Market Garden Through The Eyes Of A German War Photographer

[Rich]

 

 

Turn right and capture the Ruhr. Kind of hard to see how it could have been successful, given the Germans being essentially on their side of the river, close to their logistics base, with the Allies trying to support themselves on the enemy side, hundreds of miles from theirs.

 

 

 

Before that we'd likely see a huge German effort to reduce the bridgehead and the salient leading towards it. And the Allies would expect a counteroffensive, wouldn't they? Assuming the Germans fail, there would not be much between the Allies and the Ruhrgebiet wich is just 50 miles away.

 

 

It may be a while before you get an answer from Tony...

[Markus Becker]

It was as much a reply to Tony as to DB.

 

I also wonder if the Germans could have reacted stronger than they already did. I assume they were already throwing anything at hand at the Allies. Additional troops would have to come from further away and that takes time. Particularly if allied air raids on the German rail network are intensified.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

The movie Market Garden popped on on Amazon Prime...

I had it on whilst cleaning

 

It's no wonder that so many books have been written about it

 

quite a lot of famous actors in that one, too

[Murph]

Ike should have put his boot in Monty’s @ss to get him to Antwerp before his market garden boondoggle.

[Colin]

Politics and the UK had already suffered significant casualties over the course of the war, Monty preferred the set piece battle, which did not play to the strengths of the German Army.

[RETAC21]

Ike should have put his boot in Monty’s @ss to get him to Antwerp before his market garden boondoggle.

 

To clear the Schelde, but that may not be as straitforward as it seems as it took a lot of original planning to bring it through and the Germans may have recovered anyway and barred the way to Arnhem, and Monty be berated as the guy that lost that opportunity for taking an small island that could have been left for later... Opening Antwerp was going to take some time anyway just because of the mines.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Wasnt the American advance faltering at the same time because the logistics were tailing off due to the distance and lack of ports? Im thinking that we may have been suffering the same problem.

[Markus Becker]

I guess the magic trick is to find the right balance. When to be cautious and when to be aggressive.

[Ken Estes]

I have never thought of an alternatives, but after Normandy and the Breakout, how would the political Allied leadership view a passive Ike plan to await resupply?

 

OK, past that what is the plan? Hmmmmmmmmmm?

Edited January 3, 2019 by Ken Estes

[DB]

I have always felt that the attempt was worthwhile. The Dutch suffered greatly that winter.

[Ken Estes]

I am almost certain that such was not the strategy for fighting WWII.

[Rich]

Ike should have put his boot in Monty’s @ss to get him to Antwerp before his market garden boondoggle.

 

Why? Antwerp was liberated on 4 September, MARKET-GARDEN was executed on 17 September. The problem wasn't Antwerp, it was clearing the Scheldt Estuary.

[Markus Becker]

And that would have been a reasonable alternative to MG. But if they had the impression they could get a foothold on the east bank of the Rhine it's equally reasonable that they tried.

[MiloMorai]

 

Ike should have put his boot in Monty’s @ss to get him to Antwerp before his market garden boondoggle.

 

Why? Antwerp was liberated on 4 September, MARKET-GARDEN was executed on 17 September. The problem wasn't Antwerp, it was clearing the Scheldt Estuary.

 

 

Didn't Monty's dilly daling allow the Scheldt to be re-inforced?

[Tim the Tank Nut]

I read someplace that if General Patton had been running 30 Corps then they would have gotten through.

Lot's of people have dismissed than notion but the relief of Bastogne would be a more difficult task and it was accomplished.

 

Market Garden was a helluva try but the devil is always in the details and the details weren't handled properly.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Oh lord, I wish Bill B was still here.

[Rich]

 

 

Ike should have put his boot in Monty’s @ss to get him to Antwerp before his market garden boondoggle.

 

Why? Antwerp was liberated on 4 September, MARKET-GARDEN was executed on 17 September. The problem wasn't Antwerp, it was clearing the Scheldt Estuary.

 

 

Didn't Monty's dilly daling allow the Scheldt to be re-inforced?

 

 

What "dilly daling" was that? The British armored divisions in the pursuit averaged something like 60 miles advance a day for nine to ten days. By 4 September when Antwerp fell, it was basically 11 Armoured by itself, surrounded by masses of broken German formations, and it was a couple of days before the first infantry division caught up. Advancing further risked a "broken neck", just what Bradley had feared at Chambois two weeks earlier. Seizing the estuary meant either pushing even further up to Bergen-op-Zoom to cut off Walcheren and then thrusting down the two dikes on either side of the island or making an assault on South Beveland and then executing an amphibious assault on Walcheren as was done in October. There simply weren't the forces in place to do either until the end of the month, the Canadians were masking/assaulting in succession Le Havre, Boulougne, and Calais until the end of the month and the British Second Army spearheads were scattered over something like a hundred miles of front.

