But it should be the Wilhelmina Canal (Dutch Queen) and not the Wilhelm Canal as shown on the map. All bridges over the canal were blown up by the germans.
Operation Market Garden was my cousin's first combat drop with the 101st Airborne. He died on Sep 20, just 5 days short of his 19th birthday and is buried in the Netherlands.
So young. Must have been terrible for his family. A lot of young men never came back from that War. A lot of young men never come back from any War actually. You must be very proud of him despite the sadness of it all.
@@peterhall728 He was an only son whose father had died, his mother had remarried and he had dropped out of high school. I like to think that he found a family with the men of the 101st Airborne. He is remembered and well cared for at Margraten Cemetery by the people of Belgium and the Netherlands.
@@buzbuz33-99each year on the 4th of May our country is silent for two minutes and comes to a complete standstill to pay tribute to heroes like your cousin who fell for our freedom.
I grew up in Ede, where the 1st Airborne landed and read a lot of books about and talked to many people that lived through the battle. It was crazy! But one thing that always amazed me is how the people of Oosterbeek and the paras cared for each other and kept a very strong bond even decades after the war.
@@Niels_Dn it was because of the help from Dutch citizens of Arnhem caring for our wounded my uncle included he survived and was taken prisoner. So I would personally like to thank all of the citizens of the Netherlands 🇳🇱 for taking care of our wounded during the battle, hiding some of the survivors until they could get back to their own lines, but most of all for the wonderful job they do of looking after the graves of our dead troopers and the American troopers who never came home and for keeping their memories, courage and deeds alive by telling the future generations that come along, teaching this history in your schools. Thank You 🙏 so Much.
Dad was there, 101st Airborne and got wounded, recovered in England and then was in Bastogne for the Battle of the Bulge. May he and his brothers in arms RIP.
@@swgeek4310 I left the US Army in 2000, when I was passed over for promotion, and it seemed peace and further downsizing was ahead in the 21st century. After September 11th 2001, I joined many others in Volunteering for service in the US armed forces. I was dubious of the young men, the "Millennials"... I was an Infantry NCO, a Squad Leader, and in combat I was impressed by the Courage, Determination, and Skill of those young soldiers, as well as older veterans, like me. We trained them well, and they took that training deadly serious! Soldiers from the UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and many other nations were significantly More Skilled, More Fit, and just as Courageous as their WWII grandfathers!
I'll be doing my memorial walk around Tarrant Rushton airfield this Sunday and the 17th. It's where my grandfather flew from as part of the 'Recce' squadron with the 'special' jeeps by glider. He was lucky to survive, a lot of his mates from D troop weren't so fortunate. May they all rest in peace.
YAWNING,you're a confused nationalistic stool spitting out complete fantasy nonsense. Monty wouldn't cross the Rhine for 6 more months after his Arnhem ass kicking and that was with the US 9th army helping the tardy tart. He got run off the continent at Dunkirk,was slow in the desert, schooled by Patton in Sicily, dithered in Italy, and absolutely stuck at CAEN. And like you didn't appear at Arnhem as 34,400 troops go into the Netherlands and 17,000 came out while he hid. But in Britain they call you a FIELD MARSHALL for that crap *Monty admissions of guilt - after the war of course* "Montgomery Memoirs page 276 " "The next day, Bedell Smith came to see me the next day to say that Eisenhower had decided to act as I recommended. The Saar Thrust to be stopped. Three US Division (12 US AG) were to be grounded and their transports used to supply extra maintenance to 21 Army Group. The bulk of the 12 AG logistic support was to be given to 1 US Army on my right and I was to be allowed to deal directly with General Hodges. *As a result of these promises I reviewed my Plans with Dempsey and then fixed D-Day for the Arnhem Operation for Sunday 17th September."* *The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson, p.303 Montgomery would acknowledge as much after the war, conceding "And here I must admit a bad mistake on my part -I underestimated the difficulties of opening up the approaches to Antwerp so that we could get free use of the port."* *(Montgomery’s memoirs, p297)* *A Magnificent Disaster, by David Bennett, p. 198* Montgomery attributes the lack of full success to the fact that the II SS Panzer Corps was refitting in the area. *"We knew it was there.....we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively."* Oh others blame him also *Alan Brooke placing the blame on Bernard* *"Triumph in the West, by Arthur Bryant, From the diary of Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke* entry for 5 October 1944:Page 219" During the whole discussion one fact stood out clearly, that access to Antwerp must be captured with the least possible delay. *I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault, Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place* *Admiral Ramsay brought this out as well in the discussion and criticized Monty freely....."The mistake lay with Monty for not having made the capture of Antwerp the immediate objective at highest priority* & I let fly with all my guns at the faulty strategy we had allowed Montgomery. Our large forces were now grounded for lack of supply. Had we got Antwerp instead of the corridor we should be in a far better position for launching a knock out blow." *How about Air Marshall Tedder???* *With Prejudice, by Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander AEF, Page 599"* *Eisenhower assumed, as he and I had done all along, that whatever happened Montgomery would concentrate on opening up Antwerp. No one could say that we had not emphasized the point sufficiently by conversation and signal* *How Allied HQ Chief of Staff Bedell-Smith* *Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany,1944-45* The release of the files from German Signals by Bletchley Park conclusively showed that the 9th & 10th Panzer Divisions were re-fitting in the Arnhem area. With their Recon Battalions intact. *Yet when Bedel-Smith(SHAEF) brought this to Monty's attention "he ridiculed the idea and waved my objections airily aside"* *Monty's Chief of Staff* *Max Hastings,Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45* Freddie de Guingand Monty's Chief of Staff telephoned him saying the operation would be launched too late to exploit German disarray. That XXX Corps push to Arnhem would being made on a narrow front along one road, Monty ignored him. Montgomery’s own staff was opposed to the plan, as was his own chief of staff. *How about IKE's Private Papers?* *The Eisenhower Papers, volume IV, by Edward Chandler By early September Montgomery and other Allied leaders thought the Wehrmacht was finished . *It was this understanding that led Monty to insist on the Market-Garden Operation over the more mundane task of opening the port of Antwerp. He ignored Eisenhower's letter of Sept 4 assigning Antwerp as the primary mission for the Northern Group of Armies.*
@@bigwoody4704 With all due respect Woody, he wasn't slow in Africa, the AK was pursued 1,400 miles in 90 days, that's pretty good going for an Allied advance. Sicily is a controversial one, tbh l don't give any blame to either Patton or Monty, it was the Allied navy's and air forces who were unwilling to take heavy casualties which was the major cause of the large number of Axis troops and equipment being successfully evacuated, though it must be acknowledged that the Axis still suffered huge losses in the campaign. However it must also be acknowledged that while Pattons advance on Messina was good PR for both him and the US Army, it wasn't militarily important, in that it didn't lead to the capture or destruction of significant Axis forces. Italy was a slow start sure Woody, but look what happened when Richard McCreery ( one of Monty's armoured division commanders in the Desert ) and US commander Lucian Truscott took charge of Clarks 15th army group, they ended up capturing over a MILLION Germans in a brilliant campaign in Operation Grapeshot.
I live and give battlefield tours in Arnhem, and its a privilege to keep reading, learning and watching stories about these heroic men. I wish I could show how much this still lives in our town. Many of us, me included will be visiting both the Oosterbeek cemetery and the memorial service in the Berenkuil so we can hopefully give them the respect they forever deserve. As they say, lest we forget.
Its wonderful what you do. My father was called George . He was part of the first airborne division. He never spoke much about what happened but I know there were 12 friends who had formed a bond ,unfortunately only 4 survived my father being one of them. They lost contact after the war but in 1996 one year before my father died one of the 4 found the other 3 and they made contact. My dad was overjoyed Sadly he passed in 1997 but he said hearing their voices again made him so happy. RIP to them all . Thank you for your work ❤
The prized Arnhem bridge for which the British had fought so hard did not survive the war. As the front line stabilised south of the Rhine, B-26 Marauders of 344th Bomd Group, USAAF destroyed it on 7 October to deny its use to the Germans. It was replaced with a bridge of similar appearance in 1948 and renamed John Frost Bridege (John Frostbrug) on 17 December 1977.
My father told me that in the intervening period, during one or more severe winters, he crossed the Rhine on the ice. The crossings were marked with coal. Even light trucks could drive over the ice.
pretty much spot on without going into the whole "who's at fault for the operations failure". A cool addition to this video would have been to mention the civilian doctors and nurses of Arnhem and Oosterbeek who went out into the street to pick up wounded (civilian, British and German) and they brought them to places like Hotel Tafelberg and het Elizabeth gasthuis where makeshift hospitals were setup. Also interesting is that about 25 King Tigers were called towards Arnhem and two of them were knocked out by British para's. Also among the Germans fighting in Arnhem were Dutch SS volunteers, some of which were still in training at Amersfoort, but called in to go fight at Arnhem. A very cool collection, haven't heard of the airborne assault museum before and it's at Duxford so perfect to checkout together with the air museum there. For anyone interested in ever visiting Arnhem, its the coolest to visit it in September itself. You''ll be able to visit the Airborne museum in Oosterbeek and the Arnhem war museum 40-45 in Schaarsbergen. You also have the many activities in the city including the tour through the city you can do on your phone. Often on the weekend closests to the 17th of september you have the para jumps at the Ginkelse Heide in Ede on saturday. Last year on friday there was also a para jump at Wolfheze and a river crossing in Nijmegen on sunday.
My grandfather was with the Worcester regiment fighting the SS in elst trying to stop them pushing up to Arnhem he was killed on the 24th September cut down on a cross roads by machine gun fire he was 29 years old and is buried in oosterbeek cemetery
Market Garden was a small operation being just to establish a bridgehead, then consolidate for the next phase, the pincer on the Ruhr. All those garbage History Channel documentaries that say Monty wanted to end the war by Christmas and failed; that is complete nonsense. This vid says something similar. It was only one corps above Eindhoven. Monty had little involvement in the operation, as it was largely an FAAA operation, who were answerable only to SHAEF, using elements of Dempsey's Second Army for the ground element. Monty was left to be largely a bystander, more like an arbitrator. The FAAA was _notionally_ in the 21st Army Group.
The plan required perfection to work, but no plan survives contact with the enemy, and on top of that versus an enemy who traditionally reacted far better on the tactical level than the allies. Market Garden was defeated by low level German Officer and NCOs not waiting for orders, creating effective units and defensive lines which did not exist just hours before. It all culminated with the destruction of the 1st para brigade on black tuesday .
Market Garden was not a 100% success because the US 82nd *failed* to seize the Waal bridge on the first day. A bridge they could have walked on whistling Dixie.
Those progressives might want to have a look into what the british army was, an army to police their empire. Have a look at Mad Mitch and his highlanders in Aden, in the end of empire documentary and their mindset.
As a young teen I remember watching 'Bridge too far' a bunch of times. Later on in my later teens, I began playing (board) wargames and one of them I had was (I believe) called 'Operation Market Garden' (I still have it somewhere). The interesting thing about that particular game is each player had their own map, and moved their own units around on THEIR map, saying "i'm moving units from hex X to hex Y, and you'd only have to reveal them if your opponent could prove he had line of sight into Y, otherwise your movement was secret, you opponent knew/guessed ''SOMETHING' was going on, around X, but didn't know if you were moving 10 panzers or 10 infantry, after you proved line of sight, then you swapped the 'unknown' marker for 10 tanks/infantry (on their map) and had to move them out of LOS again or kill whomever saw them. SLOW game, but interesting. Probably the best representation of 'fog of war' in all the ww2 type games I played. I always remember thinking fondly of moving those Frundsberg & Hohensteufen panzers around...
I live in supplyzone DZ, 100 meters from the crashsite of captain Len Wilson and his Dakota FZ626. Such an amazing few days have just gone by. the memorials and commemorations were the most beautiful i can remember them be!
I went over the bridge in Nijmegen today. It's the same bridge as during the war. It's very poignany, now 80 years ago, minua six days. We Dutch are very aware of the sacrifices that were made, and of the Dutch famine during the ensuing winter.
Yep the route of market garden is peppered with commenwealth gravesites. There is almost no bigger town who has no war cemetary. memorials and signs directing to them. The irony is that other battles and operations just after market Garden in the same region were even more deadly and are mostly unknown to the public.
@@obelic71 There's such a site in the where I was born and grew up in. There are 363 graves of men, most of them around 20 years old when they fell, with the occasional officer of around 30. They were basically still children.
Good video. Difficult subject to cover in just 20 mins. One small item to add, the troops that evacuated 1 AB Div were Canadian engineers. I make a point of saying that because Canada is almost always overlooked in these videos.
@@Leonardo_33 Not forgotten. What often gets forgotten is that the Poles (not the para bde) were under command of First Canadian Army during the liberation.
Yes, it was doomed from the start. I realized this when I learned that there weren't enough aircraft to deliver the 1st Airborne on day one. 1st Airborne had to hold the drop zones for three consecutive days of drops while also taking and holding the bridge and city 8 miles away. An impossible task to ask of the size element able to be landed on day one, let alone that they were light infantry.
@Indylimburg Boyd Browning claimed 30 odd gliders to transport his headquarters to Holland , which provided no tactical or strategic advantage to the operation. Vital gliders which 1st Airborne needed.
@@creampuff5036 Madness. Another issue for 1st Airborne was that Arnhem was at the limit of where Allied close air support fighters could go, so they couldn't get air support.
