History
Second World War

Quora ... How good were the British during WW2? According to this, pretty good!

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

History ... How good were the British during WW2?

The British were the single biggest agents in the defeat of Nazi Germany. They were there from day one until the end. The so-called 'invincible' Germans army tried and failed, with their allies, for two years in WW2 to defeat the British army in North Africa. The finest army in the world from mid 1942 onwards was the British. From El Alemein it moved right up into Denmark, through nine countries, and not once suffered a reverse taking all in its path. Over 90% of German armour in the west was destroyed by the British. Montgomery had to give the US armies an infantry role as they were not equipped to engage massed German SS armour.

Montgomery stopped the Germans in every event they attacked him:

♦ August 1942 - Alem el Halfa

♦ October 1942 - El Alamein

♦ March 1943 - Medenine

♦ June 1944 - Normandy

♦ Sept/Oct 1944 - Holland

♦ December 1944 - Battle of the Bulge

Not on one occasion were Monty's ground armies (British & US under his command) pushed back into a retreat by the Germans. The Americans under their own command didn't perform all that great east of Aachen, then the Hurtgen Forest defeat with 33,000 casualties and Patton's Lorraine crawl of 10 miles in three months with over 50,000 casualties - a 1985 US Army report on the operation heavily castigated the man. These operations have been erased from mainstream US history, with few American ever hearing of the Hurtgen Forest operation. The US Army were struggling in 1944/45 'retreating' in the Ardennes. The Battle of the Bulge took all the US effort, and vital help from Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group, who took command of two US armies, just to get back to the start line. The Germans took 20,000 US POWs in the Battle of The Bulge in Dec 1944. No other allied country had that many prisoners taken in the 1944-45 timeframe, and just under 100,000 casualties in total. The USA retreat at the Bulge, again, the only allied army to be pushed back into a retreat in the 1944-45 timeframe.

The US was losing so many men; men allocated for the Far East were being sent to Europe to plug the manpower gap. They sent so many fearing future heavy losses that they outnumbered British forces. The US sent so many men to Europe the British had more ground troops in the Far East than the US, with 2.6 million men rolling into Burma, besides the Eastern and British Pacific fleets.

Montgomery was effectively in charge of the Bulge having to take control of the US 1st and 9th armies. Eisenhower for the best part of a month never communicated with Montgomery locking himself away - in Paris well away from the war zone. The US 9th army stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war just about.

Normandy was planned and commanded by the British which was a great success coming in ahead of schedule with less casualties than predicted. The German armour in the west was wiped out by primarily British - the US forces were largely impotent against massed panzers, using only one inadequate tank. Monty assessed the US armies (he was in charge of them) and had to give them a supporting infantry role, as they were just not equipped to fight tank v tank battles. On 3 Sept 1944 when Eisenhower took over overall allied command of ground forces everything went at a snail's pace. The fastest advance of any western army in Autumn/early 1945 was the 60 mile thrust by the British XXX Corps to the Rhine at Arnhem.

Eisenhower was the least responsible for the Normandy operation, compared to Montgomery and Morgan, yet he gets the big share of the victory, when Montgomery, having control of all armies, Dempsey and Bradley, of their respective armies, are left in the background. In the book Pegasus Bridge US author Ambrose says complete fallacies such as 'Eisenhower chose Normandy as the landing ground', and that 'Eisenhower knew that the right flank would be unprotected, hence the airborne drops' and other nonsense. Well he does write friction dressed up as fact. It was British officers Morgan and Cossac, before Eisenhower had even arrived that chose Normandy, and then Monty's revision, which was when Eisenhower was out of country.

During the Battle of the Bulge Eisenhower was stuck self imprisoned on his HQ in des-res Versailles in fear of 'German paratroopers wearing US uniforms with the objective to kill allied generals'. He had remained locked up more than 30 days without sending a single message or order to Montgomery, and that is when he thought he was doing 'ground control' of the campaign, when in effect Montgomery was in control as two US armies had to be put under his control after the German attack, the 1st and 9th armies. The 9th stayed under Monty's control until the end of the war, just about.

