Operation Market Garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Operation Market Garden was an Allied military operation in World War II, which took place in September 1944. It was an attempt to take bridges over the main rivers of the German-occupied Netherlands, enabling the Allies to advance into Germany without any remaining major obstacles.
The operation was initially successful with the capture of the Waal bridge at Nijmegen, but was a failure overall as the final Rhine bridge at Arnhem was not held — the German counter-offensive resulted in the destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division. It is considered the last German victory of the Western Campaign.
Contents |
Background
After the breakout from the Normandy beachheads during Operation Cobra in August 1944, the Allied forces had pushed back the German army hundreds of miles over a period of only a few weeks. By the end of August enough Allied troops were on land to form several armies. To the east, on the right, the US had the 12th Army Group under the command of General Omar N. Bradley, with two complete US armies, the 1st under Gen. Courtney H. Hodges and the 3rd under Gen. George S. Patton, in a line running roughly north-south near the German frontier. To their left the British 21st Army Group under Bernard Montgomery held the north-east corner in a line running from Antwerp to the US lines roughly along the northern border of Belgium. On their left, on the Atlantic coast, was the Canadian 1st Army which had recently advanced to a line just south of the British.
At this point the offensive halted owing to logistical issues. The only supply source in Allied hands were the shallow docks built on the original invasion beaches, and the nearby deep-water port of Cherbourg at the tip of the Cotentin. Both of these were of limited use, as the D-Day pre-invasion "softening up" air strikes had effectively destroyed all railway transport in the area. The massive port of Antwerp lay in British hands, but the river estuary leading inland to this port (the Scheldt) in front of the Canadians was still in German control.
Clearly the primary concern for the Allies should have been the advance of the Canadian army to remove the remaining German forces from the area and open Antwerp. Several factors prevented this. First, the entire Allied high command thought the German rout would continue. Second, the Allied high command apparently overlooked the fact that Antwerp could not be opened unless the Scheldt was cleared. Third, the Canadians assigned to that sector of the theater had little "pull" compared to the two generals, Patton and Montgomery. Both consistently asked for all available supplies to be given to them for quick advances. Allied Supreme Commander Eisenhower refused, preferring to maintain a strategy of broad attack across the entire front. As the Normandy breakout offensive faltered, Montgomery, Bradley, and Patton argued anew for thrusting attacks, and Eisenhower eventually asked them for their plans.
Bradley and Patton favoured an attack east from Patton's current positions to take the city of Metz, and then into the industrial area of the Saarland. However, this required passing the Siegfried Line of defenses at the German border, and left them in front of the equally heavily defended Rhine. As a defensive maneuver it was an excellent plan, as it would leave the Allies in control of the easily defended west bank of the Rhine. But as an offensive plan it did little other than take more land, and left them in an only slightly better position to assault Germany.
Montgomery initially suggested a limited airborne assault, Operation Comet, consisting of an airborne assault in front of the British XXX Corps. Operation Comet was dropped in favor of a more ambitious plan, consisting of an attack north to Arnhem, deep inside the Netherlands, bypassing the Siegfried Line (which stopped about 20 km south of there), crossing the Rhine, and capturing the entire German 15th Army behind their lines between Arnhem and the shores of the IJsselmeer. This would also have the side effect of cutting off the V-2 launch sites, which were bombarding London at this time. Montgomery pointed out that his plan ringed the entire Antwerp area well behind Allied lines, allowing it to be easily opened once the attack was completed.
Eisenhower continued to dither, as he was most interested in the opening of Antwerp to supplies. Both Montgomery and Bradley continued to pester him. The political infighting grew more intense, as both Bradley and Montgomery insisted that with more resources, they could march straight to Berlin.
The decision was apparently finally decided by command in the US. After the D-Day invasions the airborne forces had been withdrawn to re-form in England, forming the First Allied Airborne Army, commanded by Lieutenant General Lewis H Brereton. This consisted of three US and two British airborne divisions, and an additional Polish Brigade. Eisenhower had been under intense pressure from the US to use these forces as soon as possible, so in somewhat unlikely fashion this favoured Montgomery's plan.
