Appreciate the watch. A few things. #1. I've fought copyright on previous films and don't want to do what other reactors do with cutting volume out before doing commentary since audio is what is claimed in movies, hence the added commentary. If I could release the full reaction without fear of getting hit with a block or a strike so you can see how far apart some of the commentary is, I 100% would, without a doubt. (But that is why I have Patreon, movie is on there in full without the 5 second cuts, still has commentary but it's during the movie, not with the movie volume cut down and me enlarged as the only place that's the case is the beginning and end). #2. I'll try to cut down the length of commentary left in for part 2 (or maybe cut the video volume as I'm talking over audio in 90% of the places but I enlarge myself over top of it with volume muted) but.... I'll play that by ear
@@Muckylittleme Still trying to edit it. It'll be out tomorrow morning. 3 hour movie cut into 2 parts, still takes a minute to edit so all the context of the situations isn't completely lost.
I appreciate the prompt response, and I wasn’t even thinking about TH-cam’s TOS and the potential for demonetization over something like a copyright strike for providing a factual statement to the audience about a historical military operation. And even though I couldn’t sit through and watch this specific movie on your channel, it prompted me to search for it independently. I consume copious amounts of WW2 military and political history, and aside from Band of Brothers, I think this film was one of the best films of this conflict. Hollywood doesn’t have the most incredible track record when producing historical content. Still, I was pleasantly surprised with the historical accuracy and production value since this film was released in 1977. I told my dad after I watched the movie how impressed I was, and he told me that when it was released that it wasn’t very well received by critics and kind of flopped at the theaters. I don’t know if that was the consequence of how earlier films had depicted the War and military conflict in general or how the educational system taught this event and the corresponding social and political events surrounding the war. I watched the movie already, and I may not watch or even be aware when you plan to share the second half of your reaction because of the TH-cam algorithm, and I fall so many channels I have my notifications turned off. However, I have always enjoyed your reaction videos of TikTok current events, etc. I ♥️ your authenticity, critical thinking, and the fact you are still grounded in reality, unlike some of your contemporaries reacting to current events and pop culture.
My dad as a young 19-20 yr old paratrooper was taken prisoner at Arnhem and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He never spoke about his experiences until he decided to take a trip to the museum at Arnhem in his early 80's. My mum wore his para wings brooch all her life with a huge sense of pride
Growing up, my nan had a mirror hanging on the wall with a b & w photo of a man in uniform framed in the centre. It wasn't until I was older that my mom told me he was my nan's brother and he'd been at Arnhem. He'd been taken in by a Dutch family. He was then found and taken prisoner. He died only a few years after getting back home after the war, due to injuries received and ill health which resulted from them.
My grandad was with the 1st Airborne and was also captured at Arnhem. He was a POW at Stalag XIIB and then used as forced labour at a town called Uelzen. As the Allies approached all the POW’s were marched away from there and he and two others managed to escape.
My father was incredibly proud to be a member of 9 Squadron in the early 60's and had respect for the men at Arnhem drilled into him during his servcice. He used to watch this film every year.
I’m 54 years. My Dad was in the USAF as a Doctor during the Vietnam War. I was taken to see this movie in in cinema in 1977. In the mid’-90’s, I was traveling in Europe, and went up that highway to Arnhem, Netherlands. The White House, where the paratroop’s shelter has been restored. A Sherman tank in on a plateau. A British/allied cemetery is there. The Beatles, young and going to play in the Clubs in Hamburg, in 1960, stopped at the Arnhem cemetary; photos. This was really one of the last big “epic” films, of like 20 talented actors in modest roles, and practical affects, and using actual WW2 vehicles. And, having several of the soldiers advise on the true events. Yes, “Band of Brothers” had some of the soldiers to advise, yet planes or tanks not all original, or some digital effects. Actually, another set of WW2 films, about the battles in The Netherlands, both by Paul Verhoven (Dutch) are Solder of Orange (1977) and Black Book (2008-?) When the Dutch were not totally liberated, after these battles, the Winter of 1944, the Nazi deprived the people of food and heating…who would become Audrey Hepburn, lived through that as a child.
My best friends dad (when I was kid) was a para at Arnhem, was wounded and was among the last to leave, he got a medal and a promotion, I will always remember him as a kind and gentle man who always had lots of time for his sons and their friends, RIP Jim K
The director Richard Attenborough was the brother of David Attenborough. He made some brilliant films, and was also a very popular actor. Starting his film career in 1942, and ending in 2015 appearing in Jurassic World.
It's worth bearing in mind that the Battle of Arnhem, where Robert Cain won his VC, was part of this campaign. Jeremy Clarkson's documentary on the VC that you previously watched, details this event.
My great uncle Ted was in the 2nd South staffs gliders who was one of the lucky ones to escape. A tragic part of the film that really hit me was when they were all waiting and they saw some planes dropping cannisters,one of them run to get one of the cannisters hoping things they could use, he manages to get it and run,his mates were cheering,then,'brrrurp' he got hit in the back,the cannster opens as he drops it, to find that he died for red Beret's. In the film the lad that bought it was a South Stafford. Very brave young men.
Based on a true story in Cornelius Ryan's book, but the man who retrieved the cannister was a member of the Glider Pilot Regiment and not killed, he was obviously interviewed by Ryan after the war - I have a digital copy of the book so it's easy to find: 'Sergeant Lawrence Goldthorpe heard the loudspeaker, too. A few hours earlier he had risked his life to retrieve a resupply pannier--only to discover that it contained, not food or ammunition, but red berets.' Goldthorpe, Lawrence, Sgt. [Glider Pilot Regt]. The story may be part-based on a posthumous VC awarded to RAF pilot David Lord, who stayed at the control of his burning plane as it crashed into Landing Zone 'S' near Reijers Camp farm on 19 September in order to deliver his load of supplies. The film is only 50% historically accurate, much of the narrative has been altered to suit director Richard Attenborough's pacifist desire to make an "anti-war film", so these two incidents were conflated to make them look more futile, instead of making a tribute to David Lord's and Lawrence Goldthorpe's two acts of bravery.
My Dad was in this film. He was in the Paras and was one of the troops jumping out the plane during the jump scene and the first battel firing one of the artillery gun in the first big battle scene. Most of the film was filmed in Germany using real British and American troops which were base there.
The Longest Day (made early 60s about D-Day) had a similar structure to ABTF and stellar cast. Both based on books by the same WWII journalist (Cornelius Ryan).
My grandfather was part of the Staffordshire regiment and managed to eventually escape capture, by being hidden by dutch, eventually swimming the rhine.. effectively my grandfather was in the movies dunkirk, longest day and this one... lol
This was an excellent movie and one of my favourites. Great performances and a stellar cast takes the history of this operation and portrays the strategic overview while still showing some smaller more personal stories and thus giving faces to the individuals and making the story human on multiple levels. Wish they still made movies this way.
Hello Welsh vet here.....your not going to believe this after what I said about Zulu so here gose ...my brother Was in th 2 battalion the Para's who where asked to do the jump's for this film......
As a former paratrooper ( 1990- 1995) and logistics officer ( 1995-1999) myself i can tell you that jumping out of a plane with only a parachute is a "funjump" , and very enjoyable, to me and many others that are into this. Jumping with all your gear strapped to your body like a mule is not the best experience one can have 😂. To this day it stays a risky and difficult undertaking, there's always a few injured that dont make it trough training. Jumping in 1944 must have been way way worse than what i ever experienced, i'm quite happy we only had to do 4 "combat" jumps a year. Logistics wins wars, its been proven over and over again. By the public it may be a lesser known and respected job, but the fact that my superior at the time had the nickname "Mother" or "Mothergoose" says enough. He was closer to the NCO's in the units than with the Officers and kept informal communication line with them , often bypassing the Officers. Veterans will know the NCO's run the place, and so did he. Logistics is also an area where the US and Nato really shine. No one can coordinate transport and supply as efficiently. In the news you may have heard of the recent operation atlantic resolve, or in the cold war operation Reforger ( return forces to germany) , in the news you see all the fighterplanes taking of etc and people think it's a big warexercise, and it is, but it is mainly an exercise in logistics and coordination. 🤘❤️
Part of the reason the Germans never employed actual paratrooper drops after the opening of the war was the disaster on Crete. German paratroops dropped with little equipment. Their heavy stuff (guns, ammo, supplies, etc) were dropped in separate containers leading to them having to defend themselves with pistols and knives when lots of the containers landed in the other side's hands. Add to that their parachutes basically dangled the trooper by a single cord below the chute which made them spin around and be at complete mercy to the winds. So paratroops would land disoriented and sometimes sick. Their glider troops fared little better since the opposing forces knew where they would land in advance
Contrary to Arnhem mythology, the intelligence picture in the Arnhem area itself was remarkabley accurate. It was known that the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital and pavilions in its grounds were used as a collection centre for about 400 dispossessed artillery troops retreating from Normandy, as well as senior Luftwaffe officers and (conveniently) female 'Blitzmaiden' (signals operators) from the huge Fliegerhorst Deelen airbase north of Arnhem. It was the reason the hospital was bombed in the morning before the landings. In fact, the USAAF who carried out the raid had insisted on written confirmation from General Urquhart that there were German troops there. As well as the troops, the hospital contained Dutch civilian staff and patients, many of whom became casualties of the bombing and the survivors were left roaming the woods. The bombs also hit an ammunition dump in the woods, rendering the twenty-one brand new 10.5cm leFH 18/40 howitzers found in storage on the grounds completely useless, and the Royal Engineers had to spike them. The most senior Luftwaffe officer accommodated there was Generalmajor Walter Grabmann commanding the 3.Jagd-division at Deelen and the huge 'Diogenes' nightfighter control bunker at Schaarsbergen (now used by the Dutch government to store their archives) within the airbase complex. On a previous evening Grabmann had been a dinner guest at Generalfeldmarshal Walter Model's newly arrived Heeresgruppe B headquarters at the Hotel Hartestein in Oosterbeek, and tried to warn him that the fields around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, so his headquarters may be vulnerable. Model dismissed these concerns as he felt he was safe behind too many river barriers to be in any danger of an airborne assault so deep behind the lines. In fact, the reason the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges were initially so lightly defended was because they were behind three defence lines the Germans had constructed in the canal zone of the southern Netherlands and Belgium. One person at the dinner took Grabmann seriously and that was SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Sepp Krafft of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 based in Arnhem. The unit had been designated with the number '12' until August, as it had been training Hitler Youth replacements for the 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend', and were currently awaiting the arrival of 1,600 new recruits from Germany to be trained for the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer SS'. Krafft took the precaution of moving his two training companies out of the barracks in Arnhem and had them camped in the woods at Wolfheze and Oosterbeek, close to the potential landings zones, as additional protection for Model. When the airborne landings started at lunchtime on Sunday 17 September, Grabmann was horrified to see a glider landing less than half a kilometer from his quarters and had a nightmare roundabout journey to get to his headquarters at the 'Divisions-dorf' in Schaarsbergen, which has also been bombed. Krafft put his battalion on immediate alert and ordered the 2.Kompanie at the Hotel Wolfheze to attack the landing zones immediately and had the 4.Kompanie and battalion staff at Oosterbeek brought up to Wolfheze and deploy a blocking line covering two of the main routes into Arnhem. He also ordered a 9.Marsch (march) Kompanie to be formed from the units still in barracks - the 7.Stamm (reception) Kompanie and the 8.Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie in nearby Velp. In total, Krafft had 435 officers and men he could scrape together, including some Hitler Youth recruits who were completing their training, and this unit did more than any other to delay the progress of 1st Parachute Brigade towards its objectives, giving time for II.SS-Panzerkorps to mobilise and gets its units to Arnhem and deploy further blocking lines. Frost's 2nd Battalion outflanked Krafft's line to the south near the River Rijn, but the Reconnaissance Squadron was ambushed and the 3rd Battalion blocked by Krafft's initial disposition and quick reaction. Much of this detail was missing from the film and all the German reactions and resources were simplified by attributing them to the II.SS-Panzerkorps, which developed a mythological impact on the battle as a result. In truth, it provided a headquarters and structure on which to hang myriad training and replacement units from all branches of the military and from all over the Netherlands and Germany. Many of these troops were horrified to be told after the battle that they were now conscripted into the Waffen-SS and issued new uniforms in order to rebuild the SS divisions.
*My granddad (Griff Jenkins of Tylorstown, Wales) was one of the Para's that were dropped into Arnhem. 2nd Battalion (2 Para) They landed north west...(off the map as pointed out in the film) ....He was captured. Gunshot wound to the right shoulder. My uncle has one of his postcard that he had mailed back to the Uk. When they were captured. The German commanding officer had blank postcards handed out to the para's. They were instructed to write home to let their families know they were alive. My uncle has shown me the card. I have a photo of it. Thankfully the Germans who captured him and his mates were regular German infantry. So he wasn't shot by the SS or Gestapo. He made it back at the end of the war. Rob (London)*
2 old guys that used to go in my dads pub both dropped into arnhem. One was caught during the battle, and the other managed to get back to british lines after the battle. Mu uncle was part of the advance by road . They were ambushed, and he got shot during that engagement. He recovered and later took part in the battle of the bulge.
