Military Power

Ok, lets have a thread about generals promoted beyond their level of competence. I'll start:

John Bell Hood- Division should have been his highest command

Bradley- A good division, and adequate Corps commander, not an Army group commander.

Moltke II - definitely unfit for the top slot.

I'm not going into Anti-Monty Mode at this time. I do wonder who else the British had that could do the job.

Maximus the Destroyer wrote: I do wonder who else the British had that could do the job.

Field Marshal Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis. He commanded at Dunkirk, where he was the last to leave French shores, and in Burma (1942). He was appointed commander in chief in the Middle East and his forces defeated those of the Axis in Egypt, Libya and Tunis (1943) and then in Italy (1944). At the end of the war he was Allied Supreme Commander in the Mediterranean and was subsequently Governor General of Canada (1946-52).

So, then who would have taken Field Marshal Harold Alexander's place? Monty?

I thought that you might be interested in the following statement on the subject of Officers promoted beyond their ceiling which is contained in Christopher Duffy’s book ‘The Military Experience in the Age of Reason”.

Tel brille au deuxième rang, qui s’éclipse au premiere. One of the recognised features of the military profession is the sudden and unexpected collapse of an officer who is promoted beyond his level of competence-beyond his ‘ceiling’, in the useful expression of Field-Marshal Montgomery. This phenomenon received a great deal of attention in the eighteenth century. Marshal Saxe noted that one of the signs was when a general began to issue a mass of confusing and over-detailed orders. It was also betrayed by a timorous indecision on the part of a commander who had already given ample proof of his physical courage.

How do we account for these failing of decision and competence? Most commentators at the time were content to say that it reflected the simple fact that the higher reaches of the military trade were more complicated and difficult than the lower ones. However, later authorities have emphasised that the commander has to survive with much less comradely support than the men he leads, and even in the eighteenth century many writers were impelled to look more closely into the matter. There was, according to Schertel von Burtenbach, a clear distinction in mentality between those who executed what was ordered, and those who had to conceive an entire operation. Moreover, military life in the eighteenth century had peculiarities which forced a disproportionate number of officers through their natural ‘ceiling’. Motivation was frequently lacking in an age which was inclined to identify military rank with nobility, ‘for it is difficult to excel in the onerous profession of war, when you have embraced the trade just to please your parents, or, as happens in certain countries, to conform with the virtual obligation on the nobility to take up military service’(d’Espagnac).