The plan
For a more comprehensive list of Allied and German units see Operation Market Garden order of battle
The plan of action consisted of two coordinated operations:
- Market which was the use of the airborne troops, and
- Garden consisting of the British 2nd Army moving north along highway 69 (later nicknamed "Hell's Highway") spearheaded by XXX Corps under Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks.
Market
Market would employ three of the five divisions of the 1st Airborne army. The US 101st Airborne Division would drop in two locations just north of the XXX Corps to take the bridges northwest of Eindhoven at Son (mun. Son en Breugel) and Veghel. The 82nd Airborne Division would drop quite a bit northeast of them to take the bridges at Grave and Nijmegen, and finally the British 1st Airborne Division and Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade would drop at the extreme north end of the route, to take the road bridge at Arnhem and rail bridge at Oosterbeek.
Market would be the largest airborne operation in history, delivering 30,000 men of the 101st, 82nd, 1st and the Polish Brigade in a series of three huge operations known as "lifts." Commander of the 1st Army, Browning, added his own HQ to the first lift so that he could command from the front.
Garden
Garden consisted primarily of XXX Corps, the core of the 2nd Army. They were expected to arrive at the south end of the 101st's area on the launch day, the 82nd by the second day, and the 1st by the third or fourth day at the latest. They would also deliver several additional infantry divisions to take over the defensive operations from the airborne, freeing them for other operations as soon as possible.
Four days was, and is, a long time for an airborne force to fight unsupplied. In addition, the Allied paratroopers lacked adequate anti-tank weapons. Even so, it seemed to the Allied high command the German resistance at this point had broken. Most of the German 15th Army in the area appeared to be fleeing the field from in front of the Canadians, and they were known to have no Panzer-gruppen. XXX Corps would therefore be facing very limited resistance on their route up highway 69, and little armor. Meanwhile, the German defenders would be spread out over 100 km trying to contain the pockets of airborne forces, from the British 2nd Army in the south to Arnhem in the north.
German Forces
All was not what it seemed. In fact the rout of 15th Army had largely ended with the arrival of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt as Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief West in early September. Rundstedt, who replaced Field Marshal Walther Model, was generally detested by Hitler, but well liked by his troops, whom he had back in fighting condition within the week. The rout ended with most of the men escaping out from the pocket between the Canadian 1st and the Westerschelde, adding 80,000 men to the area just to the northwest of the attack route. Rundstedt immediately began to plan a defense against what Wehrmacht intelligence said was 60 Allied divisions at full strength. (Eisenhower, at that time, actually had only 49 divisions.)
Additionally, Colonel General Kurt Student, the Wehrmacht's own airborne infantry pioneer, was ordered to take up positions with what was euphemistically called the 'First Parachute Army' along the Albert Canal. Student's 3,000 paratroopers, scattered across the Reich, were probably the only combat-ready reserve forces in Germany at the time. Furthermore, Lieutenant General Kurt Chill, commanding the shattered 85th Division, established 'reception stations' at key bridge crossings in the Netherlands. Chill's actions gathered together a miscellany of service troops into a semblance of military units, which allowed Student to organize a defensive line.
What should have alarmed Allied planners of the operation was an unrelated event taking place nearby. When discussing the Allied plan of attack, Rundstedt and his generals agreed that Eisenhower would favour Patton. In one of his final orders as Commander-in-Chief West, Model ordered the troops of the II. SS-Panzerkorps, made up of the 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer divisions under the command of Lieutenant General Wilhelm Bittrich, to rest and refit in the rear. A suitable quiet spot was selected, which happened to be Arnhem. This meant another 9,000 troops in the area, all of them elite armored forces with heavy weapons.
Problems
Several reports started leaking out from the Netherlands reporting on the German movements, but by this time the planning was in late stages, and the reports were basically ignored. When a reconnaissance flight was sent in on behalf of the 1st Airborne Army, it returned with pictures clearly showing tanks deployed just to the northeast of Arnhem, perhaps only 15 km from where the British would be dropping. These were dismissed out of hand, with the claim that they probably could not run and were broken down.