This was directed by a great British actor Richard Attenborough with so many fine actors.I especially love Sean Connery s part and James Caan.Thanks for reaction always insightful👍🇬🇧
It Never Snows In September - The German View Of Market-Garden And The Battle Of Arnhem September 1944 by Robert Kershaw (1990). It's a recommended book, but like A Bridge Too Far it was a pioneering work and later books have corrected the errors and ommissions it contains. I consider both of these books to be a foundation course on studying Market Garden, but caveat emptor, you should not base your final exam answers on them. Rob Kershaw was a British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR) officer in the Parachute Regiment and liaison to the West German Bundeswehr in the 1980s. He was asked by the Staff College at Sandhurst to research Market Garden as he had access to the West German army records and spoke fluent German. The book is the result of his research. The title of the book comes from a quote by 19-year old Leutnant Joseph Enthammer that Kershaw interviewed in 1987, an 'artillery' officer who had been on the technical staff of the largest V2 rocket installation in Europe, based in Marie-sur-Oise. His vehicle convoy had been on the road since 24 August, when the base had been blown up to prevent its capture by the Americans. His V2 rocket unit was moved into a school in the northwestern suburbs of Arnhem (I suspect the Feldkommandantur in the ULO School in Heselburgherweg, now converted to apartments called Paleis op der heuvel - Palace on the hill), and he awoke the next day to see the sky full of parachutes. His first reaction was "that cannot be, it never snows in September!" Enthammer's unit was not to be involved in the fighting and had orders to evacuate to Emmerich in Germany. Enthammer and a few men were left behind as a rear guard, but when they attempted to resume their journey they were stopped near the Arnhem bridge and taken POW. Their documents showed they were technical troops and part of the army artillery arm, but there was no evidence they were associated with the top secret V-2 technology, so throughout their capture by 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge their captors had no idea their unit had been firing rockets on London.
it's great to see you grasping just how many cockups were involved in this mission, glad you are reacting to it, dunno, if you've seen the Longest Day? but again it gives a better understanding to what went on during the invasion, Love these older war movies. Kelly's Heroes, The Eagle has Landed, Where Eagles Dare,The Dirty Dozen, Tora! Tora! Tora!,
Saving private Ryan is in my opinion THE best war movie ever made, the first 10 minutes alone make it worth that, I watched it first time in a cinema with surround sound etc I just sat with my chin on my chest throughout the entire storming the beach scene. HAHA it was also the last time I involuntarily shouted something out in a cinema (I was in my late 30s possibly early 40s at the time) it was the part where they had fought their way up the beach and had finally got behind the bunkers that had been slaughtering them, and a bunch of Germans made a run for it, but then stopped and threw up their hands in surrender, it was at that point that I burst out with my very own '2 word' response.
my uncle sydney was decorated for his part in operation market garden in WW2 Bridge too far was the film about it He was a very gentle man, I loved him dearly
There’s an old saying in Britain (my grandad still says it) “If you meet a man who was at Arnhem you buy him a pint” without question the hardest major battle Britain fought on the western front and North Africa, the battles of Kohima and imphal in India against the Japanese were probably worse though (Kohima definitely was)
Mrs C,s uncle served in the East Lancashire regiment alongside the American paratroopers at Nijmegen,sadly succumbed to his wounds...RIP...😢....he gave his today for our tomorrow..E...
Remember Market Garden when you react to Band Of Brothers, they even mentioned the 101st, it shows perspective on the big plan they were part of. The more you are aware of historical events/ battles during WW11 the better. So look forward to all your reactions 😁
You were talking about the Germans probably not having air superiority due to lack of fuel etc, which would also have affected Tanks and other vehicles as well. But oil shortage (for military purposes) was not as big a problem as you may think. Don't forget during the early years of the war, Russia was on their side and supplied Oil, that soon stopped when they fell out. But the US companies were still supplying them with oil up until 1942 which was stockpiled for four years. Also even after the US joined in the Germans still had up to 25% of their annual National needs being supplied by Hungary & Romania and they had also started producing synthetic fuel from Coal (which Germany had plenty of) from the early days of Hitlers Reich. Lack of fuel was less of a problem than lack of Aircraft due to us bombing the hell out of the German factories. According to your own US Department of Energy reports "More than 92 percent of Germany's aviation gasoline and half its total petroleum during World War II had come from synthetic fuel plants. At its peak in early 1944, the German synfuels effort produced more than 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants. In February 1945, one month after Allied forces turned back the Hitler's troops at the Battle of the Bulge, German production of synthetic aviation gasoline amounted to just a thousand tons - one half of one percent of the level of the first four months of 1944. None was to be produced afterwards." Not surprisingly after the War, the US became VERY interested in Synthetic Fuel but did restrict its production so as not to upset the Oil Companies. - Market Garden was a good plan, badly implemented.
My Dad was at Arnhem - admittedly shortly after operations, with the REs in his role as a dispatch rider. According to Dad, he told me that the whole operation was a cockup.
Market Garden was not a bad plan mabey over cooked and tried to do to much with every thing taken in to account and yes they was a lot cockups by all the Allied elements both British and US and if it worked you don't get the Battle of the Bulge Christmas 1944 probaly
It was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. Nearly 100km of German held ground in just 3 days. The rest of the allied advance barely got 100km over the next six months.
This film was not intended to be a historical epic - the British director Richard Attenborough was a pacifist who wanted to make a political "anti-war film" and intended to make the British Generals and the plan look pointless, and the American producer and screenwriter (who also wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Robert Redford in 1969) wanted to make an entertainment. A great deal of work was done by the technical crew to make the film look authentic in terms of the real Dutch bridge locations, uniforms, equipment, insignia, etc., and the film crirics often laud this, misleading viewers into thinking the narrative is historically accurate. The narrative is as accurate as the idea that OBL was still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan after 9-11 and it was ten years later of course he was found living in a house in Pakistan, only a mile from their military staff college. Cornelius Ryan's original 1974 book, A Bridge Too Far, was rushed to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer, and the narrative blamed Montgomery and Browning for the failure of the operation because they had both already passed when Ryan began researching and interviewing for the book. Most of the key American players were still alive and they obviously covered their own butts. Those views have only recently been challenged now that just about everyone involved has passed and historians are getting their second wind in primary research instead of recycling the same established narrative from existing books. You made a couple of points I picked up on: the aerial photo that Browning dismissed did not look anything like the oblique shot made for the film. In fact the real photo only came to light in a Dutch government archive in 2015. The RAF had donated all its aerials of the Netherlands to the Dutch to help with reconstruction after the war. The photo taken by Spitfire near Arnhem five days before the operation was studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch and the tanks identified as obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models undergoing maintenance, having broken down, eliminating a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. In fact, we now know who they belonged to and the training unit concerned was near the 101st Airborne's drop zones on D-Day of the operation and were shot up by escorting aircraft, posing no threat to the landings and many miles from Arnhem. Browning was right to dismiss the photo and Cornelius Ryan's whole story rested on the highly strung Intelligence Officer that was interviewed by Ryan with no Browning or photo available to challenge his view. Secondly, James Caan was originally offered the role of the Captain, but he liked the role of the Sergeant better because it was more heroic - as you'll see in the second part. The characters were reversed to get Caan on board, because the money to make the film was raised by pre-selling the distribution rights to United Artists on the strength of its box office A-list cast. The real Captain was LeGrand 'Legs' Johnson, CO of Fox Company, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, who was already awarded a Silver Star for actions in Normandy, and not a nervous green officer at all. This is one of many compromises in the film that reduces its historical accuracy to about 50% of the running time. In fact, most of the accurate scenes are long ones like the tow ropes being unfurled on the runway and troops boarding their aircraft. The other half of it is altered for political reasons, or even complete fiction in some places. The real reason the operation failed was because a unit in the 82nd Airborne failed to move quickly on the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge, despite landing 30 minutes earlier than Frost at Arnhem, having 3 Km less to march to the objective, and having no German resistance standing in their way until later in the evening. Even Frost had machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars on his route to the Arnhem bridge, but the film doesn't show that to maintain the narrative it was all too easy at first. The film instead leaves the viewer to assume that Nijmegen was strongly held from the get go, but this is false, and research carried out in the last 10-12 years has unearthed evidence a small recon patrol got to the Nijmegen bridge without firing a shot, stayed for an hour until it got dark, and then had to withdraw because nobody showed up to reinforce them. As they left, they could hear "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer troops) approaching the other end of the bridge, and the whole Market Garden plan was now fatally compromised. The butt covering came later, and everyone from the troops involved to most historians simply jumped on the bandwagon instead of challenging their own prejudices and digging deeper.
My father was one of the British paras that only escaped this shambles due to the intervention of the Polish Independent Air Brigade at considerable cost to that force. His sketch book (he was a commercial artist before he signed up) was confiscated on return to the UK, never to be returned to him, and his unit was hidden away for months to keep them out of communication with the public. His official 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment memorial that I have beside me as I write this makes no mention of the role of the Poles whatsoever and perpetrates the official line that this operation was a wonderful Anglo-American success story. Dad thought that this film (movie in US speak) was a great revelation despite the opposition in some quarters to its making. As the old saying goes, in war the first casualty is truth. The US had a higher degree of success further along the waterways but much of Holland as we then called it was left abandoned and in the bitter winter of 1944/45 thousands of civilians froze and starved - "hongerwinter" - to death as the Nazis took everything they could in revenge. It was only in the spring of 45 that the Canadian forces provided freedom too late for so many Dutch victims of all ages.
Thanks for your comment, but if you're interested in the background, this story really does deserve a second look because much of what I first read in A Bridge Too Far way back in 1977 before seeing the film in the cinema turns out to be bunk, and that's thanks to new evidence that has emerged only in the last 10-12 years. Swedish historian Christer Bergström has probably done the best revision of Ryan's work in his book, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University, and seeks to debunk the many myths in the film.
Please don't ever stop pausing and talking about what you're watching. You have many great insights into stuff that people who've already watched what you're reacting to might not have thought about. You're always perceptive and above all... it's like sitting down to watch a show with a great mate. Thanks for all you do!
The film's original version (VHS and DVD) had inbuilt subtitles for the foreign language sections in the same yellow font as the place lables. For some unknown reason, the online version of the film cut the translation subtitles.
Surprised i don't see it elsewhere in comments but there was a 1946 movie about Arnhem called 'Theirs Is the Glory'(also known as Men of Arnhem). A bridge too far is essentially a remake giving a broader picture. It's pretty accurate depiction of the battle because ALL the cast were actually the real soldiers or people there that were in that battle and of course made not long after the real battle so the location was pretty genuine too and no sets were used. Its on TH-cam th-cam.com/video/fiFeYxlPYy4/w-d-xo.html
Been to the airborne march 6 years ago, and have taken the longest route 4 years in a row. The people of öesterbech and Arnhem celebrate a huge memorial festival, the first weekend of September every fall. Despite the grimm history and the trauma of rebuilding. Different military teams from all over the world, compete in forced marching in formation, but without the gear and weapons, for 2 days straight. And we all culminate on the festival ground to be dismissed from the competition, and we receive the last order from the mayor and then the parties begin and keep on drinking and dancing for one last night. The route is around 28 kilometres and you earn a little medal for your uniform.. I can definitely recommend a trip to Arnhem at least once, just to see the war museum..
The Commander of the Airborne forces taking part in the attack, General Browning (played in the film by Dirk Bogart) did actually protest. When asked how long 1st Airborne Division could hold the bridge at Arnhem he said "We can hold out for 4 days, but I think we may be going a bridge too far!" Hence the name of the film and the book it was based on.
*Bogarde. That's true, but the quote may have its origins in Browning's deliberations with Montgomery on selecting the target Rhine crossing on 3/4 September for Operation Comet - the British 2nd Army sector was between Arnhem in the Netherlands and Wesel in Germany. There were a number of pros and cons with both options but Arnhem means crossing an extra river because the German Rhine splits into the Neder Rijn and the Waal after crossing the Netherlands border, so the Arnhem option means an additional major bridge to secure. It turned out that Browning was right on both the time the Arnhem bridge could be held and the operation going a bridge too far.
I really wonder about that. Did Browning say it before the mission, or after it had already proved to be a failure? Doesn't really matter though does it because the risks were assessed and the mission went ahead regardless, just like Pickett's Charge and the invasion at Gallipoli.
@@thomast8539 - it's said afterwards in the film by Dirk Bogarde as a reference to an earlier conversation, but in reality it's recorded by Cornelius Ryan as during a planning meeting, I think the 3/4 September meeting of Browning and Montgomery to chose the target between Arnhem and Wesel for Comet (scheduled 7/8 September and finally cancelled on the 10th) and only recorded in Dempsey's diary, but the next paragraph records Montgomery asking Browning when he can be ready and Browning replies the 15th or 16th, with a citation of '* Minutes of the first planning meeting, First Allied Airborne Army operational file 1014-1017.', which must be for Market Garden. Either way, I'm think it was very well judged by Browning because the tanks did get to Nijmegen in less than two days and 1st Airborne held Arnhem bridge for four. Browning was also proved right to dismiss the aerial photo of tanks in the Arnhem area when the photo was found in a Dutch archive in 2015 and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch, so I think Browning has been very under appreciated in the intervening decades.
@davemac1197 Roy Urquhart wrote to Browning's widow, the author Daphne du Maurier and personally apologised for the way he was portrayed in A Bridge Too Far.
Great movie! The bridge at Arnhem and all buildings around it were destroyed so the area was a wasteland. After the war new buildings and roads were build so for the movie they shot the scenes of the bridge and surrounding areas mostly in the town of Deventer wich ,to this day, has the same sceneray. The bridges at Arnhem and deventer are lookalikes, so to speak. Some shots were taken at Nijmegen bridge as well. I live in Apeldoorn, very close to Arnhem so I visited the bridge and landingzones several times and when I cross the bridge on some occasions, I'm still overwhelmed of what took place there . The stone pilars of the bridge are original and war damage is still visable! Thank you so much for this reaction videos and comments!
