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'Of the over 2,000 men tasked with taking all three bridges only 740 men captured one end of a lightly defended bridge in Arnhem and held it for 3 days and 12 hours.' Perhaps if US General Brereton had arranged for more of those men to be landed closer to those bridges, and sooner, things might have been different. Who can say?..

The failure to secure the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day was a command failure in 82nd Airborne Division (Gavin) and the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment (Lindquist). Lindquist failed to interpret Gavin's instruction to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing with the required urgency. This exposed the weakness of Gavin's divisional plan, since he assigned his least aggressive and experienced regiment to the critical Nijmegen mission, and also discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the north end of the Nijmegen bridge, and that suggestion in itself was a replacement for USAAF officers Brereton and Williams at 1st Allied Airborne Army having deleted Browning's planned glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges. The Germans didn't need an invitation to occupy Nijmegen and reinforce its bridges - the door was left open for them.

"There was no way to exploit the breakthru without supplies coming in thru Antwerp." - That's why the exploitation was to take place after Antwerp was opened. EIsenhower's strategy was for all armies to advance to the Rhine and establish multiple crossings, and then advance into Germany after Antwerp was open. MARKET GARDEN was British 2nd Army's advance to the Rhine and only supposed to go as far as the Zuider Zee (Ijsselmeer) coast and establish bridgeheads on the river Ijssel - the last Rhine delta distributary before the German border. Montgomery had planned for Canadian 1st Army to clear the Scheldt estuary to open Antwerp as the next 21st Army Group operation and were repositioning themselves around Antwerp during MARKET GARDEN in preparation for this.

@@davemac1197 From Imperial War Museum "Field Marshal Montgomery believed that the Allies should employ one bold stroke to shorten the war. His plan, Operation Market Garden, would put the Allies across the Rhine on Germany's frontier in a few days and possibly end the war by Christmas 1944." Montgomery sold Market Garden as "solution" to NOT having Antwerp open. His pitch was that a "bold" stroke would end the war quickly and reach Berlin WITHOUT large logistics support. Montgomery (later, after the failure) retconned his participation in the plans and fudged the objectives. Market Garden was poorly executed, yes. But it was fundamentally flawed in the premise that they could finish the war it WITHIN the constraints of lacking a suitable port. Respectfully.

