Operation Market Garden, Arnhem, and Montgomery's Role

The men did their best :more could not be expected/demanded.

The planning/execution was not flawless(it all was improvised),but this was not causing the failure.

With hindsight(a luxury Montgomery did not have) it is obvious that MG had little chance to succeed : it all depended on the possibility that on the first days,the Germans would collaps .

 

I have no idea if this 'tour guide' was one of the six other specialist battlefield guides who was with me on our coaches in Arnhem this weekend but if so I am happy that we have guides who have a wide range of opinions, even if they are not those I subscribe to, as long as the guides are courteous to others views and can make evidence-based opinions, which is what I/we encourage. History is about opinions and nothing polarises people more about WW2 than characters like Montgomery.

 

Why is nobody "blaming" Brereton and Williams of 1 Allied Airborne Army?

 

Never got round to reading the book by Buckingham and based on the above I don't think I'll bother in the future.

 

I am always surprised by the absence of discussions on this forum about the failure the 12th US Army Group to reach the Rhine north of the Ardennes in the fall of 1944. It involved far more costly battles by the 1st & (later) 9th US Armies (among others the grueling battle for the Huertgenwald) than MG. The distance to the Rhine in the US sector was even far less than the distance 21st Army Group had to cover.

 

Hi Owen and Paul,

Paul, I did see you at Oosterbeek War Cemetery over the weekend. But be rest assured, I was not a passenger on one of your coaches.

Owen, I will not name the tour guide (there was only one) who was 'rubbishing' both Montgomery and Browning. Nor will I name the tour company either, for the simple reason, they may not be members of this forum, and therefore cannot defend themselves.

But thanks for both your courteous replies.

Dave

 

Hi steelers708,

Thanks for your reply.

I had assumed the some self-propelled guns and flame-throwing tanks from the 9th SS Panzer Division had temporarily been attached to Kampfgruppe 'Von Tettau' who attacked the Osterbeek perimeter from the west. But now I'm not so sure, as I now think these guns and tanks belonged to some other unit(s) within that group. It seems it is very difficult to identify all the ad hoc units that formed that group.

And thanks for your offer to dig through your files for me.

Dave

 

Hi LJ,

Thanks for your three replies.

Where was Monty? Was he busy planning another operation, maybe the Scheldt estuary to open up the port of Antwerp, having delegated the planning for Market Garden to others? I don't really know, but that would be my guess.

Dave

 

Hi Nijmegen,

As I understand it, the airborne planning for Market was delegated by Brereton to his deputy Browning, or at least the Arnhem part of the plan. Maybe Brereton was busy planning the airborne operations for both the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions. It would make sense to split the workload in that manner.

Thanks for your reply.

Dave

 

Hi Jonathan,

At least William Buckingham's book, 'Arnhem 1944' raises many questions and makes one think. It may be controversial, but it is worth a read.

Dave

 

Brereton and Williams decided not to deliver troops near objectives (coup-de-main), not to have two lifts on D-Day and cancelled droppings south of the Wilhelmina Canal (where initial German resistance was the greatest).

Which had consequences.

 

Hello Dave

I've no doubt it is thought provoking but I doubt that barring Buckingham's conclusions it won't contain anything I've not read elsewhere with regards to sources and evidence.

Personally, I'm way more interested in the specific actions of the individual units concerned.

 

No one know then? And there was me thinking you OMG lot knew everything down to the weave pattern of the socks worn by the Parachute Regiment

 

For the second half of OMG, his Tac HQ was at Chateau Everberg near Kortenberg just NE of Brussels. Not a million miles from the front.

 

a few numbers here
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=c9UiDNK1X-4C&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=casualties+at+arnhem&source=bl&ots=yYfW0y9IE1&sig=d4AzPkvyOsjWtu8KA0eZWhvwXbM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=a48kVM-YHPLW7Qa4j4HACQ&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=casualties%20at%20arnhem&f=false

 

Monty surely was not spending much time looking at Antwerp or the Scheldt. It was ignored while MG was being planned and executed. That needless battle didn't begin until October and the 13,000 casualties incurred there should be added to the MG tally. You cannot really separate the two. An easy and obvious move to secure the Scheldt estuary was overlooked or ignored in favour of the much riskier MG operation. Monty rolled the dice and lost. Or more correctly, 20,000+ Allied troops were lost.
Rookie mistakes from an experienced general.

 

For the second half of OMG, his Tac HQ was at Chateau Everberg near Kortenberg just NE of Brussels. Not a million miles from the front.
*
It is my understanding that Monty's TAC HQ moved from Everberg to heathland at Hechtel (near Leopoldburg) on 21 September and then to 'Iron Man' in the Eindhoven city park on 25 September 1944.
*

Monty surely was not spending much time looking at Antwerp or the Scheldt. It was ignored while MG was being planned and executed. That needless battle didn't begin until October and the 13,000 casualties incurred there should be added to the MG tally. You cannot really separate the two. An easy and obvious move to secure the Scheldt estuary was overlooked or ignored in favour of the much riskier MG operation. Monty rolled the dice and lost. Or more correctly, 20,000+ Allied troops were lost.
Rookie mistakes from an experienced general.
*
Monty was not in command of ground forces and hadn't been since 31 August 1944, he was only in command of the 21st Army Group. He received no orders to clear Antwerp until 9 October 1944. The order for both the British and US Army Groups prior to this date was to gain the line of the Rhine north of Bonn ASAP.

Best,

Steve.

 

I find it a bit insulting to ask where Monty was during the battle as even the most cursory glance at his history would see that his

tac HQ was always right up front and often in line with his forward Corps HQ - sometime to the detriment of the Corps Commander-

such as Dempsey in Sicily - when Monty was giving orders to the Div Commanders…

Cheers

 

The distance Brussels Arnhem is 212 km,which was making things not easy.

 

Monty surely was not spending much time looking at Antwerp or the Scheldt. It was ignored while MG was being planned and executed. That needless battle didn't begin until October and the 13,000 casualties incurred there should be added to the MG tally. You cannot really separate the two. An easy and obvious move to secure the Scheldt estuary was overlooked or ignored in favour of the much riskier MG operation. Monty rolled the dice and lost. Or more correctly, 20,000+ Allied troops were lost.
Rookie mistakes from an experienced general.


1)There was no easy and obvious move to secure the Scheldt estuary

2) The importance of Antwerp has been very much overestimated = Antwerp operational did NOT mean that the war could be over before Christmas;if the estuary had been liberated earlier, the result would not have been that Antwerp would have been operational earlier,it is in reality the opposite .

3)The only possibility to finish the war before Christmas was OMG,and,even with hindsight,it would have been a big mistake not to launch OMG