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Overview
The Battle of Arnhem has acquired a near-legendary status in British military history as an audacious plan to land paratroopers into the Netherlands and spearhead an attack against the German-held Ruhr. Beyond images of brave paratroopers and scenes from A Bridge Too Far, this was in fact one of the most complex and strategically important operations of the war.
It was expected that the British would sweep through and connect with the Arnhem force within a matter of days. But things on the ground proved very different. The Allied forces were isolated, without reinforcements and unable to advance. The operation ended in disaster. Using first-hand accounts, maps and detailed timelines, historian Chris Brown explores the unfolding action of the battle and puts the reader on the front line. If you truly want to understand what happened and why – read on.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780752468440 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 09/30/2011 |
| Series: | Battle Story |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 9 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Arnhem 1944
By Chris Brown
The History Press
Copyright © 2011 The History PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-6844-0
CHAPTER 1
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Normandy landings of 6 June 1944 opened a new front in the war against Nazi Germany. As a consequence of a thorough deception campaign, the Germans were taken completely by surprise, indeed for some weeks Hitler persisted in believing that the Normandy landings were no more than a deception and that the main Allied effort would be made at Calais. The initial landings were very successful and the Allied armies were firmly ensconced within days; however, the Germans reacted with incredible efficiency and the battle stalled at Caen, leading to a fierce struggle in the bocage of Normandy instead of a rapid breakout into the more open countryside of western France. Eventually the heavy losses in Normandy and the dramatic thrust of American armies from the Cotentin peninsula caused a collapse of the German defence, trapping a huge portion of the combat strength of German Army Group B at Falaise.
The loss of thousands of Wehrmacht and SS troops, and great quantities of equipment, destabilised German strategy, compromising their ability to react to US and British operations. This was not simply a matter of battlefield losses. In the months before the Normandy invasion British and American air strikes had demolished the transport infrastructure that the Germans required to move new formations to the Normandy front and to replenish the units that were already engaged. Allied commanders had expected a rather different schedule. Capturing Caen had been a much more difficult project than had been anticipated, and had held up operations to a considerable degree, but neither Montgomery, who was the senior commander on the ground, nor his superior, Eisenhower had envisaged a German collapse.
When Brussels fell to the British divisions of 21st Army Group (the parent group of Second Army), they had been in action continuously for almost exactly three months. Supply problems and exhaustion were now major factors and the campaign faltered. In addition to the challenges faced by the armies, there was also profound disagreement among the Allied commanders about the next step. Eisenhower took the view that the general strategy should be to pressure the enemy on a broad front. British historians have taken this to mean a front hundreds of miles long, from the channel to the south of France. This was not at all what he had in mind. As long as Patton and Devers were making good progress and destroying the enemy, Eisenhower was reluctant to bring their operations to a dead halt, but on the other hand, so long as the British and Canadian armies were making similar progress in the north, he was not eager to interrupt them in their pursuit of an enemy who, in July and August, was looking like it might collapse completely, allowing a rapid advance into Germany. Equally, he was aware that the logistical effort available was not up to the task of supporting all of the Allied armies at the rates of advance that had occured during July and August.
Two influential figures were unhappy about the situation. Montgomery and Patton both believed that the Germans were on the verge of a total strategic and tactical breakdown and that one axis of advance with all of the resources of the Allies firmly behind it would knock Germany out of the war much more quickly than a combination of advances. Naturally, each believed that they were the man for the job and that his force was better suited for a major strategic strike into Germany.
What was not in question was that some action was needed. If the Germans were reeling under the blows they had already received, the last thing that was wanted was to allow them any opportunity to recover. Both men had valid points, but on balance, Eisenhower decided that Montgomery should have priority over Patton and that he should mount a major new offensive which would carry Allied forces though the Netherlands, across the remaining geographical barriers facing the northern army group: the rivers of Waal, Maas and Rhine, and on into Germany. Montgomery's forces would thus bypass the heavily fortified Siegfried Line, then move into the industrial heartland of Germany. In order to achieve this objective, Montgomery was given command of the three divisions of 1st Airborne Corps from the newly named 1st Airborne Army.
