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 Personal info given and now deleted. He was just one of thousands of youngsters who died during that Operation and who deserve to be remembered for their sacrifice. 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.
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 ❤
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
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 🇺🇸
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
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.
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
Thank you for another informative presentation.... Incredibly brave men given an impossible task which was planned incredibly badly..... Roger.... Pembrokeshire
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 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...
Kudos to you on a very well-presented, informative and succinct account of the operation. There are many documentaries on the subject out there, but yours is superior to most.
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.
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.
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
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 UA-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 was a glider pilot on this Op , glad to say he survived and was take as a POW , his story is online as told through the eyes of his wife back on the home front both at their home and while she and their children stayed with my grandmother in Herefordshire , i find it very touching at the end that she mentions my grandmother and her death aged 100 years and 5 weeks
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.
@@Kareli_Miklos Not forgotten. What often gets forgotten is that the Poles (not the para bde) were under command of First Canadian Army during the liberation.
Delivered food to an 102 year old woman in Edinburgh recently, both of whom’s brothers landed at Arnhem. Both survived, but one was badly injured and taken as a POW. He swore off the miltary and returned his medals because he was so angry at how the operation had been handled
Although I don’t have the harsh view of this operation that many armchair generals do. There is one thing rarely mentioned and that is why Major Howard, who captured Pegasus bridge, wasn’t used to capture this one in the same manner.
Howard's gliders landed a hundred metres, give or take, from their objective. They achieved total surprise. I suspect it was felt Howard had played his part already; it would have been bad form to ask him to repeat his death defying performance just three months after his debut. I've no doubt, he would have accepted the role nonetheless, if offered.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Growing up in Oosterbeek we (kids in elementary school) would go to the war cemetary every year and put flowers on the graves of the soldiers who were buried there. The thing that still blows my mind is how young these men were. I recently visited again and had a good look at the graves. A lot of these soldiers were just kids, not even in their twenties yet
Hm, The one reason why Market-Garden failed was the failure of Garden (XXX Corps march to Arnhem) to meet up with Market (deployment of the vertical envolopment being 1st Airborne, 101 Airborne and 82 Airborne.). This main problem was due to the 82 Airborne failing to capture the Nijmegen bridge on the first day. Instead it took over 3 days nad only was achieved by XXX Corps assisting and eventually capturing the bridge, but made them too late to make the final leg from Nijmegen to Arnhem. The fact that the Germans managed to get their hands on the complete plans and orders of Market-Garden did not help. This was courtesy of the 82 Airborne officer who in a moronic violation of orders had taken it along. He died upon landing and thus handed it to the Germans.
"the complete plans and orders of Market-Garden" let's think real hard, who would have use for the complete plans, an 82nd officer or Browning and his HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders (capacity 1,000 infantrymen) How many bridges captured (that means both ends) by 1st AB ?
@@nickdanger3802 Not going into that question. To stick to the point that I am bringing up here; Some people have a fetish for using documents to bolster their own sense of (in)security. Almost like a toddler having a security-blanket. It takes a shrink to figure that one out. The only thing that stands in this instance is that it had been explicitly forbidden to do so and the officer in question was clearly in violation of handling these documents in the forward combat zone where they can be subject to capture and being utilised by the opponent, As happened.
"both Rauter, the SS Security chief for the Netherlands, and one of the officers of Helle’s Dutch SS battalion at Arnhem told him that a British officer was captured on D-Day with the plans for the ground markers and smoke signals.56 The Germans also listened in to British radio signals on No.68P sets which captured paratroopers had not destroyed." page 48 Canadian Military History Volume 16 Issue 1 Article 4 2007 Airborne Communications in Operation Market Garden David Bennett
@@nickdanger3802 So? What are you trying to get across here? That there were more security breaches? No kidding Sherlock! Tell me something new already! But those individual instances are not remotely comparable with the Lock-Stock&Barrel of the complete operations plan of MG.