One of the main issues with Market Garden was that it depended on almost everything going exactly to plan. It was all so interconnected that if one element failed the whole thing was in jeopardy. Almost everything needed to go right and there wasn't a lot of wiggle room if things went south. There were very few contingencies built in that allowed for a secondary objective to be secured. One of the oldest adages of war is that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It's actually a testimony to how good of soldiers these troops were that they came as close to pulling it off as they did.
I don't think that's true at all. The operation failed not because a fragile element of it failed or that the Germans did something unexpected to cause it. The failure was a command failure in one regiment to follow the plan at Nijmegen. What happened after the war was that Gavin did not want to throw a subordinate officer under the bus, which I think most people would agree was an honourable sentiment, and he took most of the blame onto his own shoulders (he was responsible for his divisional plan being carried out after all) and even asked Browning for help in muddying the waters over the relative priorities of the Nijmegen bridge versus the Groesbeek heights, and Browning seems to have been happy to help out in correspondence. Cornelius Ryan in his original research interviewed Gavin in 1967 and Gavin did touch on the internal politics within the 82nd Airborne Division, but that aspect of the story did not find its way into the book and the full story did not come out until about 10-12 years ago, after the key players had all passed away: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013) It should be noticeable that this film does not show anything about what happened in Nijmegen on the first day at all. It's completely ommitted from the narrative, and the conventional narrative on Market Garden was established by Ryan's book and cemented into the public consciousness by this Hollywood film. People become entrenched in their beliefs, just like the CIA believed OBL was still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or probably dead, until one analyst proved he was living in a house in Pakistan. History does often work like that.
@@davemac1197 I appreciate the additional information and I'll look into some of the sources you cited to see if my opinion changes. My interest in this operation started largely because of the involvement of the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade under General Sosabowski. I have family members who fought in France with the Free Polish forces and others with General Anders in the Polish 2 Corps.
@@donpietruk1517 - that's interesting, and there are plenty of misunderstandings on the role the Poles played at Arnhem. The worst one being the suggestion that they were made scapegoats for the failure of the operation, which is an appalling slur, and also technically impossible because of their late arrival. To be frank, their planned role if things went well was simply to complete the eastern sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem on D+2, but it was not to be. The Brigade made an important contribution - unplanned - to helping save the remnants of the 1st Airborne Division in Oosterbeek and enable their evacuation across the Rijn. Montgomery wrote to General Sosabowski after the operation to praise him and his Brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then received reports from Browning and Horrocks that Sosabowski was difficult to work with (Gene Hackman got that bit right if not the accent) and he was insubordinate to Horrocks at the 24 September Valburg conference (not in the movie), and that prompted Montgomery to write to Alan Brooke (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) to have the Brigade removed from his command and perhaps sent to Italy where other Polish units were serving. This somehow got conflated into the scapegoating thing and I think that is ignorant and inexcusable. Even the Germans complained that the Poles were firing on their medics, but Geneva Conventions notwithstanding, I can't really blame the Poles! Another inaccurate allegation made and appears in this film is that the Polish parachute drop was a slaughter on the drop zone, but this is not accurate. Casualties were light and only minimal fire came from German units to the east of the rail line because they were not expecting the drop in their rear on the unscheduled and re-arranged drop zone near Driel. The reason the entire 1st Battalion failed to arrive (except for their mortar platoon, which neatly replaced the missing 2nd Battalion mortar platoon) was that a radio recall message went out due to bad weather, but only the lead plane of the 1st Battalion serial received the recall and turned around. They dropped days later on an 82nd Airborne drop zone near Grave and road marched to join the Brigade. The problem with the Polish Parachute Brigade is that they were under the command of the Polish Government-in-exile based in London, and only attached to the British Army operationally, so it was always a difficult relationship to manage. The Brigade was raised (from an ordinary rifle brigade given parachute training) in the hope they could be used in the Warsaw uprising, but Warsaw was out of aircraft range of British bases and the Soviets refused permission to use bases in Russia. I'm sure you're aware of the cynical tactic by the Soviets of stopping their advance during the uprising, allowing the Germans to put it down. The Polish story at Arnhem is not a happy one, but their contribution was overwhelmingly positive. It's unfortunate they got caught up in some of the BS surrounding the operation, as has happened to many of the key British players as well. I hope you explore some of the recent references. The best overall work on Market Garden as a whole is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), based on unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University and seeks to debunk the many myths contained in the Hollywood film.
My Dad loved this film and read many books related to this part of the War. He was born on December 28th in Colombo Sri-Lanka just as Pearl Harbor Fell.
Great timing By the way as the 4 day march of the world was last week and ended on friday , over 10.000 people military personnel and civilians from around the world . walked the 200 km to Nijmegen.
Another latter part of WWII 'bridge film' you might like is the 1969 'The Bridge at Remagen', directed by John Guillermin. Of course the 101st Airborne effort in Market Garden is featured in the excellent mini-series 'Band of Brothers', and there is a documentary film from 1946 featuring people who were involved called 'Theirs is the Glory' by director Brian Desmond Hurst. And for an overview of the war the best documentary series ever made about WWII; the BBC's 26 episode 'World At War' from [1973].
@@alexanderbeta-werburghii6176 You were correct about the programme being the best documentary series! Amazing interviews and brilliantly made, still holds up today.
You remember the Victoria Cross documentary that you reacted to, Jeremy Clarkson's father in law won the medal during the battle at Arnhem. This movie is about that operation
A controversial movie at the time. There were protests from some veterans about the historical inaccuracies. Movies of course are always fiction, designed to sell to the largest possible audience. I object though when they use the names of real people.
My great uncle was a Horse glider pilot who was supposed to land at Arnhem in this operation but was hospitalized the week before. He had previously after midnight on the morning of D-Day landed his glider next to Pegasus Bridge. So lucky twist of fate for him in light of what happened in Arnhem, landing on top of an SS Panzer Division.
*Horsa. If your great uncle was one of the 12 pilots who flew the 6 Horsa gliders that captured Pegasus Bridge by coup de main on D-Day in Normandy, then it's almost certain he was due to be one of the pilots to fly a similar mission for Operation Comet to capture the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges by coup de main at dawn. There were to be 6 gliders for each bridge, delivering a complete company from each of the three Airlanding Battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade. Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork, who flew the lead glider at Pegasus Bridge, was due to fly the lead at the Nijmegen bridge and was not looking forward to doing it all over again - I think he felt it was pushing his luck. In interviews after the war, Wallwork said he and his co-pilot planned to give themselves up at the first opportunity and sit out the war in a POW camp! When Montgomery cancelled Comet on 10 September due to the worsening intelligence picture, he replaced it with the larger operation Market Garden, adding the two American airborne divisions. This involved the 1st Allied Airborne Army and the US IX Troop Carrier Command in the planning process, and due to the need to employ their entire airlift capacity, Flak became a big concern for General Paul Williams of IX TCC and felt they could not afford to loose a single aircraft (that line was inaccurately given to an RAF character in the film). One of the changes that Williams insisted on was the removal of the three coup de main glider missions, much to Jim Wallwork's relief. Instead, General Urquhart planned for the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron to use their Jeeps to take the Arnhem bridge by coup de main, and at Grave Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR (a very experienced unit that had just returned to the 82nd Airborne Division after being detached for the Anzio operation) insisted on a special drop zone for one company at the near end of the Grave bridge and got his way. There was no coup de main mission planned for the Nijmegen bridge. I digress slightly, but landing "on top of" two SS-Panzer-Divisions is also one of the persistent myths of Arnhem - the two divisions of the II.SS-Panzerkorps were each reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength, and sub-units were distributed around towns and villages all over the eastern Netherlands. At Arnhem itself was only SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 with just five tanks - three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen', plus 100 Panther crewmen who had lost their tanks in Normandy and were acting as an 'alarm' company of infantry, and the 120-man Werkstatt (workshop) unit. The regiment was so depleted that the most senior combat officer was an SS-Obersturmführer called Adolf Harder, equivalent in rank to an Oberleutnant or 1st Lieutenant, and previously the commander of the 7.Kompanie. The removal of the glider coup de main attacks is baffling, as the tug aircraft were all RAF crewed and the air maps for Operation Comet in Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's book, Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), shows the release points for the gliders were 6 Km from the Flak at the bridges - the same release point in fact for all the gliders landing at Wolfheze with the rest of the 1st Airborne Division, so the tug aircraft did not fly near the Flak at the bridges.
@@davemac1197 phone spell check got me again. He landed near the bridge and the spot has an outline or monument like the others. He was supposed to be the allied soldier furthest into France for a time. He used to visit every year and he knew the cafe owner and his wife from that night. After the war went back to York and carried on as a tailor again in his shop near York Minster at the top of Stonegate before retirement and living by the coast.
@@davidmarsden9800 - all of them marvellous men. My grandfathers were a hospital pharmacist in Dorset - receiving the American casualties evacuated from Omaha Beach, and in the Royal Navy on destroyers - mostly Norway and the Russian convoys.
@@davemac1197 Despite their losses and need to refit and reorganize they inflicted heavy damage on the airborne troops who by the nature of their role were very lightly armed and equipped. The German Fallschirmjagers in Italy had the same problem. Your SS Panzer Regiment 9 under SS Obersturmfuhrer Adolf Harder I don't recognize. I am aware of Waffle SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Harzer, Commander of the 9th SS Armoured Division Hohenstaufen. Prior to 1944 he was a staff officer of the 10th SS Armoured Division Frundsberg, under SS Brigadefuhrer Heinz Harmel and both units were at Arnhem. Harzer had an armoured reconnaissance unit consisting of 40 vehicles including flak cannons, tanks, half tracks with MG42s. This was commanded by SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Viktor Grabnor. Although they are not completely equivalent to allied ranks, as the Waffen SS units and ranks were based roughly on Roman legions and ranks. SS Brigadefuhrer is equivalent to Brigadier General. SS Obersturnbannfuhrer is equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel. SS Hauptsturmfuhrer is equivalent to Captain. The Waffen SS has a confusing amount of ranks up to Lieutenant, most look more senior than they are, and more than the allies have between Private and Lieutenant. There can be confusion with Harzer's rank because he was also in command of an SS Polizei unit as well because he was also a member of the SD, the SS Security Service set up by Reinhardt Heydrich, which covered everything from foreign intelligence, Einsatzgruppen, Gestapo and Polizei, and he had a SD rank as well of SS Oberfuhrer or Senior Colonel. The SS was a state within a state which can muddy the waters a lot as essentially he was two different men in one.
@@davemac1197 They were a different breed back then. When you watch the news these days about the different politics and attitudes it begs the question what happens if the Russians or anyone else turns up to plant their flag here?😭
The airborne element in Operation Market Garden did not intrude on the Allied supply problem since they got everything - or were supposed to get it - by plane directly from England. However, the XXX Corps advancement from the south meant that all the rest of the Allied had to stop.
WW2 was one of the worst events in human history but the LOGISTICS of the war showed what we are capable of when working together towards one purpose. It was truly mind boggling how much material was manufactured, shipped and organised during the war from all countries. 181 aircraft carriers were made in the time it would take 1 to be made before and after the war. 4.3 million vehicles (tanks, trucks, etc) Over 6 million artillery, mortars and big weapons. Over 600 000 aircraft. 55 000 ships(military not cargo) And that's just the Allies production. All for less than 1/30th the value of the Apple company.
"never understood how i would jump out of a perfectly good airplane" well ... i was passenger i an C-160 Transall several times ... after going in with my first sarajevo-approach i totally understood why there are some guys jumping out of it half way xD
So glad to see you getting your head around this one Alan. It's quite a story and takes a while to tell, but it's also well worth hearing that story being told. Plenty to think about from this one. Looking forward to the next part. Be well. 😉
In September 1944 the war was in no way winding down. The Germans were still defending and counter-attacking all along the line. Casualties for infantry units were along WW1 lines. Hence Operation Market Garden, to try for a breakthrough.
My second war film that I can quote whole passages from " we would like to accept your surrender, but im afraid we habent got room. Sorry " or robert redford " hail amry mother of god" whilst paddling furiously. Love the theme tune as well 🙂
Three pieces of trivia: American reporter Walter Cronkite was reporting on the war and came in with the glider troops. One of the paratrooper made the jump with his pet rabbit. When this movie came out, the daughter of Polish General Urqhart was thrilled that Sean Connery was playing her father in this film. She went to him to tell him and his reply was along the lines of Sean Who?
I think that was a pet chicken, not a rabbit. And Mad Jack Churchill was even more colorful. He stormed the Normandy beachead with a long bow and broadsword.
@@bfdidc6604 Well, don't thank me too fast. Apparently Mad Jack did not land in Normandy. I say good on both of us for trying to help maintain history.
I have been to Arnhem. It was quite surreal to climb the bridge and see all the bullet holes still in it. All the buildings near the bridge the british used are no longer there because German shelling flattened the place. They're just parking lots now. There were even some British Airborne vets there describing the battle to visitors
Is the damage on the foundations only because as far as I know these are the only bits left after WW2. The actual bridge was destroyed in 1944. There is a nearby train bridge that still has bullet holes in it though.