On 10th Sept 1944 Montgomery cancelled the small Operation, COMET, after many delays. General Miles Dempsey expressed concerns over intelligence of increased enemy presence. At 6 pm Brereton holds the initial planning meeting of First Allied Airborne Army on operation Sixteen which would be renamed MARKET GARDEN, based on the concept of Comet. Brereton told those present that all decisions made from this point onwards *will be final.*
3:12 - "we have no planning maps for operation MARKET GARDEN" - could this be because MARKET was planned by 1st Allied Airborne Army and the maps are held by the US Air Force (inherited from the US Army Air Force)? I also question the 12 September date as the start of the planning process as MARKET (originally known as SIXTEEN in outline form and they should have the SIXTEEN outline document in the National Records Office at Kew) as the planning started from 10 September after COMET was cancelled, and much of the preparation for COMET should be available as that was planned by the British Airborne Corps staff in the period 4-10 September and formed the basis for MARKET, as well as a previous 1st AAA plan called LINNET which recycled a triple division air plan. 3:35 - it would have been nice if the German heavy Flak batteries were shown on the map in the correct four locations around Arnhem and not as three guns stuck on the town itself. People might appreciate the unsuitability of the zone south of the Arnhem highway bridge until the Poles were due on D+2, when it was assumed the southern and western heavy Flak batteries would have been dealt with. 6:55 - Krafft's stop line did not extend that far north. It is debated that he had a platoon (reserve platoon 'Wiegand') in the woodland on the north side of the railway embankment or only had troops on the embankment itself, as accounts vary. He certainly did not have the troops to cover the gap to the woodland on the south side of the main Amsterdam road, because this was the route 1st Parachute Battalion took to outflank Krafft. 7:23 - the Reconnaissance Squadron was not supposed to be used in an offensive role either, but their use to seize a bridge was also planned for cancelled operation LINNET at Tournai, so this was not the first time this suggesed use of the Squadron had been made. Its CO, Major Freddie Gough, wanted a Troop of Tetrarch light tanks used by 6th Airborne in Normandy to spearhead their advance to Arnhem, and when that was refused he wanted .50 cal MGs on the Jeeps, and that was refused, and twin Vickers 'K' guns were refused on ammunition expenditure grounds, so a single 'K' gun was mounted and Gough ensured every Jeep also carried a Bren LMG instead, giving two per Section. 8:35 - there were no pillboxes on the "far side" of the Arnhem bridge from Frost's point of view. The two toll booths at the north end were reinforced by the Germans to make them into pillboxes and each had a 2cm Flak gun on the roof to also turn them into Flak towers. The one on the East side had been destroyed by the RAF during the morning bombing, so only the 'pillbox' and tower on the West side was still active, and fire also came from an armoured car on the southern end of the bridge acting as a radio relay for Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 in Nijmegen. When Frost started interdicting traffic on the bridge, his first victims were three fuel trucks that were probably part of Gräbner's logistics tail, and the spilt burning fuel on the road surface made movement on the bridge impossible. 12:12 - it's not clear from the map that Kampfgruppen Allwörden, Spindler, and Harzer are all 9.SS-Panzer-Division, and Brinkmann from 10.SS-Panzer-Division, because of the red tiles. Allwörden was SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 9, Spindler was SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 9, Harzer was the division commander (actually the operations officer in the wounded Stadler's absence), Brinkmann was SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 10, and Knaust was an army training unit combining companies from Panzergrenadier training battalions 64, 361 and 4, with an attached Panzer training company called Mielke from Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 11. The 'Harzer' tile, already represented by the '9 SS' tile, should probably read 'Harder' for SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Harder's SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, which started the battle with just three Panther tanks from Normandy and 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry. Most of the SS units were 'alarm' companies organised to move on an hour's notice and were reinforced by naval troops from the Marine collection centre at Zwolle to create these kampfgruppen. 14:07 - "the troops the British were facing had just finished anti-airborne training" - not really. The 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions had been raised in France in 1943 as panzergrenadier divisions and trained in the anti-airborne role to meet the expected Allied invasion of France. They were converted to 1943 type panzer-divisions on Hitler's order and then sent to Ukraine on the Eastern Front to rescue the 1.Panzer-Armee at Tarnopol, and then after the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 had to be rushed back to Normandy, where they helped hold British forces around Caen, held open the Falaise Gap to allow some of 7.Armee to escape, and then withdrew as little more than regimental sized battlegroups to the Netherlands to refit. As Harzer iirc observed - "we were too late in Normandy and too few at Arnhem." 16:42 - the 82nd captured the Nijmegen rail bridge and the Grenadier Guards captured the highway bridge. This video seems to be a presentation following the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far narrative and not the actual history, which is much more complex. The 82nd should have captured the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day while it was undefended, and this blunder compromised the entire operation, because of the 36-hour delay while the Guards and the 82nd had to fight in a city reinforced by 10.SS-Panzer-Division to capture both bridges. 16:52 - 2nd Battalion at Arnhem bridge had already lost control of the bridge by midday of 20 September when the Nijmegen bridges were finally captured in the evening. This allowed three Tiger I tanks from Panzer-Kompanie 'Hummel' to pass over the bridge and reinforce the blocking line north of Nijmegen formed by repositioned 7.5cm Flak guns between Oosterhout and Ressen. 17:02 - organised resistance at this point had been reduced to the Brigade headquarters building near the Arnhem bridge, and soft-skinned vehicles belonging to Kampfgruppe Knaust could pass up the ramp and over the bridge to reinforce the Oosterhout-Ressen blocking line. Unfortunately another out of date and poor presentation by IWM - they have the artifacts, but haven't kept up with the literature, which is a continually advancing research frontier.
@@kronk9418 - I don't think the Imperial War Museum is necessarily biased - I think it's a great museum (I've visited their aircraft collection at Duxford), but these historical videos they produce seem to be just out of date and on MARKET GARDEN resort to the conventional narrative of Cornelius Ryan and A Bridge Too Far - which I'm convinced now really is biased. So the IWM is a bit like a time capsule, they haven't updated their information from the more recent literature, and the fact is the research frontier is always moving forward, so they have just let themselves fall behind. Disappointing, for a new video.
@@davemac1197 Same rule applies to the interpretations of the Battle of Caen, we only hear from the perspective of people who spoke about it both after the events and who weren't even there! It's ridiculous.
My Great Uncle was there. Sargeant Herman Dykstra Airborne. He came from a small Wisconsin town called Friesland. He had never been out of the state of Wisconsin. WW2 began, and he ended up all over Europe. Cheers from 🍻 Milwaukee Wisconsin
@@BrianMarcus-nz7cs yes! Screaming eagles, the name comes from the Civil War. Old Abe a bald eagle that a Wisconsin regiment carried into battle, I believe.
Fascinating! Your great uncle must have had Dutch roots as well looking at his name, and the name of his Wisconsin hometown of Friesland -> a Dutch province where I grew up carries the same name
@mrhpijl yes! They spoke Friesian in the house. Almost everybody in town was a dairy farmer, of course. 🧀 Five brothers, four went to war, the oldest stayed and ran the farm. My grandfather Norman Deyoung was in the Navy, he was called the old man by the other sailors because he was 27 when he was drafted. Amazingly, all the Dystra brothers came home. Cheers from Milwaukee Wisconsin 🇺🇸
"The 82nd Airborne Division, however, certainly does not deserve any particular criticism for this as their priorities appear to be a further product of the blind optimism that dogged Operation Market Garden, of which everyone involved was guilty. At Nijmegen, as with everywhere else, the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the main concern of the airborne units was to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and as uncomplicated as possible, instead of devoting all their attention to primary objectives. Furthermore, it should be understood that the 82nd Airborne Division had by far the most complicated plan of any of the Airborne units involved with Market Garden, their troops being required to capture numerous objectives over a considerable expanse of terrain." Pegasus Archive 30. Reasons for the Failure
@@nickdanger3802 - resistance was non-existent at Nijmegen on the first day until it got dark. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was met at the 1st Battalion objective of De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge. In spite of this intelligence and lack of opposition on the Groesbeek heights, Lindquist stuck to his original plan to send a small recon patrol to the bridge, most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the streets of Nijmegen, instead of sending the 1st Battlion as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. Three scouts reached the bridge, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. When they decided to withdraw they could hear "heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge, which was undoubtedly Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen. By the time Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge it was already too late. The 1st Battalion only received an order to move on a bridge it did not know it was expected to take at 2000 hours, the same time the SS panzer units started arriving. This blunder allowed the Germans to reinforce the city and its bridges, imposing a 36-hour delay on its capture and sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. I've told you a thousand times Nick, Pegasus Archive is out of date with '2001' on its Home page and does not include any recent research. The full story of the debacle at Nijmegen is told in more recent books by Dutch and American authors: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge
Monty had little to do with this, it's the Hollywood gung-ho pro-American propaganda that loves to bash him. Operation MG was under the control of Brereton and USAAF.
Whenever I remember the poor General, I truly begin to f**king *SEETHE*... There is no worse crime than falsyfying, and then throwing your blame over at someone, who actually tried to unf**k your mess!
The overconfidence of the Allied command ignored the point that even a half strength SS Panzer division was still a force to be reckoned with. As they belatedly found out.
Thank you very much for the very good documentation film. I'd love to see one about the battle of the Schelde, if that would be possilble, I'd be very glad. Thank you.
Three fundamental problems with Market Garden: 1. Hastily planned and implemented. Intelligence ignored, vital equipment like radios didn’t work, insufficient airlift capability. 2. Failure to acknowledge the Germans were still a hard fighting force. The Germans slowed the advance of XXX corps, prepared counter attacks quickly after the airborne forces landed and committed to taking Arnhem. 3. Over confidence in the capacity of airborne forces to fight conventional forces. The Paras were aggressive and brave but a Panther tank is still a Panther tank.
Also, the entire battle plan of Market Garden had too many parts that absolutely had to go right, right from the beginning. You cannot advance along a single road that can be easily attacked by the Germans - and make that single road the only reliable lifeline for the airborne units! There is a reason a good plan accounts for errors, mishaps, bad luck and delays. You expect things to go wrong. Monty and Browning expected everything to succeed. As Antony Beevor wrote, the entire operation was rotten, right from the very beginning.
Had to be hastily planned to take advantage of German state of flux. Only 2 radios didn't work, American ones. Why was there sufficient airlift capability two weeks earlier to airlift 30,000 airborne troops in one day for Brereton's own Operation Linnet Two into American sector, which was exact same distance from British mainland? 30 Corps at Nijmegen on time in 42 hours, bridge not taken. Say no more.
@@OldWolflad "Poor communications caused heavy and avoidable casualties in 1st Parachute Brigade since the battalions and companies were unable to coordinate their advances, sometimes running into the same opposition which had frustrated an earlier unit advance. Yet this was not the cause of failure. By the time the German opposition had solidified on D+1, with mortars, light flak and armoured vehicles, there was really no chance of relieving Frost at the bridge, even with communications at their best." page 51 Canadian Military History Volume 16 Issue 1 Article 4 2007 Airborne Communications in Operation Market Garden David Bennett
@@freddieclark "The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it." Pegasus Archive Browning
Monty did no such thing. Market Garden was a small operation being just to establish a bridgehead, then consolidate for the next phase, the pincer on the Ruhr. It was only one corps above Eindhoven. All those garbage History Channel documentaries that say Monty wanted to end the war by Christmas and failed; that is complete nonsense. This vid says something similar.
@@johnburns4017, I find that hard to believe?? Monty was always numerically spoilt in all theatres of the war. And still came up against fanatical German Resistance that often held him back! Market Garden was huge flop! You cant send in lightly armed paratroopers against 2 Panzer divisions, and expect a victory. Monty knew there was German armour there! He sacrificed those brave paratroopers to try and gain a selfish victory, to get ahead of his rivals!
A general renowned for his careful planning suffered defeat due to a lack of meticulous preparation. Much respect to the soldiers at Arnhem, who secured their objective despite facing overwhelming enemy forces.
If you are referring to Montgomery, Market Garden was not his plan. His plan was shelved but then resurrected with more ambitious objectives by the Americans. When Gavin's 82nd Airborne landed at Nijmegen, the bridge was defended by 20 or so Germans with no armour. Instead of heading straight for the bridge, as tasked, Gavin had his men chasing around the woods for imaginary Panzers. Horrock's 30 Corps arrived at Nijmegen 6 hours ahead of schedule, only to find the bridge still in German hands and now much more heavily defended. 30 Corps had to waste a day taking the bridge themselves and by then, any hope of reaching Arnhem in time was gone. Gavin tried to rewrite the history after the war and exonerate himself, an effort which failed.
No mention that the biggest delay by far (two days) was caused by Gavin going against his orders and not taking the Nijmegen bridge on day one while it was undefended. XXX Corps were ahead of schedule until they arrived there and were astonished that the bridge had not been taken. This forced them into two unexpected days of street fighting to clear Nijmegen and doomed 1st Airborne.
when xxx corps arrived at Grave at 0820 on day three, they were still 25 miles/40k from Arnhem, well over 1/3 the distance from Joes Bridge to Arnhem with 11 hours to sunset.
@@spidos1000 1st AB took 4 hours to travel 4 miles/6k from LZ Z to the rail bridge arriving just in time to see it destroyed. but according to this vid the objective was the road bridge IN Arnhem.
My Uncle was at Arnhem he was a member of the 1st Airlanding Brigade attached to the HQ anti tank guns that actually made it to the Arnhem road bridge with three other guns that a lot of documentaries neglected to mention and it was those guns that helped to keep the Germans at bay and Frost at the bridge until they were knocked out or run out of ammunition and eventually captured. They make out that they only had PIATS with them at the bridge that destroyed the German armour. He was badly wounded when his gun was destroyed and most of his friends killed, he was one of the lucky survivors of Arnhem but suffered badly with the other captured Paras in POW camps in Poland. Browning was a major hindrance to the plan taking over 30+ very much needed transport planes for his Headquarters staff which were dropped nearer the American 82nd than the British Paratroopers. Edging his bets in case the plan went wrong and there was a chance of capture. Those planes could have delivered fighting troops and more heavy weapons and ammunition to aid the plan and possibly have made it a success despite the LZ and DZ areas 8 miles away. Then he left the Polish 🇵🇱 Paratroopers in the lurch , sending 240 of them across the river to act as a rearguard while they got those that were left of the 1st Parachute Battalion. The treatment they would receive from the Germans would have been death but luckily they changed their berets and helmets which had Polish insignia on with the British ones laying around. Nobody as ever told their story in any documentary or films of what happened to those Polish 🇵🇱 troops sent over as the rearguard.
Oh bless them! Greetings from the UK to all our Dutch friends. I will be marking 17 September by attending a lunchtime lecture at the RAF Cosford Cold War Museum, not far from my home, on the subject of Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story by Dr Sebastian Ritchie.
Nope, the Dutch resistance was largely infiltrated by the Germans. The British had every reason to doubt any intel they received from the Dutch resistance.
Also the Nijmegen bridge was deprioritized. There was only about two dozen old men guarding it at the beginning, before reinforcements turned up just minutes before the American airborne finally arrived.
"The 82nd Airborne Division, however, certainly does not deserve any particular criticism for this as their priorities appear to be a further product of the blind optimism that dogged Operation Market Garden, of which everyone involved was guilty. At Nijmegen, as with everywhere else, the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the main concern of the airborne units was to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and as uncomplicated as possible, instead of devoting all their attention to primary objectives. Furthermore, it should be understood that the 82nd Airborne Division had by far the most complicated plan of any of the Airborne units involved with Market Garden, their troops being required to capture numerous objectives over a considerable expanse of terrain." Pegasus Archive 30. Reasons for the Failure
@@nickdanger3802 - resistance was non-existent at Nijmegen on the first day until it got dark. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was met at the 1st Battalion objective of De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge. In spite of this intelligence and lack of opposition on the Groesbeek heights, Lindquist stuck to his original plan to send a small recon patrol to the bridge, most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the streets of Nijmegen, instead of sending the 1st Battlion as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. Three scouts reached the bridge, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. When they decided to withdraw they could hear "heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge, which was undoubtedly Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen. By the time Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge it was already too late. The 1st Battalion only received an order to move on a bridge it did not know it was expected to take at 2000 hours, the same time the SS panzer units started arriving. This blunder allowed the Germans to reinforce the city and its bridges, imposing a 36-hour delay on its capture and sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem. I've told you a thousand times Nick, Pegasus Archive is out of date with '2001' on its Home page and does not include any recent research. The full story of the debacle at Nijmegen is told in more recent books by Dutch and American authors: Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011) September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012) Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012) The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge
This is the first video that I have seen that actually mentions how keen the airborne forces commanders to go, because of all the cancellations that they had experienced. But, the amount of events that were too have such a fatal effect on the 1st Airborne. The two Panzer Tank Divisions were sighted by British forces retreating from the area of the Hook of Holland. Permission was sought to engage them but was denied, giving the order too hold their ground. The Dutch Underground resistance network was completely penetrated, force commanders were instructed not to trust or collaborate with them. RAF Transport refused to allow Gliders to be used as they had at Pegasus Bridge. Transport planes were told not to drop supplies unless 1st Airborne signalled the relevant conformation. Why oh why did R/T sets not work, unbelievable, like they had never been tested. Having read several books, not just about the landings, but about the available intelligence, British forces outside the main area of operations. I believe their bravery’s was unequalled, with particular mention of the Polish Airborne - amazing. It is as if the gods were against the operation. God bless every man jack of them.
Ahh, another one who gets his history from Hollywood. It was a workable plan but cocked up by the yanks. Lt Gen Brereton should have been dismissed for his inept planning of the airborne operation.
Thank you for another informative presentation.... Incredibly brave men given an impossible task which was planned incredibly badly..... Roger.... Pembrokeshire
One of Sean Connery's best roles, Roy (col commanding 1st AB Div (br), Hannibal Lecter/Frost was Excellent, but the movie didn't explain the blocking forces at all, only the main force across the river. So much detail not covered at all made the movie a lot less historically accurate.
Once again a total absence of recognition toward the Dutch resistance, who, at severe risk to themselves, delivered proof of 2nd panzer's presence, including pictures of heavy armour, and their advice on Dutch road and the risks of collumns getting stuck on the dike roads. The men that died at arnhem died because of the british high command's callousness and their egotistical stubbornnes fueled by their attempt to be the first to cross the Rhine, although this feat had already been accomplished by the American troops in the southwest of germany. This video could have been very short. Callous Aristocrats ignore clear information provided to them by multiple sources and send thousands of heroes to their deaths for a needless goal. Ignoring all these crucial details is not something I would have expected from the IWM.
