The Best British General Of WW2

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Danger, chat.

Danger.

Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk with me, Al Murray and James Holland, and our very special Best in the West General series, teeing you up to We Have Ways Fest at the 12th to 14th of September.

What we thought we'd do for you is a series of episodes where, in a completely fair and unbiased and impartial manner, is lay out for you who we think the best generals in the West are amongst.

First of all, we're going to do in this episode, we'll be doing Duke General, so Dominions UK Empire.

We're doing two episodes on this.

And we're doing two episodes on Duke, and then we'll be doing two episodes on our American friends, and then, of course, two episodes

on the other side of the hill.

But what about what about the Italians and the French?

Well, which side are the French on in this instance, Jim?

Because let's not, let's not, let's not forget, they did bat for both teams, so to speak.

When I was doing some notes, I put down Axis, and I suddenly thought, well, you know, that's interesting, isn't it?

You know, he's like

Darlan.

I mean, you know, I know, he's an admiral, so he's off.

So just to keep it simple, this is Duke American German.

We're not bothering with General Messi, who's the only one who could sort of reasonably be considered, I think.

Yeah, and what we've got is we've got a load of names for you in each of these three pairs.

We're going to sort of kick the ball around talking about the people concerned and look at them.

And there'll be one or two names you will have definitely heard, especially if you're a regular listener to We Have Ways of Making You Talk.

And there'll be one or two names that maybe I haven't thought about considering them in the pantheon of Khaki Great.

So it's Kharki Grates, then it's Olive Drab Greats, and then it's the old Felt Grau Great.

And

obviously there might be a lot of booing and hissing during the German generals, but there might be quite a lot of booing and hissing during some of this, because, after all, this is one of those topics that is contentious, is the wrong word.

Divisive.

Yeah, I mean, not Nicola Sturgeon divisive.

It's the thing people like to argue about, isn't it?

Right?

Yeah, they really do.

They really do.

They do like to argue about it.

And often the historiography sort of flow of the argument comes from post-war national ideas and a lot of, but also during the war.

Yes, and it also definitely comes from post-war where, you know, and the narrative of the war, the historiography of the war, you know, the comes trends on someone's in, someone's out.

Yeah.

You know, but obviously we're completely impartial, and that's the most important thing.

And also, if someone's not on the list, that is a judgment in itself.

But the great thing about this is we want you to take part.

So we're going to have these six episodes where we talk about this best of the west idea.

And this is basically North, West, Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean theatres.

We're talking about it.

It's not the Far East.

It's not the Eastern Front.

No.

It's not the Pacific.

No.

No, no, no.

You know, so, for example, Frank Mesovy, he's not in this, but were we to do best in the East, Best in the Pacific, then obviously he would be on that, even though he was briefly in...

He was in the West, but he was sacked.

So it makes it kind of hard to justify him being the best.

That was the first of his headquarters that were overrun during the war.

Anyway,

once is unfortunate.

Twice, old boy.

Might seem like carelessness.

But today.

The best thing, the most important thing about this is we want you to take part.

So on our Patreon, Patreon, our We Have Ways of Making You Talk Patreon, is your opportunity to vote on the runners and riders in Best on the West, whittle them down if you possibly can to some people for us to talk about at the festival with various historians who will be coming in prepared and forewarned and forearmed to make the case for their favorite generals and those generals' contribution during the Second World War.

And it's that's what we've got for you, right?

Yep, and we're going to be discussing the lives and careers of 14 in each category: so 14 Duke generals, 14 American, 14 German.

And we're going to to kick off, aren't we, with General Sir Ronald Forbes Adam?

Perhaps not an obvious one, but an interesting character.

1885 to 1982.

Lived a good old age.

Yep, very old age.

Yeah, and Eton.

Then at Woolwich, which is interesting.

So he's not a Sandhurst man.

So he's sort of on the technical side of soldiering because the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich is gunners, really, in theory.

Joined the field artillery in 1905.

I know.

Isn't that amazing?

Served in India before heading to the Western Front and the Italian Front.

So lots and lots of action.

Gets the DSO, mentioned in dispatches multiple times and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire.

He'd already earmarked just by that for between the wars high rank.

But he's one of these people who's been at the staff college.

You know, he's trained there.

He's been an instructor, briefly the commandant of the staff college.

So this is a guy who is British Army, pre-First World War, First World War, into war, through and through.

He's deputy chief of Imperial General Staff in January 38.

So this is a guy destined absolutely for the top.

And then, of course, he's CRA in 1st Division in 1936.

So he's, you know, he's done lots of important jobs.

And as you say, he's a gunner.

The thing that's really important about Adam is that he becomes Adjutant General in 1941.

And his contribution, really, to the British war effort is the sort of modernization and adaptation of the army into a modern citizen-soldier army under the pressure of the war as it moves forward.