 

The worst thing was that it was only Ramsey who saw the importance of clearing the estuary at the time.

[Rich]

I read someplace that if General Patton had been running 30 Corps then they would have gotten through.

Lot's of people have dismissed than notion but the relief of Bastogne would be a more difficult task and it was accomplished.

 

Market Garden was a helluva try but the devil is always in the details and the details weren't handled properly.

 

Doubtful. It was about the same distance from Nijmegan to Arnhem as it was from Neufchateau/Martelange to Bastogne, but CCR, 4th AD did not have the Rhine and the Waal rivers intervening along their route.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

General Al Irzyk thought they could have done it. We talked about it years ago.

Patton and Quesada had thing going with Tac Air. If they put air cover on both sides of the highway for 40 miles then maybe, just maybe it could have worked.

 

One of the things that I don't like is the idea that the British stopped to brew tea. They stopped, so the crews did what they did any time they stopped. They checked oil and fuel levels, too but that isn't why they stopped

[RETAC21]

The issue was less getting to Arnhem (they got there) as to keeping the road opened and exploiting afterwards. No matter how you cut it, a substantial effort was required to expand the "bridgehead" later in Autumn and the logistic situation would still be dire. The British stopped, but not because its command was sluggish but because the Germans were putting up resistance.

[Stuart Galbraith]

The movie in particular has been guilty of perpetuating this myth for years. The 'Oh we cant advance sir, we have no orders, would you like some tea?' bit. Generations have bought into it, and it just isnt true.

 

Even if we got to Arnhem, it would have had German forces on all three sides. The ability to break out of what was rapidly turning into a small scale Stalingrad has to be questioned. It didnt prove so easy to break out of Caen either

[Markus Becker]

Even if we got to Arnhem, it would have had German forces on all three sides. The ability to break out of what was rapidly turning into a small scale Stalingrad has to be questioned. It didnt prove so easy to break out of Caen either

The other way round IMO. The Germans would at first have come to you to push you back across the river. British field artillery would have had a field day, several actually. Allied TAC air too.

[Stuart Galbraith]

But you still have a one road advance over the Rhine. Into that you have to bring up more forces to widen the gap, bring up fuel to continue the advance. And this is getting towards October, with the weather starting to go south. And 2 Months hence we know the Germans were up to launching a counterattack in the Ardennes. The failure might have prevented a far bigger disaster if we had stuck with it.

 

I could see the reason for Market Garden as long as the forces in the area were replacement Divisions (I remember Cornelius Ryan talking of Stomach Battalions, little more than convalescent units) and the Germans were not going to stand and fight. That they were already on the brink of collapse. And when that was completely disproved, there was little way it was going to work. I think it was doomed to fail before the first boots hit the ground.

 

Dont get me wrong, Id love to share in the fantasy of 30 Corp jumping the Rhine and leading a general advance Berlin. But that was pretty clearly never going to happen from a very early stage. Overoptimistic it certainly was, but it was a brave try, and refutes the Idea that Montgomery was staid and reluctant to take chances.

[Ken Estes]

After the destruction of Seventh Army at Normandy, the US and Brits too often thought that the Hun was Done or some other version of Victory Disease and that the war would end soon. We repeatedly were surprised at the operational and even strategic level at German resurgences.

[Tim the Tank Nut]

the British statesman said that much of Britain's troubles come from our people looking at maps on too small a scale was correct (maybe it was Gladstone?) and a similar refrain would apply to Allied forces in the late fall of 44. Still, you can see where they were coming from. The Germans were routed and the Eastern Front was a fiasco for Germany.

I've always thought that Eisenhower left too much to JCH Lee when it came to running the supply side of things but a while back Rich said that Lee wasn't as bad as I thought.

I feel like we could've done better but not a lot better.

Is is true that Urquhart beat up Browning after the battle?

 

One other point on 30 Corps would be that an American Corps really would've had more supply and accessory equipment. That's just how the US does things. 30 Corps should've had twice the engineers and if the extra support wasn't available then the op shouldn't have happened. Even at the time it should have been obvious that the Germans would blow every bridge they could. It's what Germans do!