@@ricardokowalski1579 - with respect, this is the same problem as the Cornelius Ryan narrative, first established in his book A Bridge Too Far (1974), and followed by many historians since, until the more recent second cut at history challenged that narrative in the 2010s with authors like Dutch researcher Rick Poulussen (Lost at Nijmegen, 2011 and Little Sense or Urgency, 2014) and Swedish historian Christer Bergström (Arnhem 1944 - An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2, 2019-2020). The IWM's website is out of date and has, like Cornelius Ryan, conflated the three items on the agenda of Montgomery and Eisenhower's 10 September meeting into one discussion - Logistics - Strategy - Current Operations. After first discussing the logistics situation, the meeting turned to the difference of opinion they had in strategy, namely Montgomery's single thrust idea of a strong force of 40 divisions (including US 1st Army) driving to Berlin to end the war, versus Eisenhower's broad front strategy of all armies advancing into Germany on a broad front after making multiple Rhine crossings. This argument had been going on in their correspondence for weeks and came to a head during this meeting, in which Montgomery pushed as far as he could and Eisenhower finally shut it down, and the broad front was to be the decided policy with no further argument. The meeting then turned to current operations, and it was only then that Montgomery presented his proposal for operation SIXTEEN (it had not received the final code name MARKET yet) as an upgraded replacement for operation COMET that he had cancelled only that morning (at 0200 hours as men were loading their aircraft). Since the expanded operation involved adding the two American airborne divisions to allow the British and Poles to concentrate at Arnhem (COMET had them split between Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave) to deal with the increased intelligence threat of German armour, Montgomery needed Eisenhower's approval, which he enthusiatically gave. This operation had nothing to do with Montgomery's single thrust to Berlin proposition, it was a limited advance to the Dutch Rijn (Rhine delta) in the Netherlands. Eisenhower backed this operation because it fitted in with his broad front policy - he wanted all of his armies to advance to the Rhine and establish crossings - and he was also under pressure to show what the 1st Allied Airborne Army could do, and SIXTEEN presented an opportunity to use virtually all of its assets. The Ruhr pincer was the exploitation idea that won out in the strategy argument, and Montgomery and Eisenhower were still corresponding on this during the next weeks while MARKET GARDEN was being planned and executed, because the pre-requisites were that British 2nd Army would need to be positioned on their river Ijssel bridgeheads in the Netherlands (the Ijssel is the last Rijn delta distributary in the Netherlands before the German border) and US 1st Army in a bridgehead on the German Rhine between Cologne and Bonn. I don't believe anybody was under the illusions that any advances into Germany were possible without a major port open, such as Antwerp, and Montgomery envisaged 1st Canadian Army conducting the Scheldt clearance operations after MARKET GARDEN had concluded while US 1st Army cleared Aachen and advanced to the Rhine. Without the port open to supply all armies for simultaneous operations, Montgomery's 21st Army Group would have to strike first with the right (British 2nd Army for the Rhine) and then the left (Canadian 1st Army to clear the Scheldt), and he was arguing that Bradley would have to halt and all supplied prioritised to him, and even after this Bradley would have to stop Patton in order to supply Hodges to the Rhine north of Bonn. I'm sure if you think about it, it will make sense, because a British 2nd Army advance to the Rhine was going to happen in some form regardless of what kind of advance(s) were made into Germany subsequently, so COMET or MARKET GARDEN were irrelevent to the subsequent strategy for Germany except as a pre-requisite to establish the necessary bridgeheads for either the Berlin thrust or Ruhr pincer. Bringing Antwerp into a discussion on MARKET GARDEN is therefore a distraction, the only issue is a sequencing issue while logistics limited operations to either clear Antwerp first or cross the Rhine first. The Rhine made more immediate sense, because opening Antwerp was already proving to be difficult (Brereton had refused Montgomery an airborne operation on Walcheren) and delaying a Rhine crossing until later after the Germans had more time to establish their river and canal defence lines would only make that operation more costly. The right time to strike for the Rhine was as soon as possible, and COMET was delayed two days by weather and then cancelled because of the worsening intelligence picture, leading to another week's delay for planning MARKET. Even Eisenhower understood the logic of Rhine crossing first and delaying Antwerp until later (the Canadians needed time to reposition around Antwerp anyway), and even felt that he had to set the record straight after Cornelius Ryan's misleading book was published: Eisenhower was similarly unapologetic when he declared after the publication of Cornelius Ryan's best-selling account, A Bridge Too Far, “I not only approved Market-Garden, I insisted upon it. We needed a bridgehead over the Rhine. If that could be accomplished I was quite willing to wait on all other operations.” (Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, Carlo D'Este, 2015) If you really want to get into the weeds, Montgomery's memoirs are available online and Chapter 15 on Allied Strategy North of the Seine shows the correspondence back and forth between Montgomery and Eisenhower. You don't have to agree with Montgomery's views or opinions (although memoirs are written in retrospect they are a primary source) and you can ignore his post-war writing if you wish, but the correspondence is a matter of contemporary record and these communications thrashed out their exchange of views at the time. I'm afraid Ryan was a newspaper journalist and did that thing most journalists do in that they stop digging when they have got their 'story' and anyone reading his book would think Eisenhower agreed to MARKET GARDEN as a consolation for losing his single thrust to Berlin argument - the two are not connected in that way. MARKET GARDEN was not a solution to the problem of not having Antwerp open, it was done first because a Rhine crossing was simply more time sensitive than Antwerp. MARKET GARDEN was actually the solution to the problem of COMET being too weak to deal with the presence of II.SS-Panzerkorps in the Netherlands. The operation failed because a bridge was missed at Nijmegen on D-Day and not because Antwerp wasn't open or even because of the II.SS-Panzerkorps.

