that Tedder’s paralysis of the Nazis’ communications system was the single most significant factor in the success of the Normandy invasion.[24] It was the control of the air, though, that underwrote Tedder’s achievement"

Would Squeeth care to comment?

 

I think that the air contribution to ground operations is undergoing a searching re-evaluation which is tending to reduce its importance. recent stuff I've looked at - Buckley, Copp and Hart point out that the bombing of German coastal defences on D-Day was a failure as a destruction bombardment, that the air did indeed believe that it should concentrate on what it knew it could do well (blockade of the battlefield) but tried to avoid admitting this to the Ground Commanders, that there were all too many attacks on Allied soldiers and equipment by aircraft when they did operate over the battlefield and that the number of German tanks they destroyed was miniscule.

Tedder's denigration of Monty's Command in Normandy is a matter of record.

~~~~~would denigrate their betters~~~~~ can someone mean this and not be either an elitist prick or a brown noser of elitist pricks?

 

All criticism of Tedder stems from his dislike of Montgomery. It had a long history. Tedder's personal assistant, who maintained his diary, was Wing Commander Leslie Scarman - later Lord Scarman, Law Lord and distinguished judge. Carlo D'Este interviewed Lord Scarman in 1980-81. His assessment of Tedder, in Decision in Normandy is based on those interviews:

Sir Arthur Tedder was no friend of Montgomery. The two men had once been close during the Alam Haifa and Alamein battles in 1942, when the RAF had provided impressive support for the Eighth Army. At the conclusion of Alamein, Tedder had written to Montgomery offering the full support of the air force in the pursuit of Rommel, which he urged to be undertaken at full speed. Montgomery resented receiving advice from an airman about his tactics and from that time forth relations between them cooled perceptibly. In the period before D-Day, however, Montgomery and Tedder worked together in a spirit of cooperation and relative harmony, but after D-Day things soured badly between them, with Tedder becoming Montgomery's most vocal critic at SHAEF.

This is the background to Tedder's criticism of Montgomery's command, and at the failure of operation Goodwood at Caen. Max Hasting's in Overlord (page 238) says that "As a result of Goodwood, Montgomery's prestige within the Allied command suffered damage from which it never recovered. Eisenhower was disappointed and angered by the gulf between Second Army's promise and performance. ... Tedder's animosity was redoubled. He considered that the air forces had been the victim of a deliberate deception by Montgomery, who had exaggerated his expectations merely to ensure that he received the support of the strategic bombers".

Max Hasting's concludes (page 242) "Tedder's allegation that Second Army was not trying hard enough had some foundation. But it was much easier to take this sanguine view from the distance of SHAEF - or from the perspective of history - than for Montgomery and his commanders in Normandy, who had to watch their precious army take persistent punishment. Tedder's attitude proved his claim to be an outstanding Alliance commander, with a truly Anglo-American perspective, but it showed little sympathy for valid but more parochial sensitivities".

Supporters of Montgomery will always view Tedder in a poor light. But to jump from this to calling him 'a reptile' is entirely unjustified. We should reserve such extreme terms for characters like Himmler or Göbbels, not for honourable and distinguished commanders.

 

You're welcome to your opinion although I'd suggest that d'Este and Hastings have been superseded by writers who have gone to primary sources rather than ex post facto image burnishings. My post is due to me finding some substance for the inference I'd formed that he was a bounder. You may consider him honourable and distinguished, I think he was a reptile. Peaty tends to agree.

 

1. Those were not 'my opinions', my fine fellow, they are the grounded opinions and assertions of sound historians.

2. Are you suggesting that Carlo D'Este and Max Hastings do not use primary sources? On what grounds do you imply that? Do you not consider Lord Scarman a primary source for Tedder?

3. How do you justify saying that Carlo D'Este and Hastings, both critical of Tedder and Montgomery where it is merited, are indulging in 'ex post facto image burnishing'?

 

Surely you can agree that operational documents from the time are less vulnerable to the vagaries of memory and prejudice, hindsight and ambition?

 

In many ways one is no better or worse than the other, any history based purely on operational documents is as open to distortion by the progenitors of those documents, and often also by their very bald nature.

I'd go for a combination of the two, as I'm sure D'estes and Hastings did too. For an 'opinion' of the nature of a man personal recollections from a selection of human beings can give far more insight, particularly as one can place each opinion in it's context.
