Market Garden

Discussion in 'NW Europe' started by Dpalme01, Sep 28, 2004.

  1. Dpalme01

    Dpalme01 Member

    Can I get your feed back on operation MARKET GARDEN? Was it worth the risk? What went wrong?
     
  2. DirtyDick

    DirtyDick Senior Member

    I think one could ask, what went right?

    Landing 35,000 men in waves, by air, quite far behind enemy lines and ultimately dependent upon the success of ground troops to battle towards them, is always risky.

    Add to that faulty communications equipment, hubris amongst the planners for dismissing concerns about the level of opposition they could meet, the loss of necessary equipment such as jeeps, and the inability to be landed at opportune sites, are the basic ingredients for its failings.

    Had it been better prepared, it had all the possibilities of shortening the war in the West, that is why it was so seductive to the planners.

    Richard
     
  3. JoeRoman

    JoeRoman Junior Member

    If the 9th and 10th SS Panzers Divisions hadn't of been there, I think that it would be considered one of the most brilliant plans of WW2 and would have shortened the war by many months and thousands of lives. And all this from Monty. "After all it was 90% successful".

    Joe
     
  4. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    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.
     
  5. JoeRoman

    JoeRoman Junior Member

    It does all come down to the Germans having very good troops in the correct spot. If the Germans had not been there, then the rest of Mr Middlebrooks's reasons would have been moot.

    Is the original question about reality or theory?

    Joe
     
  6. morse1001

    morse1001 Very Senior Member

    . Failure to use 2 TAF in the "cab rank" ground support role.


    That was down to ineffectual or non-existant ground - air comms.

    :ph34r: :ph34r:
     
  7. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    Originally posted by morse1001@Sep 29 2004, 10:41 PM
    . Failure to use 2 TAF in the "cab rank" ground support role.


    That was down to ineffectual or non-existant ground - air comms.

    :ph34r: :ph34r:
    [post=28498]Quoted post[/post]

    It is not the case that it was planned for and did not work. It was not in the plan and simply not available. They were able to communicate for this purpose in 21st Army Group, so there is no reason to suppose that it could not have been tried. The fact is that the air chiefs did not want to risk 2 TAF aircraft in the operation and it was too far for UK based close air support.
     
  8. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    Originally posted by JoeRoman@Sep 29 2004, 08:21 PM
    It does all come down to the Germans having very good troops in the correct spot.  If the Germans had not been there, then the rest of Mr Middlebrooks's reasons would have been moot.

    Is the original question about reality or theory?

    Joe
    [post=28492]Quoted post[/post]

    Some of them were, but even the divisions of II SS Panzer Korps were in the early stages of reforming after Normandy, with many new recruits coming in to fill the ranks who had never been in action. The two divisions were also extremely short of tanks, although there were some heavy tank units at corps level with quite a number of Panzer VIs.

    Also, the bulk of the German divisions facing XXX Corps and the American divisions were very low in strength, many with divisional infantry strength of below 2,000 and regimental strength of 600, often less (and the rifle strength would be even lower).

    The Germans were recovering fast after the Normandy debacle, but were still scratching together units.

    If 1st Airborne had been able to concentrate in at least brigade strength in Arnhem town and south of the bridge, with more 17 pr AT guns than were available to the division, on 17 September and then rely on close air support, in my view they could have held out, particularly if the lead units of XXX Corps had been mor ewilling to take risks.

    Of course, this is just my opinion and we will never know.

    See OOBs at:
    http://www.arnhemarchive.org/order.htm
     
  9. Dpalme01

    Dpalme01 Member

    Originally posted by JoeRoman@Sep 29 2004, 09:21 PM
    It does all come down to the Germans having very good troops in the correct spot. If the Germans had not been there, then the rest of Mr Middlebrooks's reasons would have been moot.

    Is the original question about reality or theory?

    Joe
    [post=28492]Quoted post[/post]
    Reality- I tottally agree with Ike in theory- I personally think that alot of it was the falt of the troops- especially stopping to have tea and sociallize with the Dutch.
    They should have just pressed foreward and secured all the bridges before the Germans had time to recover from the shock. But also the reasons that Angie999 gave (by the way thanks for those) mostly applied to the troops.
     
  10. plant-pilot

    plant-pilot Senior Member

    Although there were several full formations in and around the Arnhem area, a major contributing factor in the speed with which the Germans were able to react is the standardization in German training and their ability to quickly draw together ad hock units that could work well together and follow the orders of the senior rank around.

