Operation Market Garden-What really went wrong?

Franek,

I remember my late father telling me that Monty visited the front line troops in Italy and my father said that before and during the visit cigarettes were handed out generously to the troops, but as soon as the talk was over the aides returned and collected as much as they could recover!

I do not think that my father would have lied about the incident taking place. Knowing of Monty's dislike to smoking and drinking, it is totally believable, but not very good for morale.

Regards

Tom

 

Not too sure about that It could be true. But there was great discord between Eisenhower and Montgomery.

After the Battle of the bulge. Montgomery demanded control of the American 1st Army.. Bradley and Eisenhower blew their tops. Montgomery told the British press that he saved the Americans from destruction. He was told that he would be replaced by Alexander. He apoligized to Eisenhower.. He replied. I remain your humble servant.. It was all blown over

Before I continue I would like to point out that the above post is a fine post in its content. Now having said that, yet again we have a Market Garden Thread that has ended up talking about the relationship between Montgomery and Eisenhower. Guys c'mon, we're better than this! How come its the only campaign to be discussed that always ends up in a character argument about Generals?

When a thread is started about the battle of Moscow we never start talking about the friction between Von Kluge and Guderian and whilst its often acknowledged, I've yet to see a thread about El Alamein end up always arguing about Rommel and his fractious relationship with the Italians and Kesselring. we can discuss any campaign except Market Garden it seems. And there's so much to talk about..... the defence of the area by the Germans, the 3 airborne divisions combat areas...Frost's defence of the bridge..... XXX corps efforts to battle up the Road to Arnhem and yet, without fail, we always end up talking about Eisenhower, Montgomery or Patton!

Why not talk about Model and his efforts to maintain a coherent defence or the actions involving Sossabowski and the Poles?

Lads there's so much more to this campaign than that one factor and it seems its the only one that everyone wants to focus on.

Franek, once again mate, nothing wrong with your post. I just wanted to use it as an example as to how Market Garden threads progress

 

Gotthard;
As a front line infantry man.. I can only recite what I read in books as to what happend. No high eschelon officer never discussed battle plans with us. We were cannon fodder. I have nothing personal against Montgomery. I never met him. These books were written by historians. At the time of Market Garden, we the Americans were in attack against Cologne..We GI's had no idea what was going on north of us. It was only after the war that these stories came to light.

 

G H is right , the rapidly changing picture on the ground which those outside the area could not influence renders the disagreements between the Generals to be a background issue.
Much was to do with the pragmatic and downright guts shown by those who were landed and how they dealt with one problem after another whilst trying to capture and hold the bridges and then to try and get back across the Rhine.
Hugely brave men I would feel humbled to be in their company.

 

We can again and again talk about Monty and blame him for it that all went wrong... I do think there is also something as a General Staff (never heard what they were saying)...

Eisenhower agreed as superial commander... So you also can say he did agree with Monty... So why blame one person if the whole Allied Command was involved... (One thing to think about)...

You can also think of other ways of excusse... Signals forinstace or weather... But the weather on D-Day was also far from perfect and signals also from time to time broke down during other operations.... so...???

I am more interresting to hear what you think about what went wrong in the British (Arnhem) planning... which was done by the staff of 1 Airborne Division himself (and not MONTY).
Why no coup de main with glider such as in the Comet planning,....??? so no excuse the land was to soft or to much Flak), landing 10 miles from the main target... If you take another course at Nijmegen then you would not have to come over Deelen....
Why not landing a Battalion/Brigade near the bridge (the land was OK ... The Poles had to land there also as planned on the 19th)
The use of DZ's during the operation ...(why did they not use the DZ's as being used on the 17th also for the 18th... Ginkel was even more miles away? Why not dropping 4 Para on the same DZ as 1 Para brigade followed by the gliders), and when it did go wrong... why not forming a larger bridgehead in the Oosterbeek area but loosing so much men to try reaching a isolated party with only holding a half bridge? - so of no use)
Why not making more use of the terrain to form a larger Perimeter (get back to Oosterbeek and blow up the railway bridges... The railway line is in a cutting in the north so no German heavy armour could have crossed that line from the north.... and there are only 2 roads that can be used by the germans from the east (Utrechtseweg and Benedendorpsweg) so you can put almost all A/T weaponds still available in the west....
Why did 1st Border retreat to their 'planned' positions on the 18th in the afternoon while nothing was according to plan (had they been ordered to stay in their positions as being taken up in the afternoon of the 17th or had been retreated backwards to another position as planned then the Germans had not followed up so fast). Seems everyone was ordered as planned to move east what ever happened when everything went wrong...
Why was 1 Border ordered on the evening of the 19th to move backwards from Utrechtseweg/Wolfhezerweg crossing while 4 Para had to use this crossing the following morning to reach Oosterbeek... If 1 Border had stayed there 4 Para Bde would have reached the Perimeter in force instead in fighting for a fital crossing now taken over by the Germans who got it without resistance...