The Airborne Army had been formed partly as a means of avoiding unnecessary duplication of effort in the way of research and development, training and planning facilities, but chiefly to ensure the efficient use of the limited airlift capacity. It consisted of six divisions: British 1st Airborne, the American 82nd, 101st and 17th Airborne, the Scottish 52nd (Airportable) Division and the Polish Parachute Brigade. The 1st, 82nd and 101st divisions and the Polish Brigade would be available for the initial strike, with the 52nd standing by for delivery to the battlefield once Deelen airfield had been secured. The commanding officer of the Airborne Army was Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton, an American Army Air Force general, who had previously had command of the US 9th Air Force. The normal practice for joint American-British formations was to appoint an American officer as commander with a British officer as his deputy. That post was held by General Frederick Browning, known throughout the British Army as 'Boy' Browning. As Brereton's deputy and commander of the 1st Airborne Corps, Browning would be the commander of the airborne element of the operation that Montgomery intended to launch to renew the campaign.
The operation, codenamed 'Market Garden', would involve placing three divisions of airborne troops – more than 30,000 men and hundreds of vehicles and artillery pieces – at several locations behind the German lines; in the case of British 1st Airborne and the Polish Brigade almost 62 miles (100km) beyond the front. Over the next 24 hours – or 48 hours at most – General Horrocks' XXX Corps from General Dempsey's Second Army would advance from Neerpelt with extensive close air support and batter their way along one road, linking up with elements of 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions who would have seized and held a chain of bridges up to and including the great road bridge at Nijmegen; from there XXX Corps would press on to Arnhem and then on towards Germany.
If everything went to plan, the war would be over by the end of 1944. Most, if not all, of Germany would have fallen to the Allies; an achievement which would have implications for the future relationship between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. At best this was an optimistic view of the situation, but there was something of an undercurrent of wishful thinking which pervaded Allied planning and policy generally. The advance through France and Belgium had led to an assumption that the German Army was ready to crack and that one more great strategic victory would do the job; the collapse of the Wehrmacht and the SS, and the capture of the industrial regions of western Germany, would destroy whatever hope still existed among the German people and would bring about the final destruction of the Nazi's domestic political credibility. However attractive this may have seemed to elements in the Allied High Command it was far from being a realistic appreciation of the political, economic, strategic and tactical realities of the day.
Most importantly, it took no real account of the abilities of the German military. The fall of France seems to have been taken by some as an indication of things to come. Given the Allied experience of fighting the Germans this is something of a curiosity. The advance through Italy had been a costly and challenging business and was by no means complete in September 1944. The Germans had demonstrated time and again a remarkable capacity for reorganisation under difficult circumstances.
Clearly the Market Garden operation was a major risk, but the possible gains were commensurately great. The Germans had been in headlong retreat for weeks, culminating in the event that Netherlanders called 'Mad Tuesday'. On 5 September a host of German units and stray individuals streamed across the Netherlands heading for Germany with all the speed they could muster and little sign of any sort of order. This had been reported to Allied intelligence and taken very much to heart as an indication of the state of the enemy's forces. There was an argument to be made that a major strategic intervention with fresh troops might be able to take advantage of the German retreat and bolster the wider campaign.
Market Garden did not represent a change of policy on the part of either Montgomery or Eisenhower, merely a shift of emphasis. The ground campaign could have continued in the form that had been so successful since the breakout from Normandy had it not been for the growing exhaustion of Second Army. If the advance to Germany was to regain the momentum that the Allies had enjoyed over the preceding months there would have to be a major addition to the forces available. The only strategic reserve available to the Allies was the collection of airborne formations still based in the UK and, in truth, the fastest way to get them into the battle was to airlift them.