It's hard to comprehend the numbers when dealing with WW2. EVERYTHING is on a huge scale, but for some context, the British forces in Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War 1), totalled about 53,000 from all services, over a 6-week campaign. The 35,000 here are just the advance bridge-taking teams for a three-day operation. There's also all the other troops moving in to link up with them, but I'm finding it hard to get numbers for them. Hundreds of thousands though.
I've actually read the book The book actually went into depth about the absolute chaos that the German army faced when they left the Netherlands One of the incidents mentioned was how in one small town they actually had a Garrison of three German soldiers and they actually left town in the middle of the night on children's scooters
I actually am working on a fan edit of this movie, changing/removing some scenes to make it more historical accurate (like removing the part where the German general dismissed the maps as fake, he actually did not dismiss them as fake during the battle). One thing that is to be noted how horrible the fighting was, they stationed German soldiers in the Arnhem region, that were Stalingrad vets, seeing they already went through hell so they got a calm place to spend the war basically. Some of those vets that survived, stated that the urban fighting in like Arnhem were far worse than what they faced in Stalingrad. My grandmother as a 14 year old girl survived the battle at Nijmegen inside a bunker.
Model dismissed the captured documents. It was General Kurt Student of 1.Fallschirm-Armee that received the documents captured from a glider that crashed near his headquarters at Vught translated, and found a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne Division (the glider was carrying the 101st's liaison officer to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek). Using his own airborne experience he understood the significance of the information and was able to extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions from this single document. Model was not convinced, so Student used his own Luftwaffe chain of command to arrange for fighter cover over the drop zones at the appropriate times. Thankfully the airlifts were delayed by bad weather and the fighters were back at their bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived. The German SS units of II.SS-Panzerkorps at Arnhem were not Stalingrad veterans, but had first fought at Tarnopol in Ukraine, before being transferred west to Normandy after the Allied invasion, and after holding open the neck of the Falaise pocket to allow other units to escape they were withdrawn to the Netherlands to refit. Tarnopol was a fortified city and the fighting was described as a mini-Stalingrad with severe street fighting. I have studied A Bridge Too Far on a scene-by-scene basis and just compared it to Cornelius Ryan's incomplete book (he had terminal cancer and published it unfinished) raather than what we know to be true today, I found that 50% of screen time was historically accurate, about 40% altered to suit the director's politics, compromised or conflated to compress events or characters, and other changes to get actors on board the project, and about 10% that's just made up and didn't happen at all. Bless your grandmother and greetings to all our friends in the Netherlands from the UK.
this was high commands great "home by christmas" plan. it was never ever getting called off despite the obvious issues it had. it was a death or glory plan, and there wasnt much glory.
There are many historical faults in this movie. When the German Field Marshall Walter Model found out that British airborne troops had landed just a kilometer from his position, he did not only run away with his cigars. He fled, yes, that was his duty as a supreme commander, but he stayed long enough to give an essential General Order: "All present forces are to organize their fighting ability, find the enemy, and attack". It's just in recent years that historians have started to accept the fact that the Germans won the Battle of Arnhem - against all odds. They were taken by surprise, they were in a bad fix, totally unprepared, but out of nothing, they reorganized themselves and fought back with success (and absolute cruelty). This was Wehrmacht's last straw, their outstanding organization ability, and Walter Model knew it.
Supposedly, producer Joe Levine did such a great job of selling this movie to international distributors that it was in profit before it was even released.
Some of the paratroopers got court up on the planes rudder-ailerons on the back of the plane and died before the plane returned home being no way to retrieve them in the air. I remember seeing a doco and there were at least three that I saw in amongst the mass of planes flapping around at the back of the plane. Absolutely horrifying as if jumping out of the plane wasn't bad enough. The planes were American DC3S or as the British called them Dakotas one of the most strong ww2 airframes ever built. Build before the war as a passenger plane everything was over engineered witch is why they they were so tough and some of them are still flying today.
Ignoring all of the historical glitches, one can only marvel at the greatest ensemble cast of the 70's, practical effects that will NEVER be seen again, and cinematography that is unrivaled.
Dirk Bogarde served in the RAF as a photo interpreter selecting bombing targets on General Dempsey's British 2nd Army staff, including during Market Garden, and knew most of the main personalities, including Browning, who he played. He was unhappy with the way Browning's role was written, as was Browning's widow, who was very upset about it, but I think he opted to play Browning as somewhat conflicted in order to mitigate the worst aspects of the script, rather than refuse the part and have someone else play Browning as the director wished.
On D-Day, the actor Richard Todd had been in the group to attack and hold Pegasus Bridge. In the film 'The Longest Day', he played Major Howard, his C.O. on 6th June, and another actor played Todd...
@@paulstroud2647 - almost correct - Todd was a paratrooper in the 7th Parachute Battalion that reinforced Howard's Company of Ox & Bucks Light Infantry glider troops that took Pegasus bridge, and Todd did play their CO, Major Howard, in the film.
The Dutch people have great respect for America and in particular the USAF. The country was starving in the latter stages of WW2. American bombers would drop food to the desperate population. To the American flyers this was known as the chow drop.
One problem was there was one main highway and it wasn't called hells highway for nothing, and the high command in Britain ignored intelligence from the Dutch underground about two SS divisions in the area, troops dropped too far outside Arnhem etc, a lot to go wrong, i have been there many times and will be there in September again.
The biggest problem with A Bridge Too Far was that it established myths that are either completely untrue, or at best, misleading. 1. There was one main supply route for XXX Corps, which was the Guards Armoured Division's customary 'Club Route' that ran from the Normandy breakout all the way into Germany to eventually terminate at Bremen (so it was nothing new or special to Market Garden), but there were numerous 'Heart Route' diversions that used the many redundent alternative crossings targeted by the operation. There were about 24 bridge targets in the airborne operation and a minimum of 10 were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Some of the 'Heart Route' alternatives were used, notably the Heumen lock bridge on the Maas-Waal canal was used because the Honinghutje highway bridge on the main road 'Club Route' crossing was damaged when the rail bridge next to it was demolished by the Germans, and it was deemed to be suitable only for light vehicles and not able to support the 30 ton Sherman tanks. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were also using their own 'Spade' and 'Diamond' main supply routes, but you rarely ever hear about them in most books. It's a myth that the tanks were restricted to staying on the main highway because the ground was too soft on either side, but that was not the case in most places. During the breakout, the tanks maneuvred off the highway to attack German forces on the flanks, but in the film they stayed on the road to exaggerate the myth on screen. 2. The nickname "Hell's Highway" was coined by the 101st Airborne, because their stretch of the 'Club Route' was the longest and the 506th PIR in particular was marched and counter-marched up and down the highway several times to fight fires along its course. See Saving Private Ryan for a mastwr class on how to gripe in the US Army. I think Michael Caine's line about the first bit being the wide end was an attempt at humour, but the reality was that different sections of the chosen route were main highways and lesser roads at different points. 3. The two divisions of II.SS-Panzerkorps were NOT ignored at all. They were part of the deteriorating intelligence picture in the Netherlands that prompted Montgomery to cancel Operation Comet on 10 September, involving just the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Brigade to take the bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave, and replace it with Operation Market Garden, upgraded by adding the two American Airborne Divisions. Both SS divisions were known to be reduced to regimental battlegroups with few if any tanks by the fighting in Normandy, because it was British units in Normandy that had reduced them to that condition. Most of the German forces sent against Market Garden were replacement and training units of the Reserve Army mobilised by the 'Valkyrie' Plan (see the 2008 Tom Cruise film 'Valkyrie' which explains how this works) in the first week of September 1944 to plug the gap in the German lines that had opened up in Belgium/Netherlands and to man the Westwall defence line in Germany. The impact of II.SS-Panzerkorps on the battle was greater than anticipated, but also exaggerated because all the minor units involved are too numerous to mention in most histories. To put things in perspective, Model had only 84 operational tanks in his entire Heersgruppe B front facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen. While 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade, now concentrated at Arnhem in the new Market Garden plan, took 83 anti-tank guns with them, and if you include the American divisions at Nijmegen and Eindhoven, that's more anti-tank guns than the Germans could possibly send tanks. 4. Despite being dropped about 11 Km from Arnhem bridge, 3 Km further than the 508th PIR were dropped from the Nijmegen bridge, and dropped 30 minutes later, and had to overcome resistance along the way (even Frost's battalion route had MGs, mortars and armoured cars), the 1st Parachute Brigade secured the Arnhem bridge and denied its use to the enemy for 80 hours, while the 508th landing sooner and closer and with zero opposition failed to seize their main objective. Why? It was a command failure at the top of the regiment, which had first manifested on their first combat operation in Normandy and not dealt with before Market Garden. Distance from the objective was not an issue that couldn't be overcome if you move quickly enough, clearly, for the highly experienced Colonel Frost. Gavin knew that and made his instructions to the 508th very clear, but they were not followed. I recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) for the details of the regiment's performance in Market Garden and earlier Normandy. 5. I lost count of "a lot of moving parts" in this video alone, and it's something I hear all the time about Market Garden, but the plan was broken down into small parts to be carried out by every sub-unit in the three Airborne Divisions and the ground forces involved. The mission assigned to the 508th PIR was not any more difficult than many others, but perhaps it was better suited to the more experienced and aggressive 505th. Responsibility for the 82nd Airborne's divisional plan was James Gavin's, and it was perhaps honourable that he took much of the blame for the failure at Nijmegen on his own shoulders to avoid throwing a subordinate officer under the bus, but in doing so he has muddied the waters for historians trying to work out the 'why' of everything. Cornelius Ryan interviewed Gavin, but none of this came out in his book, and obviously was never going to be in a Hollywood film.
This film is among the best to be made about true incidents of the Second World War. The acting, editing, screenwriting, and direction are each excellent. A semi-autobiographical account of the war as it effected children interned by the Japanese may be seen in Spielberg's excellent Empire of the Sun. It stars Christian Bale in his first leading rôle, aged just 13. I think it's the very best WW2 film.
it's so cool seeing you watch this! Especially after you made your reaction to Jeremy Clarkson's documentary on his ex-father-in-law and his Victoria Cross at Arnhem! Can anyone make recommendations for movies to watch or is it a patreon only thing?
Appreciate the watch. A few things. #1. I've fought copyright on previous films and don't want to do what other reactors do with cutting volume out before doing commentary since audio is what is claimed in movies, hence the added commentary. If I could release the full reaction without fear of getting hit with a block or a strike so you can see how far apart some of the commentary is, I 100% would, without a doubt. (But that is why I have Patreon, movie is on there in full without the 5 second cuts, still has commentary but it's during the movie, not with the movie volume cut down and me enlarged as the only place that's the case is the beginning and end). #2. I'll try to cut down the length of commentary left in for part 2 (or maybe cut the video volume as I'm talking over audio in 90% of the places but I enlarge myself over top of it with volume muted) but.... I'll play that by ear
What happened to part 2?
@@Muckylittleme Still trying to edit it. It'll be out tomorrow morning. 3 hour movie cut into 2 parts, still takes a minute to edit so all the context of the situations isn't completely lost.
@@TheEclecticBeard Okay, thanks beard.
I appreciate the prompt response, and I wasn’t even thinking about TH-cam’s TOS and the potential for demonetization over something like a copyright strike for providing a factual statement to the audience about a historical military operation. And even though I couldn’t sit through and watch this specific movie on your channel, it prompted me to search for it independently. I consume copious amounts of WW2 military and political history, and aside from Band of Brothers, I think this film was one of the best films of this conflict. Hollywood doesn’t have the most incredible track record when producing historical content. Still, I was pleasantly surprised with the historical accuracy and production value since this film was released in 1977. I told my dad after I watched the movie how impressed I was, and he told me that when it was released that it wasn’t very well received by critics and kind of flopped at the theaters. I don’t know if that was the consequence of how earlier films had depicted the War and military conflict in general or how the educational system taught this event and the corresponding social and political events surrounding the war. I watched the movie already, and I may not watch or even be aware when you plan to share the second half of your reaction because of the TH-cam algorithm, and I fall so many channels I have my notifications turned off. However, I have always enjoyed your reaction videos of TikTok current events, etc. I ♥️ your authenticity, critical thinking, and the fact you are still grounded in reality, unlike some of your contemporaries reacting to current events and pop culture.
My dad as a young 19-20 yr old paratrooper was taken prisoner at Arnhem and spent the rest of the war in a POW camp. He never spoke about his experiences until he decided to take a trip to the museum at Arnhem in his early 80's. My mum wore his para wings brooch all her life with a huge sense of pride
I respectfully thank him for his service.
Growing up, my nan had a mirror hanging on the wall with a b & w photo of a man in uniform framed in the centre. It wasn't until I was older that my mom told me he was my nan's brother and he'd been at Arnhem. He'd been taken in by a Dutch family. He was then found and taken prisoner. He died only a few years after getting back home after the war, due to injuries received and ill health which resulted from them.
i wonder if my grandfather knew your dad he also was captured at Arnhem and was a POW
My grandad was with the 1st Airborne and was also captured at Arnhem. He was a POW at Stalag XIIB and then used as forced labour at a town called Uelzen. As the Allies approached all the POW’s were marched away from there and he and two others managed to escape.
My father was incredibly proud to be a member of 9 Squadron in the early 60's and had respect for the men at Arnhem drilled into him during his servcice. He used to watch this film every year.
I thank your father for his service.
I’m 54 years. My Dad was in the USAF as a Doctor during the Vietnam War. I was taken to see this movie in in cinema in 1977.
