As opposed to Montgomery's dawdling during Salerno?
This isn't a Monty vs. Patton thread. In my opinion the two cannot be compared. Monty was an infantryman not a cavalryman. To compare Monty and Patton is like trying to comand Wellington to Paget or Napoleon to Ney or even Lee to Stuart. It's not a fair comparison, the cavalryman's more of an attractive and romantic figure than the infantryman but generally speaking doens't get involved in the heavy fighting as much as the infantryman.
Salerno was an operation that was poorly planned and rested entirely on the belief that the Germans would fight for the Calabria region. Monty is on record as saying, before the operation began, that he felt it would be a waste of manpower, time and resources but was forced to do it anyway. While the Italian forces surrendered to Monty's Eighth Army wholesale the Germans had destroyed all the bridges leading inland, put up numerous roadblocks and laid minefields in the direct route of advance. There was no way for the Eighth Army to bypass those obsticles and so they had to rebuild bridges and removed roadblocks and mines before they could continue. Because the Germans refused to fight and only set up Calabria as a delaying area Monty was proved right in that the whole operation was worthless.
I object to the word "dawdling" because it make it appear that the advance could have gone faster but that's not true. While the Eighth Army faced no real opposition the Germans had set the region up very well to delay any advance and nobody could have gotten through it quickly. If Hobart's Funnies had been available for the invasion of Italy then the advance could have been much faster but they weren't and the Eighth Army was forced to slug its way north.
How are these things his fault?
I didn't say they were his fault but it doesn't change the fact that he was consigned to the flanks, he did fight in areas of secondary importance and he did take the easiest routes of advance. While it shows his abilities to effectively work on the flank and to exploit opening it doesn't put Patton in the same areas as Rommel or Jackson who proved that they could not only work on the flanks and exploit openings but could fight in the thinckest of the action and make openings.
It's not, persay, a criticism of Patton, its more a reason as to why he couldn't reasonably be compared to Rommel or Jackson.
Sounds like Montgomery in Sicily. And at Caen. And at the Scheldt.
Yes, it's similar. The only scraps Patton got involved in was around Metz and the Hammelburg raid (where he wasted manpower, time and resources in a failed attempt rescue his son-in-law from a Germany POW camp which was liberated only nine days after that utter failure).
But even so it's a bit unfair to compare Siciliy and Caen to Metz. The Scrap around Metz was a result of Patton overrunning his supply lines, running out of Gas and then disregarding the fortifications as worthless before being stopped by them while the scrap at Sicily and Caen was a result of the Allies hitting strong defensive positions while attempting to invade the Axis held European territory.
The Scheldt it could be comparable to becuase the fighting there came about because of the failure of Market Garden and Monty's underesitmation of the German defenses and overestimation of the Canadian abilities.
It is worth noting however that the scrapping in Normandy had alway been in Monty's plans. His plans called for the immediate capture of Caen then a holding actions, a scrap, in the Falaise drawing the German forces to the Allied left and making it easier for the Americans to break out on the right. What happened was that the scrap occured around Caen but the general strategy remained the same, hold on the left break out on the right.
Monty was rather annoyed at Eisenhower after the war when Ike said something along the lines of
"when the British break out failed it was clear the American's would have to do it". This annoyed Monty because he had made it clear since he got involved in the planning for the campaign in April/May 1944 that it was an Allied plan, one where the British/Commonwelth forces played a holding role while the American's broke out, and continued to reiterate this plan throughout the Normandy Campaign to Alan Brooke, to Churchill, to Leigh-Mallory, to Tedder, to Ramsay and to Eisenhower himself through De Guingand. Eisenhower, saying what he did, lessened the event as an Allied operation and split it into arguments dominated by nationaistic pride. Monty himself never once tried to put any kind of failure on the Americans in the Normandy Campaign and always called it a great Allied Victory so Eisenhower laying some failure on the British/Commonwealth sholders did rightfully annoy him.
But i've gotten a bit off topic.
Bringing the