The thing that...

is really, really interesting is some people regard him as a bit sort of progressive and

flip-floppy and lefty, but that's because basically he's thinking, how on earth do I bring the army up to date?

How do I democratise officer selection, all these sorts of things, which they know they've got to do because they're chewing through officers so fast.

The army aren't necessarily doing that because they read the Guardian.

They're doing it because they think, well, we're just going to have to because we've run out of nice public schoolboys.

And so the WASBE War Office Selection Board is really important.

General Service Corps, which is...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is based on it's psychological based.

That's how they do it.

So it's systematic.

It's not about class class and background.

Yeah.

It's about intelligence and aptitude.

Exactly.

And what he does is he, you know, the army needs because the thing about the British Army is that it, you know, and if you, again, if you have a regular listener to podcasts, you know about lots of private armies that even during the war, even while Adam is trying to sort of iron things out and standardize things, is that there are lots of private armies and ways of doing things and regiments that have their particular way of doing things.

And he basically tries to standardize it because the thing that's coming to him from the generals in the field is they want the men to all be doing the same thing so you can give them the orders, you know know what they're going to do next as it were and so there's this great big standardization goes on and he's really important in terms of the abca the army bureau of current affairs well yes you should just say the first bit is it's the general service corps this is the gsc um which he brings in in 1942 and it and it's brilliant and you're right the abca is absolutely fantastic i've got shelves full of these things these are notes from the theaters of war training pamphlet number 42 43 etc etc etc you know and this is all part of the army bureau of current affairs the abca and it's all about about keeping people informed, learning lessons, also about morale.

Yeah.

I mean, lots of people won't have heard of him.

Plenty will have done.

But what he's really

is how the army ends out.

British Army is basically really chewing through the Germans.

He's one of the people that's made that possible.

And I think that's why he's in our list.

Simple as that.

Yeah.

And just one other thing about him.

He is the guy who sets up the Dunkirk Primiter.

He's three Corps commander in 1940 in France.

And he sets that up as well and does it very, very well.

It has to be said, because 338,000 people get off.

Yeah.

So that's Adam.

Don't dismiss him.

No, at all.

But next up, and we're doing these purely alphabetically, led gentlemen, but it may feel like James Hollander slightly

loaded the dice here or prepared the wicket.

Let's put it that way.

He's got his groundsman out in the middle of the night with a very heavy roller because here comes Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander.

Well, you know, what a legend.

I mean, you know, the thing is,

he's just a great man.

You know, he just is.

He's a man sort of without personal personal ambition.

He's got a sort of profound sense of honour.

He is the man who has the only senior commander in the Second World War of any side that has commanded troops at every rank in battle.

Yeah, yeah.

He's the only Allied commander to command German troops, which he does when he takes command of the Baltic Landswehr in 1919 in the Baltic wars.

He is unusual in that he's a guardsman who gets sent to the Indian army.

Yeah, that's pretty weird, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he takes command of the Noshira Brigade in 1944 and he disappears disappears for the first three months.

No one knows quite where he is every afternoon.

And then it comes to the Noshira Brigade Sports Day and he stands up and speaks them all in fluent Urdu.

And actually, he can speak seven languages, which is very impressive, including German, Italian, Russian, obviously Urdu, smattering of Gurkhali.

He's very switched on from that point of view.

He sees lots of action.

in the Loagra campaign against the Batans and the Malaccand in the second Mohamand campaign, where he gains a very, very good reputation from leading from the front.

He's promoted to to major general in 1937 which makes him at the time the youngest in the army.

He's then appointed to command the first infantry division in 1938 and it's with the first infantry division that he goes to war in France in 1940.

He serves under Brooke who is the corps commander.

And then when most of the senior command disappear off he is the last senior commander to remain behind and he oversees the evacuation and he is the last soldier to leave the beaches, British soldier to leave the beaches on the 2nd of June.

There's lots of accounts that confirm that.

That's not just a burnished legend from a super fan.

I mean, Alexander is one of those people that you feel like countries don't produce anymore.

Seven languages.

He's a brilliant sportsman.

At the end of 1914, he gets shot in the first battle of the and he gets wounded in the eye, in the thigh and the hand.

And to prove his fit again, he walks 64 miles in one day.

It's extraordinary.

He's Irish, of course.

I think that's the other thing to remember.

He's an Ulsterman.

A lot of the people who get to the top in the British Army are Irish, I think, is often worth remembering, or bearing in mind at least.

Yeah, he also sets other battle schools and new training techniques using live ammunition, simple phrases and all the rest of it, which comes the basis of training for thereafter.

And then he gets sent over to Burma in 1942 to take to oversee the retreat back across the Irrawaddy of the Burma Corps and does it, does it brilliantly.

