Normandy '44: The Battle Beyond D-Day - bbc2 now

Historian James Holland reassesses the brutal 77-day campaign for control of Normandy that followed the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944, challenging some of the many myths that have grown up around this vital offensive. He examines the nature of the fighting and the higher aims of both Allied and Axis forces, and also looks at the battle on an operational level to reveal the true complexity of this bitter and bloody struggle for supremacy

Interesting.... I missed the first half...yes like others I have never been totally convinced breaking out through Normandy
was the best plan, after D Day...it favoured the defenders too much

Still this program argues it drew in German forces which were ultimately destroyed...so all part of a cunning plan?? ..hmmmm
I shall have to consider

It was a brutal and hard fought battle on both sides, I admire men from both sides who fought in it

Tbh I don't think Monty was ever a tactical mastermind, but the men loved him and fought for him,
in that sense he was a good commander

There was a general shortage of high class commanders on the Allied side, the Germans had most of them imo

Letters show Monty as 'repressed gay'





"This sort of thing may be tolerated by the French, but we're British - thank God."
So decreed Field Marshal Montgomery as he urged the House of Lords not to legalise gay sex and warned that the 1967 homosexuality bill would be a "charter for buggery".

More than 30 years on, the gay age of consent has been equalised to 16, homosexuals are allowed to serve in the military - and Britain's most famous wartime general has been outed as a repressed homosexual who had "quasi love affairs" with boys and men, according to a new book.

The Full Monty, by his official biographer, Nigel Hamilton, claims that Montgomery felt passionately about fellow soldiers and boys, some not yet in their teens.

Professor Hamilton, whose official life of Montgomery was in 1981 awarded the Whitbread prize for biography, has drawn on hundreds of letters to and from Montgomery. He admits there was no proof of any physical relationship with any of the young men who wrote, but argues that any act would have been illegal and could have spelt ruin for the wartime hero.

"Don't forget homosexuality was outlawed from 1885 to 1967. Those who did act on their instincts could, like Oscar Wilde, be imprisoned and ruined," he said yesterday from Boston, where he works at the University of Massachusetts.

"He acted very negatively to the change in the law - calling it a 'charter for buggery'. He was extremely worried by it, and psychologically that suggests the law had been an essential crutch in his struggle with his own homosexual feelings."

Rumours about the sexuality of the man who won the battle of El Alamein in 1942, turning the tide of the war in north Africa, have previously circulated.

As early as 1976 - five years after his death - one earlier biographer, Lord Chalfont, noted his "predilection for the company of young men".

Last night, Montgomery's only son, Viscount David Montgomery, dismissed the new claim as being "absurd, appalling, and complete psychobabble".

Another biographer, Alistair Horne, author of The Lonely Leader, commented: "This sounds to me like Hamilton is rehashing his old work for a tabloid readership.

"I served under Montgomery in the Middle East and I have absolutely no evidence whatsoever of repressed, or any other kind, of homosexuality."

Prof Hamilton, who was befriended by the field marshal at age 11 and knew him well for the last 20 years of his life, has no doubt of the nature of Monty's feelings.

"These were quasi love affairs. He became really passionately involved with these young men - and then, more and more, boys, who he would call 'my sons'. They were nothing of the kind, of course, but in his own personality he would frame them in this way.

"I myself have more than 100 very loving letters from him. My relationship with him wasn't sexual, in the sense that it wasn't acted upon, but I had been through enough years at British boarding schools to know what kind of enormous affection and feeling he had for me.

"And I wasn't alone, this was a consistent pattern in Monty's life." One boy was Lucien Treub, Montgomery's "little Swiss friend", who met him at 12, and told Hamilton how the general would bathe him personally and rub him down so he would not catch cold. "I've interviewed him several times and he was quite clear he didn't feel there was any molesting going on, but it's a tricky area," Prof Hamilton said.

Born in 1887, Montgomery was married for 10 years from 1927, but the academic described this an "an aberration" in what had otherwise been a life devoted entirely to being with men.

He added that he had pondered on whether to write about Monty's sexuality when his acclaimed three-part biography was published in the 1980s, but felt that his main aim was to restore the field marshal's military reputation "at a time it was being systematically trashed: I didn't want to detract from that".

I would say his military reputation is still up for argument

as is Haig's in WWI
surprised all the WWI programs have not touched on that one
surely one will one in time

I think we do dancingBrave
our soldiers always fought bravely, if the leadership was not the best at times

our women worked their hearts in our factories, and bravely endured German bombing w/o complaint
we could do with that spirit now

Yes he came in at the right time Dr Crippen...Auchinleck his predecessor had already decided on El Alemain
I doubt Monty was any better strategist.....but the men believed in him. We broke Rommel's code just before Alemain
that helped a bit

He did the same job for us Patton did for the Americans imo, put some fight back into the men, who were demoralised.
Although their stupid feud did not help the allies course

Monty should have accepted, that as the Americans were going to provide most of the men and equipment,
they had to be allowed to lead, so should Churchill and our other generals tbh. Haig accepted French leadership
in WWI.