And yet biased American authors such as Stephen Ambrose said that Eisenhower took control of the Bulge and made the battle 'his' glossing it as an all American victory. Someone should have told him about the British 21st Army group being involved and that Coningham of the RAF had to take control of US air force units. Ambrose completely falsified history. In fact the only thing Eisenhower did was tell Monty to get control of the out of controlBEF in France in 1940 was only one third of the British Army and 9% of all allied forces. In about a month all units were fully re-equipped with factories turning out the latest armaments 24/7. Right after the retreat at Dunkirk, up until early 1941, the British had:

• Destroyed the German surface fleet.

• Neutralised most of the French fleet by sinking or starving it of fuel.

• Disabled a major part of the Italian fleet and starving it from fuel.

• Freely moving around the Mediterranean.

• Starving Germany of food and resources with the effective Royal Navy blockade.

• Beat the Luftwaffe over Dunkirk.

• Beat the Luftwaffe in the misnomer the Battle of Britain as Britain was never threatened.

• Pushed the Italians out of East Africa.

• Decimated the Italian army in North Africa.

• Were about to take all the southern Mediterranean coast.

• Germany was being bombed from the air with raids of over 100 bombers - 150 over Nuremberg - using the new navigational device, Gee.

• A massive air bombing fleet was being assembled.

• The RAF shot down over 700 German fighters over Continental Europe in 1941.

• Supplying the USSR with vital lend-lease tanks and planes - 40% of tanks used in the vital Battle of Moscow were British supplied.

After the small BEF left France in June 1940, the British went on the rampage. So much so Franco told Hitler the British would win and he would not join in with Germany, fearing British occupation of Spanish territory. The Turkish ambassador stated Britain will win as it has a pool of men in its empire to create an army of 45 million (later an army of 2.6 million moved into Burma).

In 1941 the British suppressed an uprising in Iraq, beat the Vichy French in Syria and secured Iran and the oil by invading. The British determined where the battlefields with the Axis were going to be.

After France 1940 Germany never had a significant campaign victory over the British Commonwealth ever again in WW2. The Germans FAILED:

• To win the Battle of Britain in 1940;

• To win the Battle of the Atlantic in 1940/41;

• To control the eastern Atlantic ;

• To control the Mediterranean in 1940/41;

• To control North Africa and the Middle East in 1940/41.

The British Commonwealth stopped the Nazis/Axis achieving all this well before the USA joined WW2 or even sent Lend Lease. Even the expensive pyrrhic victory in Crete meant little in the end to the Nazis because the Royal Navy still dominated the eastern Mediterranean with Crete not leading to any campaign winning difference.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the US only had mediocre generals, their record 'proves' that. If Clark was German he would have been shot for disobeying orders and taking his troops into Rome allowing the Germans to get away. But the US high command did nothing. When the Germans pounded through the Ardennes (a British SHAEF officer personally travelled from London to Bradley to tell him of the German build up, who ignored him) three SHAEF officers (2 British one US) saw how the US 1st and 9th armies' high command were operating after visiting them then recommended that the two armies be put under British control - US general Bedell Smith in a rage fired the two British men on the spot for such a recommendation and then took their advise and reinstated them. After WW2 the US has tried to change history putting them in a brighter light, because contrasted against the British they were shown to be not up to the job.

Years ago the myth was that the the US were key in defeating Hitler because Hollywood told us so. The Yanks were hustlers and the British sat around drinking tea - if only. When I started to read WW2 books (TV documentaries were tabloid and not worth watching for deep content but OK for seeing bangs) and quickly concluded that the British were key - overall they fought longer and smarter and destroyed over 90% of German armour in the west.

When American ships were being sunk during the so called second ‘Happy Time’, what were the Americans doing? The British were doing the fighting for them. We were told the US supplied the war and without them all would be lost. Even the US high command concluded that the British and Soviets would defeat the Nazis without the USA. About 11% of British needs were supplied by the USA and about 4% of Soviet. What was normal trade pre war to the USA became ‘supplying the British war effort’ after 1939. The UK since the 1800s took its wheat from North America - many farms were British owned. The food the US supplied was enough to feed the small city of Bradford. The millions of US troops in the UK were mainly fed and housed by the British. The cans of bully beef eaten by British soldiers came from British ranches in Argentina. The British sourced food in different continents to counter any likely famine - famine was a problem in the 1800s. In 1944/45 more people were working making planes in Britain (the British made the best planes of WW2) than were in the UK based army. The British army in the Far East accounted for 2.6 million men.