Tom good article but it must be remembered that Montgomery had military intelligence superior to Rommel’s, for god’s sake enigma was broken in 1941 and El Alamein was in October 23, 1942.
As well, Rommel was increasingly hampered by logistics and the Italian army.
But you fail to mention two of Montgomery’s major and costly blunders.
My uncle, who fought with the Canadian Princess Pats as a Bren gun carrier, never forgave Montgomery for failing to close the Falaise gap, forcing the Canadians to clean up his mess during Battle of the Scheldt and the absolute disaster of Operation Marketgarden.
As to Marketgarden, Montgomery ignored absolutely stellar information from Norm Bonter, a BC Dutch Canadian who was attached to British intelligence.
Bonter had an 12 year old Dutch girl who was one of his contacts.
He told me that each individual has ‘an accent’ when they use morse code. After awhile, he said that you just know who the person is by the way they ‘talk’.
He said that her information was always ‘spot on’.
She told him the whereabouts of the two Panzer divisions at Arnhem.
He rushed the information to his British handler and together with him went to see Montgomery.
He didn’t get past Montgomery’s aides.
The answer he got?
“Can’t bother Montgomery with that…wouldn’t want to upset the party, would we?”
SHEAF was made aware of this information too.
As an aside, I couldn’t believe that Montgomery went ahead with the plan and I told Bonter as much.
Bonter, I taught with his wife BTW in Kamloops BC, looked at me and said, I made copies of all the transmissions.
I have them at my fishing lodge at Bridge Lake. You can take a look at them yourself.
I did.
It was all there.
Pity Cornelius Ryan didn’t have access to them when he wrote A Bridge Too Far.
Lastly, in the movie version, it’s a boy who bicycles through the Dutch countryside and reports to Norm.
So, I go with my uncle, who to me was one of my heroes, when he often said,
“Montgomery was a vainglorious and pompous ass who, while believing in all the hype, and who had all the codes, still made boneheaded decisions which killed a lot of Canadians.”