Slog or Swan: British Army Effectiveness in Operation Veritable, February and March 1945

Operation Veritable (8 February to 10 March 1945) started with a 900-bomber raid and over 1,800 guns firing ‘the heaviest barrage of the whole war’. Then a dash by 30 Corps aimed to punch through the Siegfried Line to reach the Rhine bridges at Wesel within four days. It failed!

With close to half a million men fighting a month-long series of battles, Veritable dwarfed the Arnhem disaster that preceded it, the Rhine crossing that followed it, and all the named operations that formed the Angl...