If all history followed a strict and rather dreary Eltonian 'objectivity' approach it could be very dry history indeed.
Hasting's book was a bombshell on release for it's rather refreshing 'style', and D'Este's work stands as a masterly survey of the Operation (though occasionally mildly irritating to the British reader ).

Cheers,
Adam.

 

Appreciations, signal logs, tramping the ground? Surely less prone to being used to derive 'lessons'? Don't you agree that dissembling is a characteristic which bureaucracies foster?

 

Squeeth

I always like to know who I am dealing with so I took the liberty of checking up on your Public Profile, after all, this is what Public Profiles are for.

I note with interest that you describe yourself as an "Ageing anarcho-syndicalist" and that for reasons best known to yourself you place on record obituaries to your cats (please confirm that I have this right?) to whit;
Marlon the Cat 1991-17th October 2005
Claudia the Cat 1989-19th January 2007

I also remember you as the young man who referred to the Italian Campaign as "the Italian gig"

It therefore it should not come as a complete surprise when you refer to me as "either an elitist prick or a brown noser of elitist pricks?" ...I am afraid it will take stronger insults than these to shock someone who survived five years in the wartime forces.

I am delighted that Peter G has seen fit to enter the fray, might I suggest you retire gracefully before you are too embarressed ?

 

How do you deduce from operational documents that a man is a bounder and a reptile?

As Van Poop correctly says "... personal recollections from a selection of human beings can give far more insight" into the character of a person. For this, diaries are invaluable, not operational documents.

 

But Hastings & D'estes (and hopefully any serious Historian) used all of the above, it's very simplistic to assume they didn't. Interviews with personalities can then give hugely more 'flavour' to a book, often lifting it out of the realms of a purely technical publication. (A type I willingly spend far too much time with... dropping off to sleep every 5 pages!).

Imagine the World at War TV series without all those often contradictory talking heads, it'd be no different to any of the recent boring ww2 'This happened then' type documentaries. I'm waiting for the new Richard Holmes book containing the full transcripts of interviews from the series (most of which, only a fraction was screened) and will be very surprised if it isn't enlightening regarding all important personal points of views and politics.

(sorry, cross-posted with above 2 posts)

 

If Hastings and d'Este did, why have their findings been so seriously questioned over the last decade? 'Flavour'? Perhaps but I wouldn't give them too much prominence. I prefer attempts at scholarship which I've found singularly lacking in tv 'documentary', particularly since the gleichschaltung of the BBC. On the whole the people who were there and don't talk about it seem to me to be the most eloquent.


'Simplistic'? Don't assumptions tend to be? Isn't this a matter in which you are not without sin? The first thing I do with history texts is look at the bibliography.

 

Didn't he call his memoirs 'With Prejudice'????

 

'I am inclined to think that we expect far too much from the official histories. After all, they are contemporary. The authors who compile them are almost certain to have been involved in some way with the events they describe. With the best will in the world they cannot be entirely unprejudiced.

So often, people make great play about being unprejudiced. Frankly, I am completely prejudiced, and I accept as a guide and as a warning, Goethe's saying :

'I can promise to be upright but not to be unprejudiced'.

TEDDER
( From the preface to 'With Prejudice',London 1966 ).

 

Because times and overall views change as the sum of knowledge increases (or is rediscovered), & new information comes to light, both written & as personal testimony.
Conclusions being questioned does not necessarily belittle the amount of work or techniques that led to them.

 

Come off it Poopstah! Contemporary records were there for the taking from 1974. Hastings can write in sentences unlike many of our contemporaries but 'Overlord' is definitely of the 'declinist school', rather like Correlli Barnett without the choler.

I think that the historiography of WWII is receiving a well overdue historicisation rather like academic studies of WWI 15-20 years ago. I suspect that this may have something to do with the war moving beyond living memory.

 

It seems, from reading 'With Prejudice' ( especially pp559-60 ) and also 'Big Wing' by Dunn ( pp 155-157 ) that perhaps the main enthusiast for the use of strategic bombers in the ground support role in Normandy was not Tedder ( quite the contrary ) but Leigh-Mallory who, together with Montgomery, considerably over-rated the effectiveness of the 'heavies'.....

 

If they were of any benefit they ought to have been used, particulary as original judgements about the depth of German defences and the accuracy of artillery fire turned out to be wrong.

 

So do I, but I'm far from as rabid about revisionism as yourself.
Some things are revolutionary, most are evolutionary.