And actually, not only does he do that very, very smoothly, he also, in his report and dispatch afterwards, he then recommends how to defeat the Japanese, which is completely ignored by everyone until Slim.

He realizes that getting hung up on places is pointless, that you've got to fight them, defeat them, not hold on to places, because what they'll do is go past you.

They'll cut you off and leave you to hang is the thing.

And he understands that.

He must have felt, though, by 1942 that he was just basically being given disasters to sort of midwife.

Well, yes.

But then he gets called back and gets appointed GOC of First Army.

But then there is this, you know, Orkinlet gets sacked.

So he then gets...

bumped up to Commander-in-Chief of Middle East.

And then Monty comes in because Gott, who is going to be the 8th Army Commander, gets assassinated.

And so then he becomes CNC Middle East.

He's the person who says no more retreats.

It's not Monty, it's him.

He also, at the Battle of Alamein, well, he suggested a gang gun.

He says, you might want to mention to Monty that this line of attack is not the right one.

This is Operation Supercharge, second half of the battle.

You might want to go this way instead, which Monty then adopts and with great success.

He then, despite being Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, he then gets promoted to Deputy Supreme Ally Commander from February 1943 onwards, gets sent to be Army Group Commander in Tunisia.

There's a crisis going on in the middle of February, and within about a week he sorted it all out.

And again, creates battle schools in North Africa to retrain Green American troops and frankly green British troops as well.

Then commands 15th Army Group for Operation Husky.

And one of his great things is that everyone likes him.

So he's very good at coalition warfare, which he then takes into Italy.

And, you know, at some point he has 24 different nationalities serving underneath him.

And he ends the war as Supreme Ally Commander.

and a field marshal.

And, you know,

this accusation that he doesn't have great strategic insight, but it's really interesting.

I've just been reading Saul David's book on Tunisgrad, and, you know, his strategic insight seems pretty impressive to me.

I mean, you know, he seems to know exactly what's going on.

Brooke sounds off about him in his diary a lot, doesn't he?

Yeah, yeah, but Brooke sounds off about everybody in his diary.

So don't take that in isolation.

Well, no, but that's the thing people have cherry-picked, isn't it, to bash him with that Brooke was sort of dunderhead with no strategic sense.

He's such a thick, he calls him thick and things like that.

It's very weird.

He's just, he is the consummate coalition commander.

You know, he's tactful.

He's unflappable.

I don't quite believe that a man who ends up a field marshal has no ambition, Jim, but there we are.

He has no personal ambition.

So English, French, Italian, German, Russian, Urdu, get by on Spanish and Gurkali, amazing artist.

I mean, you know, he's just at the top of British efforts from the success of Alamein through Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy.

And he is absolutely one of the most visible and famous British commanders there has ever been, you know, back in 1945.

I mean, you know, there is not a single person in the country who wouldn't know who he was.

You know, his fame has been eclipsed by monty in the years since but but let's move on the orc claude aukinleck who is one of those um uh characters who sort of he has his advocates doesn't he and he has his he has his people who stick up for him but his is his is one of those careers where we're basically he ran out of road with churchill ran out of luck at the point of the war where generals aren't having much luck for all sorts of reasons the orc is one of those characters who very much sort of cops it as a result of various failings in Britain's ability to make a war stick.

And is it him?

Is it the kit?

Is it the training?

Is it the situation?

Is it some weird strategic decisions by his bosses?

And so on.

But he's an interesting guy, isn't he?

And again, he's another one of these people.

Wellington College,

Sandhurst, Royal in his kidding fusiliers, goes to India, learns Urdu and Punjabi.

Another one, you know, he's a great ability with his rapport with his Indian troops.

He's born in 1884, so by the First World War, with the Indian Army, Northwest Frontier.

He goes to Mesopotamia for the and other people we all talk about are also presenting the siege of kut and all that exactly all

right yeah yeah and you know this is dismantling the ottoman empire um and you know he's mentioned dispatches he's a tremendous leader he's got the dso but he's indian army isn't he yeah yeah he is because there is this thing isn't there that the way the british army works is that they're they've sort of if you're from east of suiz you may come to north africa and fight and command but you may not And you may as easily swap between them, whereas it's less likely that you'll go Northwest Europe to India.

it's just a lot less likely and Orkalec falls into this category doesn't he of someone who's his center of gravity is is Suez basically you know he's in India in in between the wars and this is all this tribal coin we'd call it now counter-insurgency in Waziristan frontier campaigns against tribal forces which is all quite euphemistic isn't it police actions and then he's at Quetta which is the staff college that you know and people have differing opinions about Quetta don't they they say it's yeah they say it's sort of you know it's colonial policing rather than kind of proper soldiering I mean the point is but he then gets posted back back because, you know, by 1939, he's an incredibly experienced commander.

