Talk:Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis

Infamous Harold: murdered of cossacks

The Cossack General Domanov was in the group of Cossack officers who were brutally betrayed by the British authorities. Gerenral Domanov was the one who received a letter for the British Field Marshal Harold Alexander. On the May 27, 1945 at 5 PM the British Major B.P. Davis arrived to the hotel "Gold Fish" where General Domanov was residing at that time. The Major delivered a special order to the General from Field Marshal Alexander. This order stated that all cossacks must arrive to the city of Spital (Austria) to participate in a conference "Present political and military situation and the POW cossacks". General Domanov passed the British order to all Cossack officers. Following this betrayal order, 14 Cossack generals, 2359 officers, 65 military clerks, 14 doctors, 7 feldshers and 2 priests arrived to the designated location. They were all placed into a prison camp. British took away from the cossacks pocket knives, lighters, whistles, etc. The prison camp was surrounded by the British army with 6 tanks. On the 28th of May 1945 it was announced that there will be no conference. It was announced that all cossacks will be given away to the Soviet authorities. General Krasnof wrote several petitions to the King of England, League of Nations, International Red Cross but hey all remained unanswered. Few officers who didn't want to be given to the Soviets, took away their lifes. On the 29th the Soviets came and the British forced Cossacks into the lorries. While forcing Cossacks into the lorries, the British soldiers and officers were brutally beating them. By 5 PM of the 29th of May 1945 all remaining alive 2426 Cossacks were given by British to the SMERSH (Russian acronym for "Death to the spies") group of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front. This is a free-style and may be not of a very good quality abbreviated translation from: http://www.cossacks.info/war/repatriation/chapter_lenivov21.html

IIRC, the repatriation of Soviet citizens had been previously agreed between the Western governments and the Soviets and so any Soviet troops or citizens present in areas occupied by the Western powers were obliged to be handed over to the Soviet authorities. At the time the murderous nature of these authorities was not fully appreciated in the West. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.51 (talk) 08:16, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

Alleged Monty quote

Re: this sentence and unreferenced quote attributed to Montgomery:

Montgomery, who was both a long-time friend and subordinate of Alexander in Sicily and Italy, said of him, "Alexander....is not a strong commander...the higher art of war is quite beyond him." He advised his US counterparts, Mark Clark and George S. Patton, to ignore any orders from Alexander with which they did not agree.

A Google search on the phrase: "higher art of war is quite beyond him" results in only one hit - to this page. Doing the same through Google Book Search results in no hits. Isn’t it strange that, if true, such a historically significant event has not been mentioned in any of numerous published sources that have been fully indexed by Google Book Search or that is has never been discussed anywhere else on the internet?

Considering the inflammatory nature of this quote, unless it can be properly referenced and its accuracy verified, shouldn’t it be struck from the article? Psywar (talk) 19:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's particularly inflammatory, as Monty said similar things about almost everybody apart from Alan Brooke (the only man in the world to whom he looked up AFAIK). IIRC Monty was Alexander's instructor at some stage in the interwar period, and was not impressed by his brains - that said Alexander clearly wasn't an idiot, given the high responsibilities he held, even if he had the sense to delegate a lot of the work to Harding, his chief of staff (who wrote Alexander's elegant despatches quoted so lovingly by Churchill in his "Second World War").

"I would like to make the point now, categorically, how lucky I was to have 'Alex' as my C-in-C. I could not have served under a better Chief; we were utterly different but I liked him and respected him as a man."

Most of Montgomery's criticism of others (unlike some other people's) is professional criticism of them as regards doing the job they were being paid to do, which was to win a war. At a time in the war distinctly lacking in success such criticism, where it helped fend-off defeats, and turn them into victories, was entirely justifiable if it was true. As far a Montgomery was concerned, both he, and the other men within the respective armies, were being paid to win offensive battles, and subsequently, the war. Prior to El Alamein, this had not been happening. Montgomery in his criticism, in fairness also pointed out the military limitations with-which the people he critiques were facing, especially when they were effectively given impossible jobs - such as Lord Gort had been given in 1940.

