Would Monty Have Created an SS Insurgency?
Watching a History Channel special on WWII right now. A thought occurs:
Throughout the summer, autumn and winter of 1944, Field Marshall Montgomery was an advocate for concentrating Allied forces into a single thrust that would drive across the Rhine over the North German Plain straight to Berlin with the goal of decapitating the Nazi leadership. His plans were stymied by Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower, who preferred to keep making gradual progress along a broad front, at least until the German counterattack at the Bulge.
Does Monty's strategic plan sound familiar to anyone else? It seems to me eerily similar to Gen. Tommy Franks' plan of attack in Iraq.
Which raises the question in my mind. What if Monty's plan had been adopted, and had worked? What if the Allies had taken Berlin, and overthrown the Nazi government, by November 1944? Would there have been a German insurgency similar to what we're seeing today in Iraq? If the Nazi state collapsed with most of Germany outside Allied control, with much of the German army still in the field, with the Soviet armies still in Poland and Hungary, with Dresden still standing, might the SS (and/or the OKW) have launched an insurgency to try to drive the Americans and British out? They might have even used knowledge acquired suppressing Resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. And if all of Germany-proper was under Anglo-American occupation, might there not also have been a simultaneous, and perhaps cooperative, Communist insurgency, as the Soviets tried to undermine the Western position in Central Europe? The Allies might have been tied down in a brutal occupation for a decade or more.
Throughout the summer, autumn and winter of 1944, Field Marshall Montgomery was an advocate for concentrating Allied forces into a single thrust that would drive across the Rhine over the North German Plain straight to Berlin with the goal of decapitating the Nazi leadership. His plans were stymied by Supreme Allied Commander Eisenhower, who preferred to keep making gradual progress along a broad front, at least until the German counterattack at the Bulge.
Does Monty's strategic plan sound familiar to anyone else? It seems to me eerily similar to Gen. Tommy Franks' plan of attack in Iraq.
Which raises the question in my mind. What if Monty's plan had been adopted, and had worked? What if the Allies had taken Berlin, and overthrown the Nazi government, by November 1944? Would there have been a German insurgency similar to what we're seeing today in Iraq? If the Nazi state collapsed with most of Germany outside Allied control, with much of the German army still in the field, with the Soviet armies still in Poland and Hungary, with Dresden still standing, might the SS (and/or the OKW) have launched an insurgency to try to drive the Americans and British out? They might have even used knowledge acquired suppressing Resistance movements in Nazi-occupied Europe. And if all of Germany-proper was under Anglo-American occupation, might there not also have been a simultaneous, and perhaps cooperative, Communist insurgency, as the Soviets tried to undermine the Western position in Central Europe? The Allies might have been tied down in a brutal occupation for a decade or more.
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