I am doing a paper on some of the differences between Montgomery and Patton during the war. Now, I know that Patton advocated continuing the fight against the Soviets, but does anybody know or could point me in the right direction of what Montgomery thought of the Soviets? This would be much appreciated, thank you.
Read up on Montys memoirs.(As you should as you are trying to make out differences between the two) In 1945 the UK was war weary and bankrupt. The manpower was low. The Python programme was adding to the drainage of manpower. The people in Europe had no illusions about Ivans contribution in the war. Uncle Joe became immensly popular for holding the Nazis at bay. Remember that during the opening of Barbarossa the people of the world were dicussing how many weeks it would take before the USSR was defeated. As Monty got into the NATO he advocated to the use of Nuclear deterrent, as the western powers could not match the manpower of the evil empire...errr the USSR.
Unfortunately don´t have any sources with me and did not find anything in the net that would show Monty´s view in writing. Anyway, I recall having read that Patton and Monty both were supporting the idea of continuing the war in the East once Germany was dealt with.
Kai: Where did you see Monty supporting an attack on the USSR? I have never seen that in any books written by or about him.
Montgomery did become involved with NATO and favored it as a nuclear detterent towards the Soviets, but obviously that was several years after 1945.
Willg yes and I posted that in my first post. In the latter chapters in Monty's memoirs he describes his view on the USSR at length and with arguments such as manpower and a war weary europe, he decided that nuclear deterrent was most cost effective. Monty had no ambitions for a campaign against the USSR. He experienced the manpower problem as early as 1942. Many would agree that it was largly due to inefficient priority of the manpower pool by the British government, but there it is. In 44-45 the problem of manpower was getting serious. Battalions were disbanded and the people sendt as reeinforcements to their parent regiments. The Book by Peter White 'With the Jocks' show this problem brilliantly. Peter himsel was in the Royal Artillery, but received a commision in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers as a platoon commander. For a scottish division (52nd Lowland) ther was a lot of foreigners Canloan officers English, Irish and Welsh soldiers. I don't think that anyone in Britain wanted a war with the USSR. Uncle Joe was a popular man. Churchill had used other means of stopping the communism as far east as possible. Invasion through Italy and into Austria and the Balkans. Racing to Berlin before the USSR got there. Unforetunatly Ike was politically naive and stuck to his guns by saying that his mission was to destroy the Wehrmacht.
Ah Redcoat is referring to Montys rules of war. Made famous as the Americans commited more and more troops in vietnam. 'the Americans have just broken the second rule of war: don't bring an army on mainland Asia. The first is never march on Moscow. I've made them myself.'
Well, that´s a long time back I read about the Allied generals´ thoughts on going further east in 1945 in Europe, but indirectly if they were willing to take Berlin first they must have been ready to fight the Red Army because that would have been like a "slap in the face", wouldn´t it?
Monty wasn't interested in politics, he only wanted to attack Berlin, because it was a way to finish the war quickly.
