Why Did Operation Market Garden Fail in World War Two?

it was an operation that would if successful win the war within 6 months of dday the brainchild of General Montgomery the hero of L alamain it would put British troops at the spearhead of the assault into Nazi Germany it's fraught with risk but the potential gains are so great that it is considered worth a punt what no one predicted was that the men of the British first Airborne Division would drop into some of the most intense fighting that any British troop saw for the whole of the war and the last battle that most of them would fight the whole of the market Garden operation is about real hand-to-hand fighting this is a real Bloodbath in the late summer of 1944 victory over Hitler's Germany was inevitable in the East a Soviet invasion of unimaginable scale had shredded whole groups of armies and brought Soviet troops almost to the borders of Germany itself in the west following the Ferocious battle for Normandy that began with D-Day Paris had been liberated and German units had been scrambling to retreat it seemed that Hitler's vermark might be on the verge of total collapse the end of the Normandy campaign is only kind of sort of three weeks before a and they've had this incredible surge which is sort of finally ended on the 6th of September so from the kind of you the last week of August through to the 6 September they've just gone absolutely unbelievable distances you know the Germans seem to be on the Run they seem to be completely disorganized so Montgomery who is 21st Army group commander and has just relinquished over all command of the ground forces to Eisenhower he thinks that the drive through the north is the best chance they have that is the the easiest route to winning the war in Germany and and so there is some political motivations for a getting on with the war quickly uh um that's the number one but B that Britain plays a key part in that H and there is also and I think it's fair to say Montgomery's ego which is that he quite fancies being the kind of great Victor that kind of relieves Berlin and all the rest of it code named Market Garden it was a two-pronged operation Market an Airborne assault to seize key Bridges and garden a ground attack moving up through the path created by the Airborne element it would begin with the biggest Airborne operation in history almost 35,000 British and Allied troops being dropped into Nazi occupied territory I think in Montgomery's mind Market Garden would have have been a fairly quick and simple capture of the bridges um in Nan and then in arnam and that's the real focus of course of Market Garden so the idea is to have this sort of carpet of airborne troops um securing this series of bridges I think there something like 11 or 12 bridges that they've got to get across and then you've got 30 cor supported by two other cores either side of them who are then going to steam up and re and support the airborne troops and and get across all these Bridges and force their way into Northern Germany you know it's fraught with risk but the potential gains are so great that it is considered worth a punt on Sunday the 17th of September the massive airlift began Ron Johnson was one of the glider Pilots involved in the operation as we passed over the North Sea um as far as we could see we were in twoo planes tugs and gliders and I'm told it was we were told after it stretched about 100 miles and it was the most amazing one the most amazing sight I've ever seen these tugs and gliders right into the far distant and it really was quite a sight from Allied lines in the South up a narrow Corridor through places like einhoven and niman and ending at arnam British American and Allied airborne troops landed the target of The Landings at arnam was obviously the big bridge across the river Ry and yet Allied planners decided to drop all the Airborne forces out here on this Heath no River in sight the idea had been that dropping the troops over arnum itself might expose the aircraft to the anti-aircraft guns in the city and lead to disorganization as troops fell in busy Urban streets out here you could form up and March into town as a cohesive un unit it's a fine idea trouble is that bridge is 8 mil away I'm meeting with Battlefield historian Paul Reed who's able to tell me more about the Battle of Aram and the airborne troops who fought here Paul what was it like when that first wave landed just up the road here the initial Landings at Aram uh went very well um because they were so far from the objective I suspect any German officer probably thought we'd never land there um so there was no one on the ground to stop us and they went in quite successfully the Pathfinders did their job the gliders came in the men got out and they began their March forward as the British paratroopers marched along these streets towards the center of arnam the most unexpected obstacle they face was the crowds of enthusiastic Dutch people who flooded out of homes and offices to greet their liberators this was the moment of national salvation there was a festival atmosphere it would last initial Allied intelligence calculated that they would face reservists who would put up limited opposition but then reports from Dutch resistance cells brought bad news and it was backed up by aial reconnaissance well you've got um uh two SS core here or SS2 core I should say uh um the 9th and 10th um SS Panzer divisions and you know they've been really bad L hammered these these divisions have been in Normandy and they've been absolutely hammered they're being slightly sort of reconstituted this is the moment where the Germans are sort of regaining their balance the planners absolutely know this but they just thought so what you know we we can deal with it there was not a failure of intelligence gathering there was a failure of intelligence processing Frank Ashley was another glider pilot who fought at arnam I was sent with a on a patrol with two other the glider Pilots Ray wat Ray Osborne and W Watson and a captain om Ali in the South staffs and their orders were find the Germans come back and tell us where they are and how strong they are we got about half a mile thereabouts and Everywhere We Looked were German soldiers and they'd seen us the first and third battalions of the parachute regiment got held up by German blocking detachments but the second Battalion led by liutenant Colonel John Frost managed to come right along here right along the north Bank of the river and get in towards the middle of town they found that Railway Bridge had been blown up by the Germans but the road bridge Beyond it was intact and they managed to occupy the Northern end they had seized the primary objective of Market Garden now just 800 men out of a whole Force the first British Airborne Division of 10,000 was in possession of that bridge and they had to hold it but there was a big problem the Allied Air Forces simply didn't have enough aircraft to transport the whole of the British first Airborne Division in one go the plan was to drop them over 3 days which meant that on the first day they achieved surprise but after that the Germans knew where the landing Zone was they'd be able to Counterattack it they'd be able to contest it this meant that subsequent waves of airborne troops were Landing onto a battlefield they were being shot at as they