Norman Dixon's On the Psychology of Military Incompetence(London: 1984, 1976), serves as an apologetic for historical British military stupidity. Instead of a simple lack of intelligence, the blunders of the military past are shown to be the product of authoritarian personalities, torn between their conscience and a pathological need for aggression. Dixon doesn't have much good to say of the military profession, nor of military institutions. He notes that the armed services are a place where anti-intellectualism reigns supreme, and where aggression, order, and obedience attract authoritarians. Perhaps apologetic was the wrong word? Dixon suggests that strategic mistakes were made, not due to a lack of intelligence, but due to the military environment fostering unstable authoritarian personalities.
A Freudian analysis typifies much of the work, which at points emphasizes the anxieties surrounding sex, elimination, eating, and death. Perhaps his most quotable passage, comes in analysis of the soldierly profession as a "instinctive" one.
Broadly speaking, human activities may be regarded as falling into one of the other of two main groups: those which are directly instinctual and those which are not. Into the first, which involves what have been succinctly described as the 'three Fs' - feeding, fighting, and 'reproduction' - fall such robust pastimes as pugilism, professional pie-eating, prostitution, and soldiering. Into the second group fall all those other vocations which, though sometimes subserving the basic drives, do not have as their end-product the original consummatory response. (Dixon, p.169-170)
Jonathan Fennell’s Combat and
Morale in the North African Campaign (2010), traces the complex
web of factors which influence military morale. One kernel in this cornucopia is the cult of personality
surrounding the high commander. In the case of British and
commonwealth troops in the Western Desert, it seems that a certain
notorious German commander stole a march on the British.
General Erwin Rommel's charisma still
effects the observers of military history, especially due to the
popularization of his opposition to George Patton, as portrayed
in the 1970 film Patton. Problems arose in 1942, when British troops recognized the charismatic German general over their own commanders. General
Claude Auchinleck was an unknown entity to troops under his Middle East Command as long as a year after he took control.
Generalfeldmarshschall Erwin Rommel (1892 - 1944):
Rommel at a staff conference in the Western Desert.
Fennell records that Rommel approached “folk hero” status, among troops. One officer wrote during a slow period in the desert that, “there
is no news of interest here at the moment except that I have often
heard fellows say ‘I wish we had Rommel on our side.’”
(Fennell, p. 212) Attempts to confront the Rommel legend by Middle
East Command came from the “MEF Weekly Military Newsletter
no. 74”. “Axis propaganda had gone to considerable pains to
build up the legend of Rommel, one of the aims being to give us a
feeling of inferiority in the face of this photogenic General who is
supposed to be master of the Libyan desert”.
Auchinleck’s personal reaction
betrays his own concerns about the power of his opposition's celebrity.
Auchinleck wrote,
“I wish to dispel by all possible means [the
idea] that Rommel represents something more than an ordinary German
general…The important thing now is that we do not always talk of
Rommel when we mean the enemy in Libya. We must refer to “the
Germans”, or the “Axis powers”, or “the enemy” and not
always keep harping on Rommel…PS. I am not jealous of Rommel.”(Fennell, p. 214, cited from Nigel Hamilton, The Full Monty, p.
544)
It seems that Auchinleck’s best
efforts at becoming a military idol were in vain. The situation was
reversed with the coming of the flamboyant and press-savvy
Montgomery, who “actively pursued publicity and the press limelight
and purposely took on the Rommel legend.” (Fennell, p. 214)
As Montgomery wrote after the war:
The
Eighth Army consisted in the main of civilians in uniform, not of
professional soldiers. And they were, of course, to a man, civilians
who read newspapers. It seemed to me that to command such men
demanded not only a guiding mind but also a point of focus: or to put
it another way, not only a master but a mascot. And I deliberately
set about fulfilling this second requirement. It helped, I felt
sure, for them to recognize as a person – as an individual – the
man who was putting them into battle. To obey an impersonal figure
was not enough. They must know who I was. (Fennell, p. 214)
That Montgomery bought in to the cult of Rommel can be gleaned by the questionable honour of naming his dog after the general. The distinction is only heightened by noting the moniker of his other canine comrade: "Hitler". Monty, as against Auchinleck's policies would long personalize the German forces he opposed as "Rommel", and emphasized that he knew the "Desert Fox" better than anyone else.
Fennell does acknowledge Montgomery's success in becoming part mascot, claiming that he was the first British celebrity general, with the possible exception of Kitchener. (Fennel, p.5) It appears at least one prominent military historian disagrees with awarding full celebrity status to any British general. Writing in the 1970s in his pivotal work Face of Battle, John Keegan suggests that Robert E. Lee was "the only cult general in the English-speaking world". (Keegan, 1976, p. 54) So much for Kitchener of Khartoum and Montgomery of Alamein! It seems that at least honorable mention is due to the Duke of Wellington, or even Sir Garnet Wolseley, whose name was incorporated in the British soldiers' pantheon of slang as synonymous with doing all right. In overcoming the cult of Rommel, however, it appears that things were not "all Sir Garnet" for the desert generals!
Norman Dixon's On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (London: 1984, 1976), serves as an apologetic for historical British military stupidity. Instead of a simple lack of intelligence, the blunders of the military past are shown to be the product of authoritarian personalities, torn between their conscience and a pathological need for aggression. Dixon doesn't have much good to say of the military profession, nor of military institutions. He notes that the armed services are a place where anti-intellectualism reigns supreme, and where aggression, order, and obedience attract authoritarians. Perhaps apologetic was the wrong word? Dixon suggests that strategic mistakes were made, not due to a lack of intelligence, but due to the military environment fostering unstable authoritarian personalities. 
