Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery (1887-1976), 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, is best known for commanding the British Eighth Army during World War II in the Western Desert until the final Allied victory in Tunisia – a command that famously included the Battle of El Alamein against General Erwin Rommel’s notorious Afrika Korps, one of the largest tank battles in history and a turning point in the Western Desert Campaign.
He subsequently commanded the Eighth Army (which included soldiers from the Jewish Brigade) in Sicily and Italy before being assigned responsibility for planning the D-Day invasion in Normandy, when he commanded all Allied ground forces during Operation Overlord from the initial landings until after the Battle of Normandy.
After accepting the German surrender at Luneburg Heath in northern Germany (May 4, 1945), he became commander-in-chief of the British Army of the Rhine in Germany and then chief of the British Imperial General Staff.
Prior to the birth of Israel, Montgomery twice played a critical, albeit often overlooked, role in saving the Jews of the Yishuv from genocide.
First, even before his critical military leadership during World War II for which he became renowned, he served in Eretz Yisrael as a British battalion commander and later, after his promotion to major-general, took command of the 8th Infantry Division in Eretz Yisrael, where he brutally quashed the 1936-39 Arab Revolt, the true first intifada.
Second, the allied victory at the second battle of El Alamein under Montgomery’s command was not only a seminal turning point of World War II, it also prevented the almost certain destruction of the 500,000 Jews who lived in Eretz Yisrael. With Hitler’s explicit blessing and in co-ordination with the grand mufti of Jerusalem, the Nazis had already established a mobile SS death squad ready to bring the “Final Solution” to the Middle East and, in 1942, an Einsatzkommando attached to the Afrika Korps was already waiting in Athens for orders to commence operations there.
In recognition of his key role in saving the Jews of Eretz Yisrael from mass extermination, the Vaad Leumi (which served as the de facto Jewish government during the British mandate era) awarded him a Hebrew Tanach, now known as the famous “Montgomery Bible,” which was inscribed:
Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, GCB, DSO, the gallant leader of the victorious forces by whose hand God has placed salvation in Zion in the days of El Alamein presented in token of the everlasting gratitude of Palestine Jewry by the Vaad Leumi, General Council of the Jewish Community in Palestine.
Montgomery, however, later became a much-despised figure among the Jews of Eretz Yisrael when he returned there in June 1946. He found that the “enemy” of Britain this time was the Haganah, the Irgun, and Jews furious over the infamous 1939 White Paper, pursuant to which, among other outrages, the British government rejected the creation of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael and drastically limited Jewish immigration there.
Montgomery argued that Jewish rebels had to be handled the same way the Arab revolt had been handled earlier – with sheer brute force. He imposed martial law in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv; confirmed the death sentences imposed by special military courts on Jews convicted of terrorism; and took other vicious steps to quell the Jewish insurgence. But his attempts to restore British control ended in humiliating failure when the British turned the matter over to the United Nations and fled, leading to Israel’s War of Independence.
At the start of that war, Montgomery predicted that Israel would last no longer than three weeks and that the Jews there would be massacred. Given this history of Montgomery’s record in Eretz Yisrael, it is particularly ironic that the British general and Moshe Dayan – perhaps the ultimate symbol of Israeli military might, best remembered as the legendary military hero who led Israel to victory in both the Sinai Campaign (1956) and the Six-Day War (1967) – apparently were friends, as evidenced by the fascinating November 20, 1966 handwritten correspondence exhibited with this column:
I must thank you both accordingly for the game you gave me for my birthday – Afrika Korps. I have now had time to examine it, and I don’t understand it! Perhaps Anthony [Eden?] will explain it to me on Friday evening next, while you are wrestling with the red ink of Chapter 18.
Bernard Levin has written to say how much he enjoyed meeting you both at the birthday lunch….
Coming to lunch on Saturday will be the Israel Ambassador, and General Moshe Dayan, who was C- in C- [Commander-in-Chief] of the Israel Army at the time of the Suez debacle in 1956 – and led the Israel attack on the Egyptian Army in Sinai, and would willingly have gone to Cairo with the Israel Army if he had been allowed to do so. He is a great friend of mine.
Afrika Korps was war game, marketed by Avalon Hill Game Company in 1963 and re-released in 1965, which follows Rommel’s Afrika Korps and their Italian allies as they fought back-and-forth campaigns against British forces in World War II. What does it say about the game that Montgomery – who surely understood more about the actual Alamein campaign than any person, living or dead – did not understand it?
Henry Bernard Levin, the son of poor parents in London, was arguably the most prominent British journalist of his day. Renowned as a weekly political columnist, he became even better known as a broadcaster, first on the British weekly satirical television show ‘That Was the Week That Was” and as a panelist on ‘Face the Music,” a musical quiz show. In a famous 1965 essay, “Am I A Jew?” Levin, though wholly disconnected from Jewish life and practice, sought to establish his Jewish identity, but his bitter condemnation of Israel’s treatment of the Arabs made him a detested figure in Jewish circles.
The Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom referred to by Montgomery was Aharon Remez, who flew with the British air force before serving as the second commander of Israel’s air force.
Montgomery actually met with Dayan twice. During a meeting in England in December 1957, Montgomery, then deputy commander of NATO forces, sought to create a mood where the two famous generals could sit together and “solve the world’s problems.” Montgomery later commented that “Dayan is tough, but I like him.”
They met again in the 1960s to discuss the Vietnam War, which Dayan was then studying. Montgomery, who was immersed in writing his History of Warfare, was harshly critical of the American strategy in Vietnam. In particular, he blasted American military planners and decision makers for lacking any clear objective. At the end of his meeting with Dayan, Montgomery asked the Israeli general to tell the Americans, in his name, that they were “insane.”
During a visit to the Alamein battlefields in May 1967, Montgomery bluntly told high-ranking Egyptian army officers that they would lose any war with Israel. Days later, Montgomery’s record on prognosticating the results of Israel’s wars rose to 50 percent when, after ignoring his warnings, the Egyptians were soundly thrashed in the Six-Day War.