@@ricardokowalski1579 MONTY The Field-Marshal 1944-1976 NIGEL HAMILTON HAMISH HAMILTON LONDON 1986 P48-49 In fact by 10 September Monty had discarded any notion of getting to Berlin in the immediate future. As he said after the war to Chester Wilmot: I knew now [the time of Eisenhower’s visit on 10 September 1944] that we could not hope to get much more than a bridgehead beyond the Rhine before Winter, and be nicely poised for breaking out in the New Year. By the time MARKET GARDEN was undertaken [The revised airdrop on Arnhem] its significance was more tactical than strategic. ‘Monty’s statement is supported by the evidence of Tedder himself, when interviewed just after the war by the American Official Historian, Dr Pogue: Monty had no idea of going to Berlin from here [Arnhem]. By this time he was ready to settle for a position across the Rhine. In a signal to the British Chief of Air Staff (Air-Marshall Portal) immediately after 10 September meeting, Tedder stated that the advance to Berlin was not discussed as a serious issue. CRUSADE IN EUROPE DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER WILLIAM HEINEMANN LIMITED 1948 P333 ‘At the September 10 conference in Brussels Field-Marshall Montgomery was therefore authorised to defer the clearing out of the Antwerp approaches in an effort to seize the Bridgehead [Across the Rhine] I wanted.'

You've read the wrong books then IKE should have been reassigned and the counter productive absent Bernard sacked!!! O'Connor.Auchinleck or Simmonds of the Canadian Army would have been a great choice - Monty was ass and was on the same side as 2 emerging world powers

@@bigwoody4704 Who knows where O Connor might have ended up if he had not been captured by the Italians in 1941. Perhaps the campaign in North-Africa lasts a few months less long. With the reinforcements I think he could have taken Tripoli before Rommel could do much about it.

There was. Close air support was available and used, but it suffered from a number of compromises: First, it was decided by Brereton (1st Allied Airborne Army) that 2nd Tactical Air Force based in Belgium had to be deconflicted from the airborne airlifts, so they were grounded when the transports were in the air. Second, the 2nd TAF were not informed when the airlifts were delayed by bad weather in England, so they were grounded unncessarily due to the deconfliction rules. Third, there were days of bad weather in the Netherlands and the 2nd TAF were not available then, and the 3rd airlift was also delayed several days. Finally, the USAAF Fighter Control Squadron Teams were supplied with the wrong crystals for their special VHF sets for contacting the aircraft, a fact that often gets conflated with the British communications problems at Arnhem, which was a problem of reduced ranges due to the high iron content in the glacial moraine of the Veluwe region. The only sets at Arnhem affected by the wrong crystals were the two that belonged to the two USAAF teams sent to Arnhem.

Monty doesn't show up as the plan comes apart and Carrington stops 8 miles away. But in Britain they'll give you lofty titles like Field Marshall and LORD ,can't make that shyt up

Really?..

Crucial.

Correct. It's late 16th century French, from the Latin 'corpus', meaning ‘body’.

Opinion.

@@thevillaaston7811 - also ignores the fact that the 82nd had a completely free hand in Nijmegen for the vital first few hours and failed to take advantage of it. The "regiment of SS" troops Gavin was told might be in Nijmegen was the 'sanitised' information from Ultra that the 10.SS-Panzer-Division (reduced to a regimental battlegroup in Normandy) was in the eastern Netherlands, but their exact location was unknown. In the event it was actually a greater threat to 1st Airborne, because II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 10 (aka Kampfgruppe Reinhold) based at Vorden needed the Arnhem bridge to get to Nijmegen, but in spite of that the 1st Parachute Brigade seized the Arnhem bridge and denied its use to the enemy for 80 hours.

Monty doesn't show up as the plan comes apart and Carrington stops 8 miles away. But in Britain they'll give you lofty titles like Field Marshall and LORD ,can't make that shyt up. Carrington and Guards Armor stopped in Lent and stayed there for 18 hours . The Germans,Irish Guards and GIs ALL recorded this - you may now return to your Britsh Mythology

@@davemac1197 Why did it take 1st AB four hours to go 4 miles/6k from LZ Z to the rail bridge only to get there in time to see it blown up?

@@nickdanger3802 - six hours? The 2nd Parachute Battalion dropped at 1445, left the DZ at 1500, reached Oosterbeck Laag by around 1730, from where C Company began its attack on the rail bridge. The bridge was blown at approximately 1800 by a Sprengkommando that had been stationed there for months and was blown with a platoon from C Company actually on the bridge.