You know, he's a general and he's and he's he commands 5th Division in Norway, which, you know, Norway is a failure, but a bit of it does okay.

And, you know, he's, he's, you know, he's picked up because he knows Wavell already.

He's, you know, he's picked up and becomes commander-in-chief after Wavell's sacked in 1941 of the Middle East.

But it is his misfortune, it's his bad luck that Middle East command at that time is absolutely vast and it's too big for one man.

And that's a failure higher up the chain.

Nonetheless, you know, although he has a certain amount of success, it is he that authorizes the Gazala line, which is a terrible idea.

You know, this idea that you have a lot of a defensive line, you know, which has an end but can be outflanked rather than beefing up to Brook, which had been, you know, besieged unsuccessfully for nine months the previous year.

It's a mad decision.

And he also puts Neil Ritchie in charge of eighth army, which is a terrible decision.

So his judgment is a bit dodgy.

He then steps in and commands 8th Army himself, comes down from the mountains.

As well as being Commander-in-Chief, Middle East.

Those who are for him say oh monty just inherited orchinleck's plan no he didn't okay so so orkinleck goes back to the alamein line because that's the only conceivable line they could have taken at that particular point he does a very perfectly effective defensive battle where you know air power massively contributes but the plan for the battle of alamein the second battle of alame the one that that is the the great victory of montgomery and alex is not orchinleck's plan and he gets sacked because at the time that is what is required you know he he's run out of ideas.

He's run out of steam and it needs a fresh take.

And, you know, he does pretty well in India subsequently.

Let's not forget Al-Alamein is that's the last stopper before Egypt falls, basically.

No one wants to be fighting from there.

So the idea that Monty might have inherited the Orcs plan.

Well, the Orcs Plan in that case is pretty desperate, isn't it?

That you've ended up at the last place you can defend as a last resort, really.

Yeah.

And he also, he does, subsequently, he gets sent to India and he becomes CNC of India.

And, you know, he does a pretty good job though.

He's very supportive of Slim, very supportive of Mountbatten.

You know, but that's in India and it's not in the West.

Is he can he really be considered the best in the West?

I don't think not a chance is Mike.

He dies in Marrakech.

There were always rumours about him, but aged 96.

Well, let's do one last big one before the break in this best of the west Duke special.

And it does feel like this episode's front-loaded with some legends.

And then, I mean, to be honest, no one's going to vote for the Orca after that write-up.

Well, you can't vote, can you?

I mean, no, people can if they want.

If they want.

General Sir Alan Brooke, also known as Alan Brooke, confusingly.

He's Alan Brooke after night.

What was that?

I don't know.

Would that be like calling yourself James Holland?

Lord James Holland.

Al Murray.

Murrayman.

I should insist on being called Al Murray.

He was Al Murray and he became Al Murray.

But he's not Alan Brooke

until after the war.

So strictly speaking, throughout the war, he's Alan Murray.

He's General Sir Alan Brooke.

Or just General Brooke.

He, again, with another Ulster Irish Anglo-Irishman, but French, Frenchified, which I think is very interesting.

You know, he grows up in France, doesn't he?

Born in Banier de Bigor, which I have been to, the spa town of Bannier de Bigor, where I went once went...

Is that in the Haute-Pyronet?

Yes, it was the finish line for the Tour de France when I went to watch Tour de France come powering into the town one afternoon.

It's a little spa town and there's very nice pork.

Porque de Bigor is a speciality.

Black pigs of big.

What an amazing name.

Yeah,

but he's so he's bilingual, isn't he?

And again, he goes to Woolwich, not Sandhurst, which is the sort of people who can't afford Sandhurst place to study as an officer.

Mind you, he is an aristocrat.

I mean, he's a son of Zirvictor Brooke Bart.

Well, maybe they're broke.

I mean, aristocrats, that doesn't necessarily be a good idea.

Well, he is broke later on in life, isn't he?

He's always broke.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, then, of course, the First World War comes because he's born in 1883.

So, you know, he's exactly the right age for the First World War.

He's with the Royal Horse Artillery.

He's a staff officer.

Liaison officer.

Well, that's the interesting, isn't it?

So he's got to do a lot of that kind of handling, handling of people, which becomes very much his great sort of skill later on, isn't it?

Dealing with people, dealing with people, maybe with weird demands and so on.

And he ends up, by the end of the war, he's a lieutenant colonel.

With a DSM bar.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he's so again, he's done all this and he's brave, but he's a gunner.

And the thing, you know, we have talked so much about how the Second World War.

from the British point of view is steel not flesh gunnery leading the way.