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.
Interesting perspective to note that Hitler's paratroopers invaded and captured the Greek island of Crete despite some of the best fighting men the Allies had defending it. 23,000 died on the Allies side while the Axis side lost 6000. A pretty remarkable feat and something though impossible to achieve.
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.
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.
Doomed from the begining, Repetedly criticized for objectives, approach, optimistic planing assuming inert german defences and overall lack of adequate intelligence, air support or logistics. Why Sosabowski (stern opposer of operation) was blamed for this strategic failure and not narcissist Montgomery (largely responsible for pushing bad plan)?
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.
@@johndawes9337 "The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN. On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan." RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
@@leefisher816 how many bridges captured (that means both ends) by 1st AB? Arnhem rail bridge 4 miles/6km from LZ Z, destroyed 4 hours after 1st AB landed. Browning took 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity 1,000 men, to lift his useless HQ to Nijmegen.
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!
"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
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.*
"The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN. On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan." RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
@@nickdanger3802The First Allied Airborne Army, USAAF and RAF were under SHAEF jurisdiction on September 14th and not under the jurisdiction of Montgomerys 21st Army Group.
@@lyndoncmp5751 What a shame then that Montgomery himself wrote that *it indeed was subordinated to not just 21st Army Group but even to 2nd British Army, itself subordinated to 21st Army Group.* 🤡
@@marcel-ec6qe Montgomery's strategy was what got the allies to be 400km ahead of schedule and liberating Belgium in early September 1944. Only Paris was supposed to be reached by then. Then Eisenhower arrogantly took Montgomery's job of C-in-C of all allied ground forces on September 1st and stalled the allied advance for the next six months. And my point was obvious. That if Montgomery had jurisdiction over the air forces then Market Garden would likely have suceeded. The air commanders were too cautious and killed the operation with that caution. Montgomery didn't "push" for Market Garden. In fact Montgomery even had an alternative proposal, for a paratroop operation at Walcheren Island to clear the Scheldt. Montgomery wasn't sure which operation to go for. Brereton, the American commander of First Allied Airborne Army made the decision for him. Brereton immediately rejected the proposal for a paratroop drop on Walcheren Island and decided on Market Garden, and Montgomery had to abide with Brereton's decision. It was therefore BRERETON who pushed for Market Garden. Brereton very much liked the idea and was desperate for his First Allied Airborne Army to get into action.
"their bridge?" before 740 men had even BLOCKED the last intact bridge in Arnhem area (rail bridge 4 miles/6km from LZ Z destroyed 4 hours after 1st AB landed) the 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 1,000 infantrymen)
30 Corps arrived at Grave at 0820 on day three. they were still 25 miles/40 km from Arnhem, well over 1/3 the distance from Joes Bridge to Arnhem, with 11 hours to sunset. on day 4 Frost's men ran out of food, ammo and water
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
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.
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 stated both SS units were in Kampfgruppe strength only. 9th SS had 3500 men and no tanks. 10th SS had 4500 men and 16 tanks and was sent south to Nijmegen to stop XXX Corps, which it did stopping them at Elst.
@@frankvandergoes298 Understand the Battle. XXX Corps never reached Arnhem because US 82nd never seized the Waal bridge on the first day, setting XXX Corps back *two days.* In the two day window gifted to the Germans by the 82nd they could run in armour from Germany, precluding an allied bridgehead over the Rhine. But, in a few days XXX Corps punched a 60 mile salient into German lines up to the Rhine. They fleshed out the salient with the Germans not taking back one mm of ground.
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.
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- In Italy Montgomery's forces advanced 300 miles in 17 days, across extremely difficult mountain terrain with numerous rivers. For the benefit of troll boy, source is pages 157 and 158 of Monty and Patton, Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds.
My Grandfather served with the King's own Scottish Borderers in this campaign and was captured around Oosterbeek and despite 2 failed escape attempts remained a POW for the rest of the war he passed away in 2004
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.
