“The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II”, by Antony Beevor

 

480 pages, Penguin Books, ISBN-13: 978-0143128830

If you ever saw “A Bridge Too Far” – based on the book A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan – then The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II by Antony Beevor will be familiar to you, being as it is a history of Operation Market Garden. This was the Allied attempt to create a broad salient into German territory with a bridgehead over the River Rhine, creating an Allied invasion route into northern Germany through complimentary sub-operations: the seizing of nine bridges with combined U.S. and British airborne forces (Market) followed by land forces swiftly following over the bridges (Garden), all taking place in the Netherlands between September 17^th through 25^th, 1944. While Market Garden succeeded in liberating the Dutch cities of Eindhoven and Nijmegen (along with many other towns) and limited V-2 rocket launching sites, it failed in its principle objective to secure a bridgehead over the Rhine, with the Allied advance being halted at the river.

As might be expected, while much is written about victory in war, relatively few memorialize lives given for lost causes. Even after Market Garden fell to pieces, the men who fought in Arnhem showed remarkable determination, grit, bravery and sacrifice. The Allied defeat at Arnhem was as honorable as any victory – right up there with Dunkirk, I would argue – and Beevor pays it a worthy tribute while weaving a human story about defeat and the inhumanity of war. In the world of strategic and military studies, the name Market Garden has come to signify something of its own: poor planning and confusion, roughly similar to what those on the battlefield describe as FUBAR (that would be F***** Up Beyond All Repair). While such associations can sometimes provide historical reference points, they short-change the human character of battle when they supplant deeper understandings of war, which is something Beevor endeavors to undo by placing the heroism and suffering of the soldier at the forefront of his history.

Beevor is scathing and unrelenting in his critique of the British commanders, but he doesn’t really accurately describe the true reason for Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plan. Oh, he informs us that the plan was bad, but leaves it to the reader to imply the true reason for the horrific plan: namely, that it was never a military plan but rather an attempt by Monty to regain his position as Allied Ground Commander. This is not to say that Monty didn’t have a military purpose for the operation, but that the main reason Monty pushed it was because if it worked, Monty would be top dog. That was Monty’s priority, not liberating the Netherlands and crossing the Rhine and capturing the Ruhr on the way to Berlin and ending the war in ’44 and all that. Monty was absolutely certain that he was the best commander in the Allied forces – hell, in the whole damn war – and resented that Eisenhower – a YANK – was his superior. If Operation Market Garden has succeeded, he no doubt would have made a push to oust Ike.

And a bad plan with bad commanders it was. Beevor points out repeatedly that the Koninklijke Militaire Academie – the Dutch Royal Military Academy – had, in fact, war gamed this very scenario of the single highway advance prior to the war, but without the airborne element; any cadet who attempted Monty’s strategy was always given a failing grade. And what was attempted? Market (the largest airborne operation of the war to date) dropped the British 1^st Airborne Division, the American 82^nd Airborne Division, the American 101^st Division and the Polish 1^st Parachute Brigade on six major water crossings in order to seize and hold them until, Garden (the ground component) advanced up a single raised highway with boggy land on either side for much of the way that wasn’t suitable for tanks to operate upon, led by the British XXX Corps. In such a situation, a smaller German force could (and did) hold up a larger British force for hours, and as it would turn out, the Germans would repeatedly attack the highway.

From that fatally flawed start, Beevor makes clear that things only got worse: there weren’t enough planes to drop all the troops in one drop; there weren’t going to be two drops on the same day to start off; Allied Air command wouldn’t let troops drop close to the bridges in many instances; other commanders gave greater priority to protecting their flanks from German attack than capturing the bridges; the British corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Gwynne Horrocks, was still suffering from wounds he’d received during the Italian campaign, potentially affecting his judgment; the Airborne Corps Commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Arthur Montague “Boy” Browning, was also a disaster, taking up 38 gliders in the first lift for his HQ for what would be a battle fought at the divisional and lower level by the airborne units; and the commander of the British 1^st Airborne had never made an airborne assault, never really understanding the difference between how an airborne unit and a regular division would operate.

And then the actual assault took place, where things got even worse (if you can imagine). Major General Robert Elliot “Roy” Urquhart, the British 1^st Airborne commander, would exit his HQ, thus leaving his division leaderless for crucial hours when he was trapped behind enemy lines; the distance to the bridges delayed their capture, allowed the demolition of the first bridge and, in the vital case of the Rhine bridge at Arnhem, only a small force made it to the bridge itself; there were the radios, as the British at Arnhem couldn’t communicate with their home base or even with the Allied fighters who were supposed to be listening for calls to attack ground targets (worse, Beevor relates the many witnesses to the sluggish nature of the British ground advance, and not only because of German defenders, but the 9-to-5 soldiering attitude of the British). Anything and everything that could go wrong did go wrong, but if the planning, organization and leadership had all been better, then perhaps – just perhaps – something may have been salvaged.

Beevor is unsparing in his criticism of this hastily thrown together plan and it’s terrible execution, while at the same time giving full accounts of the incredible bravery of so many involved, whether British, American, Polish or Dutch, and even German. Where Beevor surpasses Ryan is in telling the aftermath of the attempt and the terrible consequences the Dutch population would suffer as a result. Beevor also makes clear how badly the 1^st (Polish) Independent Parachute Brigade was treated, especially its commander, Major-General Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski, who would be removed after the battle as the commander it what appears to have been an attempt by Gens. Browning and Horrocks to scapegoat him for the failure of Market Garden. God knows there was plenty of blame to spread around, and after reading The Battle of Arnhem, you’ll want to know why more heads didn’t roll.