BAGGER1959

What are your views on the operation to shorten the war and whose failure cost thousands of casualties further down the line not to mention the loss of men at arnhem.How can field marshall montgomery ignore solid intelligence that placed some of hiltlers best panzer divisions nearby and drop our lads in understrength with crap communication equipment.He had a very high opinion of himself but to me he wasen,t all that and he had blood on his hands.

redcoat

These panzer divisions had been chewed up in the battle for France and had less than 50 tanks between them

But he didn't know that, did he.
All generals have blood on their hands, but Monty had a reputation of normally being careful with the lives of his troops under his command.
The plan was flawed for a number of reasons but the main reason was the conviction amongst the Allied high command that the German forces were still in such a state of confusion after the rout in France that they were incapable of organising a coherent defence.
It also didn't help that a complete plan for the attack was found on the body of a Airborne officer by the German's in the first days of the attack.

redcoat

double post

Cedar Brown

Hitler's elite panzer divisions were much stronger than mere numbers would ever tell.

Nemowork

True but many of the fighting units at Arnhem werent elite or even armoured, they were the typical scratch groups simply hurled at the allied forces using numbers to make up for training, they were even arming organisation Todt labourers and using them as infantry.

McGrunt

One road , several bridges , bad luck . A good plan but with many chokepoints .

Azita

How do members rate the performance of the US 82nd at Nijmegen?
Would you say that it had any bearing on the the failure to secure the Arnhem Bridge?

Azita

srb7677

The primary reason for the failure to capture the vital Arnhem bridge was due to the seriously flawed decision to drop the British paratroops six miles to the west and have them march to the bridge to seize it. This allowed the Germans too much time to gather their forces and react. Thus, only a fraction of the British force reached the bridge and they were only able to seize one end of it. The rest of the paratroops were prevented by German reinforcements from breaking through to the bridge, whilst the heavily outnumbered force already there, were incessantly attacked. After three days of heavy fighting, the Germans had full control of Arnhem bridge again.

Had the paratroopers landed atop, or at least much closer to, their objective, they could probably have seized both ends of the bridge quickly and in strength, and might well have held it until the land advance from the south broke through in relief.

redcoat

Their failure to capture the bridge until the arrival of the Sherman's from the lead elements of XXX Corps did cause a significant delay to the time-table

Emmanuel Gustin

Fundamentally it was a bad plan. There long has been a story that planning an operation in this area was a routine exercise at the Dutch military academies, and any student who dreamt up an operation like this, failed... That story is a bit too convenient, but perhaps it is true.

The key problem was not in the airdrops, but in the role given to the ground forces. The plan required them to advance on a single road across a country that offered no alternative routes, to a strict timetable, straight across multiple chokepoints. Any serious attempt by the enemy to merely delay the advance would result in the failure of the plan and the loss of the paratroops dropped at the most distant bridges. It was an absurd risk.

Hubris was part of the reason for adopting such a flawed plan. The German army had been chased all the way from Normandy to the Rhine in disorder, and Allied commanders planned as if any further advance would also be a walkover. In fact there were still enough capable officers in the Wehrmacht to quickly reorganize at least a small force to offer resistance, and a small force was enough to make Market-Garden fail.