    It was not uncommon around Arnhem to find mixed units of SS, Wehrmacht, Kriegs Marine and Luftwaffe, all fighting together as a single unit and fighting well. Common weapons, tactics anc doctorine all helped, as did the fact that they were fighting on the doorstep of the fatherland.

    I feel that if everything else hadn't gone wrong the battle for the bridge, as planned, would not have been a walkover. It would have needed everthing to have been dropped much closer to the objective and all in one lift for them to have had a chance to have taken and held the bridge long enough for XXX Corps to have made it.

    Blaming it on XXX Corps tanks for stopping to make tea is a little cruel. The infantry had to clear the towns, hindered by the jubilant Dutch, while the tanks had to wait for their infantry support to catch up. Tanks advancing without support is not clever. Nothing wrong with making a brew while you are waiting as any squaddie knows.
     
  11. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    I agree with Middlebrook's reasons. If 2nd SS Panzer Corps had not been there, I think 1st Airborne would not have been annihilated, but it still would have hard a hard time, and still likely not have held Arnhem Bridge. The big problem for 30 Corps was trying to shove three divisions and 40,000 men up one road. I also blame absentee leadership for Market-Garden's failings. Normally, Montgomery was a hands-on general. After launching Market-Garden, he was not. Horrocks was down with the flu. And Gen. Sir Miles Dempsey, who commanded 2nd Army, only showed up to order 1st Airborne to withdraw. If either of these three generals had been more forceful, things would have been different. Another factor was the failure of 30 Corps and 11th Armoured Division to cut off the Scheldt Estuary. That gave the German forces in the Scheldt an escape hatch. Many of these outfits fought at Oosterbeek in the ad hoc kampfgruppes that gave the attack so much trouble. There are aspects of the planning for and execution of Market-Garden that remind me of Lee at Gettysburg, who did not plan or execute that battle well, either.
     
  12. plant-pilot

    plant-pilot Senior Member

    Even though the Operation seems to have been doomed to failure from the very start, the same sort of plan has been tried, albeit on a smaller scale, since (Kosovo for example) with diferent outcomes. This would point to the plan not being as flawed as most would suggest.

    With a little more intelligence provided or even correctly interpreted and a more 'can-do' attitude from the RAF Command, things could have been tipped in the favour of the allies.

    Nobody can doubt the bravery and skill of the aircrews involved in the assault, re-supply and support of the operation, but without the ability to drop the whole of the 1st Airborne Division in one day, and the refusal of selecting DZs closer to the bridge on the south side of the river porting the reason of 'having to ensure the minimum loss of aircraft', left the whole operation in doubt from the start.

    I think it's that old problem of the service provider forgeting that they are providing a service for the customer, not the other way round.
     
  13. sapper

    sapper WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    It always amazes me how the crap is thrown about 60 years after the event. AS one that took part in the "Market Garden" operation, Was it right to take the high risk at that time...Too damned right it was! If it had succeeded then the war may well have been over months earlier. many thousands of Allied troops lives would have been saved...

    No matter the risk, this was a "Diamond" prize, had it worked GREAT! but the rewards were such that any risk was worth the try. Besides that, Why not? What are fighting men for? Obviously to fight...

    If anyone thinks that wars are won without any setbacks, then they live in cloud cuckoo land, Wars are often "two steps forward, one step back"

    Monty, often accused as being "Unadventurous" despite beating the daylights out of the Africa Corps over a thousand miles or more, and achieving Victory in Normandy ten days ahead of schedule. Yet, when he took a high risk operation with the chance to finish the war quickly, every one gathers around tut tutting!

    Heaping blame and worse on this man. He at least, took the chance, not matter how small of it coming off..to finish it. It failed... If I recall? that was his only defeat.

    But looking back after 60 years with all the rubbish written in that time, it is now easy to lay blame, If it was left to you that cast about for blame.. Then there would have been no great military endeavours. in war men fight, sometime win, sometimes lose. Monty never threw mens lives away easily, and had the mens respect for that
    Sapper
     
  14. John Benson

    John Benson Junior Member

    Omar Bradley: "Had the pious teetotaling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF with a hangover, I could not have been more astonished than I was by the daring adventure he proposed. For in contrast to the conservative tactics Montgomery ordinarily chose, the Arnhem attack was to be made over a 60-mile carpet of airborne troops. Although I never reconciled myself to this venture, I nevertheless freely concede that Monty's plan for Arnhem was one of the most imaginative of the war".