Every branch of the German military was represented, from SS, Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine and RAD. If you have any specific questions on German units at a specific location, I would be happy to give them a name check, but for the entire operation there are far too many to mention. In the first week of September, the Germans used the Operation 'Valkyrie' Plan to mobilise the Reserve Army, which consisted of training and replacement units, and many were based in the German occupied Netherlands and involved in fighting Market Garden.

My partner's grandfather was dropped with the first paras and captured on day 2 of operation market garden. He never spoke about it apparently which seems to be a common theme.

He fought on the wrong side

Not really?..

What makes you a 'REAL military expert'?

Again Little Villa you've displayed your extraordinary ability not to think.The man's pointing out errors,you should recognize them they blow up in your face and circle around and bite you in your ample ass everyday

Why would Montgomery want to 'avoid Patton getting to Germany ahead of him'?

@@thevillaaston7811 Montgomery and Patton were two strong personalities whom had different attitudes in regarding the conduct of the war. Added to that the general resentment the British at large held due to the Americans in general being their former subjects and that the Americans had to come for the second time in the century and pull their "nuts" out of the fire. I could go into greater detail about their different strategies but that would've take considerable time. The Market Garden operation was an unmitigated disaster which lengthen the war

@@thevillaaston7811 Excuse me for slipping away like that. As I was saying the failure of Market Garden lengthened the war costing more lives an wasting resources. The result was an emboldened German army and depleted supplies for the Allies and resulted in the Battle of the Bulge some months later, which cost more Allied and civilian lives. Many of the American commanders realized that German high command had almost succeeded in killing Hitler and that they would capitulate if given the chance and Patton saw this and was driving towards Germany when he was deprived of supplies diverted for Market Garden

@@casualobserver485 Not really... The First World War was won by British, French, and Russian blood, along with the Royal Navy blockade of Germany. The USA only turned up when it was time for tea and medals. When compared to the war as a whole, the amount of fighting the US forces did was miniscule. The Second World War outcome had been decided in 1940 and 1941, before the USA joined the war. The idea that Britons resented Americans because of events, that were then 165 years ago is absurd. Market Garden freed a fifth of the Dutch population, hindered German rocket attacks on London, stretched German forces another 50 miles and left the allies well placed to advance into Germany in the months that followed. Is 17,000 losses should be compared to allied defeats in the same period at Aachen (20,000), Metz (45,000) and the Hurtgen Forest (55,000). Market Garden lengthen the war?...How so ?

@@casualobserver485 Not really... If American commanders 'realized that German high command had almost succeeded in killing Hitler and that they would capitulate if given the chance' then they chose the wrong course of action to make it happen. Eisenhower's broad front strategy racked up allied casualties, some, but not all which I noted in my previous comment. The broad front strategy gave the Germans what they most wanted, time and space to re-build and expand their forces. Montgomery commanded the land campaign from D-Day to the 31st August 1944, in which time he cleared France and gave the Germans a defeat as big as Stalingrad. Eisenhower took over on the 1st September, and in the next three months, the allies went just 45 miles further forward. No supplies were diverted from Bradley's armies to Montgomery's armies for Market Garden, the only additional supplies that Montgomery received for the launching of Market Garden were 500 tons per day, by air, which had previously be used to supply the civillian population of Paris. That is why Eisenhower agreed to Market Garden, it did not disturb his broad front strategy.

More bullshit Monty was giving young lads like you a bath and failed to show up at Market Garden like a real Field Marshall Model. Monty never got driven into the sea again once the GIs arrived - imagine that. Burns when they remove your ankle monitor maybe the special needs unit will take you to wally World

@@bigwoody4704 Rambo, a quiz. Name the British general who had to take command of two shambolic US armies in the German Bulge attack? 20 points for the correct answer.

This one's barking, Quizz why wasn't Monty arrested for Buggery? Because it was the best time of John Burns life !!!