I’m a home delivery driver and yesterday I delivered food to an 102 year old woman. We got talking about her life experiences, and she talked about how both her brothers were paratroopers dropped into the battle of Arnhem. Both dropped in the wrong place, were pinned down. One was severely injured but both thankfully survived. One of them left cover at great risk to themselves to retrieve an airdrop dropped by the RAF, only to discover it was a shipment filled with berets for the victory parade! And contained nothing useful in it. They were very angry at how the operation had been managed and one swore off the army and got rid of all of his medals etc after the war because of how botched he left the leadership was. Very interesting stories. Sad that the living memory of these events are very rapidly slipping out of public consciousness.
What absolutely astonishes me is how little time was given to planning this huge and very risky operation - two weeks or so, is that correct? If so, it seems highly irresponsible to me.
The roots of this operation go back to the start of planning for COMET on 3 September, so this video does not take that into account, and the air plan for MARKET was also recycled from a 3 September plan for LINNET.
@@davemac1197 Ultimately this video is just a conventional narrative like the Hollywood film a Bridge too far, it lacks the critical analysis that is required to see what else contributed to the failure.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- yeah, it's just a means of linking the IWM artifacts to the story, but always disappointing when it's attached to the out of date story. It's like saying OBL is still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan and ignoring the last 14 years.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- directed by Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE, FRSA. RAF cameraman on bomber missions. nominated for 8 BAFTA's and won 4 not nominated for any Academy Awards
before 740 men had even arrived at the last intact bridge in the Arnhem area, 82nd had captured the 500m bridge north of Grave, the last intact bridge over the Maas Waal canal and the Heights for Brownings useless HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity of about 1,000 infantry including pilots.
@@nickdanger3802 ... while the 508th PIR just sat on their "asses" on a ridge against zero opposition outside a city they had been told by the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the Germans had evacuated and the Nijmegen bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men - yes, we know the story, but what's the excuse for compromising an entire operation and sealing the fate of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem? Or was that the intention? What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps? Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight? Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all? Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
@@ErikExeu When XXX Corps entered Nijmegen 40 hours after the start, on schedule ready to motor up to Arnhem, they found the bridge in German hands as the 82nd *failed* to seize the bridge.
@@ErikExeu They had to pause because they were still fighting in Nijmegen city because the city wasn't taken. Five tanks cannot advance without infantry support. There were two 88mm guns at Elst for a start. They wouldn't have stood a chance. They wouldn't have had to pause if the Nijmegen Waal bridge and the city had been taken in the first place.
My grandpa was in the Dutch resistance. He always maintained that the resistance tried to warn the British about the presence of 2 SS divisions but that the British mistrusted the information. In his words, Montgomery was an arrogant man who was too eager for a personal victory.
The resistance reports were not ignored (except in the Hollywood film). They led to the cancellation of operation COMET and the replacement operation MARKET upgraded to three divisions, allowing 1st Airborne to concentrate at Arnhem with its superior anti-tank assets (the US units had more field artillery). The flaws in the planning were introduced by USAAF air planners, not Montgomery and Browning. Basic range safety rule - check your target!
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- in some cases, yes. The Oosterbeek cell of one of the resistance organisations was wiped out after being penetrated by the Abwehr (German counter-intelligence) and there was a German operation called 'North Star' I think that ran a deception operation against British Intelligence using compromised assets in the Netherlands, so the British certainly had their fingers burned in terms of Dutch sources. They knew for the most part the resistance was reliable and very good at intelligence gathering, but reports had to be corroborated by other sources. The intel on the SS troops north and east of Arrnhem did match the known movement of II.SS-Panzerkorps into the eastern Netherlands, but they could not locate 10.SS-Panzer for example. The Reichswald armour turned out to be the Hohenstaufen in transit during the planning for COMET, and Gavin only realised this in 1966 while collating Dutch research by T.A. Boeree for Cornelius Ryan. Ryan didn't include it in the book, of course, to make it look like the British completely messed up on the intel.
@@davemac1197 Dropping lightly equipped airborne units pretty much right on top of 2 SS Panzer Divisions is pretty optimistic though, don’t you think? Maybe they didn’t take the threat serious enough? After the war the Brits blamed the failure on the Polish troops, who actually fought like lions under general Sosabowski. That was another thing my grandfather disliked about Montgomery.
@@davemac1197 "The British were aware of the presence of the two Divisions, but little word of it filtered through to the 1st Airborne. The primary source of the intelligence was Ultra, the codename for the interception and decoding of German signals received through the Enigma machine. Ultra clearly identified the presence of the 9th and 10th S.S. Panzer Divisions, but due to the vital need to protect the system and not give the Germans cause to suspect that their codes had been broken, only a select few were privy to this information in its purest form. The 1st British Airborne Corps, under whose umbrella all the airborne units involved in Market Garden were to fight, only received a particularly vague suggestion of armoured strength in the area. The commander of the Corps, Lieutenant-General Browning, accordingly advised Major-General Roy Urquhart that the immediate opposition to his 1st Airborne Division would be derisory, but that they could later expect to encounter little more than a Brigade Group of infantry supported by a few tanks.
More compelling evidence was to come, first from the Dutch Underground. Their organisation was not so well administered and equipped as the resistance groups of other countries, and the British had further reason to mistrust their reports, due to their experience of betrayal earlier in the War which had resulted in fifty Allied agents parachuting into waiting German arms. Some of the reports were not accurate, but others did indicate a sudden and concentrated presence of enemy armour in the Arnhem area. The only confirmation that the 1st British Airborne Corps received of this was from aerial reconnaissance photographs requested by their Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (no relation to Major-General Roy Urquhart). These showed a small number of tanks close to one of the 1st Airborne Division's drop zones, but a mere handful of armoured vehicles did not automatically mean the presence of an entire panzer division. Lieutenant-General Browning chose to play down the significance of these photographs, and when Major Urquhart persisted with his opposition to the plan, Browning forced him away on a period of sick leave." Pegasus Archive 2. Recipe for Disaster
@@johndawes9337 Brereton did not tell Browning to take 38 of 1st AB's gliders (capacity about 1,000 infantry including pilots) to lift his useless HQ to Nijmegen. He did not tell Urquhart to take his HQ and all AT guns and Bren carriers and Lend Lease 75mm pack howitzers and jeeps on day one. He did not tell 1st AB to delay for hours before traveling 4miles/6k from LZ Z to the rail bridge. He did not tell 1st AB not to bother with testing radios before the op.
Kudo regarding your Dutch pronounciations, getting the “g” right in Veghel and Nijmegen. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a native English speaking person getting it right! Well done. And a fine documentary on MG as well. Question: I recognized many of the scenes but are the landing images at 6:25-6:30 originally from MG? It looks like farmland, while the landing terrain was mainly heath.
Yes, the film images are genuine from the 1st lift. Most of the landing zones around Wolfheze were farmland and still are. Only Drop Zone 'Y' at Ginkel Heide and the southeast section of Landing Zone 'Z' (the field where the '-Z' is placed on the map at 6:34) were heathland. The Hollywood film incorrectly used Ginkel Heide or another heath for the 1st lift drop zone because they had permission to use it for filming, when in fact it was only used for the 4th Parachute Brigade drop during the 2nd lift. They also used the heath for filming the opening breakout scene of XXX Corps and incorrectly showed tanks staying on the road, when in fact it was farmland on the Belgian-Dutch border and the tanks went off the road across the fields to counter-attack German positions in the farms and woods on the flanks.
Because he wasn't involved in the failure of the operation. You should investigate the role of the Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist chain of command and realise that Browning and Montgomery had no control over them.
"The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it." Pegasus Archive Browning page
@@nickdanger3802 - I believe it was Dempsey, but I haven't seen the source myself. See my reply to you in @ivanconnolly7332's thread for the reasons why Browning might have decided to do this: What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps? Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight? Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all? Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
Market Garden was not a defeat. It took 100km of German held ground. The Germans retreated and lost Eindhoven and Nijmegen. The allies later used Nijmegen to attack into Germany. Only Arnhem was a defeat but technically this was an all air operation. Planned by the air forces. Montgomery had no jurisdiction to order First Allied Airborne Army and RAF to accept his suggestions and they didn’t. Montgomery argued for double missions flown on day one, for closer drops to Arnhem and for coup de mains on the bridges. The air commanders refused all of this. Consequently, Arnhem was not Montgomery’s battle to lose technically speaking. Deep down he may have felt the same way. It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF, though I’m not letting Hollinghurst of the RAF off here. His decision not to fly closer to Arnhem doomed 1st Airborne. It was Bereton and Williams who: ♦ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset. ♦ rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet. ♦ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges. ♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity. ♦Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“ From Operation Market Garden: The Campaign for the Low Countries, Autumn 1944:ty John Peate.
"The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it." Pegasus Archive Browning
Theoretical Second Lift on Day One 17 September 1944 Actual first lift 0945 Take off begins 1350 Main jump over Arnhem begins Four hours back to home field (not including circling while waiting to land) Theoretical Second Lift Assume minimum of one hour for turn around 1850 Take off begins (Sunset Arnhem 17 Sept. 2024, 1945 DST Central European Time) 2255 Jump begins Britain was on Double Summer Time, two hours ahead of GMT.
The criticism of Montgomery and Market Garden is a bit over blown. It was an extremely ambitious plan which was not completely followed in execution. 1. The plan was under resourced, particularly in the air component which was of course critical. 2. Some of the decision making during the operation was extremely poor (Gavin and Browning). Had they stayed on task there is every chance the operation could have still succeeded despite its shortcomings. 3. The resourcing of the Air component and subsequent Air support was not Montgomery's decision to make. A valid criticism of Montgomery would be to say he showed a lack of moral courage in not insisting the operation was adequately resourced or did not go ahead. There are some comparisons with the Gallipoli Campaign. A plan that is viable in concept but only if adequately resourced and if not a likely disaster.
A plan that requires 90% good luck to pull off successfully is still a bad plan. There's nothing to defend here. The plans for Market Garden didn't account for any delays, bad weather, coordinated German counter-action and much more.
@@Trebor74 yeah result plans for 101st Division were found, though Student said he found them very useful, Model claimed they had already worked out what the Allies were doing. Fortuitously bad weather delayed supply drops so the German fighters sent up at the anticipated time to intercept them might have caused significant damage. It must have helped the Germans, they could work out how many Allied forces we’re being used and where and when they were supposed to be inserted
As planned 1st AB was supposed to be on the south bank, by then but 1st AB took 4 hours to travel 4 miles/6k from LZ Z to the bridge it was blown up just as they arrived. Frosts' men failed to take the south end of the road bridge. During the operation 1st AB stated the ferry was intact however when the poles landed it had been sunk.
Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge on the Malburgsche Polder had a heavy Flak battery on it with 6 x 7.5cm captured French Schneider M.36(f) heavy Flak guns and supporting light Flak, and nearby on the Meinerswijk Polder was another heavy Flak battery with another 6 x 7.5cm guns. Luftwaffe gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 had a total of 24 heavy and 12 light Flak guns in four positions around the town, north-south-east-west, a battery of 12 light guns at the Oosterbeek rail bridge, and another battery with 18 light guns at the river Ijssel bridges at Westervoort. DZ 'K' zone was also crossed by the additional hazard of high tension lines from the Arnhem power station located near the Arnhem highway bridge. It was deemed unsuitable for large scale parachute landings on D-Day, or by gliders because of the many drainage ditches, but was considered acceptable for the Polish parachute element scheduled to land on D+2, when it was expected that 1st Parachute Brigade would have the area under control to destroy the Flak, and the Royal Engineers were due to RV at the power station to take control of it and shut down the power transmission lines after completing their Phase 1 tasks. The plan for the divisional perimeter around Arnhem was for the outer perimeter to be formed to the west by 1st Airlanding Brigade in Phase 2 after completing their Phase 1 task of protecting the landing zones, in the north by 4th Parachute Brigade after landing on D+1, and in the east by the Polish Brigade on D+2. Because of the unsuitability of the polder for glider landings, their Jeep transport and anti-tank guns were scheduled to land on LZ 'L' at Johannahoeve farm north of Oosterbeek, and then RV with the parachute element at Arnhem bridge as the paratroops cross over the bridge, and take up their positions in the eastern sector of the perimeter. The Polish parachute drop had to be re-arranged because their drop zone was obviously not clear and it was decided they would be better dropped at Driel and used to support the division perimeter in Oosterbeek by using the ferry, still operating when the arrangements were made, to cross into the Oosterbeek perimeter. By the time someone had been sent to secure the ferry from the north side, the Dutch ferryman unfortunately had decided to scuttle the vessel as he feared it would fall into German hands.
@@davemac1197 I never understood why they couldn't have found a way to drop at least some units on the southern side of Arnhem bridge and seize both ends at the same time. The same goes for Nijmegen bridge where they could've dropped at least a small unit near the northern end so that both sides of Nijmegen bridge could be taken at the same time. Even if there were concerns of AA shooting down aircraft or less than ideal landing zones, I think it would've been worth the risk to land at least some troops on those LZs if it meant that both sides of those bridges could be taken rather than having to fight to cross the bridge to take it.
@@UzumakiNaruto_ - I one hundred percent agree. For operation COMET the plan was to land an Airlanding Company at each of the three big bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave, actually D Company of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade, in six gliders for each raid landing on the river flood plain right next to the bridge target. They would fly the same route to the main landing zones west of Arnhem until each group crosses the rivers Maas, Waal, and Rijn, where each group would release and then turn right to follow the rivers to the targets. The plan for COMET is shown in James Daly's book Proposed Airborne Assaults - Liberation of Europe (2024), and in his presentation last night in the livestream on Paul Woodadge's channel WW2TV - th-cam.com/video/bbtRhN3-GXM/w-d-xo.html at 44:29. COMET was planned from 3 September to a scheduled D-Day on 8 September, postponed by weather to 9 September, and then again by the ground situation (start line not achieved) to 10 September, and was finally cancelled at 0200 hours on 10 September as men were boarding their aircraft because of the worsening intelligence situation between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and Montgomery realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with it using just one airborne division (British 1st Airborne and the attached Polish Brigade). Browning and Montgomery met later that morning and drew up an outline proposal for an expanded COMET using three divisions, and this was was approved by Eisenhower during his scheduled meeting with Montgomery at Brussels airport later that afternoon. The proposal, called provisional operation SIXTEEN (it was the sixteenth operation generated by Browning's British I Airborne Corps) was then taken back to England for detailed planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams), since almost all of their assets would now be used. Brereton and Williams devloped the air plan for what they called MARKET by recycling a previous three-division air plan for their cancelled operations LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges). They made a decision to make all flights in daylight from take-off to landing back at base, which meant only one flight per day, so Browning's proposed double airlift on D-Day and his dawn glider coup de main raids on the bridges were removed. Planned drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal to quickly seize the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges to assist XXX Corps start the advance on an 'airborne carpet' concept was also removed by Williams because of Flak around Eindhoven. Strangely, the phrase "airborne carpet" remains in the Hollywood film script for Browning's briefing, although this concept had in reality been already thrown out. Browning was unable to protest the changes having already threatened to resign over Brereton's previous LINNET II plan (an alternative target in case LINNET was cancelled) being scheduled on just 36-hours notice - not long enough to print and distribute maps to brief the troops, and Brereton planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, that operation was also cancelled and both agreed to forget the disagreement, and Browning withdrew his letter. Brereton's changes to the original SIXTEEN proposal for MARKET were notified too late to 21st Army Group (Montgomery) for it to be changed again - Brereton had declared that there would be no alterations to the air plan after 14 September, so any appeal would probably have to go to Eisenhower for adjudication, and he would probably consult his air chief, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery, so either Brereton would get Eisenhower's backing or Brereton could simply pull the plug on the whole operation, which he had the authority to do and had done on previous operations. According to A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin: 'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.' (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - So, it appears Browning was still trying to get the troops landed close to the bridges after Brereton and Williams had taken control of the air planning by trying to influence the divisional plans, but wasn't successful. The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR had 'insisted' on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge so he could attack from sides, so he got it. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy, but Gavin entrusted him with the Nijmegen mission and instructed him to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, which Lindquist failed to do, and this compromised the operation on the ground - allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy Nijmegen and reinforce the bridge guard. Gavin had kept the more aggressive and experienced 505th PIR back to hold his right flank against the Reichswald forest on the German border, where he expected the strongest German reaction, and this turned out not to be the case in the first 24 hours.