There was Also heavy anti aircraft guns next to DZ-K other side of the water to the North east. Source: My Grandmother that was helped by a German soldier to cross the water because the water was mined.
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.
3 weeks ago i went to the Airborne Museum in the former Horsthotel at Oosterbeek with colleagues (we had a colleagueday) and later got a tour by a guide who showed us all the major happenings and events in the Oosterbeek thumb/perimeter and while standing infront of the house of Cate Ter Horst her daughter who was 5 during Market Garden and now 80 actually came out and spoke with us wich even the tourguide never experienced, her mother opened up her house for the wounded troops and she was Called the Angel of Arnhem for this and i think she's also in the movie A Bridge too far But it was amazing and haunting to see the small pocket that they managed to keep for those days we also saw Polish graves and the guide spoke about the forgotten acts of the Polish troops during the Operation and in the war in General and that is also the case here in The Netherlands A lot of short sighted idiots always complain about Poles as being dumb immigrants etc but it makes me sick , my own city (Almelo ) was liberated by Canadian and Polish troops and i will always honour them for it
The positive thing is, as shown on last map, that a portion of The Netherlands was liberated and that the area between Nijmegen and Arnhem was taken. This gave the allied forces a wider staging front at banks of the Rhine river for making the simultaneous river crossings later in the war.
I am from the Netherlands and I was born after WO2. I admire these brave men. They are all heroes who freed us from fascism. Let’s stay alert as fascism is close again these days.
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.
On the night of October 23-24, 1944, British troops in hiding were evacuated across the Rhine River in an operation code named Digby. The Royal Canadian Engineers and British Royal Engineers met the troops on the north bank of the river.
@@johndawes9337 Okay, you say the book 'A Bridge to Far' is not factual? Why do you say that? I remember the movie 'A Bridge to Far' and the movie was much like the explanations in this video. What was wrong in the book?
@@ronaldlindeman6136 to start with XXX corps was not late for the Waal bridge that Gavin was meant to take on landing, which he had not done..no XXX did not stop for tea..also Monty did not plan it Brereton and Williams did...the book ABTF and movie are about as factual as Robin Hood the prince of thieves..
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.... ;)
Collosal failure, Montgomerys huge embarrassment. He was so vain he was getting his portrait painted whilst his men died, he then distanced himself from the whole thing even though it was his idea. Don't know why people put him on a pedestal.
60 miles of territory gained, 2.5 million dutch liberated, 6 of 7 bridges captured, 30,000 German casualties. Hardly a colossal failure. And with a casualty total of under 9,000 men, Market Garden would have been classed by the Soviets and German's as merely a minor skirmish. ps: Why does Bradley seem to get away with the Battle Of Hurtgen Forest almost scott free ? It had nearly 4 times the number of casualties as Market Garden ( 33,000 ), just to capture some trees. Or Patton's Lorraine debacle where he lost 55,000 men?
Wow. I have studied WW2 casually since 1970, and that was the fist time that I really understood what happened to the British at Arnhem. Great maps as well.
@@54356776no it’s a statement of fact, the film gives an incorrect interpretation. Eg focus on British tanks not advancing after capture of Nijmegen bridge, but doesn’t address why it wasn’t already captured as it should have been by the Americans.
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 Personal info given and now deleted. He was just one of thousands of youngsters who died during that Operation and who deserve to be remembered for their sacrifice. 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
OMG 😱
So young
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.
@@ryanbluer6098 there were no people in Arnhem, it was ecacuated knobhead
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! 🙏
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!
"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"
Extreme cringe. They were all made a fool.
@@AlTiri-rd7ly I didn't ask for your dog water opinion, shush
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.
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... 😅
@@timverheijen2622 because he is Dutch😂😂
I'm Dutch myself and hear his thick Dutch accent
@@breadgarlichouse ?
Great, informative video! Well presented!
The expert commentary complements the rest of the video!
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!