@@bigwoody4704 *BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT!* Wrong answer. Rambo, the British general who had to take command of two shambolic US armies in the German Bulge attack.was.... 🍾🎈🎊 *General Montgomery* 🍾🎈🎊 Zero points Rambo. Zero. Better luck next time.

Puddles I'm in a good mood and feel like administering a good pounding to you . So let's revisit shall we,did you visit those fine Czech folks like I told you to?Did you explain why your crown sold them out to the NAZI's in 1938 ? Did you explain to the French why you left them covering your retreat in 1940 while Monty was boarding the boats and they were taking bullets? Kind of explains why they came back with the GIs and took Southern France while Winnie and Brooke wanted to keep faffing around in Italy. How about the Dutch did you tell them why Monty left them on the horn of the Hun and the Hunger Winter that followed after he didn't have the nerve to show up for an operation that he brageed would take him to Berlin that took him backwords to Antwerp? Burns monty had the spine of a gummy bear

The airborne (Market) plan was the work of the US General Brereton, over whom, Montgomery had no jurisdiction. By the time of Market Garden, Eisenhower was both Supreme Commander and Land Forces Commander, he should have taken responsibility for all allied operations, not just the best bits.

The idea of Monty in charge of a operation filled the Allies with almost unspeakable terror.And the Krauts with incredible Joy

@@thevillaaston7811 _And so the campaign in North West Europe is finished. I am glad. It has been a tough business. When I review the campaign as a whole I am amazed at the mistakes we made. The organisation for command was always faulty._ *_The Supreme Commander had no firm ideas as to how to conduct the war and was blown about in the wind all over the place. At that particular business he was quite useless._* _The Deputy Supreme Commander [Tedder] was completely ineffective; none of the Army Commanders would see him and growled if he appeared on the horizon... and SHAEF were completely out of their depth all the time. And yet we won. The point to understand is that if we had run the show properly the war could have been finished by Xmas, 1944. The blame for this must rest with the Americans._ - Field Marshall Montgomery

@@johnburns4017 A great quote.

@@bigwoody4704 Rambo, a quiz. Name the British units that had to take the Nijmegen bridge for the US 82nd? 20 points for the correct answer.

Hardly, its out done by US failures at Aachen, Metz and the Hurtgen Forest.

How about Singapore,Toruk,Dunkirk?The Russians got alot more soldiers wiped out the closer they got to the Reich.Britain bled all of their Allies dry,it was part of Churchill's and Brooke's plan but it backfired

Euward Andre Talanay Or how about the Pilippines in 1942. Britain had wars all arounfdche world. The USA had no such excuse.

Says a guy whose empire could not come across a 30 mile wide channel in 4 yrs w/o the GIs.The Phillipines is 8,222 miles from the USAs west coast. So you see reality exists. And pretty shameful the way Winnie thru ANZAC under the bus.Specially after they fought so diligently for your so called CROWN

*corpse

Corps pronounced same as core

The GPR provided the pilots, and although they were trained and equipped to fight as light infantry once on the ground, I hardly think the 12 pilots of the six gliders landing at Pegasus Bridge should take all the credit. Their passengers were D Company, 2nd (Airborne) Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry - at establishment that would be 127 men. Similar glider coup de main operations were planned at dawn for the Grave, Nijmegen and Arnhem bridges for Operation Comet using a Company from each of the three Airlanding Battalions, and the Glider Pilot that flew the lead glider at Pegasus Bridge was also due to fly the lead glider at Nijmegen bridge, Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork, and he was not looking forward to the job at all. When Comet was cancelled and upgraded to Market with the addition of the American divisions, 1st Allied Airborne Army took over the air plan and deleted the glider coup de main attacks, because of the Flak near the bridges. Wallwork was relieved he would no longer be doing it, but the decision was one of the many compromises made to Operation Market by Brereton and Williams at 1st AAA and US IX Troop Carrier Command respectively.

@@davemac1197 I wrote that two years ago, but I can see I haven't said the GPR deserve all the credit.

He hasn't been president for 4 years stfu. It's a common mistake, but still aggravating. But stfu about someone that hasn't been relevant for 4 years.

'Corpse' is also theatrical slang for spoiling your lines by forgetting them or laughing uncontrollably.