In the mid’-90’s, I was traveling in Europe, and went up that highway to Arnhem, Netherlands. The White House, where the paratroop’s shelter has been restored. A Sherman tank in on a plateau. A British/allied cemetery is there. The Beatles, young and going to play in the Clubs in Hamburg, in 1960, stopped at the Arnhem cemetary; photos.
This was really one of the last big “epic” films, of like 20 talented actors in modest roles, and practical affects, and using actual WW2 vehicles.
And, having several of the soldiers advise on the true events. Yes, “Band of Brothers” had some of the soldiers to advise, yet planes or tanks not all original, or some digital effects.
Actually, another set of WW2 films, about the battles in The Netherlands, both by Paul Verhoven (Dutch) are Solder of Orange (1977) and Black Book (2008-?)
When the Dutch were not totally liberated, after these battles, the Winter of 1944, the Nazi deprived the people of food and heating…who would become Audrey Hepburn, lived through that as a child.
My best friends dad (when I was kid) was a para at Arnhem, was wounded and was among the last to leave, he got a medal and a promotion, I will always remember him as a kind and gentle man who always had lots of time for his sons and their friends, RIP Jim K
The director Richard Attenborough was the brother of David Attenborough. He made some brilliant films, and was also a very popular actor. Starting his film career in 1942, and ending in 2015 appearing in Jurassic World.
It's worth bearing in mind that the Battle of Arnhem, where Robert Cain won his VC, was part of this campaign. Jeremy Clarkson's documentary on the VC that you previously watched, details this event.
it was an amazing present tation I have watched Clarson present it a couple of times, I also recommend jonny jonson RAF ace spitfire Pilot
My great uncle Ted was in the 2nd South staffs gliders who was one of the lucky ones to escape. A tragic part of the film that really hit me was when they were all waiting and they saw some planes dropping cannisters,one of them run to get one of the cannisters hoping things they could use, he manages to get it and run,his mates were cheering,then,'brrrurp' he got hit in the back,the cannster opens as he drops it, to find that he died for red Beret's. In the film the lad that bought it was a South Stafford. Very brave young men.
Based on a true story in Cornelius Ryan's book, but the man who retrieved the cannister was a member of the Glider Pilot Regiment and not killed, he was obviously interviewed by Ryan after the war - I have a digital copy of the book so it's easy to find:
'Sergeant Lawrence Goldthorpe heard the loudspeaker, too. A few hours earlier he had risked his life to retrieve a resupply pannier--only to discover that it contained, not food or ammunition, but red berets.'
Goldthorpe, Lawrence, Sgt. [Glider Pilot Regt].
The story may be part-based on a posthumous VC awarded to RAF pilot David Lord, who stayed at the control of his burning plane as it crashed into Landing Zone 'S' near Reijers Camp farm on 19 September in order to deliver his load of supplies.
The film is only 50% historically accurate, much of the narrative has been altered to suit director Richard Attenborough's pacifist desire to make an "anti-war film", so these two incidents were conflated to make them look more futile, instead of making a tribute to David Lord's and Lawrence Goldthorpe's two acts of bravery.
From the iconic theme tune to the stellar cast this is one of my favourite movies
My Dad was in this film. He was in the Paras and was one of the troops jumping out the plane during the jump scene and the first battel firing one of the artillery gun in the first big battle scene. Most of the film was filmed in Germany using real British and American troops which were base there.
One reason I love the older war movies like this, Waterloo and Zulu (Great reaction btw), is the lack of CGI.
The greatest cast list for a single film in the history of movies.
The Longest Day (made early 60s about D-Day) had a similar structure to ABTF and stellar cast. Both based on books by the same WWII journalist (Cornelius Ryan).
My grandfather was part of the Staffordshire regiment and managed to eventually escape capture, by being hidden by dutch, eventually swimming the rhine.. effectively my grandfather was in the movies dunkirk, longest day and this one... lol
This was an excellent movie and one of my favourites. Great performances and a stellar cast takes the history of this operation and portrays the strategic overview while still showing some smaller more personal stories and thus giving faces to the individuals and making the story human on multiple levels. Wish they still made movies this way.
My mum's cousin died on that Bridge, he was in the Parachute Regiment, he was 19 years old.
Hello Welsh vet here.....your not going to believe this after what I said about Zulu so here gose ...my brother Was in th 2 battalion the Para's who where asked to do the jump's for this film......
As a former paratrooper ( 1990- 1995) and logistics officer ( 1995-1999) myself i can tell you that jumping out of a plane with only a parachute is a "funjump" , and very enjoyable, to me and many others that are into this. Jumping with all your gear strapped to your body like a mule is not the best experience one can have 😂. To this day it stays a risky and difficult undertaking, there's always a few injured that dont make it trough training. Jumping in 1944 must have been way way worse than what i ever experienced, i'm quite happy we only had to do 4 "combat" jumps a year.
Logistics wins wars, its been proven over and over again. By the public it may be a lesser known and respected job, but the fact that my superior at the time had the nickname "Mother" or "Mothergoose" says enough. He was closer to the NCO's in the units than with the Officers and kept informal communication line with them , often bypassing the Officers. Veterans will know the NCO's run the place, and so did he. Logistics is also an area where the US and Nato really shine. No one can coordinate transport and supply as efficiently. In the news you may have heard of the recent operation atlantic resolve, or in the cold war operation Reforger ( return forces to germany) , in the news you see all the fighterplanes taking of etc and people think it's a big warexercise, and it is, but it is mainly an exercise in logistics and coordination. 🤘❤️
Part of the reason the Germans never employed actual paratrooper drops after the opening of the war was the disaster on Crete. German paratroops dropped with little equipment. Their heavy stuff (guns, ammo, supplies, etc) were dropped in separate containers leading to them having to defend themselves with pistols and knives when lots of the containers landed in the other side's hands. Add to that their parachutes basically dangled the trooper by a single cord below the chute which made them spin around and be at complete mercy to the winds. So paratroops would land disoriented and sometimes sick. Their glider troops fared little better since the opposing forces knew where they would land in advance
One major thing that we tend to forget when watching this is the sheer magnitude of people and equipent used to make the film itself.
Contrary to Arnhem mythology, the intelligence picture in the Arnhem area itself was remarkabley accurate. It was known that the Wolfheze psychiatric hospital and pavilions in its grounds were used as a collection centre for about 400 dispossessed artillery troops retreating from Normandy, as well as senior Luftwaffe officers and (conveniently) female 'Blitzmaiden' (signals operators) from the huge Fliegerhorst Deelen airbase north of Arnhem. It was the reason the hospital was bombed in the morning before the landings. In fact, the USAAF who carried out the raid had insisted on written confirmation from General Urquhart that there were German troops there. As well as the troops, the hospital contained Dutch civilian staff and patients, many of whom became casualties of the bombing and the survivors were left roaming the woods. The bombs also hit an ammunition dump in the woods, rendering the twenty-one brand new 10.5cm leFH 18/40 howitzers found in storage on the grounds completely useless, and the Royal Engineers had to spike them.
The most senior Luftwaffe officer accommodated there was Generalmajor Walter Grabmann commanding the 3.Jagd-division at Deelen and the huge 'Diogenes' nightfighter control bunker at Schaarsbergen (now used by the Dutch government to store their archives) within the airbase complex. On a previous evening Grabmann had been a dinner guest at Generalfeldmarshal Walter Model's newly arrived Heeresgruppe B headquarters at the Hotel Hartestein in Oosterbeek, and tried to warn him that the fields around Wolfheze were ideal landing grounds for airborne troops, so his headquarters may be vulnerable. Model dismissed these concerns as he felt he was safe behind too many river barriers to be in any danger of an airborne assault so deep behind the lines. In fact, the reason the Arnhem and Nijmegen bridges were initially so lightly defended was because they were behind three defence lines the Germans had constructed in the canal zone of the southern Netherlands and Belgium.
One person at the dinner took Grabmann seriously and that was SS-Sturmbannführer (Major) Sepp Krafft of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Ausbildungs-und-Ersatz-Bataillon 16 based in Arnhem. The unit had been designated with the number '12' until August, as it had been training Hitler Youth replacements for the 12.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hitlerjugend', and were currently awaiting the arrival of 1,600 new recruits from Germany to be trained for the 16.SS-Panzergrenadier-Division 'Reichsführer SS'. Krafft took the precaution of moving his two training companies out of the barracks in Arnhem and had them camped in the woods at Wolfheze and Oosterbeek, close to the potential landings zones, as additional protection for Model.
When the airborne landings started at lunchtime on Sunday 17 September, Grabmann was horrified to see a glider landing less than half a kilometer from his quarters and had a nightmare roundabout journey to get to his headquarters at the 'Divisions-dorf' in Schaarsbergen, which has also been bombed. Krafft put his battalion on immediate alert and ordered the 2.Kompanie at the Hotel Wolfheze to attack the landing zones immediately and had the 4.Kompanie and battalion staff at Oosterbeek brought up to Wolfheze and deploy a blocking line covering two of the main routes into Arnhem. He also ordered a 9.Marsch (march) Kompanie to be formed from the units still in barracks - the 7.Stamm (reception) Kompanie and the 8.Genesenden (convalescent) Kompanie in nearby Velp. In total, Krafft had 435 officers and men he could scrape together, including some Hitler Youth recruits who were completing their training, and this unit did more than any other to delay the progress of 1st Parachute Brigade towards its objectives, giving time for II.SS-Panzerkorps to mobilise and gets its units to Arnhem and deploy further blocking lines.
Frost's 2nd Battalion outflanked Krafft's line to the south near the River Rijn, but the Reconnaissance Squadron was ambushed and the 3rd Battalion blocked by Krafft's initial disposition and quick reaction. Much of this detail was missing from the film and all the German reactions and resources were simplified by attributing them to the II.SS-Panzerkorps, which developed a mythological impact on the battle as a result. In truth, it provided a headquarters and structure on which to hang myriad training and replacement units from all branches of the military and from all over the Netherlands and Germany. Many of these troops were horrified to be told after the battle that they were now conscripted into the Waffen-SS and issued new uniforms in order to rebuild the SS divisions.
See the Spitfire that flies past the Dutch kid? I proposed to my better half when she was in the cockpit of that very plane.
*My granddad (Griff Jenkins of Tylorstown, Wales) was one of the Para's that were dropped into Arnhem. 2nd Battalion (2 Para) They landed north west...(off the map as pointed out in the film) ....He was captured. Gunshot wound to the right shoulder. My uncle has one of his postcard that he had mailed back to the Uk. When they were captured. The German commanding officer had blank postcards handed out to the para's. They were instructed to write home to let their families know they were alive. My uncle has shown me the card. I have a photo of it. Thankfully the Germans who captured him and his mates were regular German infantry. So he wasn't shot by the SS or Gestapo. He made it back at the end of the war. Rob (London)*
2 old guys that used to go in my dads pub both dropped into arnhem. One was caught during the battle, and the other managed to get back to british lines after the battle.
Mu uncle was part of the advance by road .
They were ambushed, and he got shot during that engagement.
He recovered and later took part in the battle of the bulge.
This was directed by a great British actor Richard Attenborough with so many fine actors.I especially love Sean Connery s part and James Caan.Thanks for reaction always insightful👍🇬🇧
Reference to the number of canopies, there's a book about Arnhem called " snow in September"😊
It Never Snows In September - The German View Of Market-Garden And The Battle Of Arnhem September 1944 by Robert Kershaw (1990). It's a recommended book, but like A Bridge Too Far it was a pioneering work and later books have corrected the errors and ommissions it contains. I consider both of these books to be a foundation course on studying Market Garden, but caveat emptor, you should not base your final exam answers on them.
Rob Kershaw was a British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR) officer in the Parachute Regiment and liaison to the West German Bundeswehr in the 1980s. He was asked by the Staff College at Sandhurst to research Market Garden as he had access to the West German army records and spoke fluent German. The book is the result of his research.
The title of the book comes from a quote by 19-year old Leutnant Joseph Enthammer that Kershaw interviewed in 1987, an 'artillery' officer who had been on the technical staff of the largest V2 rocket installation in Europe, based in Marie-sur-Oise. His vehicle convoy had been on the road since 24 August, when the base had been blown up to prevent its capture by the Americans. His V2 rocket unit was moved into a school in the northwestern suburbs of Arnhem (I suspect the Feldkommandantur in the ULO School in Heselburgherweg, now converted to apartments called Paleis op der heuvel - Palace on the hill), and he awoke the next day to see the sky full of parachutes. His first reaction was "that cannot be, it never snows in September!"
Enthammer's unit was not to be involved in the fighting and had orders to evacuate to Emmerich in Germany. Enthammer and a few men were left behind as a rear guard, but when they attempted to resume their journey they were stopped near the Arnhem bridge and taken POW. Their documents showed they were technical troops and part of the army artillery arm, but there was no evidence they were associated with the top secret V-2 technology, so throughout their capture by 2nd Parachute Battalion at the Arnhem bridge their captors had no idea their unit had been firing rockets on London.
it's great to see you grasping just how many cockups were involved in this mission, glad you are reacting to it, dunno, if you've seen the Longest Day? but again it gives a better understanding to what went on during the invasion, Love these older war movies. Kelly's Heroes, The Eagle has Landed, Where Eagles Dare,The Dirty Dozen, Tora! Tora! Tora!,
Love 'Kelly's Heroes' - it's a WW2 film but with a totally 60's attitude.