Well, is it any coincidence that the man who ends up chief of the imperial general staff the man who's absolutely shaping how the british are going to fight is a gunner i don't think so right i it's no coincidence no i completely agree yeah that someone who understands this is how we won the first world war is the game yeah i mean make no mistake he's not just a pen pusher he is a guy who is basically drawing up how we beat the axis forces you know the steel knot flesh it's basically coming from him at the very top and he's got his acolytes who agree with him like monty or whatever or people who are going to turn the line but that's why monty's there because he's brooke's man yes and and and his patronage matters matters enormously when he finally gets the top but he teaches again all of these people they go through camerley they most of the generals we will talk about have taught there been instructors there as well as the école supérieure de guerre isn't that interesting embarrassed yeah and then he's at the war office and all this sort of stuff commands are again gunnery at all the shot command and it's about training and staff efficiency and all the I mean it sounds incredibly like axiomatic surely that's what you ought to be doing is rigorous.

It being, you know, having insistence on rigorous training, staff efficiency, march to combined arms operation.

You'd think that would be, surely that's what everyone should be doing, but that's his reputation.

Corps commander in the BF in France, 1940, gets out, managed to withdraw.

Okay.

Then he's commander of Southern Command

during the time of the Battle of Britain.

Yeah, which is about a resisting invasion.

And again, then he's commander-in-chief home forces, which is again a further development of that.

Because the big topic, of course, after the blitzkrieg is how do we fight tanks?

How on earth do we do it?

How do we beat the panzers?

There's all that discussion going on and he's central to that.

Well, actually, he's a combined arms expert as well.

I mean, you know,

he gets that package, which is so vital.

Yeah.

And then takes over as chief of the Imperial General Staff in December 1941 when Dill is posted as ambassador to Washington.

And his job is to run the

entire damn thing.

I mean, it's quite extraordinary when you think about his responsibilities.

And it's interesting, isn't it, that in an establishment where the Royal Navy has seniority in essence, that it's a soldier that's in charge, that's Chief Imperial General Staff, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously we've got a few administrators.

We've already talked about Ronald Adam.

You know, how do you compare?

I mean, I know he was a fighting general at the start of the war, but how do you compare someone like him and say Eisenhower to a fighting commander, corps commander, an army commander, an army group commander?

How do you compare them?

You know, and I think that's the difficult thing here because, you know, clearly he's a he's a brilliant man.

He's a brilliant general.

Does that make him the best general in the West?

He's almost kind of above theatres.

I mean, you know, he's best general in the war, I think, in the whole war.

You know,

maybe he's kind of more better considered to three years down the line when we've done the war in the Far East best generals and then we've been through the worst generals, then maybe we can go back to the overall best generals of the war.

If you're trying to do apples and apples, it's him and Marshall, isn't it, really?

Yeah, their contributions, both of them, are just absolutely incalculable.

But as battlefield commanders, I I mean, I'm not sure.

Well, we're going to take a break.

That's the first four, which you've tried to canter through, but you know what it's like on this podcast, if you're a regular listener.

Don't forget to go to the Patreon and vote.

Let us know what you think.

And even the people that we've missed out, because I know they're going to be people you think we've missed out.

And we will see you very, very shortly after this break.

Welcome back to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, Best in the West, episode one.

You know, we always try and resist Top Trumps, don't we, Jim?

But here we are doing it for real.

You can't avoid it.

And we want you to vote, please, everybody, to let us know what you think.

And so we can whittle it down.

And then at We Have Ways Festival, which I'm sure you will all be attending, please do.

It's great fun for the weekend.

And you can hear us duke it out to see who the best of the Duke generals is, which is what we're doing right now.

Then it'll all come together, won't it?

For the best.

Yes, the best Sunday morning.

Undisputed crowned champion, World War Champion of the World.

Okay, right.

Now, a nickname that maybe belies a man of steel.

We're now talking about General Sir Miles Bimbo Dempsey.

Big fan.

And then another Irishman.

Captain Edward Dempsey and Annette Mary Dempsey.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it?

Mind you, he was born in Cheshire.

Yeah, in 1896, he's a bit younger than some of the people we've been talking about, sort of a decade younger.

Yes, much younger, yeah.

Shrewsbury School.

And I think the big thing about Dempsey is that he cool cucumber.

He's totally unflappable.

He doesn't get in a state.

Yes.

Fantastic temperament.

Yep.

And a nice sense of humor as well.

Yeah.

Well, and known for a sort of incredible ability with maps.

Anyway, he First World War, goes to his regiment on the Western Front in 1916.

Somm, Arras, Passchendaele, wounded twice, a military cross, and ends the war as a captain.

So that's quite interesting, isn't it?

Because that doesn't necessarily say how much further he might go after the war.

And there's a whole load of people who are captains at the end of the First World War.

We must be thinking, well, that's if I'm going to stay in, what's my career really now?