The great thing about Allied Airbourne parachute drops in WWII, is that they always went precisely according to plan. With all the troops landing exactly where they were supposed to be at precisely the correct time.... ;)
The spat between the Ranger company commander who took the Eindhoven bridge and future Lord ACarrington then commanding the vanguard of XXX Corps depicted in "A bridge too far "is most probably a fiction , the British are wrongly portrayed as lacking stomach for an advance towards Arnhem.
1. It was the Nijmegen highway bridge. 2. The company commander was a paratrooper, Captain Moffatt T. Burriss of 'I' Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. 3. He was already Lord Carrington, as he inherited the title on the death of his father, the 5th Baron Carrington on 6 June 1940. His full title at the time was Captain The Lord Peter Carrington. Note that the family name had changed from Carrington to Carington since the title was created, so he was legally born Peter Carington now holding the hereditary title Lord Carrington. 4. Carington said the confrontation didn't happen, while Burriss has proved an unreliable witness after claiming to have met Sergeant Robinson's tank as it crossed the bridge (Robinson was already 45 minutes up the road in Lent when Burriss got to the bridge) and he said he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the north bank between the bridges, which Sergeant Pacey (in the second tank behind Robinson) had knocked out while crossing the bridge, confirming the tanks crossed some time before the paratroopers got to it. A sketch map of the operation by fellow 'H' Company commander Carl Kappel for the official report has the timings on the tanks crossing as 1830 hours and 'H' and 'I' Company group under Burriss reaching the bridge at 1915 hours.
Something that has removed from history by the main Dutch historian about market garden is that there were a lot of Dutch SS in that area and they fought alongside the Germans. There is a video on TH-cam of a Dutch SS veteran with English subtitles and he said he called the historian to say this and he just hung up the phone.
I met couple of ww2 airborne vets, including these famous from Easy company of 506 PIR (2004). I also met one Polish vet (96). He told me sth bitter. That allied or axis airborne, at all, didnt make so much in ww2 as it is said in its legend. He explained what he meant. That unquestionable paratroopers' bravery was apart from tactics which usually made problems after 2 days after landing and needed rescue or general support... I didnt comment. Just listened to him.
Great to see the guys at Airborne Assault getting some time! hey are great, really passionate and enthusiastic and very helpful. IWM doesn't give them anything like enough support. A true gem, if you ever go near IWM Duxford be sure to drop in to the Airborne museum that they run there!
No! If the weather in England was more favorable? If the radios worked (Ie if the responsible officer spoke up!)? If secret signals from the ground to the RAF supply C47s were agreed? If the SS Panzers were expected If, if, if!
Dickie Davis, a well known English post-war sports commentator, was one of the tank drivers in the relief column. His life was saved when the Corps commander ordered that there was no point sending forward any more tanks : they had to stay on the one road they were on because of the boggy ground either side; and the Germans had positioned a single 88 mm gun that simply picked off every tank that went forward.
Thanks for this great video, even the Dutch place names are pronounced correctly! Without wanting to be a know-it-all, at 3:31, the landing zones were (also) so far from Arnhem because there were no suitable landing zones closer to the bridge. Parachutists cannot easily land in a (densely) built-up area and not in a forest. Gliders cannot land / crash in a controlled manner in the meadows, intersected by ditches, east and south of the bridge.
Monty was fixated on doing this even before the D-Day landings. He didn't factor in the infrastructure limitations, ignored inconvenient intelligence, and ordered rules of engagement that hampered the offensive.
@@diskopartizan0850 - yes. I had no idea what he talking about until I read your reply. The rest of it is wrong as well - it's all Hollywood mythology.
As a Dutch person, this makes me emotional every time, the sacrifices that many people have made and the hell in which many still had to live, such as Anne Frank's death in February 1945, because the Nazi terror continued in the following year.
The British Airbourne Major General in command. Was running around with his Sten machine gun, killing Germans. That's when you know, this mission wasn't going to plan.
@@InTheFootstepsofHeroes before 740 men had even arrived at the last intact bridge in the Arnhem area, 82nd had captured the 500m bridge north of Grave, the last intact bridge over the Maas Waal canal and the Heights for Brownings useless HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity of about 1,000 infantry including pilots.
@@nickdanger3802 So why was Grave more important than the bridge at Nijmegen? Obviously it wasn't but the 504 PIR were wise enough to drop troops either side of the bridge. Who's fault was it that the 508 didn't do the same.
@@nickdanger3802 ... while the 508th PIR just sat on their "asses" on a ridge against zero opposition outside a city they had been told by the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the Germans had evacuated and the Nijmegen bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men - yes, we know the story, but what's the excuse for compromising an entire operation and sealing the fate of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem? Or was that the intention? What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps? Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight? Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all? Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
@@InTheFootstepsofHeroes - September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3: As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.” General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first. General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance. At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote. Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion." - I think this is excellent analysis by McManus, but Cornelius Ryan's notes on his interview with Gavin for A Bridge Too Far offered more details [my square brackets]: Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight. He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.” Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east. When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.” It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him. We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days[?] to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days. The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized. Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area. (Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University) - Colonel Tucker of the highly experienced 504th PIR 'insisted' on a special drop zone for a company to land south of the Grave bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it. Colonel Lindquist and the 508th had only one combat jump behind them, and Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy, getting a lot of men killed in the 4 July attack on Hill 95 (Saint Catherine) in particular. Why Gavin assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th is probably because he was more concerned with reports of German armour in the Reichswald. Only in 1966 while forwarding some research by Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree to Cornelius Ryan did he realise that Boeree's research on the Hohenstaufen Division's withdrawal to the Netherlands took it through Nijmegen to Arnhem and probably made a stop in the Reichswald. When the 82nd was assigned to Nijmegen, Gavin recalled visiting the 1st Airborne HQ to see their plans and intel because they were planning to drop on Nijmegen for operation COMET and were making their plans accordingly. This obviously inflcuenced his own divisional plan, to the detriment of the Nijmegen mission.
Tha aftermath of thuis battle isn't mocht known. In the days after the battle the citizens of Arnhem were swept out and chased to the norah. The city was louter. My parent had als to lease their home with theorie 3 children. It was just after May 1945 the could return.
Well done on the pronunciation of the Dutch place names. It's evident you put effort into pronouncing them correctly.
Indeed. Just a small error on the map. It's Wolfheze, without the 'n' on the end.
But it should be the Wilhelmina Canal (Dutch Queen) and not the Wilhelm Canal as shown on the map. All bridges over the canal were blown up by the germans.
I recognised that as well. Gut gemacht! Goed gedaan... 😅
Operation Market Garden was my cousin's first combat drop with the 101st Airborne. He died on Sep 20, just 5 days short of his 19th birthday and is buried in the Netherlands.
So young. Must have been terrible for his family. A lot of young men never came back from that War. A lot of young men never come back from any War actually. You must be very proud of him despite the sadness of it all.
@@peterhall728 He was an only son whose father had died, his mother had remarried and he had dropped out of high school. I like to think that he found a family with the men of the 101st Airborne. He is remembered and well cared for at Margraten Cemetery by the people of Belgium and the Netherlands.
@@buzbuz33-99each year on the 4th of May our country is silent for two minutes and comes to a complete standstill to pay tribute to heroes like your cousin who fell for our freedom.
God Bless, very brave soldiers one and all. AIRBORNE ALL THE WAY
I grew up in Ede, where the 1st Airborne landed and read a lot of books about and talked to many people that lived through the battle. It was crazy! But one thing that always amazed me is how the people of Oosterbeek and the paras cared for each other and kept a very strong bond even decades after the war.
amen
@@Niels_Dn it was because of the help from Dutch citizens of Arnhem caring for our wounded my uncle included he survived and was taken prisoner. So I would personally like to thank all of the citizens of the Netherlands 🇳🇱 for taking care of our wounded during the battle, hiding some of the survivors until they could get back to their own lines, but most of all for the wonderful job they do of looking after the graves of our dead troopers and the American troopers who never came home and for keeping their memories, courage and deeds alive by telling the future generations that come along, teaching this history in your schools. Thank You 🙏 so Much.
Dad was there, 101st Airborne and got wounded, recovered in England and then was in Bastogne for the Battle of the Bulge. May he and his brothers in arms RIP.
Wow! The Greatest Generation. God bless your dad!
@@terrymurphy2032 I sometimes wonder whether the UK & US would be up to such a challenge today… God bless your father & his mates.
God Bless
I dont think we would to be honest and that isn't a knock at either service men and woman.
@@swgeek4310 I left the US Army in 2000, when I was passed over for promotion, and it seemed peace and further downsizing was ahead in the 21st century.
After September 11th 2001, I joined many others in Volunteering for service in the US armed forces.
I was dubious of the young men, the "Millennials"... I was an Infantry NCO, a Squad Leader, and in combat I was impressed by the Courage, Determination, and Skill of those young soldiers, as well as older veterans, like me. We trained them well, and they took that training deadly serious!
Soldiers from the UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Poland, and many other nations were significantly More Skilled, More Fit, and just as Courageous as their WWII grandfathers!
The boys never backed down and stood their ground. They gave so much more than was asked. There can be no question of their courage or tenacity. ❤
The greatest generation.
I'll be doing my memorial walk around Tarrant Rushton airfield this Sunday and the 17th.
It's where my grandfather flew from as part of the 'Recce' squadron with the 'special' jeeps by glider.
He was lucky to survive, a lot of his mates from D troop weren't so fortunate.
May they all rest in peace.
Yes it was doomed from the start because of the caution of Brereton and Williams of the USAAF and Hollinghurst of the RAF.
YAWNING,you're a confused nationalistic stool spitting out complete fantasy nonsense. Monty wouldn't cross the Rhine for 6 more months after his Arnhem ass kicking and that was with the US 9th army helping the tardy tart. He got run off the continent at Dunkirk,was slow in the desert, schooled by Patton in Sicily, dithered in Italy, and absolutely stuck at CAEN. And like you didn't appear at Arnhem as 34,400 troops go into the Netherlands and 17,000 came out while he hid. But in Britain they call you a FIELD MARSHALL for that crap
*Monty admissions of guilt - after the war of course*
"Montgomery Memoirs page 276 "
"The next day, Bedell Smith came to see me the next day to say that Eisenhower had decided to act as I recommended. The Saar Thrust to be stopped. Three US Division (12 US AG) were to be grounded and their transports used to supply extra maintenance to 21 Army Group. The bulk of the 12 AG logistic support was to be given to 1 US Army on my right and I was to be allowed to deal directly with General Hodges. *As a result of these promises I reviewed my Plans with Dempsey and then fixed D-Day for the Arnhem Operation for Sunday 17th September."*
*The Guns at Last Light, by Rick Atkinson, p.303 Montgomery would acknowledge as much after the war, conceding "And here I must admit a bad mistake on my part -I underestimated the difficulties of opening up the approaches to Antwerp so that we could get free use of the port."*
*(Montgomery’s memoirs, p297)*
*A Magnificent Disaster, by David Bennett, p. 198* Montgomery attributes the lack of full success to the fact that the II SS Panzer Corps was refitting in the area. *"We knew it was there.....we were wrong in supposing that it could not fight effectively."*
Oh others blame him also
*Alan Brooke placing the blame on Bernard*
*"Triumph in the West, by Arthur Bryant, From the diary of Field Marshal Lord Alan Brooke* entry for 5 October 1944:Page 219" During the whole discussion one fact stood out clearly, that access to Antwerp must be captured with the least possible delay. *I feel that Monty's strategy for once is at fault, Instead of carrying out the advance on Arnhem he ought to have made certain of Antwerp in the first place*
*Admiral Ramsay brought this out as well in the discussion and criticized Monty freely....."The mistake lay with Monty for not having made the capture of Antwerp the immediate objective at highest priority* & I let fly with all my guns at the faulty strategy we had allowed Montgomery. Our large forces were now grounded for lack of supply. Had we got Antwerp instead of the corridor we should be in a far better position for launching a knock out blow."
*How about Air Marshall Tedder???*
*With Prejudice, by Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Lord Tedder, Deputy Supreme Commander AEF, Page 599"* *Eisenhower assumed, as he and I had done all along, that whatever happened Montgomery would concentrate on opening up Antwerp. No one could say that we had not emphasized the point sufficiently by conversation and signal*
*How Allied HQ Chief of Staff Bedell-Smith*
*Max Hastings, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany,1944-45* The release of the files from German Signals by Bletchley Park conclusively showed that the 9th & 10th Panzer Divisions were re-fitting in the Arnhem area. With their Recon Battalions intact. *Yet when Bedel-Smith(SHAEF) brought this to Monty's attention "he ridiculed the idea and waved my objections airily aside"*
*Monty's Chief of Staff*
*Max Hastings,Armageddon:The Battle for Germany,1944-45* Freddie de Guingand Monty's Chief of Staff telephoned him saying the operation would be launched too late to exploit German disarray. That XXX Corps push to Arnhem would being made on a narrow front along one road, Monty ignored him. Montgomery’s own staff was opposed to the plan, as was his own chief of staff.
*How about IKE's Private Papers?*
*The Eisenhower Papers, volume IV, by Edward Chandler By early September Montgomery and other Allied leaders thought the Wehrmacht was finished . *It was this understanding that led Monty to insist on the Market-Garden Operation over the more mundane task of opening the port of Antwerp. He ignored Eisenhower's letter of Sept 4 assigning Antwerp as the primary mission for the Northern Group of Armies.*
@@bigwoody4704 With all due respect Woody, he wasn't slow in Africa, the AK was pursued 1,400 miles in 90 days, that's pretty good going for an Allied advance.
Sicily is a controversial one, tbh l don't give any blame to either Patton or Monty, it was the Allied navy's and air forces who were unwilling to take heavy casualties which was the major cause of the large number of Axis troops and equipment being successfully evacuated, though it must be acknowledged that the Axis still suffered huge losses in the campaign.
However it must also be acknowledged that while Pattons advance on Messina was good PR for both him and the US Army, it wasn't militarily important, in that it didn't lead to the capture or destruction of significant Axis forces.
Italy was a slow start sure Woody, but look what happened when Richard McCreery ( one of Monty's armoured division commanders in the Desert ) and US commander Lucian Truscott took charge of Clarks 15th army group, they ended up capturing over a MILLION Germans in a brilliant campaign in Operation Grapeshot.
The Nijmegen Bridge delay, doomed the operation.
I live and give battlefield tours in Arnhem, and its a privilege to keep reading, learning and watching stories about these heroic men. I wish I could show how much this still lives in our town. Many of us, me included will be visiting both the Oosterbeek cemetery and the memorial service in the Berenkuil so we can hopefully give them the respect they forever deserve. As they say, lest we forget.
Thank you for Everything you do.
Its wonderful what you do. My father was called George . He was part of the first airborne division. He never spoke much about what happened but I know there were 12 friends who had formed a bond ,unfortunately only 4 survived my father being one of them. They lost contact after the war but in 1996 one year before my father died one of the 4 found the other 3 and they made contact. My dad was overjoyed
Sadly he passed in 1997 but he said hearing their voices again made him so happy. RIP to them all . Thank you for your work ❤
@@clivebennett7985 And thank you for sharing your father's story! 🙏
"out of Ammo. God save the King" ... damn what a final message man
Pretty sure some cheeky British guy would've asked the Germans for some ammo so they could keep going, "Oy German fulla give us some ammo"
The prized Arnhem bridge for which the British had fought so hard did not survive the war. As the front line stabilised south of the Rhine, B-26 Marauders of 344th Bomd Group, USAAF destroyed it on 7 October to deny its use to the Germans. It was replaced with a bridge of similar appearance in 1948 and renamed John Frost Bridege (John Frostbrug) on 17 December 1977.
My father told me that in the intervening period, during one or more severe winters, he crossed the Rhine on the ice. The crossings were marked with coal. Even light trucks could drive over the ice.
pretty much spot on without going into the whole "who's at fault for the operations failure". A cool addition to this video would have been to mention the civilian doctors and nurses of Arnhem and Oosterbeek who went out into the street to pick up wounded (civilian, British and German) and they brought them to places like Hotel Tafelberg and het Elizabeth gasthuis where makeshift hospitals were setup.
