The Top Ten

Okay, not really a bad field commander. In fact, a pretty fair one. The only reason he’s on the list is that, like a British version of Macarthur, he too may be one of the most overrated commanders of World War II. While Monty is credited—and rightfully so—for his victory at El Alamein, Egypt in October of 1942, it must be remembered he was fighting an exhausted and over-extended German Afrika Korps that lacked significant air support and was running on fumes. The British and their allies, in contrast, massively outnumbered Rommel in almost every category, making victory—pending some remarkable chain of events—eventually inevitable. Unfortunately, unlike his predecessors, Monty choose not to follow up on his victory by pushing the Germans out of Africa immediately, waiting until May of 1943 to finally accomplish what should have been done months earlier. But Egypt wasn’t Monty’s real problem. That came later, first with the over-planned and under-executed landings in Sicily (Patton’s forces beat Monty’s British Army to Messina even though they had twice as far to go), followed by his dismal attempt to capture Caen, France on D-Day. (The city was not taken until July 18, 1944, six weeks after the initial landing.) Then there was Ope