Etc Etc...

 

What happened to Allied intelligence? Why did they not know that there were so many German units in the area regrouping?

 

The info they had was correct... Its more a question: why did they not use it or !

 

The info they had was correct... Its more a question: why did they not use it or !

This is all so true. The same thing happened in the Battle of the Bulge.

There were reports by GI patrols, that to German side of the front was void of deep snow.. Indicating heavy traffic. Reports came in from Belgian and German civilians seeing a build up when visiting inside Germany.
There were intercepted German messages that All was ignored.

 

Sorry I gave up reading this thread in detail after page three.....

If some took the time to read the thread that took me the best part of a day to draft after watching the programme I was only looking to see if they had missed anything out. As I said before I'm not bothered about hindsight....I already know its a wonderful thing and like Diane said shit loads of brave men died and I don't think its fair to them (Vet or Not) to argue like kids over the rights and wrongs of Americans, British or the Generals decisions.

The thing I got the most from was the fact the radios and not the Operators resulted in problems with Communications. I've just received ATB's rather fine volumes of Market Garden and shall widen my knowledge of the Operation from there as it seems it won't ever be discussed appropriately on here.

As for the pic of the American Para that appears to have landed on his head.......

This picture is in the ATB book and the caption reads something like 'A text book landing. The picture was taken as the trooper rolled over onto his shoulder to absord the impact as trained'

Cheers for the sensible replies from those who took the time to read my original thread. You know who you are

Cheers Andy

 

Seems to me Drew5233 lost interest when it gets interesting....

 

Intell report 1 Airborne Division dated 1 september 1944:-
9.SS Panzer Division - 3000 men, 10.SS Panzer Division - 2000 men, Present tank strength is about 250

Intell Summ No. 3 (for Operation Comet):-
9.SS and 10.SS Panzer Division, 2nd and 116 Panzer Division have been indentifeid on WEST bank of River MAAS.....

Operation Market, Operational Instruction 13-9-44:-
Enemy is expecting to stand with main defence position on River Rhine with covering positions on River Maas and reserve positions on Lower Rhine....

Additional Intelligence Summary No.1 of 1 Parachute Brigade dated 13-09-44:-
.......meanwile a reported concentration of 10.000 troops South West of Zwolle on 1 september may represent a battle scarred Pz. Division or two reforming....

So please stop saying they did not know abaout the German presence...


And Drew... this if is no hindsight

 

Seems to me Drew5233 lost interest when it gets interesting....
No, maybe when it got into a "Who is to blame for Market Garden, Montgomery or Eisenhower" discussion it might have influenced his level of interest. After all its a different question.

 

I've retired to the fact I will learn what went wrong in ATB's Operation Market Garden.

However I have found some of the posts related to my original post interesting so I thank you

 

I've retired to the fact I will learn what went wrong in ATB's Operation Market Garden.

However I have found some of the posts related to my original post interesting so I thank you
And I would like to thank you for your initial post because it was excellent.

 

Thanks......Another one who read it

Much appreciated

Andy

 

Nothing went wrong.The stories of Guards stopping for tea and all the other utter rubbish that has been spread around..Its all rubbish. But rubbish that some folk want to believe! When you come to the end of a long chase across Europe. You don't stop when things look tough. No matter what stood in the way, the attack would have gone ahead........ We were fighting a war not a tea party.
Then there was the urgency to stop the Rockets that we watched being fired back at our homeland.Night after night
Sapper

 

I thought I would come back and visit this thread now I have read nearly a 750 pages about Operation Market Garden by no means an expert but I feel far better informed.