Also interesting is that about 25 King Tigers were called towards Arnhem and two of them were knocked out by British para's.
Also among the Germans fighting in Arnhem were Dutch SS volunteers, some of which were still in training at Amersfoort, but called in to go fight at Arnhem.
A very cool collection, haven't heard of the airborne assault museum before and it's at Duxford so perfect to checkout together with the air museum there. For anyone interested in ever visiting Arnhem, its the coolest to visit it in September itself. You''ll be able to visit the Airborne museum in Oosterbeek and the Arnhem war museum 40-45 in Schaarsbergen. You also have the many activities in the city including the tour through the city you can do on your phone. Often on the weekend closests to the 17th of september you have the para jumps at the Ginkelse Heide in Ede on saturday. Last year on friday there was also a para jump at Wolfheze and a river crossing in Nijmegen on sunday.
Excellent programme. Thank-you so much.
My grandfather was with the Worcester regiment fighting the SS in elst trying to stop them pushing up to Arnhem he was killed on the 24th September cut down on a cross roads by machine gun fire he was 29 years old and is buried in oosterbeek cemetery
Why don't the schools teach this instead of teaching are children how wicked we were to the rest of the world. 😢😢😢
Market Garden was a small operation being just to establish a bridgehead, then consolidate for the next phase, the pincer on the Ruhr. All those garbage History Channel documentaries that say Monty wanted to end the war by Christmas and failed; that is complete nonsense. This vid says something similar. It was only one corps above Eindhoven.
Monty had little involvement in the operation, as it was largely an FAAA operation, who were answerable only to SHAEF, using elements of Dempsey's Second Army for the ground element. Monty was left to be largely a bystander, more like an arbitrator. The FAAA was _notionally_ in the 21st Army Group.
The plan required perfection to work, but no plan survives contact with the enemy, and on top of that versus an enemy who traditionally reacted far better on the tactical level than the allies.
Market Garden was defeated by low level German Officer and NCOs not waiting for orders, creating effective units and defensive lines which did not exist just hours before. It all culminated with the destruction of the 1st para brigade on black tuesday .
Market Garden was not a 100% success because the US 82nd *failed* to seize the Waal bridge on the first day. A bridge they could have walked on whistling Dixie.
I'm from that region, we'll never forget their valiance. the 1st airborne division's flag is often used in progressive and anti fascist protests
Do you have pictures of that?
@@mardiffv.8775 doubt it
Those progressives might want to have a look into what the british army was, an army to police their empire. Have a look at Mad Mitch and his highlanders in Aden, in the end of empire documentary and their mindset.
I think that Eisenhower later said “I didn’t just approve the operation. I insisted on it.”
He also gave the go ahead to the far bigger failures in the Hurtgen Forest, Lorraine and Alsace.
You can think whatever you want, but the blunder can entirely be attributed to the highly overrated Field Marshal Montgomery.
Great, informative video! Well presented!
The expert commentary complements the rest of the video!
As a young teen I remember watching 'Bridge too far' a bunch of times. Later on in my later teens, I began playing (board) wargames and one of them I had was (I believe) called 'Operation Market Garden' (I still have it somewhere). The interesting thing about that particular game is each player had their own map, and moved their own units around on THEIR map, saying "i'm moving units from hex X to hex Y, and you'd only have to reveal them if your opponent could prove he had line of sight into Y, otherwise your movement was secret, you opponent knew/guessed ''SOMETHING' was going on, around X, but didn't know if you were moving 10 panzers or 10 infantry, after you proved line of sight, then you swapped the 'unknown' marker for 10 tanks/infantry (on their map) and had to move them out of LOS again or kill whomever saw them. SLOW game, but interesting. Probably the best representation of 'fog of war' in all the ww2 type games I played. I always remember thinking fondly of moving those Frundsberg & Hohensteufen panzers around...
I have the game, the map is about 6 feet long.
I live in supplyzone DZ, 100 meters from the crashsite of captain Len Wilson and his Dakota FZ626. Such an amazing few days have just gone by. the memorials and commemorations were the most beautiful i can remember them be!
I went over the bridge in Nijmegen today. It's the same bridge as during the war. It's very poignany, now 80 years ago, minua six days. We Dutch are very aware of the sacrifices that were made, and of the Dutch famine during the ensuing winter.
Yep the route of market garden is peppered with commenwealth gravesites.
There is almost no bigger town who has no war cemetary. memorials and signs directing to them. The irony is that other battles and operations just after market Garden in the same region were even more deadly and are mostly unknown to the public.
@@obelic71 There's such a site in the where I was born and grew up in. There are 363 graves of men, most of them around 20 years old when they fell, with the occasional officer of around 30. They were basically still children.
Good video. Difficult subject to cover in just 20 mins. One small item to add, the troops that evacuated 1 AB Div were Canadian engineers. I make a point of saying that because Canada is almost always overlooked in these videos.
@@lib556 And it was the Canadians, many months later. Who finally took and secured the city of Arnhem.
@@McTeerZor and liberated the Netherlands.
@@lib556and don't forget the poles
@@Leonardo_33 Not forgotten. What often gets forgotten is that the Poles (not the para bde) were under command of First Canadian Army during the liberation.
@@lib556 that is true, that fact is often forgotten, idk why tho
Yes, it was doomed from the start. I realized this when I learned that there weren't enough aircraft to deliver the 1st Airborne on day one. 1st Airborne had to hold the drop zones for three consecutive days of drops while also taking and holding the bridge and city 8 miles away. An impossible task to ask of the size element able to be landed on day one, let alone that they were light infantry.
@Indylimburg Boyd Browning claimed 30 odd gliders to transport his headquarters to Holland , which provided no tactical or strategic advantage to the operation. Vital gliders which 1st Airborne needed.
@@creampuff5036 Madness. Another issue for 1st Airborne was that Arnhem was at the limit of where Allied close air support fighters could go, so they couldn't get air support.
My dad was 1st airborne division. 12 lads that formed a bond 4 came back . My dad was one of them RIP to all the heroes❤
On 10th Sept 1944 Montgomery cancelled the small Operation, COMET, after many delays. General Miles Dempsey expressed concerns over intelligence of increased enemy presence. At 6 pm Brereton holds the initial planning meeting of First Allied Airborne Army on operation Sixteen which would be renamed MARKET GARDEN, based on the concept of Comet. Brereton told those present that all decisions made from this point onwards *will be final.*
3:12 - "we have no planning maps for operation MARKET GARDEN" - could this be because MARKET was planned by 1st Allied Airborne Army and the maps are held by the US Air Force (inherited from the US Army Air Force)? I also question the 12 September date as the start of the planning process as MARKET (originally known as SIXTEEN in outline form and they should have the SIXTEEN outline document in the National Records Office at Kew) as the planning started from 10 September after COMET was cancelled, and much of the preparation for COMET should be available as that was planned by the British Airborne Corps staff in the period 4-10 September and formed the basis for MARKET, as well as a previous 1st AAA plan called LINNET which recycled a triple division air plan.
3:35 - it would have been nice if the German heavy Flak batteries were shown on the map in the correct four locations around Arnhem and not as three guns stuck on the town itself. People might appreciate the unsuitability of the zone south of the Arnhem highway bridge until the Poles were due on D+2, when it was assumed the southern and western heavy Flak batteries would have been dealt with.
6:55 - Krafft's stop line did not extend that far north. It is debated that he had a platoon (reserve platoon 'Wiegand') in the woodland on the north side of the railway embankment or only had troops on the embankment itself, as accounts vary. He certainly did not have the troops to cover the gap to the woodland on the south side of the main Amsterdam road, because this was the route 1st Parachute Battalion took to outflank Krafft.
7:23 - the Reconnaissance Squadron was not supposed to be used in an offensive role either, but their use to seize a bridge was also planned for cancelled operation LINNET at Tournai, so this was not the first time this suggesed use of the Squadron had been made. Its CO, Major Freddie Gough, wanted a Troop of Tetrarch light tanks used by 6th Airborne in Normandy to spearhead their advance to Arnhem, and when that was refused he wanted .50 cal MGs on the Jeeps, and that was refused, and twin Vickers 'K' guns were refused on ammunition expenditure grounds, so a single 'K' gun was mounted and Gough ensured every Jeep also carried a Bren LMG instead, giving two per Section.
8:35 - there were no pillboxes on the "far side" of the Arnhem bridge from Frost's point of view. The two toll booths at the north end were reinforced by the Germans to make them into pillboxes and each had a 2cm Flak gun on the roof to also turn them into Flak towers. The one on the East side had been destroyed by the RAF during the morning bombing, so only the 'pillbox' and tower on the West side was still active, and fire also came from an armoured car on the southern end of the bridge acting as a radio relay for Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 in Nijmegen. When Frost started interdicting traffic on the bridge, his first victims were three fuel trucks that were probably part of Gräbner's logistics tail, and the spilt burning fuel on the road surface made movement on the bridge impossible.
12:12 - it's not clear from the map that Kampfgruppen Allwörden, Spindler, and Harzer are all 9.SS-Panzer-Division, and Brinkmann from 10.SS-Panzer-Division, because of the red tiles. Allwörden was SS-Panzerjäger-Abteilung 9, Spindler was SS-Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 9, Harzer was the division commander (actually the operations officer in the wounded Stadler's absence), Brinkmann was SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 10, and Knaust was an army training unit combining companies from Panzergrenadier training battalions 64, 361 and 4, with an attached Panzer training company called Mielke from Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 11. The 'Harzer' tile, already represented by the '9 SS' tile, should probably read 'Harder' for SS-Obersturmführer Adolf Harder's SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, which started the battle with just three Panther tanks from Normandy and 100 Panther crewmen acting as infantry. Most of the SS units were 'alarm' companies organised to move on an hour's notice and were reinforced by naval troops from the Marine collection centre at Zwolle to create these kampfgruppen.
14:07 - "the troops the British were facing had just finished anti-airborne training" - not really. The 9 and 10.SS-Panzer-Divisions had been raised in France in 1943 as panzergrenadier divisions and trained in the anti-airborne role to meet the expected Allied invasion of France. They were converted to 1943 type panzer-divisions on Hitler's order and then sent to Ukraine on the Eastern Front to rescue the 1.Panzer-Armee at Tarnopol, and then after the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 had to be rushed back to Normandy, where they helped hold British forces around Caen, held open the Falaise Gap to allow some of 7.Armee to escape, and then withdrew as little more than regimental sized battlegroups to the Netherlands to refit. As Harzer iirc observed - "we were too late in Normandy and too few at Arnhem."
16:42 - the 82nd captured the Nijmegen rail bridge and the Grenadier Guards captured the highway bridge. This video seems to be a presentation following the Hollywood film A Bridge Too Far narrative and not the actual history, which is much more complex. The 82nd should have captured the Nijmegen highway bridge on the first day while it was undefended, and this blunder compromised the entire operation, because of the 36-hour delay while the Guards and the 82nd had to fight in a city reinforced by 10.SS-Panzer-Division to capture both bridges.
16:52 - 2nd Battalion at Arnhem bridge had already lost control of the bridge by midday of 20 September when the Nijmegen bridges were finally captured in the evening. This allowed three Tiger I tanks from Panzer-Kompanie 'Hummel' to pass over the bridge and reinforce the blocking line north of Nijmegen formed by repositioned 7.5cm Flak guns between Oosterhout and Ressen.
17:02 - organised resistance at this point had been reduced to the Brigade headquarters building near the Arnhem bridge, and soft-skinned vehicles belonging to Kampfgruppe Knaust could pass up the ramp and over the bridge to reinforce the Oosterhout-Ressen blocking line.
Unfortunately another out of date and poor presentation by IWM - they have the artifacts, but haven't kept up with the literature, which is a continually advancing research frontier.
This museum is heavily biased. Poor display of a video, in my opinion.
@@kronk9418 - I don't think the Imperial War Museum is necessarily biased - I think it's a great museum (I've visited their aircraft collection at Duxford), but these historical videos they produce seem to be just out of date and on MARKET GARDEN resort to the conventional narrative of Cornelius Ryan and A Bridge Too Far - which I'm convinced now really is biased. So the IWM is a bit like a time capsule, they haven't updated their information from the more recent literature, and the fact is the research frontier is always moving forward, so they have just let themselves fall behind. Disappointing, for a new video.
@@davemac1197 Same rule applies to the interpretations of the Battle of Caen, we only hear from the perspective of people who spoke about it both after the events and who weren't even there! It's ridiculous.
My Great Uncle was there. Sargeant Herman Dykstra Airborne. He came from a small Wisconsin town called Friesland. He had never been out of the state of Wisconsin. WW2 began, and he ended up all over Europe. Cheers from 🍻 Milwaukee Wisconsin
Screaming eagles,,🐤 correct me if I'm wrong plz 👍
@@BrianMarcus-nz7cs yes!
Screaming eagles, the name comes from the Civil War. Old Abe a bald eagle that a Wisconsin regiment carried into battle, I believe.
Fascinating! Your great uncle must have had Dutch roots as well looking at his name, and the name of his Wisconsin hometown of Friesland -> a Dutch province where I grew up carries the same name
@mrhpijl yes! They spoke Friesian in the house. Almost everybody in town was a dairy farmer, of course. 🧀 Five brothers, four went to war, the oldest stayed and ran the farm. My grandfather Norman Deyoung was in the Navy, he was called the old man by the other sailors because he was 27 when he was drafted. Amazingly, all the Dystra brothers came home. Cheers from Milwaukee Wisconsin 🇺🇸
@@Mark.G475 ta bud , limey over here,,,,, most of the goose on the loose 8ty dice came from penncilvainia , I believe,,,,, Jimmy Hendrix 👍🍺🐝🤣
IWM, maybe mention the bridges that were not captured which severely hampered progress of XXX Corps.
"The 82nd Airborne Division, however, certainly does not deserve any particular criticism for this as their priorities appear to be a further product of the blind optimism that dogged Operation Market Garden, of which everyone involved was guilty. At Nijmegen, as with everywhere else, the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the main concern of the airborne units was to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and as uncomplicated as possible, instead of devoting all their attention to primary objectives. Furthermore, it should be understood that the 82nd Airborne Division had by far the most complicated plan of any of the Airborne units involved with Market Garden, their troops being required to capture numerous objectives over a considerable expanse of terrain."
Pegasus Archive 30. Reasons for the Failure
@@nickdanger3802 - resistance was non-existent at Nijmegen on the first day until it got dark. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was met at the 1st Battalion objective of De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge. In spite of this intelligence and lack of opposition on the Groesbeek heights, Lindquist stuck to his original plan to send a small recon patrol to the bridge, most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the streets of Nijmegen, instead of sending the 1st Battlion as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. Three scouts reached the bridge, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. When they decided to withdraw they could hear "heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge, which was undoubtedly Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen. By the time Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge it was already too late. The 1st Battalion only received an order to move on a bridge it did not know it was expected to take at 2000 hours, the same time the SS panzer units started arriving. This blunder allowed the Germans to reinforce the city and its bridges, imposing a 36-hour delay on its capture and sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
I've told you a thousand times Nick, Pegasus Archive is out of date with '2001' on its Home page and does not include any recent research. The full story of the debacle at Nijmegen is told in more recent books by Dutch and American authors:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge
@@davemac1197
Pegasus Archive is drivelous.
@@johnburns4017 - it's out of date. Home page has a 2001 date on it. Nick relies on it because it's wrong.
@@davemac1197
Rambo has a very wrong life.
Montgomery’s arrogance, and the shameful blaming of Sosabowski
Last gasps of a dying empire
Monty had little to do with this, it's the Hollywood gung-ho pro-American propaganda that loves to bash him. Operation MG was under the control of Brereton and USAAF.
Whenever I remember the poor General, I truly begin to f**king *SEETHE*... There is no worse crime than falsyfying, and then throwing your blame over at someone, who actually tried to unf**k your mess!
Daring? more like foolhardy
The overconfidence of the Allied command ignored the point that even a half strength SS Panzer division was still a force to be reckoned with.
As they belatedly found out.