Saving private Ryan is in my opinion THE best war movie ever made, the first 10 minutes alone make it worth that, I watched it first time in a cinema with surround sound etc I just sat with my chin on my chest throughout the entire storming the beach scene.
HAHA it was also the last time I involuntarily shouted something out in a cinema (I was in my late 30s possibly early 40s at the time)
it was the part where they had fought their way up the beach and had finally got behind the bunkers that had been slaughtering them, and a bunch of Germans made a run for it, but then stopped and threw up their hands in surrender, it was at that point that I burst out with my very own '2 word' response.
A bridge to far is a great movie hope you enjoyed it
my uncle sydney was decorated for his part in operation market garden in WW2
Bridge too far was the film about it
He was a very gentle man, I loved him dearly
No plan survives first contact with the enemy. Also, I forgot how many seriously big actors where in this film.
There’s an old saying in Britain (my grandad still says it)
“If you meet a man who was at Arnhem you buy him a pint” without question the hardest major battle Britain fought on the western front and North Africa, the battles of Kohima and imphal in India against the Japanese were probably worse though (Kohima definitely was)
A side comment is that John Addison, who composed the music score for this film was himself a tank veteran in this campaign.
Mrs C,s uncle served in the East Lancashire regiment alongside the American paratroopers at Nijmegen,sadly succumbed to his wounds...RIP...😢....he gave his today for our tomorrow..E...
Remember Market Garden when you react to Band Of Brothers, they even mentioned the 101st, it shows perspective on the big plan they were part of. The more you are aware of historical events/ battles during WW11 the better. So look forward to all your reactions 😁
You were talking about the Germans probably not having air superiority due to lack of fuel etc, which would also have affected Tanks and other vehicles as well. But oil shortage (for military purposes) was not as big a problem as you may think. Don't forget during the early years of the war, Russia was on their side and supplied Oil, that soon stopped when they fell out. But the US companies were still supplying them with oil up until 1942 which was stockpiled for four years. Also even after the US joined in the Germans still had up to 25% of their annual National needs being supplied by Hungary & Romania and they had also started producing synthetic fuel from Coal (which Germany had plenty of) from the early days of Hitlers Reich. Lack of fuel was less of a problem than lack of Aircraft due to us bombing the hell out of the German factories. According to your own US Department of Energy reports "More than 92 percent of Germany's aviation gasoline and half its total petroleum during World War II had come from synthetic fuel plants. At its peak in early 1944, the German synfuels effort produced more than 124,000 barrels per day from 25 plants. In February 1945, one month after Allied forces turned back the Hitler's troops at the Battle of the Bulge, German production of synthetic aviation gasoline amounted to just a thousand tons - one half of one percent of the level of the first four months of 1944. None was to be produced afterwards." Not surprisingly after the War, the US became VERY interested in Synthetic Fuel but did restrict its production so as not to upset the Oil Companies. - Market Garden was a good plan, badly implemented.
You need to remember that this film was done before computer generated effects , there all real effects and vehicles and people
This is a superb movie. Extremely underrated. Very glad to see you watching it. Enjoy!
My Dad was at Arnhem - admittedly shortly after operations, with the REs in his role as a dispatch rider.
According to Dad, he told me that the whole operation was a cockup.
Yes it was
Market Garden was not a bad plan mabey over cooked and tried to do to much with every thing taken in to account and yes they was a lot cockups by all the Allied elements both British and US and if it worked you don't get the Battle of the Bulge Christmas 1944 probaly
It was actually the fastest allied advance against German opposition in the entire September 1944 to February 1945 period. Nearly 100km of German held ground in just 3 days.
The rest of the allied advance barely got 100km over the next six months.
This film was not intended to be a historical epic - the British director Richard Attenborough was a pacifist who wanted to make a political "anti-war film" and intended to make the British Generals and the plan look pointless, and the American producer and screenwriter (who also wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid starring Robert Redford in 1969) wanted to make an entertainment. A great deal of work was done by the technical crew to make the film look authentic in terms of the real Dutch bridge locations, uniforms, equipment, insignia, etc., and the film crirics often laud this, misleading viewers into thinking the narrative is historically accurate.
The narrative is as accurate as the idea that OBL was still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan after 9-11 and it was ten years later of course he was found living in a house in Pakistan, only a mile from their military staff college. Cornelius Ryan's original 1974 book, A Bridge Too Far, was rushed to publication unfinished because of his terminal cancer, and the narrative blamed Montgomery and Browning for the failure of the operation because they had both already passed when Ryan began researching and interviewing for the book. Most of the key American players were still alive and they obviously covered their own butts. Those views have only recently been challenged now that just about everyone involved has passed and historians are getting their second wind in primary research instead of recycling the same established narrative from existing books.
You made a couple of points I picked up on: the aerial photo that Browning dismissed did not look anything like the oblique shot made for the film. In fact the real photo only came to light in a Dutch government archive in 2015. The RAF had donated all its aerials of the Netherlands to the Dutch to help with reconstruction after the war. The photo taken by Spitfire near Arnhem five days before the operation was studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch and the tanks identified as obsolete Mark III and early Mark IV models undergoing maintenance, having broken down, eliminating a 1944 panzer division as the likely owner. In fact, we now know who they belonged to and the training unit concerned was near the 101st Airborne's drop zones on D-Day of the operation and were shot up by escorting aircraft, posing no threat to the landings and many miles from Arnhem. Browning was right to dismiss the photo and Cornelius Ryan's whole story rested on the highly strung Intelligence Officer that was interviewed by Ryan with no Browning or photo available to challenge his view.
Secondly, James Caan was originally offered the role of the Captain, but he liked the role of the Sergeant better because it was more heroic - as you'll see in the second part. The characters were reversed to get Caan on board, because the money to make the film was raised by pre-selling the distribution rights to United Artists on the strength of its box office A-list cast. The real Captain was LeGrand 'Legs' Johnson, CO of Fox Company, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, who was already awarded a Silver Star for actions in Normandy, and not a nervous green officer at all. This is one of many compromises in the film that reduces its historical accuracy to about 50% of the running time. In fact, most of the accurate scenes are long ones like the tow ropes being unfurled on the runway and troops boarding their aircraft. The other half of it is altered for political reasons, or even complete fiction in some places.
The real reason the operation failed was because a unit in the 82nd Airborne failed to move quickly on the undefended Nijmegen highway bridge, despite landing 30 minutes earlier than Frost at Arnhem, having 3 Km less to march to the objective, and having no German resistance standing in their way until later in the evening. Even Frost had machine-guns, mortars and armoured cars on his route to the Arnhem bridge, but the film doesn't show that to maintain the narrative it was all too easy at first. The film instead leaves the viewer to assume that Nijmegen was strongly held from the get go, but this is false, and research carried out in the last 10-12 years has unearthed evidence a small recon patrol got to the Nijmegen bridge without firing a shot, stayed for an hour until it got dark, and then had to withdraw because nobody showed up to reinforce them. As they left, they could hear "heavy equipment" (SS-Panzer troops) approaching the other end of the bridge, and the whole Market Garden plan was now fatally compromised. The butt covering came later, and everyone from the troops involved to most historians simply jumped on the bandwagon instead of challenging their own prejudices and digging deeper.
My father was one of the British paras that only escaped this shambles due to the intervention of the Polish Independent Air Brigade at considerable cost to that force. His sketch book (he was a commercial artist before he signed up) was confiscated on return to the UK, never to be returned to him, and his unit was hidden away for months to keep them out of communication with the public. His official 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment memorial that I have beside me as I write this makes no mention of the role of the Poles whatsoever and perpetrates the official line that this operation was a wonderful Anglo-American success story.
Dad thought that this film (movie in US speak) was a great revelation despite the opposition in some quarters to its making. As the old saying goes, in war the first casualty is truth.
The US had a higher degree of success further along the waterways but much of Holland as we then called it was left abandoned and in the bitter winter of 1944/45 thousands of civilians froze and starved - "hongerwinter" - to death as the Nazis took everything they could in revenge. It was only in the spring of 45 that the Canadian forces provided freedom too late for so many Dutch victims of all ages.
Thanks for your comment, but if you're interested in the background, this story really does deserve a second look because much of what I first read in A Bridge Too Far way back in 1977 before seeing the film in the cinema turns out to be bunk, and that's thanks to new evidence that has emerged only in the last 10-12 years. Swedish historian Christer Bergström has probably done the best revision of Ryan's work in his book, Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), using unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection held at Ohio State University, and seeks to debunk the many myths in the film.
Please don't ever stop pausing and talking about what you're watching. You have many great insights into stuff that people who've already watched what you're reacting to might not have thought about. You're always perceptive and above all... it's like sitting down to watch a show with a great mate. Thanks for all you do!
The film's original version (VHS and DVD) had inbuilt subtitles for the foreign language sections in the same yellow font as the place lables. For some unknown reason, the online version of the film cut the translation subtitles.
Surprised i don't see it elsewhere in comments but there was a 1946 movie about Arnhem called 'Theirs Is the Glory'(also known as Men of Arnhem). A bridge too far is essentially a remake giving a broader picture. It's pretty accurate depiction of the battle because ALL the cast were actually the real soldiers or people there that were in that battle and of course made not long after the real battle so the location was pretty genuine too and no sets were used. Its on TH-cam th-cam.com/video/fiFeYxlPYy4/w-d-xo.html
Been to the airborne march 6 years ago, and have taken the longest route 4 years in a row. The people of öesterbech and Arnhem celebrate a huge memorial festival, the first weekend of September every fall.
Despite the grimm history and the trauma of rebuilding. Different military teams from all over the world, compete in forced marching in formation, but without the gear and weapons, for 2 days straight. And we all culminate on the festival ground to be dismissed from the competition, and we receive the last order from the mayor and then the parties begin and keep on drinking and dancing for one last night.
The route is around 28 kilometres and you earn a little medal for your uniform.. I can definitely recommend a trip to Arnhem at least once, just to see the war museum..
The Commander of the Airborne forces taking part in the attack, General Browning (played in the film by Dirk Bogart) did actually protest. When asked how long 1st Airborne Division could hold the bridge at Arnhem he said "We can hold out for 4 days, but I think we may be going a bridge too far!" Hence the name of the film and the book it was based on.
*Bogarde. That's true, but the quote may have its origins in Browning's deliberations with Montgomery on selecting the target Rhine crossing on 3/4 September for Operation Comet - the British 2nd Army sector was between Arnhem in the Netherlands and Wesel in Germany. There were a number of pros and cons with both options but Arnhem means crossing an extra river because the German Rhine splits into the Neder Rijn and the Waal after crossing the Netherlands border, so the Arnhem option means an additional major bridge to secure. It turned out that Browning was right on both the time the Arnhem bridge could be held and the operation going a bridge too far.
I really wonder about that. Did Browning say it before the mission, or after it had already proved to be a failure? Doesn't really matter though does it because the risks were assessed and the mission went ahead regardless, just like Pickett's Charge and the invasion at Gallipoli.
@@thomast8539 - it's said afterwards in the film by Dirk Bogarde as a reference to an earlier conversation, but in reality it's recorded by Cornelius Ryan as during a planning meeting, I think the 3/4 September meeting of Browning and Montgomery to chose the target between Arnhem and Wesel for Comet (scheduled 7/8 September and finally cancelled on the 10th) and only recorded in Dempsey's diary, but the next paragraph records Montgomery asking Browning when he can be ready and Browning replies the 15th or 16th, with a citation of '* Minutes of the first planning meeting, First Allied Airborne Army operational file 1014-1017.', which must be for Market Garden.
Either way, I'm think it was very well judged by Browning because the tanks did get to Nijmegen in less than two days and 1st Airborne held Arnhem bridge for four. Browning was also proved right to dismiss the aerial photo of tanks in the Arnhem area when the photo was found in a Dutch archive in 2015 and studied by the RAF's Air Historical Branch, so I think Browning has been very under appreciated in the intervening decades.
@davemac1197
Roy Urquhart wrote to Browning's widow, the author Daphne du Maurier and personally apologised for the way he was portrayed in A Bridge Too Far.
Great movie!
The bridge at Arnhem and all buildings around it were destroyed so the area was a wasteland.
After the war new buildings and roads were build so for the movie they shot the scenes of the bridge and surrounding areas mostly in the town of Deventer wich ,to this day, has the same sceneray. The bridges at Arnhem and deventer are lookalikes, so to speak.
Some shots were taken at Nijmegen bridge as well.
I live in Apeldoorn, very close to Arnhem so I visited the bridge and landingzones several times and when I cross the bridge on some occasions, I'm still overwhelmed of what took place there .
The stone pilars of the bridge are original and war damage is still visable!
Thank you so much for this reaction videos and comments!
One of the main issues with Market Garden was that it depended on almost everything going exactly to plan. It was all so interconnected that if one element failed the whole thing was in jeopardy. Almost everything needed to go right and there wasn't a lot of wiggle room if things went south. There were very few contingencies built in that allowed for a secondary objective to be secured. One of the oldest adages of war is that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. It's actually a testimony to how good of soldiers these troops were that they came as close to pulling it off as they did.
I don't think that's true at all. The operation failed not because a fragile element of it failed or that the Germans did something unexpected to cause it. The failure was a command failure in one regiment to follow the plan at Nijmegen. What happened after the war was that Gavin did not want to throw a subordinate officer under the bus, which I think most people would agree was an honourable sentiment, and he took most of the blame onto his own shoulders (he was responsible for his divisional plan being carried out after all) and even asked Browning for help in muddying the waters over the relative priorities of the Nijmegen bridge versus the Groesbeek heights, and Browning seems to have been happy to help out in correspondence.