Worse, RAF Transport Command reported that they were desperately short of aircraft and would be barely able to support the operation. Any losses or bad weather would upset this ability. The problem was so acute that they flatly refused to drop the British to the north of their target bridge because it would put them in range of flak guns just to the north at Deelen (mun. Ede). Another suitable drop zone just to the south of the bridge was also rejected because it was thought to be marshy, and thus unsuitable for dropping the gliders containing the force's heavier equipment. Instead, they demanded a drop zone 15 km away from the bridge, which would have to be taken and held overnight until the 3rd lift; the force would have to be split in half for over a day.
Realizing the seriousness of the problem, the plan was then hastily changed to task the small force of machine-gun equipped jeeps in the reconnaissance squadron with seizing the bridge in a coup de main, and holding it until the infantry could arrive. Three battalions would follow on foot, with the fourth and all the glider pilots holding the drop zones while they waited for the next two lifts.
The battle
In a staggeringly short period of one week, everything was ready.
Day 1, Sunday, September 17, 1944
Operation Market-Garden opened with successes all around. The first lift was in daylight for accuracy, and almost all of the troops arrived on top of their target drop zones without incident. This contrasted strongly with previous operations where night drops resulted in the units being scattered by up to 20 km in some cases.
In the south the 101st met little resistance and easily captured the small bridge at Veghel. However, the similar bridge at Son was blown up as they approached it, after being delayed by a short engagement with German anti-tank guns. Later that day several small attacks by units of the 15th Army were beaten off, while small units of the 101st had moved south of Son.
To their north the 82nd arrived, and the small group dropped near Grave took the bridge intact in a rush. However, the main force of the 82nd found their task of securing the Groesbeek Heights to the east of Nijmegen much harder than they expected, and they continued to try for the rest of the day. One force tasked with taking the bridge made their attempt, but due to miscommunication they did not start until late in the day and never made it. This left the Nijmegen bridge in German hands.
Meanwhile the 1st Airborne landed almost without a hitch, with the exception that the reconnaissance squadron lost over half its jeeps on landing, and the rest were ambushed on their way into Arnhem. Thus the only hope of capturing the bridge was on foot.
This, too, proved very difficult. Two of the three battalions found themselves slowed down by small German units of a training battalion rushing to hem them in. Luckily, one of the three, led by Lieutenant Colonel John Frost, found their route largely undefended, and arrived at the bridge in the afternoon and set up defensive positions. Continued attempts by the other two battalions were meeting increased resistance, so eventually the decision was made to wait for the second lift and try again the next day.
This is of vital importance. Unlike some of the bridges to the south, which were over smaller rivers and canals and could be bridged by engineering units, the Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges crossed two arms of the Rhine, and there was no possibility of easily bridging either. To make matters worse, the British airborne were on the far side of their bridge. If either Nijmegen or Arnhem bridges were not captured and held, there was absolutely no way for XXX Corps to reach them. Yet at the end of Day 1, only a small force held Arnhem, and Nijmegen was still in German hands.
In addition, the British radios did not work. Their long-range VHF sets were delivered with the wrong crystals, thus operating on a frequency no one was listening to. Meanwhile, the shorter-range sets for use between the brigades did not work, and the various battalions were completely cut off from each other.
XXX Corps didn't start their advance until 2 p.m., as General Horrocks had been involved in several previous Airborne-related operations that had been aborted at the last minute and refused to risk his troops until he received confirmation that the airborne forces had landed. Soon after starting they ran into a force of infantry and anti-tank units dug in on the road, and it took several hours for them to be cleared, along with the loss of a number of the elite Guards Armoured division's leading tanks. This slowed the advance along the narrow road. By the time the light started giving out at 5 p.m. they were still 15 km south of Eindhoven and they camped in Valkenswaard. The operation was already behind schedule.
On the German side things were not much better, largely because it was not clear at the start what was going on. Model, in direct command of the forces in the area, was completely confused by the British dropping in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, and concluded they were commandos attempting to kidnap him. Meanwhile, Bittrich, commanding the 2nd SS Panzer Corps, had a clearer head, and immediately sent a reconnaissance squadron of the 9th SS Panzer Division to Nijmegen to reinforce the bridge defense there.
