Terry Brighton - Patton, Montgomery, Rommel: Masters of War

I N THE S ECOND W ORLD W AR , the United States, Great Britain and Germany each produced one land-force commander who stood out from the rest: George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. These three armor-plated egos were, in their own opinion but also in the judgment of their contemporaries, the greatest generals of the war.

All three were arrogant, publicity-seeking and personally flawed, but with a genius for the command of men and an unrivaled enthusiasm for combat. All had spectacular success on the battlefield. Each understood the war in terms of his own ambitions and the attempts of the other two to thwart them. Rommel became the only German general known by name in Britain and America before most had even heard of Patton and Montgomery. They had to compete with him as larger-than-life personalities in whom their armies could believe before they could beat him on the battlefield. Yet as they fought for the headlines the hostility expressed by the two allies was directed not at their mutual enemy but at one another. Rommel, aware that the men and armor under their command outnumbered his own, remained confident that his superior tactical skills could defeat both of them.

It was a very personal contest: the clash of mighty armies perceived as a bout between three men. In Patton, Montgomery, Rommel, for the first time in the literature of the Second World War, all three are put in the same ring and allowed to go at it against a backdrop of the great tank battles of North Africa, the invasions of Sicily and Italy, the Normandy landings and the push through France and Belgium into Germany.

Patton, Montgomery and Rommel were all born in November, but in different years, between 1885 and 1891, and under the same astrological sign: Scorpio, from the scorpion, known for its venomous sting. Each of the three was to live up to that.

Patton was nicknamed Old Blood and Guts because of his enthusiasm for battle, and General Eisenhower joked that he probably wore his combat helmet in bed. He certainly wore an ivory-handled Colt revolver everywhere and put on what he called his warrior face to deliver obscene and profane speeches to the troops. He led American troops to their first victory in North Africa and commanded U.S. forces in the invasion of Sicily. After D-Day he led the breakout from Normandy, the only Allied commander to emulate Rommels blitzkrieg (lightning war). As his armored columns raced toward the Rhine he boasted that he would be first into Berlin and personally shoot that son-of-a-bitch Adolf Hitler.

Montgomery was a small man with a shrill voice, but his appearance belied the size of his ego. Convinced that only he knew how to conduct the war, he treated his superiors with contempt and snubbed even Churchill. His victory at El Alamein against the previously invincible Rommel inspired the British press to compare him with Wellington, a sentiment he heartily endorsed. King George VI, visiting him in North Africa, said he was delighted to discover that Monty was not after his job. Montgomery led British forces in the invasion of Sicily and rewrote the plan for the D-Day invasion, during which he commanded all Allied ground troops and attempted once more to outsmart Rommel, who commanded the coastal defenses.

Rommels firm-set face and goggled cap became an icon of the desert war after Hitler personally gave him command of the Deutsches Afrika Korps. He pressed the British back to El Alamein, defeated the Americans at Kasserine and was nicknamed Wstenfuchs (Desert Fox) for the uncanny brilliance of his battle tactics. General Auchinleck found it necessary to tell his beaten British army that Rommel is not superhuman it would be undesirable to attribute supernatural powers to him. After his defeat and pursuit across North Africa by Montgomery, Rommel was put in charge of defending the French coast. There, he planned to beat back the Allied invasion and win the war for Germany.