Cornelius Ryan in his original research interviewed Gavin in 1967 and Gavin did touch on the internal politics within the 82nd Airborne Division, but that aspect of the story did not find its way into the book and the full story did not come out until about 10-12 years ago, after the key players had all passed away:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
Put Us Down In Hell - A Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
The 508th Connection, chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge, Zig Boroughs (2013)
It should be noticeable that this film does not show anything about what happened in Nijmegen on the first day at all. It's completely ommitted from the narrative, and the conventional narrative on Market Garden was established by Ryan's book and cemented into the public consciousness by this Hollywood film. People become entrenched in their beliefs, just like the CIA believed OBL was still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or probably dead, until one analyst proved he was living in a house in Pakistan. History does often work like that.
@@davemac1197 I appreciate the additional information and I'll look into some of the sources you cited to see if my opinion changes. My interest in this operation started largely because of the involvement of the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade under General Sosabowski. I have family members who fought in France with the Free Polish forces and others with General Anders in the Polish 2 Corps.
@@donpietruk1517 - that's interesting, and there are plenty of misunderstandings on the role the Poles played at Arnhem. The worst one being the suggestion that they were made scapegoats for the failure of the operation, which is an appalling slur, and also technically impossible because of their late arrival. To be frank, their planned role if things went well was simply to complete the eastern sector of the planned divisional perimeter around Arnhem on D+2, but it was not to be.
The Brigade made an important contribution - unplanned - to helping save the remnants of the 1st Airborne Division in Oosterbeek and enable their evacuation across the Rijn. Montgomery wrote to General Sosabowski after the operation to praise him and his Brigade for their efforts and to ask for recommendations for awards. He then received reports from Browning and Horrocks that Sosabowski was difficult to work with (Gene Hackman got that bit right if not the accent) and he was insubordinate to Horrocks at the 24 September Valburg conference (not in the movie), and that prompted Montgomery to write to Alan Brooke (Chief of the Imperial General Staff) to have the Brigade removed from his command and perhaps sent to Italy where other Polish units were serving. This somehow got conflated into the scapegoating thing and I think that is ignorant and inexcusable. Even the Germans complained that the Poles were firing on their medics, but Geneva Conventions notwithstanding, I can't really blame the Poles!
Another inaccurate allegation made and appears in this film is that the Polish parachute drop was a slaughter on the drop zone, but this is not accurate. Casualties were light and only minimal fire came from German units to the east of the rail line because they were not expecting the drop in their rear on the unscheduled and re-arranged drop zone near Driel. The reason the entire 1st Battalion failed to arrive (except for their mortar platoon, which neatly replaced the missing 2nd Battalion mortar platoon) was that a radio recall message went out due to bad weather, but only the lead plane of the 1st Battalion serial received the recall and turned around. They dropped days later on an 82nd Airborne drop zone near Grave and road marched to join the Brigade.
The problem with the Polish Parachute Brigade is that they were under the command of the Polish Government-in-exile based in London, and only attached to the British Army operationally, so it was always a difficult relationship to manage. The Brigade was raised (from an ordinary rifle brigade given parachute training) in the hope they could be used in the Warsaw uprising, but Warsaw was out of aircraft range of British bases and the Soviets refused permission to use bases in Russia. I'm sure you're aware of the cynical tactic by the Soviets of stopping their advance during the uprising, allowing the Germans to put it down.
The Polish story at Arnhem is not a happy one, but their contribution was overwhelmingly positive. It's unfortunate they got caught up in some of the BS surrounding the operation, as has happened to many of the key British players as well. I hope you explore some of the recent references. The best overall work on Market Garden as a whole is Swedish historian Christer Bergström's Arnhem 1944: An Epic Battle Revisited vols 1 and 2 (2019, 2020), based on unpublished documents and interviews in the Cornelius Ryan Collection at Ohio State University and seeks to debunk the many myths contained in the Hollywood film.
My Dad loved this film and read many books related to this part of the War. He was born on December 28th in Colombo Sri-Lanka just as Pearl Harbor Fell.
Amazing thing about that movie is all the planes, all the parachutists and all the vehicles were real. No CGI.
Great timing By the way as the 4 day march of the world was last week and ended on friday , over 10.000 people military personnel and civilians from around the world . walked the 200 km to Nijmegen.
Another latter part of WWII 'bridge film' you might like is the 1969 'The Bridge at Remagen', directed by John Guillermin. Of course the 101st Airborne effort in Market Garden is featured in the excellent mini-series 'Band of Brothers', and there is a documentary film from 1946 featuring people who were involved called 'Theirs is the Glory' by director Brian Desmond Hurst. And for an overview of the war the best documentary series ever made about WWII; the BBC's 26 episode 'World At War' from [1973].
World at War was made by Thames TV.
@@swanvictor887 Doh! Thanks Swan Victor, I should have checked, it's a long time since I've watched it.
@@alexanderbeta-werburghii6176 You were correct about the programme being the best documentary series! Amazing interviews and brilliantly made, still holds up today.
You remember the Victoria Cross documentary that you reacted to, Jeremy Clarkson's father in law won the medal during the battle at Arnhem. This movie is about that operation
When the first boots hit the ground there were still aircraft waiting to take off back in Britain to drop the troops off.
A controversial movie at the time. There were protests from some veterans about the historical inaccuracies. Movies of course are always fiction, designed to sell to the largest possible audience. I object though when they use the names of real people.
It's like the film Bridge over the river Kwai but that film was total bull nothing like the character or suffering under the Japanese.
i must say this is the best war film ever glad you watching it :)
My great uncle was a Horse glider pilot who was supposed to land at Arnhem in this operation but was hospitalized the week before. He had previously after midnight on the morning of D-Day landed his glider next to Pegasus Bridge. So lucky twist of fate for him in light of what happened in Arnhem, landing on top of an SS Panzer Division.
*Horsa. If your great uncle was one of the 12 pilots who flew the 6 Horsa gliders that captured Pegasus Bridge by coup de main on D-Day in Normandy, then it's almost certain he was due to be one of the pilots to fly a similar mission for Operation Comet to capture the Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave bridges by coup de main at dawn. There were to be 6 gliders for each bridge, delivering a complete company from each of the three Airlanding Battalions of 1st Airlanding Brigade. Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork, who flew the lead glider at Pegasus Bridge, was due to fly the lead at the Nijmegen bridge and was not looking forward to doing it all over again - I think he felt it was pushing his luck. In interviews after the war, Wallwork said he and his co-pilot planned to give themselves up at the first opportunity and sit out the war in a POW camp!
When Montgomery cancelled Comet on 10 September due to the worsening intelligence picture, he replaced it with the larger operation Market Garden, adding the two American airborne divisions. This involved the 1st Allied Airborne Army and the US IX Troop Carrier Command in the planning process, and due to the need to employ their entire airlift capacity, Flak became a big concern for General Paul Williams of IX TCC and felt they could not afford to loose a single aircraft (that line was inaccurately given to an RAF character in the film). One of the changes that Williams insisted on was the removal of the three coup de main glider missions, much to Jim Wallwork's relief.
Instead, General Urquhart planned for the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron to use their Jeeps to take the Arnhem bridge by coup de main, and at Grave Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR (a very experienced unit that had just returned to the 82nd Airborne Division after being detached for the Anzio operation) insisted on a special drop zone for one company at the near end of the Grave bridge and got his way. There was no coup de main mission planned for the Nijmegen bridge.
I digress slightly, but landing "on top of" two SS-Panzer-Divisions is also one of the persistent myths of Arnhem - the two divisions of the II.SS-Panzerkorps were each reduced to a regimental battlegroup in strength, and sub-units were distributed around towns and villages all over the eastern Netherlands. At Arnhem itself was only SS-Panzer-Regiment 9 with just five tanks - three Panthers and two Flakpanzer IV 'Möbelwagen', plus 100 Panther crewmen who had lost their tanks in Normandy and were acting as an 'alarm' company of infantry, and the 120-man Werkstatt (workshop) unit. The regiment was so depleted that the most senior combat officer was an SS-Obersturmführer called Adolf Harder, equivalent in rank to an Oberleutnant or 1st Lieutenant, and previously the commander of the 7.Kompanie.
The removal of the glider coup de main attacks is baffling, as the tug aircraft were all RAF crewed and the air maps for Operation Comet in Dutch researcher RG Poulussen's book, Little Sense Of Urgency (2014), shows the release points for the gliders were 6 Km from the Flak at the bridges - the same release point in fact for all the gliders landing at Wolfheze with the rest of the 1st Airborne Division, so the tug aircraft did not fly near the Flak at the bridges.
@@davemac1197 phone spell check got me again. He landed near the bridge and the spot has an outline or monument like the others. He was supposed to be the allied soldier furthest into France for a time. He used to visit every year and he knew the cafe owner and his wife from that night.
After the war went back to York and carried on as a tailor again in his shop near York Minster at the top of Stonegate before retirement and living by the coast.
@@davidmarsden9800 - all of them marvellous men. My grandfathers were a hospital pharmacist in Dorset - receiving the American casualties evacuated from Omaha Beach, and in the Royal Navy on destroyers - mostly Norway and the Russian convoys.
@@davemac1197 Despite their losses and need to refit and reorganize they inflicted heavy damage on the airborne troops who by the nature of their role were very lightly armed and equipped. The German Fallschirmjagers in Italy had the same problem.
Your SS Panzer Regiment 9 under SS Obersturmfuhrer Adolf Harder I don't recognize.
I am aware of Waffle SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Walter Harzer, Commander of the 9th SS Armoured Division Hohenstaufen. Prior to 1944 he was a staff officer of the 10th SS Armoured Division Frundsberg, under SS Brigadefuhrer Heinz Harmel and both units were at Arnhem.
Harzer had an armoured reconnaissance unit consisting of 40 vehicles including flak cannons, tanks, half tracks with MG42s.
This was commanded by SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Viktor Grabnor.
Although they are not completely equivalent to allied ranks, as the Waffen SS units and ranks were based roughly on Roman legions and ranks.
SS Brigadefuhrer is equivalent to Brigadier General.
SS Obersturnbannfuhrer is equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel.
SS Hauptsturmfuhrer is equivalent to Captain.
The Waffen SS has a confusing amount of ranks up to Lieutenant, most look more senior than they are, and more than the allies have between Private and Lieutenant.
There can be confusion with Harzer's rank because he was also in command of an SS Polizei unit as well because he was also a member of the SD, the SS Security Service set up by Reinhardt Heydrich, which covered everything from foreign intelligence, Einsatzgruppen, Gestapo and Polizei, and he had a SD rank as well of SS Oberfuhrer or Senior Colonel. The SS was a state within a state which can muddy the waters a lot as essentially he was two different men in one.
@@davemac1197 They were a different breed back then. When you watch the news these days about the different politics and attitudes it begs the question what happens if the Russians or anyone else turns up to plant their flag here?😭
The airborne element in Operation Market Garden did not intrude on the Allied supply problem since they got everything - or were supposed to get it - by plane directly from England. However, the XXX Corps advancement from the south meant that all the rest of the Allied had to stop.
Ah, the movie some folks have reviewed as "A Film Too Long" ;)
And incredible, classic film. Many big starts
Probably the best movie cast of all time.
WW2 was one of the worst events in human history but the LOGISTICS of the war showed what we are capable of when working together towards one purpose. It was truly mind boggling how much material was manufactured, shipped and organised during the war from all countries.
181 aircraft carriers were made in the time it would take 1 to be made before and after the war.
4.3 million vehicles (tanks, trucks, etc)
Over 6 million artillery, mortars and big weapons.
Over 600 000 aircraft.
55 000 ships(military not cargo)
And that's just the Allies production.
All for less than 1/30th the value of the Apple company.
"never understood how i would jump out of a perfectly good airplane" well ... i was passenger i an C-160 Transall several times ... after going in with my first sarajevo-approach i totally understood why there are some guys jumping out of it half way xD
i did get to meet one of the British Para's that took part in this battle, in the late 80's when he taught my parents ballroom dancing
So glad to see you getting your head around this one Alan. It's quite a story and takes a while to tell, but it's also well worth hearing that story being told. Plenty to think about from this one. Looking forward to the next part. Be well. 😉
I spent from 80 to 84 in the Coast Guard. While waiting for my A school, I was sent to Dubuque Iowa. WTF is in Dubuque Iowa? I asked .River tender.
Lmao. Yeah I saw some of the posts you could get and was like there's no coast there. But river tenders and ice breakers seemed like they'd be fun
In September 1944 the war was in no way winding down. The Germans were still defending and counter-attacking all along the line. Casualties for infantry units were along WW1 lines. Hence Operation Market Garden, to try for a breakthrough.
My second war film that I can quote whole passages from " we would like to accept your surrender, but im afraid we habent got room. Sorry " or robert redford " hail amry mother of god" whilst paddling furiously. Love the theme tune as well 🙂
I’m so glad you’ve done this, it’s one of my favourite movies of all time.
Three pieces of trivia: American reporter Walter Cronkite was reporting on the war and came in with the glider troops. One of the paratrooper made the jump with his pet rabbit. When this movie came out, the daughter of Polish General Urqhart was thrilled that Sean Connery was playing her father in this film. She went to him to tell him and his reply was along the lines of Sean Who?
The Polish General was called Sosabowski and both General Urquhart and Sean Connery are Scottish.