I think he's one of the ones where you wouldn't expect this at all.

You know, it's just like, who would you expect in 1919 to go on and kind of be senior commander in 20 years' time?

He's not going to be on your list for all his courage and all the rest of it.

Yeah, interestingly, he is.

He serves in the Irish War of Independence in Ireland.

Then he goes to the staff college at Camberley, which means he has cards marked.

And then, you know, this is a classic interwar British career, isn't it?

Ireland, staff college, Malta, India, gradually ticking his way up the rank to battalion command, you know, gets his first battalion in 1938.

You know, Alexander is a general, Brooke is a corps commander, he's a battalion commander.

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

And then he's with the BEF of the Royal Berkshire Regiment, 1st Battalion, and they fight back to Dunkirk.

Again, it's a similar story.

But basically, he gets spotted, doesn't he, by the Brooke system

and is a brigadier, 13th Infantry Brigade, and then he's sent to North Africa in 1942.

And I think that's quite interesting that these obviously, because there's a lot of people who are battalion commanders in 1940, aren't there, who then end up in these roles.

Horrocks, for instance, is a battalion commander, isn't he, in 1940?

These people who get picked up, get noticed, get up the ladder faster.

He performs spectacularly well in France, that's the point.

Bump up two ranks in the summer of 1940.

Yeah, it's going some, yeah.

You know, you're well on the way, aren't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, particularly as there isn't the churn of people at that point of the war, you know, being killed and needing to be replaced.

So, this is the sort of where they're reshuffling, aren't they?

You know, and picking their people.

Again, it's this thing.

He's known for meticulous training and emphasis on combined arms coordination.

It's kind of like.

Well, yeah, because you're not going to be still standing at the end of the war if you can't do that.

That's the point.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

But it's how these things seem like truisms are axiomatic.

You know, like, of course, that's what he's, you know, how else are you going to get on?

But he gets out to the Mediterranean, he gets out to North Africa, does well commanding a division, you know, and becomes out of nowhere because there's been so many divisional commanders and corps commanders, you know, Lumsden, Norrie, people like this, you know, who Bean and Gone, Lease, you know, all these guys, been and gone, got wounded, disappeared, got sacked, whatever.

And then suddenly, by the end of the Tunisian campaign, that's when you want to be peaking.

You don't want to be peaking in 1941.

You don't want to be peaking in the first half of 1942.

You want to pick your moment, and you want to be peaking when people are winning.

And so suddenly, he's plucked out of nowhere to command 13 Corps during Operation Husky.

Why is he doing that?

Because Because people at Horrocks have been wounded by this point quite badly.

So he's out of the fray.

There's another potential corps commander that has gone.

Leese has been moved across to 30 Corps.

Anderson is sort of, he's been an army commander.

He's not wanted anymore.

So he's sent back.

So it's not like he's last man standing, but the next tier down, he's done enough to kind of make him stand out.

And as I say, he's peaking at the right moment.

And Monty really, really rates him, really trusts him, and is one of those people.

He can ask him to do something.

And he knows how he's going to do it.

And he knows that they're completely simpatico in their method of war.

I think it's PCA, Peter Caddig Adams, who said, you know, if you really want to look at how Monty does war, look at how Dempsey does war.

It's him doing it.

Monty's in his tech HQ, being collegiate or whatever.

It's Dempsey who's actually having to make the thing stick, particularly in Normandy.

That's what he ends up doing.

His Second Army, it takes the job in 1944.

January 1944, and then it's him that's doing the British Canadian landings.

All the way.

And you have to say, British Second Army does a very, very, very good job in Northwest Europe from D-Day onwards.

You know, yeah, you can argue the toss about it, and they didn't get to con and all the rest of it, but Second Army performs brilliantly.

There's enough stick.

There's enough kind of drive.

You can never accuse Dempsey of being overly cautious, but he's also clearly an operational commander.

He's mindful of the lives of his men and does what he can, you know.

So he gets that balance, I think, absolutely spot on.

I think, you know, he's pretty good.

And I think the British Army, by the end of the Second World War, are really tip top.

Yeah.

And Dempsey is one of these people who doesn't get credit mainly because he's got a, let's say, a flashy boss who likes the attention.

Yeah, he's also a good Curlish and Warfare commander as well, gets on with people, gets on with his American counterparts.

You know, he's very easygoing, but he's meticulous, you know, and he doesn't suffer fools.

And his very kind of affable impression kind of belies in a backbone of steel, really.

I mean, he's very tough cookie, Dempsey.

Pretty impressive, to be honest.

Okay, next.

General Sir Richard Nelson Windy Gale.

Yeah.

Now, okay, over to you then, Al.

Well, the reason Gale's in here is because we have, over the years, talked an awful lot about airborne warfare.