They also didn't expect the Germans to form effective units, no matter where the soldiers came from, and how experienced or tired they were.
Not true. Bittrich only had 6,000 men and 5 tanks, it was the tanks brought in that made a difference.
@@KeimzelleAgain, the overconfidence of the Allied command caused them to ignore what previous experience had shown them about German battle tactics.
@@simongee8928It was nothing to do with their tactics they simply had greater numbers. Wehraboo.
@@simongee8928 Possibly, but politics took over and demanded it went ahead. It was arguably one, perhaps two weeks too late
Thank you very much for the very good documentation film. I'd love to see one about the battle of the Schelde, if that would be possilble, I'd be very glad. Thank you.
Three fundamental problems with Market Garden:
1. Hastily planned and implemented. Intelligence ignored, vital equipment like radios didn’t work, insufficient airlift capability.
2. Failure to acknowledge the Germans were still a hard fighting force. The Germans slowed the advance of XXX corps, prepared counter attacks quickly after the airborne forces landed and committed to taking Arnhem.
3. Over confidence in the capacity of airborne forces to fight conventional forces. The Paras were aggressive and brave but a Panther tank is still a Panther tank.
Also, the entire battle plan of Market Garden had too many parts that absolutely had to go right, right from the beginning. You cannot advance along a single road that can be easily attacked by the Germans - and make that single road the only reliable lifeline for the airborne units!
There is a reason a good plan accounts for errors, mishaps, bad luck and delays. You expect things to go wrong. Monty and Browning expected everything to succeed.
As Antony Beevor wrote, the entire operation was rotten, right from the very beginning.
Had to be hastily planned to take advantage of German state of flux.
Only 2 radios didn't work, American ones.
Why was there sufficient airlift capability two weeks earlier to airlift 30,000 airborne troops in one day for Brereton's own Operation Linnet Two into American sector, which was exact same distance from British mainland?
30 Corps at Nijmegen on time in 42 hours, bridge not taken. Say no more.
@@Keimzelle Monty had very little to do with the failures, you can lay that at the feet of Brereton who was in charge of the allied airborne army.
@@OldWolflad "Poor communications caused heavy and avoidable
casualties in 1st Parachute Brigade since the battalions and companies were unable to coordinate their advances, sometimes running into
the same opposition which had frustrated an earlier unit advance. Yet this was not the cause of failure. By the time the German opposition had solidified on D+1, with mortars, light flak and armoured vehicles, there was really no
chance of relieving Frost at the bridge, even with communications at their best."
page 51
Canadian Military History
Volume 16 Issue 1
Article 4
2007
Airborne Communications in Operation Market Garden
David Bennett
@@freddieclark "The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it."
Pegasus Archive Browning
Rip Bernard Montgomery. He tried to end or shorten the war.
Everyone. Neither Monty nor MacArthur were the enemy
Caen he was "too cautious", Arnhem he was "too impulsive" ,can't catch a break.
@@Trebor74 and in North Africa he was spoilt numerically!!!
Monty did no such thing. Market Garden was a small operation being just to establish a bridgehead, then consolidate for the next phase, the pincer on the Ruhr. It was only one corps above Eindhoven. All those garbage History Channel documentaries that say Monty wanted to end the war by Christmas and failed; that is complete nonsense. This vid says something similar.
@@charlesknowles6301
Was he? Not at Alem El Halfa he was not.
@@johnburns4017, I find that hard to believe?? Monty was always numerically spoilt in all theatres of the war. And still came up against fanatical German Resistance that often held him back! Market Garden was huge flop! You cant send in lightly armed paratroopers against 2 Panzer divisions, and expect a victory. Monty knew there was German armour there! He sacrificed those brave paratroopers to try and gain a selfish victory, to get ahead of his rivals!
A general renowned for his careful planning suffered defeat due to a lack of meticulous preparation. Much respect to the soldiers at Arnhem, who secured their objective despite facing overwhelming enemy forces.
If you are referring to Montgomery, Market Garden was not his plan. His plan was shelved but then resurrected with more ambitious objectives by the Americans. When Gavin's 82nd Airborne landed at Nijmegen, the bridge was defended by 20 or so Germans with no armour. Instead of heading straight for the bridge, as tasked, Gavin had his men chasing around the woods for imaginary Panzers. Horrock's 30 Corps arrived at Nijmegen 6 hours ahead of schedule, only to find the bridge still in German hands and now much more heavily defended. 30 Corps had to waste a day taking the bridge themselves and by then, any hope of reaching Arnhem in time was gone. Gavin tried to rewrite the history after the war and exonerate himself, an effort which failed.
The caution of Brereton and Williams of the USAAF and Hollinghurst of the RAF doomed the operation.
British were brave soldiers, but they had very mediocre leadership in Arnhem and that is an understatement.
You need to carefully read JohnCampbell's explanation. Gavin's 48-hr delay in taking the Bridge was a significant mistake. @roodborstkalf9664
@@roodborstkalf9664Also don't forget that telecommunications were completely disrupted by equipment that was not working properly.
No mention that the biggest delay by far (two days) was caused by Gavin going against his orders and not taking the Nijmegen bridge on day one while it was undefended. XXX Corps were ahead of schedule until they arrived there and were astonished that the bridge had not been taken. This forced them into two unexpected days of street fighting to clear Nijmegen and doomed 1st Airborne.
True. TIK has done a completing video on Gavin’s failure which ruined the entire operation.
Totally agree. But all you will hear from Americans is that it was Monty's fault.
when xxx corps arrived at Grave at 0820 on day three, they were still 25 miles/40k from Arnhem, well over 1/3 the distance from Joes Bridge to Arnhem with 11 hours to sunset.
@@spidos1000 1st AB took 4 hours to travel 4 miles/6k from LZ Z to the rail bridge arriving just in time to see it destroyed.
but according to this vid the objective was the road bridge IN Arnhem.
I agree.
My Uncle was at Arnhem he was a member of the 1st Airlanding Brigade attached to the HQ anti tank guns that actually made it to the Arnhem road bridge with three other guns that a lot of documentaries neglected to mention and it was those guns that helped to keep the Germans at bay and Frost at the bridge until they were knocked out or run out of ammunition and eventually captured.
They make out that they only had PIATS with them at the bridge that destroyed the German armour.
He was badly wounded when his gun was destroyed and most of his friends killed, he was one of the lucky survivors of Arnhem but suffered badly with the other captured Paras in POW camps in Poland.
Browning was a major hindrance to the plan taking over 30+ very much needed transport planes for his Headquarters staff which were dropped nearer the American 82nd than the British Paratroopers. Edging his bets in case the plan went wrong and there was a chance of capture. Those planes could have delivered fighting troops and more heavy weapons and ammunition to aid the plan and possibly have made it a success despite the LZ and DZ areas 8 miles away.
Then he left the Polish 🇵🇱 Paratroopers in the lurch , sending 240 of them across the river to act as a rearguard while they got those that were left of the 1st Parachute Battalion. The treatment they would receive from the Germans would have been death but luckily they changed their berets and helmets which had Polish insignia on with the British ones laying around. Nobody as ever told their story in any documentary or films of what happened to those Polish 🇵🇱 troops sent over as the rearguard.
My Grandad was there and made it back. What an ordeal that must have been. Would love to know more.
The Pegasus flags are once again hanging proudly on display from houses and flagpoles in the region.
Oh bless them! Greetings from the UK to all our Dutch friends.
I will be marking 17 September by attending a lunchtime lecture at the RAF Cosford Cold War Museum, not far from my home, on the subject of Arnhem: The Air Reconnaissance Story by Dr Sebastian Ritchie.
The sick part is Montgomery not listening to the resistance in the Netherlands...
Nope, the Dutch resistance was largely infiltrated by the Germans. The British had every reason to doubt any intel they received from the Dutch resistance.
He did listen. The Dutch resistance was unreliable and infiltrated by German intelligence.
From everything I have heard or read about Montgomery. The only source he listened to was his own ego.
Monty is the second most overhyped hack of a general in history.
Secondly only to Robert E. Lee
@@Dysfunctional_Reprint i find patton to be a lot more overhyped
Also the Nijmegen bridge was deprioritized. There was only about two dozen old men guarding it at the beginning, before reinforcements turned up just minutes before the American airborne finally arrived.
"The 82nd Airborne Division, however, certainly does not deserve any particular criticism for this as their priorities appear to be a further product of the blind optimism that dogged Operation Market Garden, of which everyone involved was guilty. At Nijmegen, as with everywhere else, the assumption was that resistance would be light and so the main concern of the airborne units was to make the advance of the ground forces as rapid and as uncomplicated as possible, instead of devoting all their attention to primary objectives. Furthermore, it should be understood that the 82nd Airborne Division had by far the most complicated plan of any of the Airborne units involved with Market Garden, their troops being required to capture numerous objectives over a considerable expanse of terrain."
Pegasus Archive 30. Reasons for the Failure
@@nickdanger3802 - resistance was non-existent at Nijmegen on the first day until it got dark. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was met at the 1st Battalion objective of De Ploeg on the Groesbeek ridge by Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees, who told him the Germans had deserted Nijmegen and left only a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men to guard the highway bridge. In spite of this intelligence and lack of opposition on the Groesbeek heights, Lindquist stuck to his original plan to send a small recon patrol to the bridge, most of which got lost in the crowds of Dutch civilians in the streets of Nijmegen, instead of sending the 1st Battlion as Gavin had instructed in the final divisional briefing. Three scouts reached the bridge, took seven prisoners at the southern end without firing a shot, and waited an hour for reinforcements that never arrived. When they decided to withdraw they could hear "heavy equipment arriving at the other end of the bridge, which was undoubtedly Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 arriving from Beekbergen. By the time Gavin found out Lindquist was not moving on the bridge it was already too late. The 1st Battalion only received an order to move on a bridge it did not know it was expected to take at 2000 hours, the same time the SS panzer units started arriving. This blunder allowed the Germans to reinforce the city and its bridges, imposing a 36-hour delay on its capture and sealed the fate of 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem.
I've told you a thousand times Nick, Pegasus Archive is out of date with '2001' on its Home page and does not include any recent research. The full story of the debacle at Nijmegen is told in more recent books by Dutch and American authors:
Lost At Nijmegen, RG Poulussen (2011)
September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012)
Put Us Down In Hell - The Combat History of the 508th PIR in WW2, Phil Nordyke (2012)
The 508th Connection, Zig Boroughs (2013), Chapter 6 - Nijmegen Bridge
Terrible plan from beginning to end, as historians have largely agreed on at this point. What a shame.
This is the first video that I have seen that actually mentions how keen the airborne forces commanders to go, because of all the cancellations that they had experienced. But, the amount of events that were too have such a fatal effect on the 1st Airborne. The two Panzer Tank Divisions were sighted by British forces retreating from the area of the Hook of Holland. Permission was sought to engage them but was denied, giving the order too hold their ground. The Dutch Underground resistance network was completely penetrated, force commanders were instructed not to trust or collaborate with them. RAF Transport refused to allow Gliders to be used as they had at Pegasus Bridge. Transport planes were told not to drop supplies unless 1st Airborne signalled the relevant conformation. Why oh why did R/T sets not work, unbelievable, like they had never been tested. Having read several books, not just about the landings, but about the available intelligence, British forces outside the main area of operations. I believe their bravery’s was unequalled, with particular mention of the Polish Airborne - amazing. It is as if the gods were against the operation. God bless every man jack of them.
As at the end of A Bridge Too Far, It was A stupid plan
Ahh, another one who gets his history from Hollywood. It was a workable plan but cocked up by the yanks. Lt Gen Brereton should have been dismissed for his inept planning of the airborne operation.
Thank you for another informative presentation.... Incredibly brave men given an impossible task which was planned incredibly badly..... Roger.... Pembrokeshire
One of Sean Connery's best roles, Roy (col commanding 1st AB Div (br), Hannibal Lecter/Frost was Excellent, but the movie didn't explain the blocking forces at all, only the main force across the river. So much detail not covered at all made the movie a lot less historically accurate.
Once again a total absence of recognition toward the Dutch resistance, who, at severe risk to themselves, delivered proof of 2nd panzer's presence, including pictures of heavy armour, and their advice on Dutch road and the risks of collumns getting stuck on the dike roads.
The men that died at arnhem died because of the british high command's callousness and their egotistical stubbornnes fueled by their attempt to be the first to cross the Rhine, although this feat had already been accomplished by the American troops in the southwest of germany.
This video could have been very short. Callous Aristocrats ignore clear information provided to them by multiple sources and send thousands of heroes to their deaths for a needless goal.
Ignoring all these crucial details is not something I would have expected from the IWM.
Exactly - the British had many good commanders why they propped up monty and his farcial accounts is a travesty.
Always interesting. Thank you IWM.
The story of Frost’s stand at the Arnhem Bridge never fails to give me chills. A true display of grit and determination. Thank you for sharing!
I’m a home delivery driver and yesterday I delivered food to an 102 year old woman. We got talking about her life experiences, and she talked about how both her brothers were paratroopers dropped into the battle of Arnhem. Both dropped in the wrong place, were pinned down. One was severely injured but both thankfully survived. One of them left cover at great risk to themselves to retrieve an airdrop dropped by the RAF, only to discover it was a shipment filled with berets for the victory parade! And contained nothing useful in it. They were very angry at how the operation had been managed and one swore off the army and got rid of all of his medals etc after the war because of how botched he left the leadership was. Very interesting stories. Sad that the living memory of these events are very rapidly slipping out of public consciousness.
Fake statement it was in the movie
@@bulldawg6259You can't know for sure, he could actually be a home delivery driver, can't he? 😉
Camo and a red hat? That is so British 😂😂😂. . Brave men!
What absolutely astonishes me is how little time was given to planning this huge and very risky operation - two weeks or so, is that correct? If so, it seems highly irresponsible to me.
The roots of this operation go back to the start of planning for COMET on 3 September, so this video does not take that into account, and the air plan for MARKET was also recycled from a 3 September plan for LINNET.
@@davemac1197 Ultimately this video is just a conventional narrative like the Hollywood film a Bridge too far, it lacks the critical analysis that is required to see what else contributed to the failure.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- yeah, it's just a means of linking the IWM artifacts to the story, but always disappointing when it's attached to the out of date story. It's like saying OBL is still hiding in a cave in Afghanistan and ignoring the last 14 years.
@@davemac1197 how many divisions for those ops ?
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- directed by Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough, CBE, FRSA. RAF cameraman on bomber missions.
nominated for 8 BAFTA's and won 4
not nominated for any Academy Awards
This is what happens when you get in a hurry. You have to lose that 'get the war over by Christmas' mentality.
82st airborne was to slow to get the bride of nimegen
before 740 men had even arrived at the last intact bridge in the Arnhem area, 82nd had captured the 500m bridge north of Grave, the last intact bridge over the Maas Waal canal and the Heights for Brownings useless HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity of about 1,000 infantry including pilots.
@@nickdanger3802 ... while the 508th PIR just sat on their "asses" on a ridge against zero opposition outside a city they had been told by the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the Germans had evacuated and the Nijmegen bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men - yes, we know the story, but what's the excuse for compromising an entire operation and sealing the fate of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem? Or was that the intention?
What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps?
Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight?
Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all?
Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
And still, when the bridge was taken, XXX Corps were not ready to proceed so they were even slower.
@@ErikExeu
When XXX Corps entered Nijmegen 40 hours after the start, on schedule ready to motor up to Arnhem, they found the bridge in German hands as the 82nd *failed* to seize the bridge.
@@ErikExeu They had to pause because they were still fighting in Nijmegen city because the city wasn't taken. Five tanks cannot advance without infantry support. There were two 88mm guns at Elst for a start. They wouldn't have stood a chance. They wouldn't have had to pause if the Nijmegen Waal bridge and the city had been taken in the first place.
My grandpa was in the Dutch resistance. He always maintained that the resistance tried to warn the British about the presence of 2 SS divisions but that the British mistrusted the information. In his words, Montgomery was an arrogant man who was too eager for a personal victory.