Day 2, Monday the 18th
Early in the day the force of the 9th Panzer, sent south the day before, concluded they were not needed in Nijmegen, and attempted to return to Arnhem. They were aware of the British troops at the bridge, but attempted to cross by force anyway and were beaten back with staggering losses. Meanwhile, newly arrived forces of the 10th SS beat off the attempt to move the other two British battalions to the bridge after heavy fighting. Lift two arrived late due to fog in England, but put down successfully in the afternoon.
To their south the 82nd was having troubles of its own. Grave was well protected, but German forces continued to press on the 82nd deployed to the east of Nijmegen on the heights. In the morning the Germans took one of the Allied landing zones, target for the second lift which was to arrive at 1:00 p.m. Troops from the entire area, even as far as the town itself, rushed to the drop zone and by 3:00 p.m. it was back in their control. Luckily, due to the delay in England the second lift did not arrive until 3:30 p.m.
The 101st, faced with the loss of the bridge at Son, attempted to take the similar bridge a few kilometers away at Best. However, they found their approach heavily blocked, and eventually gave up. Other units continued moving to the south and eventually reached the northern end of Eindhoven. At about noon they were met by recce units from XXX Corps. At 4:00 p.m., they made radio contact with the main force to the south and told them about the Son bridge, asking for a Bailey bridge to be brought forward.
XXX Corps soon arrived in Eindhoven, and by that night were camped out south of Son while they waited for the Royal Engineers to erect the new bridge. Thus ended Day 2, with the operation already 36 hours behind schedule and both primary bridges still in German hands.
Day 3, Tuesday the 19th
By this point most of the 1st Airborne was in place, and only the Polish brigade was yet to arrive in the 3rd lift later that day. Yet another attempt was made to reinforce Frost at the bridge, and this time resistance was even stronger. It appeared that there was no longer any hope of reaching the bridge, and the isolated units then retreated to Oosterbeek, to the west of Arnhem, in (mun. Renkum). Meanwhile, at the bridge German tanks were arriving to take up the fight, which was becoming desperate.
At 5 p.m. a small part of the Polish units in the third lift finally arrived, but fell directly into the waiting guns of the Germans camped out around the area – with the radios not working they still had no way to tell the HQ that the landing zone was taken and many of the Polish troops were killed. At the same time several of the supply drop points were also in German hands, and the 1st retrieved only 10% of the supplies dropped to them.
Things were going somewhat better for the 82nd, who found advanced units of XXX Corps arriving that morning. With the support of tanks they were able to quickly beat off the Germans in the area, at which point they decided to make a combined effort to take the bridge; the Guards Armoured and 505th (part of the 82nd) would attack from the south while the 504th would cross the river in boats and take the north. The boats were called for to make the attempt in the late afternoon, but due to huge traffic problems to the south, they never arrived. Once again XXX Corps was held up in front of a bridge.
To their south the units of the 101st sent to take Best the day before found themselves facing a renewed attack that morning and gave ground. However, as more British tanks arrived the Germans were beaten off by late afternoon. Later a small force of Panthers arrived at Son, seemingly out of nowhere, and started firing on the Bailey bridge. These, too, were beaten back by anti-tank guns that had recently landed, and the bridge was secured.
Day 4, Wednesday the 20th
Frost's force at the bridge continued to hold out. Around noon the radios started working and they learned that the rest of the division had no hopes of relieving them, and that XXX Corps was stuck to their south in front of Nijmegen bridge. By the afternoon the Germans had complete control of the Arnhem bridge and started setting fire to the houses the British were defending. The rest of the division had now set up defensive positions in Oosterbeek to the west of Arnhem, waiting for the arrival of XXX Corps.
In Nijmegen the boats still hadn't arrived during the night, so the troops continued to wait. They didn't arrive until the afternoon, but time was so short they decided to do the crossing in daylight. In what is generally considered to be one of the bravest actions in military history, they made the crossing in 26 rowing boats into well-defended positions. They took the banks and pressed to the bridge, which caused the Germans to pull back from their positions on the southern side. That freed the Guards Armoured, who rushed across the bridge and met the airborne troops. Nijmegen bridge was now in Allied hands after four long days.