And I think the interesting thing about airborne warfare is it's an absolute frontier.

It's brand new.

It's been, the British have grabbed it and the Americans as well in reaction to what the Germans achieved in 1940.

They picked the brains of the Fauci Bieger they've captured, blah, blah, blah.

But there's one man on the British side of things who gets it, who understands it, and is the one guy who pulls off the landmark successful British airborne operation of the war, which is, after all, the Normandy landings, Optonga, and all that sort of stuff.

Wendy Gale's a fascinating guy.

He's Anglo-Australian, interestingly.

Born in 1896, grows up in Australia, New Zealand, comes back to England in 1906.

So he's one of those sort of people that, you know, these families who move around the empire, you know, at that level.

He's not particularly posh.

He goes to King Edward VI School in Stratford-Ponavian.

So he's not...

You know, this is, we've talked about a lot of posh people and a lot of baronets and sons of baronets and that sort of thing, haven't we?

Gale isn't one of those people.

First World War signs up.

He's in the Worcestershire Regiment.

He's in the Worcesters, but then he transfers to the Machine Gun Corps.

There's a story he tells about he thought he'd gone to something else, that he'd gone on a training course.

He didn't realise he'd joined an actual new corps.

But the Machine Gun Corps is one of these things where the British Army is trying to figure out how to reply to or how to apply what the Germans are doing with machine guns themselves.

So I think what's interesting about him in the First World War is that he's into innovation.

He's into grasping new ways of doing things.

And wins an MC.

Yeah, he loses his nerve at one point.

And, you know, in his sort of summation of his careers, there's a moment where he kind of says, you know, I was worn out.

I was done.

So that's quite interesting.

Between the wars, he's doing the same sort of thing where it's staff roles and keeping going.

But Second World War,

what's really interesting is Gail goes in and out.

of the war office and airborne forces.

He's there right from the start.

He takes command of the 1st Parachute Brigade.

So once they've stopped calling it

Special Air Service, and it's him that's in the War Office fighting the Air air ministry tooth and nail to get this thing to work it's him that decides what sort of people he wants you know you've got browning running top cover doing all the sort of networking but it's gale in there writing the doctrine it's gale in there picking officers like john frost picking people like james hill picking the sort of absolute legends of the airborne fraternity alasta pierce and those guys but in 1943 he's appointed major general and this is when six airborne divisions formed whose task from its formation is to do the, you know, the flanking operation that will cover the edge of the seaborne landing in Normandy.

We've talked a lot about it, but what he figures out is how to make this work.

He figures out how to make it work with a shortage of aircraft.

He figures out that what he can do when he lands on the night of D-Day is nothing, right?

That he's got to let his brigadiers and his battalion commanders and his company commanders and his squadron commanders and troop commanders and all the way down to the bottom.

He's got to let them get on with it before he starts making big decisions.

And then he fights this really, really horrendous battle at Breville, locking off the Allied left flank and stopping the Germans taking the high ground, stopping the Germans being able to watch everything that's going on.

And, you know, fights with what is basically an assault force, ends up fighting a proper infantry scrap, an under-resourced infantry scrap, and they fight with great vim and vigor.

And I think Gail is the guy who does proof of concept of airborne operations from raising battalions through to raising a division through to winning a battle.

And they know how good he is because immediately, immediately, once normally he's over, he's taken out that job and he's given something more important to do, which is keep things going on the airborne side and run things properly.

From a British Second World War, he's a standard.

He's the embodiment of the evolution of modern warfare, isn't he?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You know, from the trenches of the First World War to pioneering airborne operations of the Second World War.

Exactly.

And he's a natural leader, isn't he?

I mean, he's a terrific fellow.

Absolutely terrific.

You know, they talk about him turning up at briefings and going, I am the best at the bloody business and you ought to know it.

All that sort of thing.

And some people people thought oh god what's all this and others thought no he actually is

he actually is so we got one more to do in this episode he didn't originally make the list actually and then and then we suddenly thought hang on a minute yeah he's got to be in it surely because he doesn't make the list because so who we're talking about here is he's got some excellent middle names as well yes it's general sir percy hobart whose middle names are cleghorn stanley hobart I mean, Foghorn Clegghorn here.

And he's born in India and he's an Indian Army brat.

His dad's an Indian Army colonel.

I think the thing, the most important thing to know about Hobart and Hobart's mindset is he's a Royal Engineer.

He's a sapper.

So he goes to Woolwich and then he's a sapper and he's he's a he's a thinker.

He's a he's an intellectually curious guy, you know, and then he's got this garlanded career with the sappers in mainly in the siege of Kut he's involved in as well.

Yes, he is, yes.

But he's fought at Mons.

He's with he's, you know, he's all over the place.

