Winnie as Villain

CHURCHILL AND THE MONTGOMERY MYTH by R. W. Thompson. 276 pages. Evans. $5.95.

Churchill hunting is in season. Rolf Hochhuth's play Soldiers accused Winnie of conniving to kill off a troublesome ally, and of provoking air raids on Britain so that he could retaliate with mass bombings on German cities (TIME, May 10). Now Author Thompson, a British journalist turned war historian, says that Churchill, to save his own skin, fashioned a hero out of a so-so soldier named Bernard Law Montgomery. This will be news to those who have always felt that Field Marshal Montgomery alone was responsible for that singular achievement.

Thompson reasons this way: Prime Minister Churchill had presided over a long string of military disasters. By August 1942, Singapore had fallen, Crete was gone, and the British were being hit hard everywhere. The nation desperately needed a great victory and a greater hero. With the sure hand of a master propagandist, says Thompson, Churchill removed the able but colorless General Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Eighth Army in North Africa and put the theatrical Monty in his place. Churchill's press officers set out to obliterate the fact that the Eighth Army had already won one battle at El Alamein and had the superiority to win others. Moreover, though Field Marshal Rommel was a sick and dispirited man commanding a weakened army, Churchill revived the myth of the invincible Desert Fox so that Monty would have to deal with a worthy foe. Even with the stage so cleverly set, Thompson charges that Monty still fought a static, overly cautious battle, sacrificing far too many men.

Rivers of Blood. It is true that Monty's victory at El Alamein came at a time when the British desperately needed a conquering hero. The British propaganda mills unquesionably did work overtime to glorify Monty. It is equally true that he may have curried fame too eagerly. But it is a well-documented fact that Churchill had for months vainly implored Auchinleck again and again to attack Rommel. More importantly--and unforgivably--Thompson fails to emphasize that, ailing or not, Rommel did live up to his reputation by the brilliant way he feinted and eluded British attacks.

Though General Eisenhower himself complained that Monty was a prickly and secretive subordinate, and General Omar Bradley accused him of being too cautious, nobody can question that he won an overwhelming victory at El Alamein. And while the British had numerical superiority in men and tanks, it was no staged battle that was fought on the hot desert sands. It was a nightmarish engagement that was won eventually with British guts and skill. Even Rommel himself was appalled by the fierceness of the fighting. He wrote: "Rivers of blood were poured out over miserable strips of land which, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have bothered his head about."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.