    In my view it failed because:

    1. Troops weren't landed on either side of the bridge. Failure fully to realise the role of airborne troops? Lee-Mallory said it would be too highly defended. Yet the Poles were scheduled to be landed there.
    2. In the anxiety to get airborne forces into action little account was taken of intelligence sources. Arrogance? Dutch officers for instance tried in vain to point out that before the war they had tried to advance up the road on an exercise and that it had failed - for precisely the reasons that were experienced in 1944. The road had to be used because tanks couldn't get off it.
    3. Lack of a sense of urgency.
    4. Weather
    5. Equipment failure, particularly radio. People in the UK simply didn't know what the true position was.

    But the Press - particularly Stanley Maxted of the BBC - were able to get their reports through. What I've never understood is why - with the radios out - some effort wasn't made to utilise these facilities? Maybe they didn't know that Maxted was able to get through?

    I've also never understood Monty's claim that Market Garden was 90 per cent successful. The whole aim was to take the bridge - and that was 100 per cent unsuccessful.

    Bradley's right - it was a gamble. Had it paid off the war might have been shortened. But the war might also have been shortened had we shown some urgency in taking the banks of the Scheldt. After all, taking and using the deep sea port at Antwerp had been identified very early on as a priority, but it wasn't working until November. Even Monty acknowledged later that he'd made a mistake. As things turned out, opting for Market Garden rather than Antwerp possibly lengthened the war.

    John
     
  15. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    After the spectacular success of the Normandy campaign and the breakout, September 1944 was a period of failure to achieve objectives:

    1. Market Garden itself.

    2. Failure to seal off and clear the Scheldt.

    3. Failure at Metz and Aachen.

    All along the front, the German forces were in disarray and had lost unit cohesion and much of their equipment, although they were dealing with this throughout the month.

    I don't think that anyone planned or expected such a spectacular advance in August and early September. I think that both Montgomery and Patton were right to argue for a single, well supplied thrust, because the allies had simply over-reached and were in need of a major administrative pause if a general advance was to continue before the winter.

    This is sometimes overlooked.
     
  16. sapper

    sapper WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Having been there, at that time it was a great chance. Since the war we have had so many authors spouting about something they know nothing about...And each one writing with his own personal prejudice.

    At that time it was that one great chance. Only Monty was bright enough, and clever enough to set it in progress. 90% of it was a complete success, it failed at the last hurdle all the others were a complete success...., should it have been attempted? Too damned right it should. Typical of Monty's thrust and drive and willingness to go for the throat of an enemy given an outside chance.

    If you think not of Monty? Then you should have had the experience of the inside of the Falaise pocket, any doubt of Monty's skilland control of the battlefield would quickly be dispelled. For here was the ultiimate defeat of an army. many got away. But Oh dear, the carnage visited on the German army was nothing short of horrific.
    Sapper
     
  17. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    How far exactly were XXX Corps from the bridge when the advance stopped and why didnt they try to punch through to take the bridge. I have yet to find a clear explanation for this. It all seems very vague. Were XXX Corps fought to a standstill or was it a case of the infantry stuck in the towns along the route still trying to clear out pockets of german resisntance???
     
  18. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Originally posted by Gotthard Heinrici@Mar 9 2005, 10:06 AM
    How far exactly were XXX Corps from the bridge when the advance stopped and why didnt they try to punch through to take the bridge. I have yet to find a clear explanation for this. It all seems very vague. Were XXX Corps fought to a standstill or was it a case of the infantry stuck in the towns along the route still trying to clear out pockets of german resisntance???
    [post=32030]Quoted post[/post]
    30 Corps was five miles from the bridge at Elst, where the Arnhem-Nijmegen Highway is an elevated embankment, where vehicles are easily silhouetted against the sky. The 5th Guards Armoured Brigade was stalled there by Kampfgruppe Knaust, a collection of Tiger and Panther tanks led by one-legged Oberst Hans Peter Knaust, and jammed up the road. The 43rd Infantry Division slide left around the block, through the polder and hooked up with the Polish paratroopers at Driel and the British 1st Airborne, but also found they were blocked by the rest of 2nd SS Panzer Corps and KG Knaust. With the Germans cutting the highway at Veghel, 30 Corps' supply and administration system was pretty fragile. At this point, with the 1st Airborne hanging on by a thread and the offensive stalled and nearly out of supply, Dempsey (and Horrocks to a lesser degree) made the call that a further push would just lead to the annihilation of the 1st Airborne and no ground gained. Dempsey said it was time to halt and "consolidate" the offensive's gains, and pull out the 1st Airborne. "It was the one bloody road...to Nijmegen," as the generals say at the end of "A Bridge Too Far."
     
