Thread by @18airbornecorps

1 of 11: Operation Market Garden lesson 20 of 20: Character matters, particularly at the senior level.  Let’s take a look the two main actors in Market Garden -- Eisenhower and Montgomery – and how their individual characters manifest in this tragedy

2 of 11: Ike missed WWI. After the Great War, he spent operational time in the Philippines as MacArthur's chief of staff & assistant adviser to the Philippine govt on military matters. This was an unstable period wherein the dangers of guerilla warfare loomed large in his memory.

3 of 11: Partly as a result of this experience, Ike favored a coordinated offensive along a broad front, where Allied mass, logistical expertise, & unrelenting pressure would not only push back the Germans but leave few pockets of resistance to disrupt the Allied comms zone.

4 of 11: Montgomery, in contrast, saw significant action in WWI as a junior officer. In fact. he was shot through chest by a sniper near the Belgian border.

5 of 11: His operational experience was in northern Africa in WWII, racing back and forth across the desert of Libya in pursuit of, and chased by, Erwin Rommel.

6 of 11: Both Ike and Monty favored the kind of operations they had experienced: Eisenhower leaned toward well supported, persistent operations that worn down the enemy; Montgomery championed rapid penetration that seized the initiative and forced an enemy's hand.

7 of 11: Montgomery's strategic plan was to rapidly seize Rhine bridges and immediate drive toward Berlin, something Eisenhower thought was infeasible.  Montgomery in turn thought that Eisenhower was excessively cautious.

8 of 11: Montgomery demanded to be designated as the main effort and have priority for logistical support. He even made an end run around Eisenhower directly to Prime Minister Churchill and through Churchill to President Roosevelt.

9 of 11: For a variety of reasons, Eisenhower compromised, reluctantly giving Montgomery his opportunity to win the war by himself.

10 of 11: Eisenhower would provide limited priority for logistical support and priority of air support to Montgomery for the planned operations, but would not curtail concurrent operations across the entire French boundary to satisfy Montgomery's demands.

FINAL: Who was right, who was wrong, who planned well, and who planned poorly can be debated. The point is that Eisenhower and Montgomery were men of decidedly different characters. In this campaign, their tragic ambition had a definite impact.