I have always considered Monty to be an excellent "defensive" general but believed he lacked something in attack mode eg Operation Market Garden.

What do others think?

I think these top Generals need to have the piece of mind to be able to gamble with the lives of thousands of men. Montgomery was able to that, but thats about the extent of my opinion.

I think of him as a very bad general! If he was commander instead of Eisenhower, we would have lost the war!
Nazis would be marching in Europe like an angry bull in a Texas Rodeo!

He won in Africa simply because Romell was sick in Berlin(Tifus), and when he came back everything went wrong for nazis( ), other wise we would certainly loose Africa , 'till operation "Torch", where Eisenhower would command, and everything would be O.K. !
Eisenhower(my favourite general ) & Monti were not so well friends, 'cause Dwight knew he wasn't a good General.... Every operation he started was failure from the begining! More of our men died brcause of him!

Uncle_Sam, asobjective as ever today huh?

Remember, that monty was responsible for major re-planning of the invasion of normandy, and he is a mjor part of the sucses of that invasion. He cared for his man, he inspired his man. He trained them well and hard.

And he sent them to die He certainly had sucessful ops., after all he was a general , but those big ops he planned, weren't so sucessful, much. Some would fail totally, if there weren't other commanders to correct him. He was like Hitler, obsessed of knowing the battlefield, which he didn't....

Hmmm...Again that is incorrect. Hitler was a corporal, monty was a proffesional soldier, witha good understanding of his weaknesses and strong points. He was unfavorable with the americans for being very cautios, which he was(aside from market garden).

was montgomery over rated? Yes. Thats my opinion.

At Caen, Monty was again found wanting in attack but he did draw the main Panzer Divisions away from the Americans as they were building their forces up in Normandy.

Originally Posted by sherman105

Hmmm...Again that is incorrect. Hitler was a corporal, monty was a proffesional soldier, witha good understanding of his weaknesses and strong points. He was unfavorable with the americans for being very cautios, which he was(aside from market garden).

He was lucky to get to be general, he was for colonel, nothing more. But certainly not for that job he qualified(one of the heads of allied forces)....

Can a man be overrated just because he never were always succesful? I don't think so.
Montgomery was a great defensive commander, and also a good offensive one, but, unlike Rommel, he liked to build up carefully every inch of power he could gather to unleash them all at once against the enemy.
Remember his division was the one which retreated to Dunkirk on perfect formation and carrying all his equipment, because he trained them hard all along the "phony war". He was a good commander, but their colleagues weren't so.
On Africa he managed to rally the demoralized british troops, to train them and to gather anything which could be throw to Germans... and if he didn't destroyed them on Alamein was because of his "neverdaring" nature, which lend him not to run risks at all, and becouse of the mastery of Rommel moving his poor forces (the German ones, 'cos' the Italians were left behind as useless pieces).
Maybe not the best, but much better than some others.