And then after the war, you know, joins the Royal Tank Corps in 1923, thinks, actually, this is the thing that I need to be headed towards.

This is the coming warfare.

I think that's really, really interesting because he sniffs the wind and sees

which way warfare is going to go.

People will know about Hobart because of Hobart's funnies, that D-Day contribution, but actually, this is a guy who raises 7th Armoured Division, which is the Desert Force or Desert Fast, as it's known when he takes it over in the Middle East.

And he's been the inspector of the Royal Tank who's been writing doctrine.

It's the infantry tank and cruiser doctrine that comes from his thinking.

It's him who's the biggest advocate for that.

And some might say that's kind of like the sort of millstone around british armoured thinking's neck that's his appraisal is you need a heavy slow tank for the infantry stuff for the breakthrough and then a cavalry tank for the breakout that's doctrine that the british are still kind of digesting until the very end of the war when they end up with a main battle tank you know but but then he has this slight hiatus doesn't it it's bizarre having sort of you know done all of his training having been this great advocate of armoured warfare having created the seventh armoured division he then gets recalled uh removed from command put placed on the retired list uh and this is largely because of disputes over doctrine and his abrasive style, but it's also for infidelity, isn't it?

Well, yes, but so basically when he's teaching at Kettle, and the thing about the Ketter Staff College is everyone knows it's a sort of, it's a place where people go and have affairs and there's lots of shagging going on.

It's known, it's renowned for it.

But what he does is he has an affair with the wife of one of his students, one of the officers at the college, and then they get married.

And the War Office actually issue a memo saying anyone that does that ought to resign their commission.

And he doesn't resign his commission.

So he's got this, all his intellectual rigor and his approach to developing new doctrine and embracing modern warfare.

He's got this black mark on him that he's basically a rotter.

You know, he's a home wrecker or something, right?

Yeah.

In the Middle East, Wavell's wife doesn't like this and really doesn't like Hobart.

And that causes him big problems

in the pre-war period, where basically he's shuttled off there to get him out of London.

Well, yeah, he goes back and retired from the army.

He's done in 1941.

So he then joins the Home Guard as a Lance Corporal.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's absolutely amazing.

Churchill goes, hang on a minute.

What about this Hobart bloke i've heard of you know oh he's a lance corporal home guard now sir so he's brought back they have these things called tank parliaments churchill gets together with industrialists and brooke and people like hobart and they talk about what they should do for armoured warfare and sort of argue it all out there with churchill trying to sort of move it along and then he's appointed to train 11th armoured so the seventh armoured and 11th armoured division i think two of the sort of most famous armor armoured divisions of the second world war in the british army he raised the gerbil is the seventh armoured from the desert years the desert rats So it's a pet that one of the officers had.

And then the bull is Hobart's family crest.

And then, but they think he's too old to command it.

And they don't trust him because he's a shagger.

Blotted his copybook.

So he's not allowed to command 11th Armoured.

He's seen as old and done.

And then finally, Brooke says, actually, you know what?

We'll raise 79th Armoured.

We need a specialized armoured assault force.

And this is the thing Hobart's known for.

But the thing is, is he has invented armoured doctrine anyway and then reinvents it all over again.

Yeah, amazing, isn't it?

Yeah.

And I think the interesting thing about 79th Armoured is they are the largest tank force in the world at the end of the Second World War, but they never fight as a division.

They're never seen as that.

They have something like 4,000 vehicles at the end of the war, something like that.

But it's all devolved.

Everyone's trained to just turn up and go, what do you need me to do?

You know, and a request will go for some crocodiles or some flails or some, you know, Avries and all this sort of stuff, bridge layers, all this sort of stuff.

And it's all devolved.

So 79th Armoured Division, you know, if you read the Blackcock reports, they are literally everywhere, but not as a division.

Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it?

He's absolutely incredible.

And he keeps track of all this, runs all this, and, you know, I think he's crucial to the Allied victory in Northwest Europe in 1944-45.

Yeah, he's a visionary, isn't he?

He's a visionary, brilliant man, you know, creative, thinking outside the box.

I mean, you need these people.

Yeah, really good at when he has to go to a cavalry regiment and go, by the way, chaps, you're not going to be swanning.

You're going to be flailing or you're going to be punching holes in the seawall.

He's able to persuade them that that's actually what they want to do and that they're going to be important.

Because it's a difficult task task that getting the cavalry people to think again about what their actual role will be isn't easy he's considered 20 years ahead of his time isn't he i mean that's i think easily yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so the first seven so adam alex the orc brooke dempsey uh gail hobart that's the chaps we've done today in our next episode we'll be working our way through the next set of Duke generals before we then advance onto our Nobel United States of America.

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Alexander.

Except Monty.

Anyway,

we will see you next time.

Thanks very much.

Cheerio.

Cheerio.