There was a brief firestorm in Britain when a photograph appeared in the press of Montgomery and Gen. Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the commander of the Afrika Korps and the highest-ranking German captured at Alamein. After his capture Thoma was brought to the Eighth Army command post, where Montgomery accorded him the respect of one honorable professional soldier to another. The two dined that night, and the photograph of the two generals led Brendan Bracken to send Churchill a memo criticizing Montgomery’s naïveté and noting that it created a bad impression with the public. Churchill merely commented: “I sympathize with Gen. von Thoma. Defeated, humiliated, in captivity, and,” after pausing for effect, “dinner with General Montgomery.”
Carlo d’Este, Warlord: A life of Winston Churchill at war, 1874-1945, 2008.
June 15, 2018
QotD: Churchill on Montgomery
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