I think that was a pet chicken, not a rabbit. And Mad Jack Churchill was even more colorful. He stormed the Normandy beachead with a long bow and broadsword.
@@thomast8539 That's what I get for repeating historical facts from ancient memory. Thanks for the corrections.
@@bfdidc6604 Well, don't thank me too fast. Apparently Mad Jack did not land in Normandy. I say good on both of us for trying to help maintain history.
I have been to Arnhem. It was quite surreal to climb the bridge and see all the bullet holes still in it. All the buildings near the bridge the british used are no longer there because German shelling flattened the place. They're just parking lots now. There were even some British Airborne vets there describing the battle to visitors
Is the damage on the foundations only because as far as I know these are the only bits left after WW2. The actual bridge was destroyed in 1944. There is a nearby train bridge that still has bullet holes in it though.
@@floydster23 Yeah, either end the original steps up to the deck and everything are still there. The span over the river was destroyed
It's hard to comprehend the numbers when dealing with WW2. EVERYTHING is on a huge scale, but for some context, the British forces in Operation Desert Storm (Gulf War 1), totalled about 53,000 from all services, over a 6-week campaign. The 35,000 here are just the advance bridge-taking teams for a three-day operation. There's also all the other troops moving in to link up with them, but I'm finding it hard to get numbers for them. Hundreds of thousands though.
I've actually read the book The book actually went into depth about the absolute chaos that the German army faced when they left the Netherlands One of the incidents mentioned was how in one small town they actually had a Garrison of three German soldiers and they actually left town in the middle of the night on children's scooters
I actually am working on a fan edit of this movie, changing/removing some scenes to make it more historical accurate (like removing the part where the German general dismissed the maps as fake, he actually did not dismiss them as fake during the battle). One thing that is to be noted how horrible the fighting was, they stationed German soldiers in the Arnhem region, that were Stalingrad vets, seeing they already went through hell so they got a calm place to spend the war basically. Some of those vets that survived, stated that the urban fighting in like Arnhem were far worse than what they faced in Stalingrad. My grandmother as a 14 year old girl survived the battle at Nijmegen inside a bunker.
Model dismissed the captured documents. It was General Kurt Student of 1.Fallschirm-Armee that received the documents captured from a glider that crashed near his headquarters at Vught translated, and found a resupply schedule for 101st Airborne Division (the glider was carrying the 101st's liaison officer to Browning's Corps HQ at Groesbeek). Using his own airborne experience he understood the significance of the information and was able to extrapolate the airlift schedule for all three divisions from this single document. Model was not convinced, so Student used his own Luftwaffe chain of command to arrange for fighter cover over the drop zones at the appropriate times. Thankfully the airlifts were delayed by bad weather and the fighters were back at their bases in Germany being refuelled when the transports arrived.
The German SS units of II.SS-Panzerkorps at Arnhem were not Stalingrad veterans, but had first fought at Tarnopol in Ukraine, before being transferred west to Normandy after the Allied invasion, and after holding open the neck of the Falaise pocket to allow other units to escape they were withdrawn to the Netherlands to refit. Tarnopol was a fortified city and the fighting was described as a mini-Stalingrad with severe street fighting.
I have studied A Bridge Too Far on a scene-by-scene basis and just compared it to Cornelius Ryan's incomplete book (he had terminal cancer and published it unfinished) raather than what we know to be true today, I found that 50% of screen time was historically accurate, about 40% altered to suit the director's politics, compromised or conflated to compress events or characters, and other changes to get actors on board the project, and about 10% that's just made up and didn't happen at all.
Bless your grandmother and greetings to all our friends in the Netherlands from the UK.
this was high commands great "home by christmas" plan. it was never ever getting called off despite the obvious issues it had. it was a death or glory plan, and there wasnt much glory.
Hello mate I just wanted to say thank you for choosing A Bridge Too Far, it's a fantastic movie. Anyway I can't wait for part two, take care mate.
My Great Uncle was 1 of the lucky ones to get out of there!
There are many historical faults in this movie. When the German Field Marshall Walter Model found out that British airborne troops had landed just a kilometer from his position, he did not only run away with his cigars. He fled, yes, that was his duty as a supreme commander, but he stayed long enough to give an essential General Order: "All present forces are to organize their fighting ability, find the enemy, and attack". It's just in recent years that historians have started to accept the fact that the Germans won the Battle of Arnhem - against all odds. They were taken by surprise, they were in a bad fix, totally unprepared, but out of nothing, they reorganized themselves and fought back with success (and absolute cruelty). This was Wehrmacht's last straw, their outstanding organization ability, and Walter Model knew it.
It's a film that makes you proud and angry at the same time .
Like the Aussies feel about Breaker Morant heh?
Supposedly, producer Joe Levine did such a great job of selling this movie to international distributors that it was in profit before it was even released.
If you want a good movie made closer to WW2 end try the Cruel Sea. Made in 1953. The book by Nicholas Moonsarrat is a great read as well.
The Western Approaches museum is here in Liverpool 😊😊😊
My dad was a Para in the 70's and took me and my brother to see the jump reenactment used in the film.
Some of the paratroopers got court up on the planes rudder-ailerons on the back of the plane and died before the plane returned home being no way to retrieve them in the air. I remember seeing a doco and there were at least three that I saw in amongst the mass of planes flapping around at the back of the plane. Absolutely horrifying as if jumping out of the plane wasn't bad enough. The planes were American DC3S or as the British called them Dakotas one of the most strong ww2 airframes ever built. Build before the war as a passenger plane everything was over engineered witch is why they they were so tough and some of them are still flying today.
Wow what a film great reaction. I must watch it In full.
Saw this at the flicks when it 1st came out, great film.
Ignoring all of the historical glitches, one can only marvel at the greatest ensemble cast of the 70's, practical effects that will NEVER be seen again, and cinematography that is unrivaled.
It’s still funny to me that Walter Model actually thought the Brits are coming for his ass because he was a major general
Xxx corps was the faster advancing unit in the allied army after the break out!
the history buffs channel does a great video on this movie discussing what they get right and wrong in the movie
Got to love the armchair strategists second-guessing everything with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.
I think it was this film, either Anthony Hopkins or Dirk Bogarde was actually played their own commanding officer.
Dirk Bogarde served in the RAF as a photo interpreter selecting bombing targets on General Dempsey's British 2nd Army staff, including during Market Garden, and knew most of the main personalities, including Browning, who he played. He was unhappy with the way Browning's role was written, as was Browning's widow, who was very upset about it, but I think he opted to play Browning as somewhat conflicted in order to mitigate the worst aspects of the script, rather than refuse the part and have someone else play Browning as the director wished.
On D-Day, the actor Richard Todd had been in the group to attack and hold Pegasus Bridge. In the film 'The Longest Day', he played Major Howard, his C.O. on 6th June, and another actor played Todd...
@@paulstroud2647 - almost correct - Todd was a paratrooper in the 7th Parachute Battalion that reinforced Howard's Company of Ox & Bucks Light Infantry glider troops that took Pegasus bridge, and Todd did play their CO, Major Howard, in the film.
@@davemac1197 Thanks, the old memory is going a bit and I couldn't quite find the answer using Google.
BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI NEXT MATE :o) IT WON 7 OSCARS
Hey Allen, this is the action that Clarkson covered in the documentary "Victoria Cross for Valour" where his father in law was awarded the VC.
this is one of my fave films
my grandfather was on second day of d day thenm he was one of the first to liberate belsen
And now fools try to sell books & dvd's saying it was all faked and set up by the allies. 🙄
when they made the gliders for the movie they were told not to use them as they weren't fit to use
If you haven't already done it, by now, (2024), 'The Battle of Britain' is a great film to watch/react to.
The Dutch people have great respect for America and in particular the USAF. The country was starving in the latter stages of WW2. American bombers would drop food to the desperate population. To the American flyers this was known as the chow drop.
The RAF was involved as well - it was named operation Manna.
My grandad was taken POW at Oosterbeek, whole thing was a clusterfuck, but they did what they could.
One problem was there was one main highway and it wasn't called hells highway for nothing, and the high command in Britain ignored intelligence from the Dutch underground about two SS divisions in the area, troops dropped too far outside Arnhem etc, a lot to go wrong, i have been there many times and will be there in September again.
The biggest problem with A Bridge Too Far was that it established myths that are either completely untrue, or at best, misleading.
1. There was one main supply route for XXX Corps, which was the Guards Armoured Division's customary 'Club Route' that ran from the Normandy breakout all the way into Germany to eventually terminate at Bremen (so it was nothing new or special to Market Garden), but there were numerous 'Heart Route' diversions that used the many redundent alternative crossings targeted by the operation. There were about 24 bridge targets in the airborne operation and a minimum of 10 were needed to get XXX Corps to Arnhem. Some of the 'Heart Route' alternatives were used, notably the Heumen lock bridge on the Maas-Waal canal was used because the Honinghutje highway bridge on the main road 'Club Route' crossing was damaged when the rail bridge next to it was demolished by the Germans, and it was deemed to be suitable only for light vehicles and not able to support the 30 ton Sherman tanks. The flanking VIII and XII Corps were also using their own 'Spade' and 'Diamond' main supply routes, but you rarely ever hear about them in most books. It's a myth that the tanks were restricted to staying on the main highway because the ground was too soft on either side, but that was not the case in most places. During the breakout, the tanks maneuvred off the highway to attack German forces on the flanks, but in the film they stayed on the road to exaggerate the myth on screen.
2. The nickname "Hell's Highway" was coined by the 101st Airborne, because their stretch of the 'Club Route' was the longest and the 506th PIR in particular was marched and counter-marched up and down the highway several times to fight fires along its course. See Saving Private Ryan for a mastwr class on how to gripe in the US Army. I think Michael Caine's line about the first bit being the wide end was an attempt at humour, but the reality was that different sections of the chosen route were main highways and lesser roads at different points.
3. The two divisions of II.SS-Panzerkorps were NOT ignored at all. They were part of the deteriorating intelligence picture in the Netherlands that prompted Montgomery to cancel Operation Comet on 10 September, involving just the 1st Airborne Division and Polish Brigade to take the bridges at Arnhem, Nijmegen and Grave, and replace it with Operation Market Garden, upgraded by adding the two American Airborne Divisions. Both SS divisions were known to be reduced to regimental battlegroups with few if any tanks by the fighting in Normandy, because it was British units in Normandy that had reduced them to that condition. Most of the German forces sent against Market Garden were replacement and training units of the Reserve Army mobilised by the 'Valkyrie' Plan (see the 2008 Tom Cruise film 'Valkyrie' which explains how this works) in the first week of September 1944 to plug the gap in the German lines that had opened up in Belgium/Netherlands and to man the Westwall defence line in Germany. The impact of II.SS-Panzerkorps on the battle was greater than anticipated, but also exaggerated because all the minor units involved are too numerous to mention in most histories. To put things in perspective, Model had only 84 operational tanks in his entire Heersgruppe B front facing Montgomery's 21st Army Group with 2,400 and the US 1st Army at Aachen. While 1st Airborne Division and the Polish Brigade, now concentrated at Arnhem in the new Market Garden plan, took 83 anti-tank guns with them, and if you include the American divisions at Nijmegen and Eindhoven, that's more anti-tank guns than the Germans could possibly send tanks.
4. Despite being dropped about 11 Km from Arnhem bridge, 3 Km further than the 508th PIR were dropped from the Nijmegen bridge, and dropped 30 minutes later, and had to overcome resistance along the way (even Frost's battalion route had MGs, mortars and armoured cars), the 1st Parachute Brigade secured the Arnhem bridge and denied its use to the enemy for 80 hours, while the 508th landing sooner and closer and with zero opposition failed to seize their main objective. Why? It was a command failure at the top of the regiment, which had first manifested on their first combat operation in Normandy and not dealt with before Market Garden. Distance from the objective was not an issue that couldn't be overcome if you move quickly enough, clearly, for the highly experienced Colonel Frost. Gavin knew that and made his instructions to the 508th very clear, but they were not followed. I recommend 82nd Airborne historian Phil Nordyke's combat history of the 508th - Put Us Down In Hell (2012) for the details of the regiment's performance in Market Garden and earlier Normandy.
5. I lost count of "a lot of moving parts" in this video alone, and it's something I hear all the time about Market Garden, but the plan was broken down into small parts to be carried out by every sub-unit in the three Airborne Divisions and the ground forces involved. The mission assigned to the 508th PIR was not any more difficult than many others, but perhaps it was better suited to the more experienced and aggressive 505th. Responsibility for the 82nd Airborne's divisional plan was James Gavin's, and it was perhaps honourable that he took much of the blame for the failure at Nijmegen on his own shoulders to avoid throwing a subordinate officer under the bus, but in doing so he has muddied the waters for historians trying to work out the 'why' of everything. Cornelius Ryan interviewed Gavin, but none of this came out in his book, and obviously was never going to be in a Hollywood film.
This film is among the best to be made about true incidents of the Second World War. The acting, editing, screenwriting, and direction are each excellent. A semi-autobiographical account of the war as it effected children interned by the Japanese may be seen in Spielberg's excellent Empire of the Sun. It stars Christian Bale in his first leading rôle, aged just 13. I think it's the very best WW2 film.
My das, ex far said exactly the same...never jump.from a perfectly good aircraft, insane.
it's so cool seeing you watch this! Especially after you made your reaction to Jeremy Clarkson's documentary on his ex-father-in-law and his Victoria Cross at Arnhem!
Can anyone make recommendations for movies to watch or is it a patreon only thing?