Excellent programme. Thank-you so much.
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❤
Yes, eight miles is a long way to march carrying gear and kit
@@Digmen1 LZ Z 4 miles/6km from rail bridge
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.
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.
its a shame the polish were utterly betrayed at the end of the war
They did in fact back down
well eventually the buggered off over the river...
@@jack-wf5fw this haha
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 🇺🇸
@@Marcg-b4n ta bud , limey over here,,,,, most of the goose on the loose 8ty dice came from penncilvainia , I believe,,,,, Jimmy Hendrix 👍🍺🐝🤣
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.
Well put. Everyone has their axe to grind. I prefer to learn, not distribute blame and glory.
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
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.
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
Thank you for another informative presentation.... Incredibly brave men given an impossible task which was planned incredibly badly..... Roger.... Pembrokeshire
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 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.
Kudos to you on a very well-presented, informative and succinct account of the operation. There are many documentaries on the subject out there, but yours is superior to most.
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!
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.
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.
Bet the troops involved would hate to see that.
Strange, wasn't the average Briton of their era a "patriarchal, homophobic and transphobic racist" and whatnot?
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
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 UA-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.
You do know there were naz!s in every country, right? There were far right parties in every country in Europe.
My uncle was a glider pilot on this Op , glad to say he survived and was take as a POW , his story is online as told through the eyes of his wife back on the home front both at their home and while she and their children stayed with my grandmother in Herefordshire , i find it very touching at the end that she mentions my grandmother and her death aged 100 years and 5 weeks
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
@@Kareli_Miklos 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
Delivered food to an 102 year old woman in Edinburgh recently, both of whom’s brothers landed at Arnhem. Both survived, but one was badly injured and taken as a POW. He swore off the miltary and returned his medals because he was so angry at how the operation had been handled
Probably the one time in the war where Monty showed true boldness and audacity turned into a disaster
Although I don’t have the harsh view of this operation that many armchair generals do.
There is one thing rarely mentioned and that is why Major Howard, who captured Pegasus bridge, wasn’t used to capture this one in the same manner.
Howard's gliders landed a hundred metres, give or take, from their objective. They achieved total surprise. I suspect it was felt Howard had played his part already; it would have been bad form to ask him to repeat his death defying performance just three months after his debut. I've no doubt, he would have accepted the role nonetheless, if offered.
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.
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.
Best narrator from the IWM! ❤
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.
Why don't the schools teach this instead of teaching are children how wicked we were to the rest of the world. 😢😢😢
No battle plan survives contact with the enemy
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Growing up in Oosterbeek we (kids in elementary school) would go to the war cemetary every year and put flowers on the graves of the soldiers who were buried there. The thing that still blows my mind is how young these men were. I recently visited again and had a good look at the graves. A lot of these soldiers were just kids, not even in their twenties yet
Hm, The one reason why Market-Garden failed was the failure of Garden (XXX Corps march to Arnhem) to meet up with Market (deployment of the vertical envolopment being 1st Airborne, 101 Airborne and 82 Airborne.). This main problem was due to the 82 Airborne failing to capture the Nijmegen bridge on the first day. Instead it took over 3 days nad only was achieved by XXX Corps assisting and eventually capturing the bridge, but made them too late to make the final leg from Nijmegen to Arnhem.
The fact that the Germans managed to get their hands on the complete plans and orders of Market-Garden did not help. This was courtesy of the 82 Airborne officer who in a moronic violation of orders had taken it along. He died upon landing and thus handed it to the Germans.
"the complete plans and orders of Market-Garden"
let's think real hard, who would have use for the complete plans, an 82nd officer or Browning and his HQ brought in by 38 of 1st AB's gliders (capacity 1,000 infantrymen)
How many bridges captured (that means both ends) by 1st AB ?
@@nickdanger3802 Not going into that question. To stick to the point that I am bringing up here; Some people have a fetish for using documents to bolster their own sense of (in)security. Almost like a toddler having a security-blanket.