A major airborne deployment was not an unreasonable proposition in itself; what was the value of such a force if it was not to be used to intervene in the wider struggle? Even accepting that the fastest means of getting the airborne formations to the battle area was by air, it could be argued that dropping them in the midst of the enemy may not have been the best option. If the airlift capacity existed to take them to battle, it would have been just as easy to transport them to airfields in northern France and then move them to the front by road. There are two major flaws to this argument. The first would have been the challenge of transport control. The roads leading to the Netherlands were very heavily overcrowded by the demands of the armies already in action. Secondly, where were the thousands of necessary trucks to come from? Even if these issues could be overcome, there would have been the vast administrative challenge of passing the new formations through to the front; by the time the airborne units were in action the opportunity to keep the Germans in a state of disorganised retreat might well have passed.
The Market Garden plan was formulated in just one week starting from 10 September 1944; however, the basic operational plan had already been considered. An operation – Comet – had been planned for distributing one airborne division across the main river crossings – Nijmegen, Grave, Eindhoven and Arnhem. The parachute forces would hold the bridges until such time as the tanks and infantry of XXX Corps pushed through. A great deal of the planning already done for Comet, which was itself based largely on another abandoned operation entitled 'Fifteen', was applicable to Market Garden.
Despite the plans being broadly similar, the strategic and tactical environment was not and although that was not immediately obvious to those concerned, there is a good argument that it should have been. The most significant difference was that Comet had been designed to take advantage of an existing situation. The whole of Second Army had been rapidly advancing since before the crossing of the Seine, but in the days before Market Garden the speed of the advance slowed to a snail's pace, largely because the logistical effort required was unsustainable. The other difference was that the enemy was no longer on the run. The Germans were offering more committed resistance which slowed down Second Army, and Second Army was also being held back by supply and manpower shortages. This afforded a little more breathing space to German formations, which in turn allowed them to reorganise and offer stiffer resistance. This should have been more apparent to the planning staff at Montgomery's and Browning's headquarters since it was most definitely apparent to battalion and brigade intelligence officers at the front.
It has been argued that Comet might have succeeded where Market Garden failed; the operation might have gone ahead a few days earlier, at a point when the Germans were still reeling. Success would have depended on the German Army throughout Belgium and the Netherlands collapsing under one final blow – a straw breaking a camel's back. This is not a realistic analysis for a number of reasons. Chiefly, the German Army was in a rather better condition than the planners realised. Mad Tuesday notwithstanding, the crisis was, if not past, then certainly past its worst and German formations were beginning to get a grip on the situation. Moreover, the force to be committed was very much smaller. Only one brigade would be available for each of the operational areas and, apart from Arnhem, each area would contain more than one objective. Even if the objectives had all been taken with little loss, the force available to retain them would have been terribly vulnerable to counterattack. Furthermore, XXX Corps would have had even less time to replenish units and stockpile the fuel and ammunition required to advance 62 miles (100km).
There was also the question of the German reaction. Superficially it might seem that closing the bridges would prevent the German Army from retreating into the Netherlands and thus bring about a wholesale surrender of units trapped with the west banks of the Rhine, Meuse and Waal behind them and the onset of Second Army in front of them. However it is likely that Comet would have had quite the opposite effect. A threat to their only avenue of escape might well have persuaded German troops still in, or close to, contact with the enemy that it was in their better interests to fight hard and delay the British while units in the rear dealt with the slender parachute forces, thus securing the bridges for a continued withdrawal to Germany.
Even if Comet was mounted successfully the prospect that the Germans could be defeated in the Netherlands was a rather hopeful assumption in itself. There was no guarantee that the German High Command would prove incapable of mounting a determined resistance once the Allies had crossed the Rhine. It is true that the advance across Germany in the spring of 1945 was rapid and successful, but the situation was very different from that of the late summer and autumn of 1944. By 1945 the Germans had, to coin a phrase, 'shot their bolt' in the Ardennes offensive.
