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1. On April 23, 2025 at 1:19 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   One of the great “what if” questions of Second World War history, is what would have happened if General Eisenhower, SHAEF/the supreme commander of the European theater of operations, had not green-lighted Operation Market Garden (along with Operation Market Basket, the ground element of the operation), the airborne operation into occupied Holland in the fall of 1944.

   In the South, Patton’s 3rd Army was making significant gains deep into German lines, and was poised to enter Germany proper if supplied with its logistical needs, esp. fuel.

   However, British Field Marshall Montgomery’s plan to capture a series of bridges over rivers in Holland, culminating in the seizure of a bridgehead over the Rhine – using a combination of airborne forces and ground troops, was approved by Ike. Thus, resources slated to go to Patton and other force in theater were held-up or diverted to supply Montgomery’s plan. Patton was reportedly furious, but to no avail.

   Ike later said that it was a decision he could not have declined to make; a high-risk operation which,if successful, would “end the war by Christmas.” The backstory is somewhat more complicated: political considerations at the highest level were in play.

   By the fall of 1944, Britain was suffering under a barrage of V-1 and V-2 guided missile attacks. Prime Minister Churchill appealed to Franklin Roosevelt and Eisenhower for relief, some sort of attack or offensive to take the pressure off. Their launching sites – in particular those of the V-2, which was a much more fearsome weapon – had to be overrun. Monty’s plan, if successful, would accomplish that end, at least to an extent.

   In reality, of course, the plan was fatally-flawed from the start. Overly-optimist and unrealistic projections about the rate of advance possible by the ground forces on the single highway leading to their objective, hamstrung the operation from the start, which wasn’t helped when the Germans captured some maps and other intelligence of the operation from a crashed/shot-down glider.

   Critical intelligence from the Dutch resistance and Allied photo-reconnaissance flights showing the disposition and presence of enemy forces was ignored or brushed aside by the Anglo-American high-command. The airborne forces were being dropped into a hornet’s nest blind to who was actually facing them.

   Critically, access to decrypted Enigma signals intelligence, so vital earlier in the war, was now lessened or even cut off, because of the shrinking of German interior lines. The Enigma System was not needed/used to the same extent as before, because messages could no be sent by more-expedient means such as teletype, telegraph, motorcycle messenger, officer courier, etc.
   Thus, the Allied high-command was partially-blind when it came to intelligence influencing the operation’s planning and execution.

   The same drawback was to harm the Allies during the run-up to the Ardennes counter-offensive later in 1944.

   The British 1st Airborne, “The Red Devils,” were badly-mauled at Arnhem, despite fighting heroically and well for more than a week, cutoff and ultimately surrounded. Likewise, the Polish Airborne Brigade, who was decimated by the German waiting for them as they landed. The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne, sustained heavy losses as well, but remained combat-effective after the conclusion of the fiasco.

2. On April 23, 2025 at 6:41 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:

   (Part 2)

   To clarify, the British 1st Airborne were tasked with taking/hold the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem; the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade were also tasked with the Arnhem phase of the operation. Originally intended to land along with the “Red Devils,” they did not make it to Arnhem until the battle was well-underway to due a shortage of parachute-infantry capable transport aircraft and weather delays in the U.K.

   The American 101st Airborne was tasked with the bridges north of Eindhoven,at Son and Vegel, Holland, while the 82nd Airborne was tasked with taking and holding the bridges at Grave and Nijmegen.

   British 30th (XXX) Corps was to spearhead the ground offensive which was tasked with punching through the German lines and getting the sixty-four behind enemy lines to allow the planned link-up at Arnhem.

   The Anglo-American high-command forecast that the sixty-four miles could be done in a ridiculously optimistic 48 hours of time. This fatal error was just one of the many possible points of failure of the operation, which by all rights should have been undertaken in the first place.

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