Meanwhile the Germans organized another attack on the heights on the east side of town, this time making significant progress. Eventually the only remaining bridge suitable for tanks fell to the Germans, but was retaken by forces of the 82nd and Coldstream Guards.
To the south the running battles between the 101st and various German units continued, eventually with several Panthers once again rushing in and cutting off the roads, only leaving when they ran low on ammunition.
Day 5, Thursday the 21st
Although hard pressed, things were looking up for Market Garden this morning. XXX Corps was across the Nijmegen bridge and less than an hour's drive from the ongoing battle at the foot on Arnhem bridge. But it was too late. Frost's force was down to two houses, a handful of men, and had used up every bullet they had. With a last radio message "out of ammo, God save the King", heard only by German radio intercept operators, his remaining force surrendered. In memory of the defense at the bridge by Frost, the bridge has been renamed to the "John Frost bridge".
At the same time the rest of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, now two days late due to weather, arrived. The situation north of the river was obviously too hostile to land, so a new drop zone on the south side across from the 1st was selected near the village of Driel. The landings went well, but the ferry they planned to use to reach the British had been sunk. Their force was largely wasted as a result.
Meanwhile the lead elements of Guards Armoured sat still. Their commander refused to move them forward while Nijmegen to their south was still under constant threat, and radioed back along to the line for the 43rd Infantry Division to move up to take over the town. However, by this point there was a 30-mile-long traffic jam behind them, and the 43rd didn't arrive until the next day. But a unit of British field artillery was close enough by this point that they were in radio contact with the units in Oosterbeek, and starting shelling any German units who attempted to approach them.
German attacks continued all along the route, but by this point the Allied forces had clearly started to gain the upper hand. Not only were the Germans attacks stalled, the British and 101st continued to take more and more area.
Day 6, Friday the 22nd (Black Friday)
The Poles were forced to sit and watch the battle from the sidelines not having the proper means to cross the river, with British artillery flying overhead from Nijmegen. That afternoon two British airborne soldiers swam the Rhine and informed them of the desperate situation, asking for any help they could give. The Poles were hastily equipped with flimsy inflatable rubber rafts, but promised to try a crossing that night. This operation was opposed, and only 52 soldiers of the 8th Polish Parachute Company made it across.
By this point much of the battle area was now in allied hands, and it appeared all of the problem was at the north end of the line with XXX Corps. As soon as the 43rd arrived things would be in better shape, and the Guards Armoured could attempt to retake the Arnhem bridge.
However, the Germans had other ideas, and during the previous night had organized two mixed armored formations on either side of highway 69 at about the middle of the line between Veghel and Grave. They attacked and only one side was stopped, while the other made it to the highway and cut the line. Any advance on Arnhem was now impossible.
Day 7, Saturday the 23rd
The Germans had figured out what the Poles were attempting to do, and spent the rest of the day trying to cut the British off from the riverside. The British managed to hold on, and both sides suffered heavy losses. The Germans also attacked the Poles on the south side in order to tie them down, but several tanks arrived from XXX Corps and they were beaten off. Boats and engineers from the Canadian army arrived that day, and another river crossing that night landed another 150 troops of the Polish 3rd Parachute Battalion.
To the south several more German attacks from their road crossing were stopped, but the road was still cut. XXX Corps then sent a unit of the Guards Armoured south the 20 km and re-took the road. The rest of the force to the north continued to wait for infantry to move up, still only a few kilometers from Arnhem.
Day 8, Sunday the 24th
Yet another German force attacked the road, this time to the south of Veghel. Several units were in the area, but were unable to stop them, and the Germans quickly set up defensive positions for the night.
It was not clear to the Allies at this point how much of a danger these actions represented. But it was on this day that the operation was essentially stopped and the decision made to go over to the defense. The 1st Airborne, or what remained of them, would be withdrawn that night. The lines would then be solidified where they were, with the new front line in Nijmegen.
Day 9, Monday the 25th
At 10 p.m. the withdrawal of the remains of the 1st began, as British and Canadian engineer units ferried the troops across the Rhine, covered by the Polish 3rd Parachute Battalion on the north bank. By early the next morning they had withdrawn some 2,000 of them, but another 300 were still on the north at first light when German fire stopped the effort. They surrendered. Of the 10,000 troops of the 1st Airborne Division, only 2,000 escaped.
