Ike and Monty: Generals at War

Gelb ( Desperate Venture ) offers a comprehensive analysis of the troubled wartime collaboration between two military leaders whose professional differences were compounded by deep contrasts in character and behavior. Gelb depicts Dwight D. Eisenhower as likable and honorable, conspicuously successful as managing director of the Allied war effort but less effective as a general. He too often allowed himself to be distracted by the non-military aspects of his job, Gelb argues; his campaigns would have benefited from closer control and a firmer hand. Bernard Law Montgomery emerges as a difficult man whose aspirations, particularly after the Normandy campaign, were not matched by his achievements. Gelb admires his narrow-front strategic plan for ending WW II quickly, but he also demonstrates that the Field Marshal's poisonous personality made it impossible for him to win Eisenhower's support for his concept. Specialists will discover nothing new here, though others will find a useful study of the human aspects of high military command. Photos not seen by PW . (May)