[Matt Wiser]

Antony Beevor's latest is what I'm tackling now..The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II.

Two things stand out, and they're both about the highest-ranking prima donna in the ETO: Montgomery. 1) His pride and vanity led to the operation, which should never have been attempted, failure to listen to the Dutch Underground or the Dutch Brigade fighting with the British-some of whose officers knew the ground-and ANY Dutch officer in prewar staff training who proposed an attack up the same road XXX Corps took was automatically failed, and dismissing intelligence that suggested things not just at Arnhem, but along XXX Corps' advance, were not what he thought them to be.

2) That same vanity, until the day he died, would not allow him to admit that the whole operation had been a disaster. Eisenhower said it best: "Monty's a psychopath. He will never admit to anything wrong, everything has gone right, and he has never made a mistake." Monty was his own worst enemy, though his Chief of Staff knew it, but he would never admit it.