To the south, the newly arrived 50th Infantry attacked the Germans holding the highway. By the next day they had been surrounded and their resistance ended. The corridor was now secure, but with nowhere to go.
Conclusions
Casualties:
| Casualties | KIA (Market + Garden = Total) | WIA | MIA | POW | Total | Grand Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German | 4 000 to 8 000 | unknown | unknown | 13 000 | 13 000 | |
| British | 1 130 + 5 354 = 6 484 | 851 | 6 450 | 13 785 | ||
| American | 3 542 + = | 4 000 | 18 196 | |||
| Polish | 378 + 0 = 378 | 411 |
In addition to Allied and German losses, several Dutch were also killed, including several soldiers and officers in British service as well as resistance fighters and civilians. A green area near the bridge, Jacob Groenewoud plantsoen, was named after one Dutch officer.
It is easy to second-guess a battle, and Operation Market Garden is one of the most debated 'what ifs' of the war. Two perspectives tend to emerge in the historiography: UK historians tend to overlook the US Army's contribution, while US historians tend to excoriate Montgomery's generalship.
Eisenhower believed until his death that Market Garden was a campaign that was worth waging. Even so, Cornelius Ryan quotes Eisenhower as saying, "...I don't know what you heard in Britain, but the British have never understood the American system of command... I never heard from the British any golden paeans of praise. And you're not going to hear it now, particularly from people like Montgomery." But Eisenhower kept these views to himself, not revealing them until long after hostilities had ended.
One certain problem with the plan was that the entire operation required both bridges over the Rhine to be captured and held. Had the Nijmegen bridge been destroyed or remained in German hands, the British would be cut off kilometers to the north with no hope whatsoever. Even with Nijmegen successfully taken, things would be little better if Arnhem bridge fell. This would require a forced crossing of the Rhine to relieve the airborne, and there was no planning to allow for this very possible eventuality. Little thought seemed to have gone into the terrain along which the armoured relief column was supposed to advance; for much of its length the road was a single-track raised ditch, liable to ambush and ensuing congestion.
Given this, it is surprising in retrospect that the plans placed so little emphasis on capturing the important bridges immediately with forces dropped right on them. In the case of Veghel and Grave, where this was done, the bridges were captured with only a few shots being fired. There seems little reason to suspect the same would not have been true of Arnhem and Nijmegen, but with the troops over an hour's march away, or told to do other things, there was little hope of their success.
Just as baffling are the actions on the part of XXX Corps towards the end of the operation. Although Frost's force was likely doomed, Arnhem was not the only available crossing. In fact, had the Market Garden planners realized that a ferry was available at Driel, Frost's paratroops might well have secured that instead of the Arnhem bridge, making a profound difference in the campaign. At a minimum, had XXX Corps pushed north, they would have arrived at the south end and secured it, leaving the way open for another crossing to the north at some other point. There was the smaller possibility of arriving with Frost's force intact. This perceived "lack of guts" caused some bitterness at the time.
The commander of XXX Corps asked for another course of action. About 25 km to the west of the action was another bridge similar to Arnhem, at Rhenen, which he predicted was undefended due to all efforts being directed on Oosterbeek. This was in fact the case, but the Corps were never authorised to take the bridge; if they had, it is almost certain they would have crossed unopposed, into the rear of the German lines. By this time it appears that Montgomery was more concerned with the ongoing German assaults on Market Garden's lengthy 'tail'.
The Allied forces faced some formidable German commanders in the persons of Model, Bittrich, and Student. Prodigies of valour were performed on both sides, but ultimately the sacrifices were for nought. The Allies were further delayed in their race to Berlin; Germany's European reserves were essentially wiped out; and the Dutch civilians along the briefly liberated corridor found themselves under German rule again. The destruction, the forced evacuation of Arnhem and the bitter winter of 1944 ensured that the people of the Netherlands suffered most.