came down their parachutes they'd been dropped into an Inferno on the morning of day two yeah give me the situation on this battlefield well uh one group had got to the bridge uh more the second lift was coming in uh fourth parachute Brigade was coming in so more men were arriving to push forward to get into arnum um so these men find themselves arriving going straight into action and then all hell is let loose and fourth parachute Brigade for example example um within 24 hours was down to just a handful of guys so what happens to the Paras is they face an initial small amount of resistance which they can overwhelm and over match but then if they're going to cross the bridge um and get to the other side which is what it's all about it's getting this crossing of the rine then you've got a real issue with that because you don't have the depth to be able to put enough people across so they had to dig in they had to use a number of houses around the end of the bridge fortify them and they had to keep the Germans back who kept on of course doing what the Germans were really good at and that's counterattacking now they faced an assault by German armor and artillery which systematically smashed the buildings surrounding them meanwhile the luva flew low passes strafing them and they were running low on medical supplies and ammunition it was some of the fiercest fighting that any British unit saw during the second world war and after holding the bridge for 4 days the situation facing Frost and his men was truly desperate he managed to make communication with divisional HQ on the radios and they informed him that no further help could be expected he was on his own at 13:30 he was badly injured the Germans were closing the news a fire swept through the makeshift hospital it was decided to organize a truce so the wounded could be surrendered into German hands including Frost to receive some medical attention that night the final pockets of British resistance here at the bridge were Stamped Out the last radio message broadcast said out of ammunition God Save the King once Frost is overrun on the North End of arnam bridge what is their left to fight for cuz the bridge is back in German hands it is but I think a decision by this stage has already been made that we can't get to them um hopefully they'll hold out but we need to make sure that we hold out as well because somewhere along the line 30 core the ground troops are going to meet up with us we hope so a decision is made to pull back into the urban environment of of uster beak um and if they can defend the uster beak perimeter uh in these narrow streets then they can hold on there until the Cavalry arrive until the 30 core get there the fighting at user became so ferocious that the British nicknamed it the Devil's Cauldron that was not just Street to Street or house to house fighting but room to room with troops from both sides mous holing their way through walls attacking and counterattacking Ron Johnson remembers one instant at the hotel I was by standing um near the end section end trench of my section ction when suddenly a half trck B vehicle came right up close and standing up was the commander of this half track vehicle and without thinking too much about it I Got My Revolver and and and fired at the man and rather incredibly I I shot him and killed him was there any chance that that Enclave here on the North Bank of the rine could could that have held out indefinitely Or was there just were they were they condemned men there's no way they could have held out and definitely because the resupply was pretty good uh but it was being dropped in the wrong place and the what they needed for in terms of equipment food material ammunition so was just not arriving they were running out of this stuff um and gradually the Germans were getting nearer and nearer pushing them back street by Street house by house um initially the Germans had been cocky but they'd learned from those lessons um and there was more armor coming in I mean they even had King Tigers here at the end of the the the US to beak battle but held back by the artillery of 30 cor despite the difficulties at arnam further south operation Market Garden was almost on schedule the American 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions had despite some bitter fighting captured their objectives and 30 core had been able to steam up the road now dubbed hell's highway but for the first Airborne at arnam and ubic this was of little comfort running low on supplies the men surrounded on the North Bank of the rine would either have to retreat or Surrender glider pilot Frank Ashley held out in an isolated position for days and without a trace of an accent it's gentlemen we know you're there you have five five minutes to come down with your hands up we have men posted on the staircase above you and Below you and here in the church there is no way out we decided there's no sense whatever in throwing your life away so we used the five minutes to disable our weapons by breaking off the firing pins so they were so much junk and we surrendered I had a few words of German very few and they were school boy but I said uh next ESS Fe tag which is not eaten four days on the evening of the 25th of September under heavy rain the evacuation took place the men muffled their weapons their boots to make sure that no sound would alert the Germans and they made their way down to the river bank here some of them swam others took boats across to the South Bank around 2,000 men managed to get out but they left behind them thousands of their comrades here on the North Bank both wounded and those who'd been unable to retreat rat the Battle of arnam was [Music] over the British first Airborne Division held out at arnam for 9 days but the failure to capture the bridge over the rine signaled the end of operation Market Gard the first Airborne would never recover from its losses 75% were killed wounded or missing after the battle around 7,000 men lost the people of our suffered terribly 500 killed in the fighting and the entire population expelled as the Germans turned the town into a fortified strong point looting the houses and leaving a wasteland it was not liberated until the last days of the war in 1945 arnam was not a failure but it neither was it a great success it perhaps could have been better had it have been better planned and there have been more intelligence I think there's no doubt it was a gamble worth taking although there were casualties not just fighting troops of course uh Dutch civilians um uh but it it it we learned some really important lessons from it which were able to apply uh in March 45 for the varsity operation the crossing of the rine um which I think were really really useful in terms of using parachuter and using gliders there was no back door into Germany it would take many months more intense fighting millions of people killed wounded and brutalized before the Third Reich was finally defeated thanks for watching this video on the history Hit YouTube channel you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great films that are coming out or if you are a true history fan check out our special dedicated History Channel History hit. 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Id: rbg6rKpUuhU

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 05 2024