Quote:
Originally Posted by angie999  In his book Arnhem (Penguin Book edition, 1995), Martin Middlebrook gave 10 reasons in chronological order:
1. Over-optimism about German powers of recovery after the defeat in Normandy.
2. Failure to warn 1st Airborne about Panzer divisions, thus denying them the opportunity to include more AT weapons in their loads.
3. Decision of Lt. Gen. Browning to take a corps HQ to Holland, thus reducing the gliders available to 1st Airborne in 1st lift by 38.
4. Failure of 1st Airborne's air plan, in particular limiting them to one lift on the first day and also failure to land at least a coup de main force close to the Arnhem bridge and covering both ends. (In my opinion, not making two drops on the first day, which was possible, also reduced the Air Landing Brigade - or that part of it which had landed - to the passive role of protecting drop and landing zones for too long and prevented the brigades from linking up to fight as a division)
5. Failure of 1st Airborne commanders to sufficiently impress 1st Parachute Brigade with the urgency of pressing on to the Arnhem bridge on the first day.
6. Failure to employ available help from Dutch civilians.
7. Failure to use 2 TAF in the "cab rank" ground support role.
8. Browning's failure to give US 82nd Airborne greater priority in capturing Nijmegen bridge. (Middlebrook rates this as second in importance after the air plan)
9. Lack of push in 2nd Army and XXX Corps. (And I would single out in particular 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Grenadier Guards after Nijmegen, who did not seem to be prepared to accept losses to break through what was a very thin front)
10. Failure of Urquart to appreciate the importance of the Westerbouwing height and the Rhine ferry below and the failure to accept the advice of Sosabowski that there was a better crossing downstream of where it was attempted by 4th Dorsets.
I think I generally accept all of these.
In my view, the operation was 90% successful, which is usually pretty good in war. The trouble is that this was one operation which needed to be 100% successful.
Of course there was some "bad luck" like the narrow failure of US 101st Airborne to take the Son bridge before it was blown and the same with 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment at the Arnhem railway bridge, but these were secondary reasons in my opinion. |
I would like to repost Angie's post from earlier in the thread as it seems to contain a lot of sense. She also makes the valid point that it was 90% successful and that in most cases it would be looked at as a success. Unfortunately as she writes, it needed to be 100% successful.
Tom whilst you are right about the misconceptions I still think that people tend to be very nationalistic when it comes to MG. whenever a criticism is raised which, for example, seems to question the efforts of the British Army, we get responses pointing out american errors. And vice versa, Monty being a particularly good target. I do notice Tom that you are not above having a pop at the US side yourself??
Its very hard but if a really good thread about Market Garden is to emerge then people have to be prepared to adopt a more "neutral" stance when talking about it. BTW, I too can lapse into this routine. Believe me, I'm not perfect either!!
Philip I also understand your point of view and "what if" threads can be the most dangerous threads to start!!