It takes a shrink to figure that one out.
The only thing that stands in this instance is that it had been explicitly forbidden to do so and the officer in question was clearly in violation of handling these documents in the forward combat zone where they can be subject to capture and being utilised by the opponent, As happened.
"both Rauter, the SS Security chief for the Netherlands, and one of the officers of Helle’s Dutch SS battalion at Arnhem told him that a British officer was captured on D-Day with the plans for the ground markers and smoke signals.56 The Germans also listened in to British radio signals on No.68P sets which captured paratroopers had not destroyed."
page 48
Canadian Military History Volume 16 Issue 1 Article 4 2007
Airborne Communications in Operation Market Garden David Bennett
@@nickdanger3802 So? What are you trying to get across here? That there were more security breaches? No kidding Sherlock! Tell me something new already!
But those individual instances are not remotely comparable with the Lock-Stock&Barrel of the complete operations plan of MG.
This video has the best layout of Market Garden, so easy to follow where the fighting happened and why.
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
Interesting perspective to note that Hitler's paratroopers invaded and captured the Greek island of Crete despite some of the best fighting men the Allies had defending it.
23,000 died on the Allies side while the Axis side lost 6000. A pretty remarkable feat and something though impossible to achieve.
Always interesting. Thank you IWM.
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
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.
Doomed from the begining, Repetedly criticized for objectives, approach, optimistic planing assuming inert german defences and overall lack of adequate intelligence, air support or logistics. Why Sosabowski (stern opposer of operation) was blamed for this strategic failure and not narcissist Montgomery (largely responsible for pushing bad plan)?
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.
@@johndawes9337 "The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN. On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan."
RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
@@nickdanger3802D'you ever post anything useful?
The failure was due to the 508 PIR not capturing the Nijmegen bridge on the 17-19th September
@@leefisher816 how many bridges captured (that means both ends) by 1st AB?
Arnhem rail bridge 4 miles/6km from LZ Z, destroyed 4 hours after 1st AB landed.
Browning took 38 of 1st AB's gliders, capacity 1,000 men, to lift his useless HQ to Nijmegen.
Good short summary. Kudos to the right pronunciation of the Dutch places.
My grandfather fought in British Indian army in wwii in Burma and Hong Kong sectors
much respect to your GF
as a dutchy i must note that the pronounciation of the Dutch towns were excellent :D
My Grandad was there and made it back. What an ordeal that must have been. Would love to know more.
Small fun fact: the bridge now in place of the bridge they tried to capture, is called the "John Frost Bridge".
@@klootviool14nl John Frost Avenue.
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!
Sitting in my Arnhem room right now, so weird that 85 years ago this was a battlefield.
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.
A near success? You must work on Monty's publicity staff! Ask Sosabowski about the "Near Success" of Market-Garden!
Best not to ask an overly emotional type. Yes, the tip of the spear was broken off, but the shaft left a deep hole in German lines.
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.*
"The airborne assault on the bridges was code-named Operation MARKET and the ground follow-up and relief Operation GARDEN. On 14 September, Montgomery issued his ‘Operational Appreciation M 525’ summarising his plan."
RAF Museum The Royal Air Force and Operation Market Garden: Chapter 2
@@nickdanger3802The First Allied Airborne Army, USAAF and RAF were under SHAEF jurisdiction on September 14th and not under the jurisdiction of Montgomerys 21st Army Group.
@@lyndoncmp5751 What a shame then that Montgomery himself wrote that *it indeed was subordinated to not just 21st Army Group but even to 2nd British Army, itself subordinated to 21st Army Group.*
🤡
@@lyndoncmp5751 What is your point? He didnt had tactical jurisdiction but his strategy was terrible from the start. He also pushed allies to do it.
@@marcel-ec6qe Montgomery's strategy was what got the allies to be 400km ahead of schedule and liberating Belgium in early September 1944. Only Paris was supposed to be reached by then.