Despite the heroism, bad choices were made throughout, and opportunities ignored. The commander of the Glider Pilot Regiment had asked for a small force with gliders to land on the southern side of the bridge at Arnhem, to quickly capture it, but he was denied. In England, the commander of the 52nd (Lowland) Infantry Division, whose troops were slated to fly into a captured airfield, pleaded with his superiors to allow a force to fly in with gliders to assist Gen. Urquhart's trapped forces; this was also denied. Polish commander, Gen. Stanisław Sosabowski was prepared to be dropped dangerously through the fog which held up his drop, but again was refused.
Perhaps most importantly, the Dutch resistance was ignored by the forces at Arnhem. There was a very good reason for this, in that Britain's spy network in the Netherlands had been thoroughly and famously compromised — the so-called England game, which had only been discovered in April 1944. Perhaps assuming that the Dutch resistance would be similarly penetrated, British intelligence took pains to minimise all civilian contact. As things turned out, the simple knowledge of the Driel ferry, or of the Underground's secret telephone network could have changed the outcome of the operation, much the more as the Allied radio equipment was malfunctioning, having to rely on messengers. The latter was very important: it would have given the XXX Corps and Airborne High Command knowledge about the dire situation that had enveloped Col. Frost and Gen. Urquhart at Arnhem.
Legacy
In the end Montgomery still called Market Garden "90% successful" and said:
- In my prejudiced view, if the operation had been properly backed from its inception, and given the aircraft, ground forces, and administrative resources necessary for the job, it would have succeeded in spite of my mistakes, or the adverse weather, or the presence of the 2nd SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem area. I remain Market Garden's unrepentant advocate.
But Dutch Prince Bernhard said to Cornelius Ryan:
- My country can never again afford the luxury of another Montgomery success.
The most readable history of Operation Market Garden is Cornelius Ryan 's book A Bridge Too Far. The book was later adapted to a film of the same name directed by Richard Attenborough and featuring an ensemble cast of stars. Facets of the Operation were also featured in an episode of Band of Brothers. The battle was loosely depicted as a map in the computer game Battlefield 1942,Medal Of Honor: Frontline,Close Combat 2, and Call of Duty among others.
References
- Cornelius Ryan (1974) A Bridge Too Far, Coronet Books. ISBN 0340199415
- Robert J. Kershaw (1994) It never Snows in September, Ian Allen Ltd.. ISBN 0781802873
- Martin Middlebrook (1994) Arnhem 1944-Airborne Battle, Westview Press. ISBN 081332498X
- George F. Cholewczynski (1993) Poles Apart, Sarpedon Publishers. ISBN 1853671657
- Donald Burgett (1999) The Road to Arnhem : A Screaming Eagle in Holland, Presidio Press. ISBN 089141682X
- George E. Koskimaki (1989) Hell's Highway: Chronicle of the 101st Airborne Division in the Holland Campaign, September-Noverber 1944, 101st Airborne Division Association. ISBN 187770203X
- Tim Saunders (2001) Hell's Highway: Us 101st Airborne & Guards Armoured Division (Battleground Europe:Market Garden), Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850528372
- Tim Saunders (2001) Nijmegen: Grave and Groesbeek : US 82nd Airborne and Guards Armoured Division (Battleground Europe: Market Garden), Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850528151
- Tim Saunders (2002) The Island: Nijmegen to Arnhem (Battleground Europe), Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850528615
- Frank Steer (2002) Arnhem Landing Grounds and Oosterbeek: Landing Grounds and Oosterbeek (Battleground Europe: Operation Market Garden), Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850528569
- Frank Steer (2003) Arnhem: The Bridge (Battleground Europe: Market Garden), Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850529395
- Frank Steer (2001) Arnhem: The Fight to Sustain,The Untold Story of the Airborne Logisticians, Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850527708
- Peter Herclerode (1994) Arnhem A Tradegy of Errors, Caxton Editions. ISBN 1840671467
- Geoffrey Powell (1998) Men at Arnhem, Leo Cooper Ltd.. ISBN 0850526264
External links
- Operatie Market Garden in de provincies Brabant en Gelderland
- Operation Market Garden
- Remember September '44
- Arnhem Archive
- marketgarden.com
- World War 2 Online Newspaper Archives - The Liberation of the Netherlands, 1944-1945
- The Decision To Launch Operation MARKET GARDEN
