Arnhem was meant to end the war in Europe. The Germans were in retreat
from Normandy and seemed to be beaten. Three airborne divisions were to
seize the bridges across the great rivers of Holland and unleash the
Allied armies into Germany. The Battle of Arnhem was a turning-point in
the war, a gamble by Montgomery, using three airborne divisions to
capture a series of bridges across the wide rivers that separated a
powerful mobile army from the plains of northern Germany. If the bridges
had been captured and held, and the ground forces had been able to
relieve the airborne forces, then there would have been a good chance of
ending the war before Christmas 1944.
It all went wrong. The initial operation was successful, the bridges
taken by the Americans were relieved by ground troops, but these troops
could not reach Arnhem quickly enough. In the meantime, only a small
part of the 1st British Airborne Division had reached the Arnhem Bridge.
Most of the remainder of the airborne force was held up on the outskirts
of the town by German units that turned out to be far stronger than
expected -? a major intelligence failure. After nine days of fighting,
the survivors of the division were withdrawn across the Rhine and it was
not until many months later that ground forces captured Arnhem.
Using the technique he has perfected over twenty-five years of military
study, blending meticulous research based on original documents with the
personal experiences of more than 500 participants, Martin Middlebrook
describes the Battle of Arnhem from start to finish, from one end of
that complicated battlefield to the other. The author offers a masterly
summary of what went wrong in the last major defeat in battle suffered
by the British Army.