Then Eisenhower arrogantly took Montgomery's job of C-in-C of all allied ground forces on September 1st and stalled the allied advance for the next six months.
And my point was obvious. That if Montgomery had jurisdiction over the air forces then Market Garden would likely have suceeded. The air commanders were too cautious and killed the operation with that caution.
Montgomery didn't "push" for Market Garden. In fact Montgomery even had an alternative proposal, for a paratroop operation at Walcheren Island to clear the Scheldt. Montgomery wasn't sure which operation to go for. Brereton, the American commander of First Allied Airborne Army made the decision for him. Brereton immediately rejected the proposal for a paratroop drop on Walcheren Island and decided on Market Garden, and Montgomery had to abide with Brereton's decision. It was therefore BRERETON who pushed for Market Garden. Brereton very much liked the idea and was desperate for his First Allied Airborne Army to get into action.
One of the best explanation of the big picture of Operation Market Garden. Then re-watch A Bridge Too Far. You will have better grasp 😊
So basically what you're saying is it was the 82nd airbornes fault for not securing their bridge?
correct.
"their bridge?" before 740 men had even BLOCKED the last intact bridge in Arnhem area (rail bridge 4 miles/6km from LZ Z destroyed 4 hours after 1st AB landed) the 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 1,000 infantrymen)
good stuff as always
The Nijmegen Bridge delay, doomed the operation.
30 Corps arrived at Grave at 0820 on day three. they were still 25 miles/40 km from Arnhem, well over 1/3 the distance from Joes Bridge to Arnhem, with 11 hours to sunset.
on day 4 Frost's men ran out of food, ammo and water
I drove from england the bridges were all crossed and I had an interesting time and the museum was great
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
Great video. “A Bridge too Far” is still my favourite war movie.
Interesting that the British devised the evacuation of Gallipoli.
They should have listen to the Polish General Stanislaw Sosabowski
And the Battalions of 4th Parachute Brigade don’t get a mention IWM? Quite poor to leave out their contribution to the battle.
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.
Excellent video, many thanks for posting. Every man an Emperor.
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
Excellent video!
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.
As stated both SS units were in Kampfgruppe strength only.
9th SS had 3500 men and no tanks.
10th SS had 4500 men and 16 tanks and was sent south to Nijmegen to stop XXX Corps, which it did stopping them at Elst.
@@frankvandergoes298
They never stopped XXX Corps for long.
@johnburns4017 They obviously stopped them long enough otherwise the British would have won.
@@frankvandergoes298
Understand the Battle. XXX Corps never reached Arnhem because US 82nd never seized the Waal bridge on the first day, setting XXX Corps back *two days.*
In the two day window gifted to the Germans by the 82nd they could run in armour from Germany, precluding an allied bridgehead over the Rhine.
But, in a few days XXX Corps punched a 60 mile salient into German lines up to the Rhine. They fleshed out the salient with the Germans not taking back one mm of ground.
Wait... why were DRIVERS being parachuted in? Wouldn't they start from the back/rear of the line and bring materiel in?
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 caution of Brereton and Williams of the USAAF"
Source ?
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- In Italy Montgomery's forces advanced 300 miles in 17 days, across extremely difficult mountain terrain with numerous rivers.
For the benefit of troll boy, source is pages 157 and 158 of Monty and Patton, Two Paths to Victory by Michael Reynolds.
@@lyndoncmp5751 Which operation in Italy and what month?
My Grandfather served with the King's own Scottish Borderers in this campaign and was captured around Oosterbeek and despite 2 failed escape attempts remained a POW for the rest of the war he passed away in 2004
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.
There was Also heavy anti aircraft guns next to DZ-K other side of the water to the North east. Source: My Grandmother that was helped by a German soldier to cross the water because the water was mined.
