Bernard Law Montgomery
On its own Field Marshal Montgomery's military record and record of ability in Generalship is exceptional. On it own Monty's legacy as a military commander is superior to the vast majority of British, American, German, Russian, Japanese and all other nationalities Generals of WWII.
But thats the problem; Monty's legacy isn't left alone.
Montgomery himself is partly to blame. During WWII he was known to tell his superiors one thing while telling his suboordinates another (such as playing up the idea of breaking out of Normandy early to his superiors while playing down the possiblilty to his suboordinates). He is also well documented in his attemts to claim that, even in failure, his plans had been 90% sucessfull and that, in victory, everything had gone to exactly according to plan.
These errors in judgement are often used against Monty in discussions about his military ability as fact that he was substandard, often taking what he said to superiors as fact while ignore what he said to suboordinates (a somewhat onesided view).
Mostly however Monty's tarsnihed reputation comes from Omar Bradley and his fellow Monty-bashers.
Because Montgomery made so many enemies amungst the Americans during his time in the European Theatre of Operations those enemies wasted very little time in attack his career and pointing out every little fault even if it was the smallest thing imaginable.
One thing that I can highlight for this is in regards to the period of time following El Alamein. Montgomery is accused of letting Rommel escape following initial victory and being slow in persuit where as the fact of the matter is that Monty very nearly caught Rommel but was prevented from doing so by bad weather and his advance across the desert was one of the largest and quickest advances in military history, 780 miles in 20 day, a rate of advance faster than that of Patton much praised advance through Europe.
Another thing I can highlight is this idea that Montgomery outnumbered his enemy at El Alamein, Rommel, by a ratio of 5:1 when in fact Monty outnumber Rommel 2:1 but was attempted to attack an enemy who was in a strong defensive position with an advantage of Monty enemy not being able to outflank him.
There is an idea that came from the mind of Omar Bradley and was reinforced by the movie "Patton" (of which Bradley was military consultant) that Montgomery and Patton were rivals, hated each other and raced each other all over Europe while he (Bradley) looked out for his men and did nothing in the persuit of personal glory.
This idea is quite wrong.
First, Monty and Patton may very well have hated each other but they weren't rivals and they didn't race each other. They respected each others military ability enough to co-exist and work well together but their individual egos were too large to allow them to actually get on.
Further more history actually tell us that Omar Bradley was the most likely out of Monty, Patton or himself to throw men into a pointless battle simply to try and further his own legacy.
One notably part of Bradley version of events that made it into the film "Patton" and subsequently the general ideas of the situation in WWII was during the Allied invasion of Sicily. Bradley said that Patton and Montgomery were racing each other to be the first to capture Messina where as the reality is that Montgomery got bogged down and he suggested to Alexander that Patton's Seventh US Army take Messina as they were in a better position to do so than Monty was.
Montgomery's only real failure as a General in command of an Army in WWII was Market Garden. In that operation he failed to take a strong enough interest in how the generals in the field would control their forces in accordance to his plans. Market Garden was not actually a failure in the strategic of logistical planning but in the execution, something Monty should have taken more interest in but didn't.
As a trainer of men and suboordinates Montgomery was exceptional, as seen from his almost singlehanded retraining of the British Army in Britain and in Africa as well as his influential position in preparing the Canadian forces (with Harry Crerar) for the invasion of Europe. As a strategist, tactian and logistician he was one of the best of his era, as you can tell from the fact that his only major failure was Market Garden. And as a builder of morale there were few better.
The major criticism leveled at Montgomery is that he was a general of material who only ever won through superiority of manpower and material conveniantly ignoring the fact that the American and Russian generals also only ever won with those advantages when talking about them them. This criticism ignores Monty's sucessful improvisations in North Africa, Normandy and the Ardennes, during which he did not have the man power or equipment to achieve those scale victories.
People over the years have made the mistake of believing that because Montgomery was a very difficult man personally he must a poor general but how difficult a man is to get along with has little bearing on how good he is as a general.
If Montgomery's career had been left alone to talk for itself he would be remembered as a general who could easilly equal the ability of Zhukov, meaning a general superior to most and inferior to few but because of the unfair and unjustified assault that Monty and his legacy have suffered in the post-war years Monty is not even thought to be the same calibur of general as Omar Bradley.