VE DAY

Subject: VE Day

So it's 'VE Day', (Virus Endurance Day) today. Victory in Europe was a day of great celebration, the end of the European war with its 5 years of civilian and military trauma pressured as we were by the German fighting machine which was, in the end, only overcome by its own brash self belief that it could fight on two fronts and invade Russia fighting over the vast Russian Stepps against an army controlled by a man who was equally as ruthless as Hitler.
It was said that the best generals, the most ruthless generals who pressed their men to the point of destruction were the German and Russian generals. On the Western front none of the generals, other than perhaps General Patten had this intolerance of others below them to win at all costs.

 Perhaps General MacArthur fighting the Japanese had the ruthless streak needed but in general the Generals fighting in Europe, Eisenhower, Bradley and our own Montgomery were not quite of the calibre of the German or the Russian top brass. Montgomery in particular was loathed by the Americans, a very good tactical man but lacking the talent to combine whole armies in a common purpose. An egotist par excellence looked up to by his men but hated by everyone else and it was only Eisenhower's supremacy talent for diplomacy that kept the allies around the table.
One of Eisenhower's best attributes was his ability to work with egotistical generals, to man manage people who saw themselves 'beyond the Pale', stunted by their own sense of their exceptionalism and cursed with an unrealistic sense of national importance.
The Germans with greatly depleted armies were able, with great tactical skill to hinder for another year the push through Germany from an overwhelmingly larger, better equipped, better supplied  force than themselves. German efficiency meant that they had to scrape the barrel, putting raw teenagers in the line, they held their positions in an orderly retreat and not a rout. With hindsight it might have been better for the Germans to have capitulated whilst the Russians were still distant. Germany would not have been divided and Stalin not able to play the part he did in usurping so much of Europe in what became the USSR.