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? 😉
@@paulvanderweerd7456😂😂
3 weeks ago i went to the Airborne Museum in the former Horsthotel at Oosterbeek with colleagues (we had a colleagueday) and later got a tour by a guide who showed us all the major happenings and events in the Oosterbeek thumb/perimeter and while standing infront of the house of Cate Ter Horst her daughter who was 5 during Market Garden and now 80 actually came out and spoke with us wich even the tourguide never experienced, her mother opened up her house for the wounded troops and she was Called the Angel of Arnhem for this and i think she's also in the movie A Bridge too far
But it was amazing and haunting to see the small pocket that they managed to keep for those days we also saw Polish graves and the guide spoke about the forgotten acts of the Polish troops during the Operation and in the war in General and that is also the case here in The Netherlands
A lot of short sighted idiots always complain about Poles as being dumb immigrants etc but it makes me sick , my own city (Almelo ) was liberated by Canadian and Polish troops and i will always honour them for it
Sosabowski was a badass
it was because he always ate baked beans with his boiled cabbage
My father was 82nd Airborne in Market Garden. Montgomery screwed up.
if your dad is called Gavin then it was he who screwed up MG by not taking the Waal b ridge on landing..also Ike was in command of MG not Monty
The positive thing is, as shown on last map, that a portion of The Netherlands was liberated and that the area between Nijmegen and Arnhem was taken. This gave the allied forces a wider staging front at banks of the Rhine river for making the simultaneous river crossings later in the war.
I am from the Netherlands and I was born after WO2. I admire these brave men. They are all heroes who freed us from fascism. Let’s stay alert as fascism is close again these days.
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.
On the night of October 23-24, 1944, British troops in hiding were evacuated across the Rhine River in an operation code named Digby. The Royal Canadian Engineers and British Royal Engineers met the troops on the north bank of the river.
Lack of planning?
lack of resources?
That's on ICK is it not?
It was the final nail in Britains "fight as equals" belief
Can thoroughly recommend Cornelius Ryan's incredible book about the operation - A Bridge Too Far.
it is far from factual
@@johndawes9337 Okay, you say the book 'A Bridge to Far' is not factual? Why do you say that?
I remember the movie 'A Bridge to Far' and the movie was much like the explanations in this video. What was wrong in the book?
@@ronaldlindeman6136 to start with XXX corps was not late for the Waal bridge that Gavin was meant to take on landing, which he had not done..no XXX did not stop for tea..also Monty did not plan it Brereton and Williams did...the book ABTF and movie are about as factual as Robin Hood the prince of thieves..
Excellent video.
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....
;)
2.00 1st AB had done one division level op, virtually unopposed and by sea in Italy.
Terrible plan from beginning to end, as historians have largely agreed on at this point. What a shame.
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.
Collosal failure, Montgomerys huge embarrassment. He was so vain he was getting his portrait painted whilst his men died, he then distanced himself from the whole thing even though it was his idea. Don't know why people put him on a pedestal.
60 miles of territory gained, 2.5 million dutch liberated, 6 of 7 bridges captured, 30,000 German casualties. Hardly a colossal failure. And with a casualty total of under 9,000 men, Market Garden would have been classed by the Soviets and German's as merely a minor skirmish.
ps: Why does Bradley seem to get away with the Battle Of Hurtgen Forest almost scott free ? It had nearly 4 times the number of casualties as Market Garden ( 33,000 ), just to capture some trees. Or Patton's Lorraine debacle where he lost 55,000 men?
@@Bullet-Tooth-Tony- The Dutch famine of 1944-1945, also known as the Hunger Winter
@@nickdanger3802 caused by a railway strike and the Germans taking all the food
Wow.
I have studied WW2 casually since 1970, and that was the fist time that I really understood what happened to the British at Arnhem.
Great maps as well.
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.
@@54356776no it’s a statement of fact, the film gives an incorrect interpretation.
Eg focus on British tanks not advancing after capture of Nijmegen bridge, but doesn’t address why it wasn’t already captured as it should have been by the Americans.