The resistance reports were not ignored (except in the Hollywood film). They led to the cancellation of operation COMET and the replacement operation MARKET upgraded to three divisions, allowing 1st Airborne to concentrate at Arnhem with its superior anti-tank assets (the US units had more field artillery). The flaws in the planning were introduced by USAAF air planners, not Montgomery and Browning.
Basic range safety rule - check your target!
@@davemac1197 Is it true that the Dutch resistance was compromised by the Gestapo? I could see why the Allies were somwhat skeptical about reports.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- in some cases, yes. The Oosterbeek cell of one of the resistance organisations was wiped out after being penetrated by the Abwehr (German counter-intelligence) and there was a German operation called 'North Star' I think that ran a deception operation against British Intelligence using compromised assets in the Netherlands, so the British certainly had their fingers burned in terms of Dutch sources. They knew for the most part the resistance was reliable and very good at intelligence gathering, but reports had to be corroborated by other sources.
The intel on the SS troops north and east of Arrnhem did match the known movement of II.SS-Panzerkorps into the eastern Netherlands, but they could not locate 10.SS-Panzer for example.
The Reichswald armour turned out to be the Hohenstaufen in transit during the planning for COMET, and Gavin only realised this in 1966 while collating Dutch research by T.A. Boeree for Cornelius Ryan. Ryan didn't include it in the book, of course, to make it look like the British completely messed up on the intel.
@@davemac1197 Dropping lightly equipped airborne units pretty much right on top of 2 SS Panzer Divisions is pretty optimistic though, don’t you think? Maybe they didn’t take the threat serious enough?
After the war the Brits blamed the failure on the Polish troops, who actually fought like lions under general Sosabowski. That was another thing my grandfather disliked about Montgomery.
@@davemac1197 "The British were aware of the presence of the two Divisions, but little word of it filtered through to the 1st Airborne. The primary source of the intelligence was Ultra, the codename for the interception and decoding of German signals received through the Enigma machine. Ultra clearly identified the presence of the 9th and 10th S.S. Panzer Divisions, but due to the vital need to protect the system and not give the Germans cause to suspect that their codes had been broken, only a select few were privy to this information in its purest form. The 1st British Airborne Corps, under whose umbrella all the airborne units involved in Market Garden were to fight, only received a particularly vague suggestion of armoured strength in the area. The commander of the Corps, Lieutenant-General Browning, accordingly advised Major-General Roy Urquhart that the immediate opposition to his 1st Airborne Division would be derisory, but that they could later expect to encounter little more than a Brigade Group of infantry supported by a few tanks.
More compelling evidence was to come, first from the Dutch Underground. Their organisation was not so well administered and equipped as the resistance groups of other countries, and the British had further reason to mistrust their reports, due to their experience of betrayal earlier in the War which had resulted in fifty Allied agents parachuting into waiting German arms. Some of the reports were not accurate, but others did indicate a sudden and concentrated presence of enemy armour in the Arnhem area. The only confirmation that the 1st British Airborne Corps received of this was from aerial reconnaissance photographs requested by their Intelligence Officer, Major Brian Urquhart (no relation to Major-General Roy Urquhart). These showed a small number of tanks close to one of the 1st Airborne Division's drop zones, but a mere handful of armoured vehicles did not automatically mean the presence of an entire panzer division. Lieutenant-General Browning chose to play down the significance of these photographs, and when Major Urquhart persisted with his opposition to the plan, Browning forced him away on a period of sick leave."
Pegasus Archive 2. Recipe for Disaster
Monty’s arguably biggest mistake but not his first
not his mistake..Ike had Brereton and Williams plan MG and it was a good plan till Gavin messed it up..what other mistakes are you talking about?
Not Monty's mistake, Brereton was in charge of the airborne army.
@@johndawes9337 Brereton did not tell Browning to take 38 of 1st AB's gliders (capacity about 1,000 infantry including pilots) to lift his useless HQ to Nijmegen.
He did not tell Urquhart to take his HQ and all AT guns and Bren carriers and Lend Lease 75mm pack howitzers and jeeps on day one.
He did not tell 1st AB to delay for hours before traveling 4miles/6k from LZ Z to the rail bridge.
He did not tell 1st AB not to bother with testing radios before the op.
@@nickdanger3802 source..hahahaha
Kudo regarding your Dutch pronounciations, getting the “g” right in Veghel and Nijmegen. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a native English speaking person getting it right! Well done. And a fine documentary on MG as well. Question: I recognized many of the scenes but are the landing images at 6:25-6:30 originally from MG? It looks like farmland, while the landing terrain was mainly heath.
Yes, the film images are genuine from the 1st lift. Most of the landing zones around Wolfheze were farmland and still are. Only Drop Zone 'Y' at Ginkel Heide and the southeast section of Landing Zone 'Z' (the field where the '-Z' is placed on the map at 6:34) were heathland. The Hollywood film incorrectly used Ginkel Heide or another heath for the 1st lift drop zone because they had permission to use it for filming, when in fact it was only used for the 4th Parachute Brigade drop during the 2nd lift. They also used the heath for filming the opening breakout scene of XXX Corps and incorrectly showed tanks staying on the road, when in fact it was farmland on the Belgian-Dutch border and the tanks went off the road across the fields to counter-attack German positions in the farms and woods on the flanks.
Officers are taught to use pencil in the field because it doesn't run like ink if it gets wet.
Lack of planning?
lack of resources?
That's on ICK is it not?
Monty
Great vid. Read Antony Beevors Battle of the Bridges for an in depth read.
Avoid history comics by Beevor.
@@johnburns4017 Let me have a list of your books and I will compare.
@@josephtreacy667
Try Bergstrom, Richie and Poulussen for starters.
Appreciate the film "A Bridge Too Far" and the game "Post Sciptum/Squad 44" for keeping this history alive for future generations
Unfortunately that film is inaccurate and perpetuates many myths. Sadly.
@@lyndoncmp5751
Is this the latest twitter trend or something? I'm seeing this comment everywhere recently.
The morale factor was the problem
Many cancellations so the arnhem seizure was a bold
Plan and would have suceeded
If all went to schedule!
Not to mention the 9th and 10ss panzer divisions that were being rested and refitted.in the area..
No. The 10th were way north of Arnhem. They had no armour as the British destroyed it in Normandy, they were only infantry.
It seemed odd that the 1st airborne drop would be over 4 days, when the plan stated they would be relieved in two.
Why no mention of Field Marshal Montgomery’s role in the failure of the operation?
Because he wasn't involved in the failure of the operation. You should investigate the role of the Brereton-Williams-Gavin-Lindquist chain of command and realise that Browning and Montgomery had no control over them.
@@davemac1197 Thanks 👍🏾
"The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it."
Pegasus Archive Browning page
@@davemac1197 who told Browning to take 38 of 1st AB's gliders (capacity about 1,000 infantry including pilots) to lift his useless HQ to Nijmegen ?
@@nickdanger3802 - I believe it was Dempsey, but I haven't seen the source myself. See my reply to you in @ivanconnolly7332's thread for the reasons why Browning might have decided to do this:
What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps?
Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight?
Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all?
Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
Just shows you should always listen to local knowledge.
Best narrator from the IWM! ❤
Market Garden was not a defeat. It took 100km of German held ground. The Germans retreated and lost Eindhoven and Nijmegen. The allies later used Nijmegen to attack into Germany.
Only Arnhem was a defeat but technically this was an all air operation. Planned by the air forces.
Montgomery had no jurisdiction to order First Allied Airborne Army and RAF to accept his suggestions and they didn’t. Montgomery argued for double missions flown on day one, for closer drops to Arnhem and for coup de mains on the bridges. The air commanders refused all of this. Consequently, Arnhem was not Montgomery’s battle to lose technically speaking. Deep down he may have felt the same way.
It was planned mainly by the Air Force commanders, Brereton and Williams of the USAAF, though I’m not letting Hollinghurst of the RAF off here. His decision not to fly closer to Arnhem doomed 1st Airborne.
It was Bereton and Williams who:
♦ decided that there would be drops spread over three days, defeating the object of para jumps by losing all surprise, which is their major asset.
♦ rejected the glider coup-de-main on the bridges that had been so successful on D-day on the Pegasus Bridge and which had been agreed to on the previously planned Operation Comet.
♦ chose the drop and and landing zones so far from the Bridges.
♦ Who would not allow the ground attack fighters to take on the flak positions and attack the Germans while the escort fighters were protecting the transports, thereby allowing them to bring in reinforcements with impunity.
♦Who rejected drops south of the Wilhelmina Canal that would prevent the capture of the bridges at Son, Best and Eindhoven by the 101st because of “possible flak.“
From Operation Market Garden: The Campaign for the Low Countries, Autumn 1944:ty John Peate.
Don't let the Americans read that. They love a bit of Monty bashing and can't accept he had nothing to do with the faliure of the op
"The essential plan was not dead, however, and on the 10th September 1944, Montgomery personally briefed Browning for Operation Market Garden. The objectives remained the same, but now the American airborne divisions entered the equation, and the areas around Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem respectively became the responsibility of the 101st, 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions with the Poles under the command of the latter. Browning, having asked Montgomery how long the 1st Airborne would have to hold Arnhem and being told two days, replied that they could hold it for four. Whether or not he then went on to add the famous phrase that Arnhem might be "a bridge too far" is a matter for debate, though Brigadier Walch, Browning's Chief of Staff who saw him immediately after this meeting, believed that he did say it."
Pegasus Archive Browning
Theoretical Second Lift on Day One 17 September 1944
Actual first lift
0945 Take off begins
1350 Main jump over Arnhem begins
Four hours back to home field (not including circling while waiting to land)
Theoretical Second Lift
Assume minimum of one hour for turn around
1850 Take off begins
(Sunset Arnhem 17 Sept. 2024, 1945 DST Central European Time)
2255 Jump begins
Britain was on Double Summer Time, two hours ahead of GMT.
@@nickdanger3802 yawn.
Amazing...
Can thoroughly recommend Cornelius Ryan's incredible book about the operation - A Bridge Too Far.
it is far from factual
My great uncle took part in market garden on a b-24. They were dropping supplies and were shot down, him all but one of the crew were killed. R.I.P.
The criticism of Montgomery and Market Garden is a bit over blown. It was an extremely ambitious plan which was not completely followed in execution.
1. The plan was under resourced, particularly in the air component which was of course critical.
2. Some of the decision making during the operation was extremely poor (Gavin and Browning). Had they stayed on task there is every chance the operation could have still succeeded despite its shortcomings.
3. The resourcing of the Air component and subsequent Air support was not Montgomery's decision to make.
A valid criticism of Montgomery would be to say he showed a lack of moral courage in not insisting the operation was adequately resourced or did not go ahead. There are some comparisons with the Gallipoli Campaign. A plan that is viable in concept but only if adequately resourced and if not a likely disaster.
A plan that requires 90% good luck to pull off successfully is still a bad plan. There's nothing to defend here.
The plans for Market Garden didn't account for any delays, bad weather, coordinated German counter-action and much more.
@@Keimzelle Again, Operation Sixteen was the British plan, Operation Market garden was essentially an American plan.
Except Montgomery was not in charge of the plan, or the planning. Lay that at the feet of Eisenhower and Brereton.
Forgetting someone took the full.plans into battle,and lost them. The Germans then knew everything,Inc landings
@@Trebor74 yeah result plans for 101st Division were found, though Student said he found them very useful, Model claimed they had already worked out what the Allies were doing. Fortuitously bad weather delayed supply drops so the German fighters sent up at the anticipated time to intercept them might have caused significant damage. It must have helped the Germans, they could work out how many Allied forces we’re being used and where and when they were supposed to be inserted
Small fun fact: the bridge now in place of the bridge they tried to capture, is called the "John Frost Bridge".
Why where the Polish para troops planned to land south of Arnhem, while this wasn’t possible for the English para troops?
As planned 1st AB was supposed to be on the south bank, by then but 1st AB took 4 hours to travel 4 miles/6k from LZ Z to the bridge it was blown up just as they arrived.
Frosts' men failed to take the south end of the road bridge.
During the operation 1st AB stated the ferry was intact however when the poles landed it had been sunk.
Drop Zone 'K' south of the Arnhem bridge on the Malburgsche Polder had a heavy Flak battery on it with 6 x 7.5cm captured French Schneider M.36(f) heavy Flak guns and supporting light Flak, and nearby on the Meinerswijk Polder was another heavy Flak battery with another 6 x 7.5cm guns. Luftwaffe gemischte Flak-Abteilung 591 had a total of 24 heavy and 12 light Flak guns in four positions around the town, north-south-east-west, a battery of 12 light guns at the Oosterbeek rail bridge, and another battery with 18 light guns at the river Ijssel bridges at Westervoort.
DZ 'K' zone was also crossed by the additional hazard of high tension lines from the Arnhem power station located near the Arnhem highway bridge.
It was deemed unsuitable for large scale parachute landings on D-Day, or by gliders because of the many drainage ditches, but was considered acceptable for the Polish parachute element scheduled to land on D+2, when it was expected that 1st Parachute Brigade would have the area under control to destroy the Flak, and the Royal Engineers were due to RV at the power station to take control of it and shut down the power transmission lines after completing their Phase 1 tasks.
The plan for the divisional perimeter around Arnhem was for the outer perimeter to be formed to the west by 1st Airlanding Brigade in Phase 2 after completing their Phase 1 task of protecting the landing zones, in the north by 4th Parachute Brigade after landing on D+1, and in the east by the Polish Brigade on D+2. Because of the unsuitability of the polder for glider landings, their Jeep transport and anti-tank guns were scheduled to land on LZ 'L' at Johannahoeve farm north of Oosterbeek, and then RV with the parachute element at Arnhem bridge as the paratroops cross over the bridge, and take up their positions in the eastern sector of the perimeter.
The Polish parachute drop had to be re-arranged because their drop zone was obviously not clear and it was decided they would be better dropped at Driel and used to support the division perimeter in Oosterbeek by using the ferry, still operating when the arrangements were made, to cross into the Oosterbeek perimeter. By the time someone had been sent to secure the ferry from the north side, the Dutch ferryman unfortunately had decided to scuttle the vessel as he feared it would fall into German hands.
@@davemac1197
I never understood why they couldn't have found a way to drop at least some units on the southern side of Arnhem bridge and seize both ends at the same time. The same goes for Nijmegen bridge where they could've dropped at least a small unit near the northern end so that both sides of Nijmegen bridge could be taken at the same time.
Even if there were concerns of AA shooting down aircraft or less than ideal landing zones, I think it would've been worth the risk to land at least some troops on those LZs if it meant that both sides of those bridges could be taken rather than having to fight to cross the bridge to take it.
@@UzumakiNaruto_ - I one hundred percent agree.
For operation COMET the plan was to land an Airlanding Company at each of the three big bridges at Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave, actually D Company of the three Airlanding Battalions in 1st Airlanding Brigade, in six gliders for each raid landing on the river flood plain right next to the bridge target. They would fly the same route to the main landing zones west of Arnhem until each group crosses the rivers Maas, Waal, and Rijn, where each group would release and then turn right to follow the rivers to the targets. The plan for COMET is shown in James Daly's book Proposed Airborne Assaults - Liberation of Europe (2024), and in his presentation last night in the livestream on Paul Woodadge's channel WW2TV - th-cam.com/video/bbtRhN3-GXM/w-d-xo.html at 44:29.
COMET was planned from 3 September to a scheduled D-Day on 8 September, postponed by weather to 9 September, and then again by the ground situation (start line not achieved) to 10 September, and was finally cancelled at 0200 hours on 10 September as men were boarding their aircraft because of the worsening intelligence situation between Nijmegen and Arnhem, and Montgomery realised COMET was not strong enough to deal with it using just one airborne division (British 1st Airborne and the attached Polish Brigade).
Browning and Montgomery met later that morning and drew up an outline proposal for an expanded COMET using three divisions, and this was was approved by Eisenhower during his scheduled meeting with Montgomery at Brussels airport later that afternoon. The proposal, called provisional operation SIXTEEN (it was the sixteenth operation generated by Browning's British I Airborne Corps) was then taken back to England for detailed planning by 1st Allied Airborne Army (Brereton) and US IX Troop Carrier Command (Williams), since almost all of their assets would now be used.
