An Essay on Leadership
HUNTINGTON, SAMUEL P.
WRITERS and WRITING An Essay on Leadership Reviewed by Samuel P. Huntington Assistant director, Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount...
...Nonetheless, apparently the Chiefs were the lesser of two evils, and at one point Montgomery urged them to join in a collective demarche to the Prime Minister to fire A. V. Alexander as Minister of Defense...
...The criticism of Eisenhower in this book is the natural counterpart to Montgomery's vigorous praise for de Gaulle...
...The significance of Montgomery's discussion of the campaign in France is not its reopening of the old argument of broad vs...
...they are criminal...
...Montgomery would heartily agree but he might quibble over the word "sport" for him life it a serious calling...
...What is leadership...
...Indecision and hesitation are fatal in any officer...
...What makes a great military commander...
...508 pp...
...Strenuous battling for the right," Theodore Roosevelt once declared "is the noblest sport the world affords...
...The Montgomery theory of leadership stands in marked contrast to the pragmatic, easy-going approach of the man under whom he twice served...
...in a C.-in-C...
...Montgomery frequently speaks of officers who rose above their "proper ceiling," of good division commanders who were poor corps commanders, and the like...
...Field-Marshal Montgomery's Memoirs cover a wide span of time and action, from his London boyhood in the 1890s, through his early Army career and his spectacular role in World War II, to his later activities in the War Office and NATO...
...6.00...
...To Montgomery, however, a plan is essentially the creation of a single mind, and he leaves no doubt that in his command it was the creation of his mind...
...The result was the last stage in a "dismal and tragic story" in which the opportunity for victory before spring was lost...
...Montgomery recognizes Eisenhower's key role in keeping conflicting allies and personalities harnessed to the common purpose...
...In his Crusade in Europe Eisenhower argues that every military plan is essentially a collective staff product...
...WRITERS and WRITING An Essay on Leadership Reviewed by Samuel P. Huntington Assistant director, Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University The Memoirs of Field-Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein...
...The literature on World War II is, of course, immense, and the contribution of new information which the Memoirs make to it relatively small...
...On the other hand Clement Attlee like Churchill and Truman, gets a high however, Montgemery appears to equate decisiveness with right de-cisions from own viewpoint...
...Ten days before the German Ardennes offensive, Montgomery was still calling for a choice of strategies, but "no decision was given...
...narrow front or north Germany vs...
...central Germany...
...It is rather the now more relevant question of the nature of Eisenhower's generalship and its relation to the nature of his Presidency...
...But he always returns to these questions...
...They therefore resented those put forward by me and their resentment was not lessened by the fact that my proposals were, in the end, often accepted...
...In some respects, Montgomery, too, rose above his ceiling...
...The Eisenhower military record, as Montgomery describes it, includes a full measure of indecision, hesitation and confusion...
...they expected these to be given them by the Secretariat...
...Much to Mont-gomery's disgust his air and naval colleagues backed out at the last moment Alexander's great crime of course was indecisiveness...
...Nonetheless, he argues that "the greatest quality required in a commander is 'decision...
...World...
...A great battlefield leader he was ill-equipped to be the military statesman...
...Clearly no organization composed primarily of Montgomeries could possibly function at all...
...One thing is certain: Montgomery sees in him as a commander many deficiencies which other critics have discovered in Eisenhower the President...
...Of the British Chiefs of Staff during this period, Montgomery characteristically remarks- "My colleagues seldom produced any original ideas...
...In Normandy, Eisenhower "failed to comprehend the basic plan [for a breakout in the west] to which he had himself cheerfully agreed...
...No organization without one Montgomery however, can possibly function well...
...Balance, flexibility and openmindedness were not his strong points...
...The book is unusual, however, in the picture it gives of the process of military policy-making in the British Government after the war, while Montgomery was Chief of the Imperial General Staff...
...Inter-service rivalry and compromise, budgetary and manpower battles, the intermesh-ing of military, national and partisan concerns, the recurring threats to resign, all indicate that the Pentagon is not alone in its problems...
...More than anything else, even auto-biography the Memoirs are an essay on leadership a subject on which the Field-Marshal has very definite views The leader he argues, above all must possess the ability to create, the will to dominate and the power to decide quickly and finally For him the leader is a heroic, dramatic, lonely figure Behind this concept is the theory that life, like war is the relatively simple struggle of good against evil Montgomery's philosophy is that distinctively Anglo-American, late Victorian combination of Social Darwinism and intense moral fervor...
...As the allied armies moved north of the Seine, Eisenhower, according to Montgomery was guilty not of the wrong decision but of no decision...
...On the other hand, in an age of conformity and compromise, of organization men and organized thought, it is refreshing to read a briskly written book by a man so devastatingly opinionated, enormously conceited, and yet so engagingly frank about his own faults as well as those of others...
Vol. 41 • November 1958 • No. 41