Montgomery subjected himself to high standards of professionalism - which is why he didn't marry until he was 40 - and he expected those same standards to apply to all the other career soldiers he came across. He sometimes found that some could not achieve these high standards. That was not necessarily their fault, but it sometimes meant that they were of no use to him when it came to winning battles. In some cases, they were simply tired and worn out from previous campaigns, and needed a rest. If so, he states so. In other cases it was because they were in the wrong jobs, and so he moved them to ones they were better suited to. He also got rid of people who were likely to argue with him for no constructive purpose; he didn't mind arguments that resulted in an improvement in a plan, or were ultimately constructive to winning the battle, but he had come across people who - in his view - just wasted time by questioning everything, and adding nothing to achieving the desired result. Many of these were pre-war officers who had yet to grasp the realities of the then-present war, and that things had changed since the German introduction of Blitzkrieg.

I should also perhaps point out that Montgomery had been with the BEF in France in 1940, and he had exited France via Dunkirk, so he had seen what defeat looked like, and by 1942 he had had plenty of time to ponder the causes of that, and all the subsequent up to 1942, defeats. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.111 (talk) 12:22, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

"He advised his US counterparts, Mark Clark and George S. Patton, to ignore any orders from Alexander with which they did not agree." - if true, this would be classed in the British Army as an extreme form of insubordination and would likely end up in a court-martial. This is not in Montgomery's character at all, and in the contemporary German army of the time it is the sort of behaviour that would get the person responsible for making the statement shot.

A less than generous person might think the alleged statement was an attempt at justifying Clark's insubordination to Alexander after Anzio when the former disobeyed Alex's orders to cut-off the retreating Germans and instead went off to liberate Rome, thus allowing a large German force to escape, a force that Alexander had explicitly ordered Clark to intercept. All this occurred while Montgomery was in England preparing for Operation Overlord, at a time when news of an ally's disobeying of orders was least likely to be well received, nor appreciated, Montgomery having enough to occupy his mind in the last few days before D-Day without having the additional worry at the last minute over whether his Allied subordinates would obey his orders during the forthcoming invasion of Europe or not.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.149.55.51 (talk) 08:32, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

References

Orange Order

According to the Orange Lodge of BNA he was a member http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/CAN-ORANGE/2004-04/1081898239 not certain how to cite it within the article as I am not certain it is important enough to be mentioned in the main article. But obviously he should be in the Members category in this case.

Privy Councillor

The only source I could find that Alexander was appointed to the Imperial Privy Council is a biography that says he became a member when he was appointed defence minister in the British government. But ministers in the UK are not appointed to the Privy Council and there is no record in the UK Gazette of his appointment. The book does not say where it got this information. Unless someone can show he was appointed, I will remove it. TFD (talk) 11:39, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Why were his post-nominal letters removed?

Almost all the articles about British people on Wikipedia have the person's post-nominal letters after the person's name at the very beginning for the article. For example: Sir Winston Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS, RA.

Why did someone remove the post-nominal letters from after Harold Alexander's name at the beginning of this article? It's very annoying, since many people use Wikipedia to quickly see what knighthoods, awards, and other honours a British person has received, and it is easy to obtain this information simply by looking at the post-nominal letters after a person's name (as in the example of Winston Churchill which I mentioned above).

But in this article about Harold Alexander, someone has removed the post-nominal letters from after his name at the beginning of the article. Thus, the only was to determine what honours he received is to scroll down to the section concerning his honors, which takes much longer. Can someone please restore the post-nominal letters after his name at the beginning of the article, just like how almost every other article about a British person has their post-nominal letters after their name at the beginning of the article. 69.138.243.14 (talk) 04:07, 5 June 2023 (UTC)