Brereton and Williams devloped the air plan for what they called MARKET by recycling a previous three-division air plan for their cancelled operations LINNET (Tournai) and LINNET II (Liege-Maastricht bridges). They made a decision to make all flights in daylight from take-off to landing back at base, which meant only one flight per day, so Browning's proposed double airlift on D-Day and his dawn glider coup de main raids on the bridges were removed. Planned drop zones for the 101st Airborne south of the Wilhelmina canal to quickly seize the Son-Eindhoven-Aalst bridges to assist XXX Corps start the advance on an 'airborne carpet' concept was also removed by Williams because of Flak around Eindhoven. Strangely, the phrase "airborne carpet" remains in the Hollywood film script for Browning's briefing, although this concept had in reality been already thrown out.
Browning was unable to protest the changes having already threatened to resign over Brereton's previous LINNET II plan (an alternative target in case LINNET was cancelled) being scheduled on just 36-hours notice - not long enough to print and distribute maps to brief the troops, and Brereton planned to replace him with Matthew Ridgway and his US XVIII Airborne Corps for the operation. Thankfully, that operation was also cancelled and both agreed to forget the disagreement, and Browning withdrew his letter.
Brereton's changes to the original SIXTEEN proposal for MARKET were notified too late to 21st Army Group (Montgomery) for it to be changed again - Brereton had declared that there would be no alterations to the air plan after 14 September, so any appeal would probably have to go to Eisenhower for adjudication, and he would probably consult his air chief, Tedder, who was not well disposed towards Montgomery, so either Brereton would get Eisenhower's backing or Brereton could simply pull the plug on the whole operation, which he had the authority to do and had done on previous operations.
According to A Bridge Too Far author Cornelius Ryan's interview notes with Gavin:
'The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.'
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
- So, it appears Browning was still trying to get the troops landed close to the bridges after Brereton and Williams had taken control of the air planning by trying to influence the divisional plans, but wasn't successful. The highly experienced Colonel Reuben Tucker of the 504th PIR had 'insisted' on a special drop zone south of the Grave bridge so he could attack from sides, so he got it. Colonel Lindquist of the 508th PIR was not a good field commander and had not performed well in Normandy, but Gavin entrusted him with the Nijmegen mission and instructed him to send his 1st Battalion directly to the bridge after landing, which Lindquist failed to do, and this compromised the operation on the ground - allowing 10.SS-Panzer-Division to occupy Nijmegen and reinforce the bridge guard. Gavin had kept the more aggressive and experienced 505th PIR back to hold his right flank against the Reichswald forest on the German border, where he expected the strongest German reaction, and this turned out not to be the case in the first 24 hours.
Great British from Great Britain.
14:33 to be fair the Allies had droped supplies to counterfeit Dutch resistance forces (in reality the Abwehr) so the fear was not unfounded.
The great thing about Allied Airbourne parachute drops in WWII, is that they always went precisely according to plan. With all the troops landing exactly where they were supposed to be at precisely the correct time....
;)
The spat between the Ranger company commander who took the Eindhoven bridge and future Lord ACarrington then commanding the vanguard of XXX Corps depicted in "A bridge too far "is most probably a fiction , the British are wrongly portrayed as lacking stomach for an advance towards Arnhem.
I think you mean the Nijmegen Bridge.
@@thevillaaston7811 Thankyou ,for the correction.
Rangers were not part of airborne at that time.
@@nickdanger3802
Who cares?
1. It was the Nijmegen highway bridge.
2. The company commander was a paratrooper, Captain Moffatt T. Burriss of 'I' Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
3. He was already Lord Carrington, as he inherited the title on the death of his father, the 5th Baron Carrington on 6 June 1940. His full title at the time was Captain The Lord Peter Carrington. Note that the family name had changed from Carrington to Carington since the title was created, so he was legally born Peter Carington now holding the hereditary title Lord Carrington.
4. Carington said the confrontation didn't happen, while Burriss has proved an unreliable witness after claiming to have met Sergeant Robinson's tank as it crossed the bridge (Robinson was already 45 minutes up the road in Lent when Burriss got to the bridge) and he said he passed an abandoned German anti-tank gun on the north bank between the bridges, which Sergeant Pacey (in the second tank behind Robinson) had knocked out while crossing the bridge, confirming the tanks crossed some time before the paratroopers got to it. A sketch map of the operation by fellow 'H' Company commander Carl Kappel for the official report has the timings on the tanks crossing as 1830 hours and 'H' and 'I' Company group under Burriss reaching the bridge at 1915 hours.
Badly planned ignored intellegence
Something that has removed from history by the main Dutch historian about market garden is that there were a lot of Dutch SS in that area and they fought alongside the Germans. There is a video on TH-cam of a Dutch SS veteran with English subtitles and he said he called the historian to say this and he just hung up the phone.
My uncle Val was in the Royal Engineers and went in on a glider. He was one of the last who got out. He said he swam, naked, over the river!
I met couple of ww2 airborne vets, including these famous from Easy company of 506 PIR (2004). I also met one Polish vet (96). He told me sth bitter. That allied or axis airborne, at all, didnt make so much in ww2 as it is said in its legend. He explained what he meant. That unquestionable paratroopers' bravery was apart from tactics which usually made problems after 2 days after landing and needed rescue or general support...
I didnt comment. Just listened to him.
My Gt Uncle was a Pathfinder with the 21st Independent Para Reg, dropped in to mark out the DZ's & LZ's for the main drop...
Great to see the guys at Airborne Assault getting some time! hey are great, really passionate and enthusiastic and very helpful. IWM doesn't give them anything like enough support. A true gem, if you ever go near IWM Duxford be sure to drop in to the Airborne museum that they run there!
No!
If the weather in England was more favorable?
If the radios worked (Ie if the responsible officer spoke up!)?
If secret signals from the ground to the RAF supply C47s were agreed?
If the SS Panzers were expected
If, if, if!
Very important video.
Wait... why were DRIVERS being parachuted in? Wouldn't they start from the back/rear of the line and bring materiel in?
Dickie Davis, a well known English post-war sports commentator, was one of the tank drivers in the relief column. His life was saved when the Corps commander ordered that there was no point sending forward any more tanks : they had to stay on the one road they were on because of the boggy ground either side; and the Germans had positioned a single 88 mm gun that simply picked off every tank that went forward.
Thanks for this great video, even the Dutch place names are pronounced correctly!
Without wanting to be a know-it-all, at 3:31, the landing zones were (also) so far from Arnhem because there were no suitable landing zones closer to the bridge. Parachutists cannot easily land in a (densely) built-up area and not in a forest. Gliders cannot land / crash in a controlled manner in the meadows, intersected by ditches, east and south of the bridge.
Monty was fixated on doing this even before the D-Day landings. He didn't factor in the infrastructure limitations, ignored inconvenient intelligence, and ordered rules of engagement that hampered the offensive.
Wasn't the rules of engagement thing made up in Band of Brothers?
@@diskopartizan0850 - yes. I had no idea what he talking about until I read your reply. The rest of it is wrong as well - it's all Hollywood mythology.
As a Dutch person, this makes me emotional every time, the sacrifices that many people have made and the hell in which many still had to live, such as Anne Frank's death in February 1945, because the Nazi terror continued in the following year.
The British Airbourne Major General in command. Was running around with his Sten machine gun, killing Germans. That's when you know, this mission wasn't going to plan.
Really ruins the flow of the video when an ad plays midway through your reading of the famous ‘Out of ammo. God save the King.’ Line.
Bloody big British blunder- no disrespect to the men who were brave and courageous. Lest we Forget
Not capturing Nijmegen bridge was a huge and critical American blunder.
@@InTheFootstepsofHeroes before 740 men had even arrived at the last intact bridge in the Arnhem area, 82nd had captured the 500m bridge north of Grave, the last intact bridge over the Maas Waal canal and the Heights for Brownings useless HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity of about 1,000 infantry including pilots.
@@nickdanger3802 So why was Grave more important than the bridge at Nijmegen? Obviously it wasn't but the 504 PIR were wise enough to drop troops either side of the bridge. Who's fault was it that the 508 didn't do the same.
@@nickdanger3802 ... while the 508th PIR just sat on their "asses" on a ridge against zero opposition outside a city they had been told by the Dutch resistance leader Geert van Hees the Germans had evacuated and the Nijmegen bridge was guarded by a non-commissioned officer and seventeen men - yes, we know the story, but what's the excuse for compromising an entire operation and sealing the fate of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem? Or was that the intention?
What exactly would you have done with 1,000 men and those gliders, Nick? Re-instate the glider coup de main assaults on the Arnhem-Nijmegen-Grave bridges that USAAF officers Brereton and Williams had removed perhaps?
Had it even occured to you that Browning had advanced the transport of his Corps HQ only after Brereton and Williams had removed the glider coup de main, and Gavin had discarded a British request to drop a battalion on the northern end of the Nijmegen bridge? Perhaps Browning was concerned about Nijmegen for some reason? Can you think of a reason he might be concerned about Nijmegen, I mean even with the benefit of hindsight?
Did you even realise that by moving his Corps HQ transport from the 2nd to the 1st lift after Brereton had made his arbritrary decision for only one lift per day, this was the only way to get his HQ on the ground on the first day at all?
Did you even know that the glider loads going to Arnhem that were pushed back to the 2nd lift by Browning's decision were not 1,000 troops, it was one Troop of four 6-pounder anti-tank guns (Z Troop) and the Jeeps and trailers with the second line ammunition for all the Troops in 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery. Considering anti-tank gun ammunition was the one type of munition 1st Airborne did not actually run out of by the end of the battle (what with German tanks being a bit shy of British anti-tank guns), can you tell all the nice peoeple why you think this was a misjudgement of Browning to take his Corps HQ to Groesbeek instead?
@@InTheFootstepsofHeroes - September Hope - The American Side of a Bridge Too Far, John C McManus (2012), Chapter 3:
As Gavin finished his briefing, the British General [Browning] cautioned him: “Although every effort should be made to effect the capture of the Grave and Nijmegen bridges, it is essential that you capture the Groesbeek ridge and hold it.”
General Browning’s order, of course, made perfect sense. It was of paramount importance to hold the high ground. Any commander worth his salt understood that. Even so, the purpose of Market Garden was to seize the bridges in order to speedily unleash a major armored thrust into northern Germany, toward Berlin. High ground notwithstanding, the only way for the Allies to accomplish this ambitious objective was to take the bridges, and these were, after all, perishable assets, because the Germans could destroy them (and might well be likely to do so the longer it took the Allies to take the bridges). By contrast, the Groesbeek ridge spur wasn’t going anywhere. If the 82nd had trouble holding it, and German artillery or counterattacks became a problem, the Allies could always employ air strikes and artillery of their own to parry such enemy harassment. Also, ground troops from Dempsey’s Second Army could join with the paratroopers to retake Groesbeek from the Germans. So, in other words, given the unpleasant choice between the bridges and the hills, the bridges had to come first.
General Gavin did have some appreciation of this. At an earlier meeting with his regimental commanders, he [Gavin] had told Colonel Roy Lindquist of the 508th Parachute Infantry that even though his primary mission was to hold the high ground at Berg en Dal near Groesbeek, he was also to send his 1st Battalion into Nijmegen to take the key road bridge. Gavin told Lindquist to push for the bridge via "the flatland to the east of the city and approach it over the farms without going through the built-up area." Gavin considered this so important that he stood with Lindquist over a map and showed him this route of advance.
At the same time, Colonel Lindquist had trouble reconciling Gavin's priorities for the two ambitious objectives of holding Berg en Dal and grabbing the bridge. He believed that Gavin wanted him to push for the bridge only when he had secured the critical glider landing zones and other high ground. According to Lindquist, his impression was that "we must first accomplish our main mission before sending any sizeable force to the bridge." Actually, General Gavin wanted the 508th to do both at the same time, but somehow this did not sink into the 508th's leadership. "If General Gavin wanted Col Lindquist to send a battalion for the bridge immediately after the drop, he certainly did not make that clear to him," Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley, the executive officer of the 508th, later wrote.
Perhaps this was a miscommunication on Gavin's part, probably not. Lieutenant Colonel Norton, the G-3, was present for the conversation (Shanley was not) and recorded Gavin's clear instructions to Lindquist: "Seize the high ground in the vicinity of Berg en Dal as his primary mission and ... attempt to seize the Nijmegen bridge with a small force, not to exceed a battalion."
- I think this is excellent analysis by McManus, but Cornelius Ryan's notes on his interview with Gavin for A Bridge Too Far offered more details [my square brackets]:
Gavin and Lindquist had been together in Sicily[?] and Normandy and neither Gavin nor Ridgway, the old commander of the 82nd, trusted him in a fight.
He did not have a “killer instinct.” In Gavin’s words, “He wouldn’t go for the juggler [jugular].” As an administrative officer he was excellent; his troopers were sharp and snappy and, according to Gavin, “Made great palace guards after the war.”
Gavin confirms he ordered Lindquist to commit a battalion to the capture of the Nijmegen bridge before the jump. He also confirms he told Lindquist not to go to the bridge by way of the town but to approach it along some mud flats to the east.
When Gavin learned that Lindquist’s troops were pinned down within a few hundred yards of the bridge on the night of the 17th, he asked him if he had sent them into town by way of the flats. Lindquist said that he had not; that a member of the Dutch underground had come along and offered to lead the men in through the city and that he “thought this would be all right.”
It’s interesting to note that Gavin was without an assistant division commander throughout the war. Ridgway refused to promote Lindquist to brigadier and, since Lindquist was senior colonel in the division, was reluctant to jump Tucker, Billingslea or Eckman over him.
We discussed also objectives. Gavin’s main objectives were the heights at Groesbeek and the Grave bridge; he expected and intelligence confirmed “a helluva reaction from the Reichswald area.” Therefore he had to control the Groesbeek heights. The Grave bridge was essential to the link up with the British 2nd Army. He had three days[?] to capture the Nijmegen bridge and, although he was concerned about it, he felt certain he could get it within three days.
The British wanted him, he said, to drop a battalion on the northern end of the bridge and take it by coup de main. Gavin toyed with the idea and then discarded it because of his experience in Sicily. There, his units had been scattered and he found himself commanding four or five men on the first day. For days afterward, the division was completely disorganized.
Instead, and in effect, Gavin decided to operated [sic] out of what he described as a "power center"; broadly, a strong, centralized circle of power from which he could move in strength upon his objectives. That power center was located, for the most part, in the Groesbeek heights area.
(Notes on meeting with J.M. Gavin, Boston, January 20, 1967 - James Maurice Gavin, Box 101 Folder 10, Cornelius Ryan Collection, Ohio State University)
- Colonel Tucker of the highly experienced 504th PIR 'insisted' on a special drop zone for a company to land south of the Grave bridge so it could be taken from both ends, and he got it. Colonel Lindquist and the 508th had only one combat jump behind them, and Lindquist had not performed well in Normandy, getting a lot of men killed in the 4 July attack on Hill 95 (Saint Catherine) in particular. Why Gavin assigned the critical Nijmegen mission to the 508th instead of the more aggressive and experienced 505th is probably because he was more concerned with reports of German armour in the Reichswald. Only in 1966 while forwarding some research by Dutch Colonel T.A. Boeree to Cornelius Ryan did he realise that Boeree's research on the Hohenstaufen Division's withdrawal to the Netherlands took it through Nijmegen to Arnhem and probably made a stop in the Reichswald. When the 82nd was assigned to Nijmegen, Gavin recalled visiting the 1st Airborne HQ to see their plans and intel because they were planning to drop on Nijmegen for operation COMET and were making their plans accordingly. This obviously inflcuenced his own divisional plan, to the detriment of the Nijmegen mission.
Fantastico arnhem.... Respect from Vietnam... Allahu akhbar.
C'mon, the plan was created by a buffoon......
Please don't use "here's why" in the title. It's a clickbait term used by all those woke Huffington post like sites.
Tha aftermath of thuis battle isn't mocht known. In the days after the battle the citizens of Arnhem were swept out and chased to the norah. The city was louter. My parent had als to lease their home with theorie 3 children. It was just after May 1945 the could return.