Market Garden was very much in the mould of Comet; the rationale behind the operation was identical and the forces were similar in form, though, of course, very much larger. A good deal has been made of the difficulties of mounting the operation in such a short space of time and there is some truth in this, however neither Comet nor Market Garden were planned in isolation; in fact some documents for Comet were recycled for its successor, the word Comet being obliterated by having Market Garden stamped over the top of the original title.
A succession of at least a dozen proposed operations had been cancelled before Comet, either because they had been deemed impractical or because the advance of the ground forces had proceeded more quickly than expected and had made the operations redundant. Inevitably this had had a damaging effect on the morale of the individual units of all of the airborne divisions, though probably more on the British than the American formations. The Americans had been in action in Normandy, whereas 1st Airborne had never seen action as a division at all, though several of the battalions had fought in North Africa or Italy. Even so, the divisional staff had been in place for some time and given all of the operations that they had planned for – though cancelled one and all – in theory at least, by September 1944 the planning process should have been honed to a very sharp edge indeed.
CHAPTER 2THE ARMIES
Responsibility for the execution of Market Garden and the Arnhem battle must rest with the commanders, as is the case for all battles. Eisenhower, Montgomery, Browning and Urquhart all made errors of judgement, each in his degree. With the benefit of hindsight it is all too easy to criticise a certain lack of focus and an unrealistic degree of optimism on the part of any one of them, and all of them in combination; however, there were many pressures on these officers, and we must bear in mind that an opportunity recognised and a moment seized can bring about huge success in war. Montgomery saw the opportunity and persuaded Eisenhower to back him. Browning accepted his mission and persuaded Urquhart to put up with a most unsatisfactory set of circumstances. Urquhart failed to ensure that his division was ready to fight a divisional battle and managed to become separated from his headquarters at the very point when he could have made a difference to the shape of the battle.
A number of historians when criticising the Market Garden operation have neglected – or have chosen to ignore – the fact that not all of these officers had much, if any, practical experience of airborne warfare on the scale proposed for Market Garden. Parachute and glider troops had been committed in the Mediterranean theatre and in the Normandy invasion, but the situations had been very different. The North African and Italian operations had been relatively small affairs, and although airborne troops had been used extensively in Normandy, it was as part of a mammoth operation which had been months in the planning. Although Market Garden was, in essence, a much larger version of Comet, and although some of the planning aspects remained the same, there was very little time to examine the myriad details which make the difference to success or failure.
Eisenhower and Montgomery – quite reasonably – expected to be able to rely on the professional ability of their subordinates, particularly those who would have operational responsibility. As head of the 1st Airborne Corps, Browning was responsible for the troops once they got on the ground, but the airlift aspect of the operation was almost entirely in the hands of Air Force staffs whose appreciation of the priorities of the combat units was extremely limited. From the earliest stage of planning General Brereton insisted on a daylight drop, in part at least because many of the American aircrews involved had had very little training in night operations. This was accepted, albeit reluctantly, by the three divisional commanders, though a dawn drop would have had many advantages. Once the airlift plan was established, Brereton was unwilling to consider any changes, and this was a major problem. All of the airborne commanders sought to make alterations to their proposed drop zones for a variety of reasons, but none could convince Brereton of their proposals. The air effort as a whole suffered from a lack of flexibility and from divided responsibilities. Although the delivery of 1st Airborne to Arnhem was Brereton's province, re-supply was largely a British affair, and all transport requests had to be referred to Air Marshal Leigh Mallory. This was an area in which the British had a considerable degree of expertise; several major operations in Burma had relied on air transport to supply ground forces on a similar scale; however, failures in communications, equipment and liaison between air and ground forces would make supply a critical issue at Arnhem.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Arnhem 1944 by Chris Brown. Copyright © 2011 The History Press. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Dedication,
Acknowledgements,
List of Illustrations,
Introduction,
Timeline,
Historical Background,
The Armies,
The Days Before Battle,
The Battlefield: What Actually Happened?,
After the Battle,
The Legacy,
Orders of Battle,
Further Reading,
Copyright,