alternatehistory.com

There's an old saying:

Amateurs talk of tactics, dilettantes of strategy and professionals of logistics

This got me thinking. Rommel is often thought of as a brilliant General, a true professional but he often ignored logistics and left them to others - he didn't appear to consider ensuring he had sufficient logistics to be his job.

Montgomery on the other hand is these days considered not really to be a great general. Granted he was good at training and motivating his men and ensuring a proper logistical build up but this didn't make him a great General. But surely these are the marks of a truly great General? He set things up so that his victory was as certain as possible, and when things did go wrong, as actually happened at El Alamein he was capable of completely changing his battle plan. Granted he made mistakes but so did Rommel on more than one occasion.

So, has history overrated Rommel as a General and underrated Montgomery? It seems to me that Rommel was the very picture of what people's view of a General should be; he led from the front, was inspirational and imposed his will on his opponents, well, until he faced Montgomery. Rommel fulfilled a very ancient view of what a General should be - a view that goes back to the days of the Roman Empire itself. Montgomery however was a consummate professional, showy in his own way but at the end of the day a modern professional General, not something from a bygone era

Just a thought
Top