Funnily enough I think the programme has got a lot of it wrong or certainly placed to much effort on some things that really in my opinion didn't have that much effect on the outcome of the battle.

I made some notes as I read through two volumes of the battle as I always intended to come back to this thread and subject you to my opinions-albeit a bit more educated about what happened. It was interesting to see that only one person (Apologies if I missed anyone) had picked up on something which I had felt had been overlooked, certainly by me anyway. Over the years as I pondered every now and then what went wrong I never considered the German Army. It started to dawn on me about half way through reading the books that the Germans actually put up a bloody good fight- Not just in Arnhem but along the whole front. I think this is essentially has been missed by many.

So my first point that resulted in the outcome was the German Army and their fighting spirit in Holland. Even with all the 'Bad luck' bestowed on the Allies taken into consideration it would have only delayed Market Gardens success and not resulted in a failure to secure the final objective.

Having DZ/LZ's so far away from their objective effectively split the 1st Airborne in half greatly reducing their fighting capabilities.

The use of or the lack of use of the captured airfield at Oud Keent near Grave on D-Day by the 82nd this could have been used to bring in the 52nd Lowland Divison into the battle and used to bring much need supplies to the battle. When it was finally decided to be used it again was too late. A big missed opportunity in my opinion.

The weather undoubtedly played a part in the outcome of the whole operation with supplies and further troop deployments greatly delayed. The Polish drop at Dreil and the 325th Glider Infantry at Nijmegen being two of the most significant.

Much has been made of the lack of advance my British ground troops in Market Garden. The delay of the Guards Division at Eindhoven for example for some 10+hrs and spending the night there. In reality this would have had little effect if any on the outcome, they would have only had to wait longer than they did at the bridges at Son and Nijmegen. However I do think that if any blame is to pointed at ground forces then it would probably be more fair to aim it at VIII Corps and XII Corps advance on the flanks of XXX Corps who's main purpose was to protect the flanks. Due to XXX Corps advancing far quicker than the other two Corps this left the supply route vunerable to attack and resulted with the main route being cut at Son and with far greater consequences at Veghel on at least two occasions. To put the flanking Corps progress into some sort of perspective they advanced an average of 3 miles a day with very little resistance. I accept they had harder terrain to advance over and received less support than XXX Corps but many do feel that they could have achieved more mileage per day given their circumstances. Whilst on the subject of ground troops being cautious another significant delay in XXX Corps advance was the speed at 43rd Wessex Divisions reaction to support the Guards Division at Ressen on the 21st and it appears to have lacked a sense of urgency on the 22nd.

One thing I'm left to wonder is the lack of Air to Ground support in the Arnhem area and what effect this would have had on the battle. Fighter and ground attack aircraft were used with great effect except for one day to protect the transports, fending of German fighters and attacking ground targets like flak units. However none were really used to harass the movement of ground troops into the Arnhem area like they did so well after D-Day. 1st Airborne established radio communications with the 64th Medium Artillery at Nijmegen and used them to great effect calling in artillery strikes on German positions and breaking up German attacks often calling in the artillery on their own positions. Aircraft were first used over Arnhem on 24th September and again on the 25th when Typhoons, Mitchells and Bostons attacked German targets. All proved successful but unfortaunately too late to change the outcome.

A lot has been mentioned before in the past abot the lack of working radios, operational maps falling into enemy hands, Browning using up valuable resources taking his HQ into Nijmegen and the like but I think in the big scheme of things they had a minimal effect on the overall outcome and can be defended almost as easily as they can be criticised.

Well I can't think off a better way to end this post than to give you a quote:

When all is said, it is not the monumental size nor the operational intricacies of 'Market' which linger longest in the memory. It is the heroism of the men who flew burning, disintegrating aircraft over their zones as coolly as if on review and gave their lives to get the last trooper out, the last bundle dropped. It is the stubborn courage of the airborne troops who would not surrender though an army came against them. In the sense that both troops carrier crews and airborne troops did all that men could do, there was no failure in 'Market'.


Cheers
Andy