John Buckley enters one of the enduring debates of World War II with his book Monty's Men: The British Army and the Liberation of Europe, which examines the performance of the British Army and General (then Field Marshal) Bernard Montgomery, its commander. The debate over the performance of armies and commanders in 1944–45 has been going on almost since D-Day itself. There are arguments about the quality of the armies, with the Germans, Americans, and British lauded and criticized. There are discussions of the commanders, with Patton, Eisenhower, and Montgomery targeted. There are well-trodden narratives: the British army was combat averse; Montgomery was slow and stiff-necked; the Germans were superior at the individual soldier and the command level; the Americans were brash and aggressive, except Eisenhower, who waffled. Ultimately, the arguments are somewhat sterile. First, the terms of evaluation are rarely defined, with the odd result that the German army, despite having lost two world wars, has often been held up as the model of a twentieth-century army. Second, historians have been so busy criticizing Monty and the British army that they have largely missed or failed to explore the genesis of their 1944 mindset, which was deeply rooted in the understanding of war that the British reached in 1918. The model for the British in 1944–45 was not the German blitzkrieg of 1940, but the combined arms masterstroke at Amiens in 1918. 1944–45 was, in many ways, the offensive of 1919 that was planned but, interrupted by the armistice, never executed.

Thankfully, Buckley is not interested in simply another polemical entry in this canon. Instead, he concedes the point—that the British often moved more deliberately than did the Americans or Germans—but seeks to analyze why. Buckley points out that the British Army was a wasting asset in 1944–45 and Montgomery's dual charge from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was both to play a substantial role in the Allied victory and to preserve the Army as a fighting force. These counterposing demands reinforced Montgomery's predilection for the use of firepower over manpower, a philosophy he assiduously inculcated in the British Army during the run-up to Normandy. Montgomery privileged tactics that emphasized massive artillery barrages, infantry creeping behind them supported by tanks and a range of specialized equipment, with the expectation of but prepared for immediate German counterattacks. Buckley argues that Montgomery's methods were generally successful throughout 1944–45. They were slow, however, especially in the Normandy bocage. They were limited, as well, allowing the British regularly to crack the German defensive line but only rarely to exploit such an opening widely. The exception, of course, was after Falaise, but that had more to do with the catastrophic collapse of the overwhelmed German defenders and the American attacks in the south. The one time Montgomery did try to manufacture a breakthrough, the result was the MARKET GARDEN debacle, where a succession of airborne landings ahead of an advancing British Army failed to pave the way across the Rhine river. This “bridge too far,” Buckley argues, was a failure because it did not fit with the kind of army executing it. MARKET GARDEN was Montgomery forgetting his vision for a moment and the Allies paying the price.

In Buckley's evaluation, both Montgomery and the British Army did the job they were asked to do, learned from their experiences while doing it, and executed their mission effectively, if not perfectly. He willingly criticizes Montgomery when he thinks it necessary, pointing out his generally difficult personality, his propensity to scream loudly when he felt aggrieved, and his serial undercutting of Dwight Eisenhower, the overall Allied commander. Montgomery was an ongoing irritant for everyone around him, and Buckley makes that clear. What he also makes clear, however, is that much (but not all) of that came from Montgomery's vision of how to handle his army and his impatience at anyone who disrupted the clarity of that vision. In this, he resembled no one more than Winston Churchill, albeit without the verbal virtuosity. Buckley makes this case effectively and avoids the polemical overstatements that can mar works in this debate. His analysis of Montgomery's approach is well-sourced and well-conceived. It is fundamentally convincing.

The book is not without flaws. Buckley could have made his argument more potent by exploring the influence of World War I on Montgomery, who was a divisional staff officer during the 1918 offensives and thus helped design and execute exactly the kind of offensives he would insist on several decades later. Montgomery's planning in World War II really did resemble the later British offensives of the First World War, most notably the “bite and hold” approach most associated with General Walter Rawlinson. In addition, Buckley sometimes undersells Montgomery's repeated misbehavior, most particularly surrounding Operation GOODWOOD in July 1944, when Montgomery unequivocally lied to Eisenhower about the scope and goal of the attack. Buckley recounts this episode, but passes it by without much criticism. The drive to keep his vision clear brought out dubious behavior in Montgomery, and Buckley should have been more aggressive in censuring the Field Marshal.

These are minor criticisms, however. Overall, Monty's Men is an excellent work: thoughtful, cogently argued, and supported with plentiful evidence. Buckley contributes a valuable piece to the debate over the British Army, and, even better, deepens our understanding of that Army and its commander. The book is not just one piece of an argument, it is also a valuable work of history in its own right. Anyone seeking to understand the British Army's approach and experience in Normandy will find this book a necessity; a necessity, in fact, for anyone seeking to understand the entire Allied campaign of 1944–45.