All,
Monty and Brooke were not in favour of Eisenhower. Brooke always claimed that Eisenhower had no strategic outlook at all and was a total amateur.
Monty was not much better.
With someone with more "drive" and a focus on the war (and not on politics) maybe it would have been all over in 1944.
His tactical knowledge (everybody is fighting every day and all the time) and his strategic knowledge was poor. That I think everybody can agree upon.
His plans for the campaigns were not received well by Churchill either.
He was told to get on with the war in Africa instead of just being a politician (Going to Darlan's funeral instead of going to the front!).
Somehow, the US genrals wanted him to be more than just "chairman of the board" and becoming a commander; hence he took over the land forces himself.
It did not stop him from attending the golf courses around Versaille, though.
The only major positive I have found is that he did not want to go for Berlin as it was, after all, in the SU sphere. No more casualties. THAT was a rather major decision and one he communicated directly to Stalin. He got nailed for it as he had no business in communicating directly with Stalin.
Maybe he saw himself as the President already?
Was he really totally 100% useless and incompetent and delayed the entire thing unnecessarily?
Ivan