  19. Gerard

    Gerard Seelow/Prora

    Originally posted by Kiwiwriter+Mar 9 2005, 03:28 PM-->(Kiwiwriter @ Mar 9 2005, 03:28 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteBegin-Gotthard Heinrici@Mar 9 2005, 10:06 AM
    How far exactly were XXX Corps from the bridge when the advance stopped and why didnt they try to punch through to take the bridge. I have yet to find a clear explanation for this. It all seems very vague. Were XXX Corps fought to a standstill or was it a case of the infantry stuck in the towns along the route still trying to clear out pockets of german resisntance???
    [post=32030]Quoted post[/post]
    30 Corps was five miles from the bridge at Elst, where the Arnhem-Nijmegen Highway is an elevated embankment, where vehicles are easily silhouetted against the sky. The 5th Guards Armoured Brigade was stalled there by Kampfgruppe Knaust, a collection of Tiger and Panther tanks led by one-legged Oberst Hans Peter Knaust, and jammed up the road. The 43rd Infantry Division slide left around the block, through the polder and hooked up with the Polish paratroopers at Driel and the British 1st Airborne, but also found they were blocked by the rest of 2nd SS Panzer Corps and KG Knaust. With the Germans cutting the highway at Veghel, 30 Corps' supply and administration system was pretty fragile. At this point, with the 1st Airborne hanging on by a thread and the offensive stalled and nearly out of supply, Dempsey (and Horrocks to a lesser degree) made the call that a further push would just lead to the annihilation of the 1st Airborne and no ground gained. Dempsey said it was time to halt and "consolidate" the offensive's gains, and pull out the 1st Airborne. "It was the one bloody road...to Nijmegen," as the generals say at the end of "A Bridge Too Far."
    [post=32040]Quoted post[/post]
    [/b]Thats brilliant Kiwiwriter and well put too. I didnt know about Kampgruppe Knaust. Thank you!
     
  20. Kiwiwriter

    Kiwiwriter Very Senior Member

    Originally posted by Gotthard Heinrici+Mar 9 2005, 11:51 AM-->(Gotthard Heinrici @ Mar 9 2005, 11:51 AM)</div><div class='quotemain'>Originally posted by Kiwiwriter@Mar 9 2005, 03:28 PM
    <!--QuoteBegin-Gotthard Heinrici@Mar 9 2005, 10:06 AM
    How far exactly were XXX Corps from the bridge when the advance stopped and why didnt they try to punch through to take the bridge. I have yet to find a clear explanation for this. It all seems very vague. Were XXX Corps fought to a standstill or was it a case of the infantry stuck in the towns along the route still trying to clear out pockets of german resisntance???
    [post=32030]Quoted post[/post]
    30 Corps was five miles from the bridge at Elst, where the Arnhem-Nijmegen Highway is an elevated embankment, where vehicles are easily silhouetted against the sky. The 5th Guards Armoured Brigade was stalled there by Kampfgruppe Knaust, a collection of Tiger and Panther tanks led by one-legged Oberst Hans Peter Knaust, and jammed up the road. The 43rd Infantry Division slide left around the block, through the polder and hooked up with the Polish paratroopers at Driel and the British 1st Airborne, but also found they were blocked by the rest of 2nd SS Panzer Corps and KG Knaust. With the Germans cutting the highway at Veghel, 30 Corps' supply and administration system was pretty fragile. At this point, with the 1st Airborne hanging on by a thread and the offensive stalled and nearly out of supply, Dempsey (and Horrocks to a lesser degree) made the call that a further push would just lead to the annihilation of the 1st Airborne and no ground gained. Dempsey said it was time to halt and "consolidate" the offensive's gains, and pull out the 1st Airborne. "It was the one bloody road...to Nijmegen," as the generals say at the end of "A Bridge Too Far."
    [post=32040]Quoted post[/post]
    Thats brilliant Kiwiwriter and well put too. I didnt know about Kampgruppe Knaust. Thank you!
    [post=32042]Quoted post[/post]
    [/b]No worries, mate. KG Knaust is well-described in "A Bridge Too Far." I have a bunch of books on the Market-Garden campaign, listed on my web page. And I've studied the terrain from my game "Highway to the Reich," which re-fights the battle at company level from the Belgian border to downtown Arnhem. I think I can see that road in my sleep! :)
     

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