What went wrong with Operation Market Garden?

Have a book on it, Ill have to dig it up and read it again but from memory it was a 2 for the price of one, Cut off the remnants of a German army, And also punch a whole in the front and secure the Ruhr Industrial region.

 

Even before the invasion Monty always wanted to have a single drive commanded by him that would go around the Ruhr. MG was an attempt to accomplish that goal. Ike agreed because it seemed like a good try at the time. Monty's problem is that he never understood that Ike could not afford to have half the US army in France idle. Patton also wanted to have his drive to be primary, but he knew when to accept orders. Monty should have just accepted his role and not keep wining about being in charge.

 

Any chance of some sources....?

 

While I'm more in the 'Patton camp' rather than the 'Monty camp' it's fair to say Patton stretched his orders to the limit at least as much as Monty did.

 

Any good General did stretch the orders, As to if there stretching the order's payed off or not is a different matter. The way MG came about and was launched from what I can tell was way outside of Monty's wheel house as such I don't believe he could quickly adapt to the challenging situations. For him to have advanced in good order he would have had to use more then a single road, But this would have slowed the advance more and that couldn't have been allowed to happen because of the airborne behind Axis lines.

Monty was put in a catch 22 situation he wasn't suited for.

 

its not stretching orders with Monty its his constant perstering of Ike when it was never going to happen. As far as Monty, I saw the movie about IKe on the military channel and Monty was shown talking about a thrust to Berlin. I dont know about proof, but it makes sense that Monty would want to be in charge of the winning thrust. I have no problem with Monty wanting to be in charge, you cant be a good general and not have an ego, its his refusal to accept the fact that he was not going to push Ike out of command and that the Americans were not going to play second fiddle.

 

Have to disagree about being a good General and Having an ego, Admittedly I am biased but Monash from WWI didn't appear to have an ego, Nor did Arthur Currie.. Perhap's it was limited to the guy's that had over all command? Would explain why Currie and Monash didnt get control of all the Common wealth forces in WWI, They didn't have a big enough ego

 

And preferably not cable TV channels......

I mean, it's wonderfully reassuring to cherish notions that Monty stamping his foot and crying ( sorry, 'whining' ) about not being allowed to win the war single-handed was why it all went wrong - Patton ( who always obeyed orders and did the best thing - like Hammelburg ) could have easily knocked out the Krauts.

Sadly, and as so often, reality is far 'greyer' and perhaps a little harder to grapple with.

Just taking two books almost at random from my shelf we read : 'In conformity with our startegic plans for operations into the heart of Germany the main effort in the Allied operations West of the Rhine was to be in the northern sector, with a view to seizing the crossings North of the Ruhr...' Eisenhower, Report By The Supreme Commander To The Combined Chiefs Of Staff Of The Allied Expeditionary Force' HMSO 1946. For a deeper analysis, see Russel Weigley 'Eisenhower's Lieutenants' - I've kept to US sources to avoid a riposte of 'pro-British bias' - where the reasoning behind this strategy is discussed - primarily to enter Germany at the closest point to sea ports ( yes, it's those boring logistics again ), the consideration that, rightly or wrongly, neutralizing germany's largest inustrial area was the only possibility to end the War in 1944 ( the Central German plain not being quite so attractive a proposition ) and finally, the Political imperative to neutralize V1 launching sites which, although it may sound trivial now, put huge pressure on Eisenhower.

And to say that Ike 'agreed because it seemed like a good idea at the time' is to attribute childlike tendencies to Eisenhower. He was in charge of the War in Europe and in a position of incredible responsibilty - given his orders Market Garden seemed the only way to achieve the Coalition's objectives in 1944. M-G was strategically correct but tactically - disastrously wrong.

Blaming the whole thing from strategy, conception , planning and execution - on 'Monty's whining' is simplistic in the extreme and grossly unfair to Ike.

 

What I mean by good idea is that Ike thought it had a chance of succeeding. A couple of examples of where the planning did not meet Monty's usual high standards are the ignoring of the intel about the tank division, the unreasonable timetable based on the fact of only one road and the dropping of the Arnhem unit so far from the target. When planning for the 2nd battle of El Alamain and Normandy Monty had every detail covered, but in MG a lot of things were planned badly and I wonder if Monty did let the disapointment of being delegated to 2nd in command affected him. I would point out that Monty did pester IKe repeatedly about being placed in command. Just because I criticise him for that does not make me a basher.
I admire Monty for his outstanding job in planning and for restroing 8th army, I do think he recieved more credit then was fair for Alamain and that he was not the best general outside of his set piece battles.

 

Montgomery thought he could strike the decisive blow.
But then so did Patton,Denvers and Bradley.
However it seems the fashion to concentrate on his claims and ignore the clamour from the other prima-donnas.
I wonder why?

 

Pay attention to what I said instead of getting in a tizy because I made a critical comment. MG did not meet Monty's usual standards for planning and I wonder if he allowed his disapoinment at being demoted affect his work.

 

I do have to back up steverodgers80 here seeing as you have gone and ignored the entire post of his, He did give Monty credit for his feat in organizing the 8th Army in NA.

 

I don't think that anyone could agree that Market-Garden was well-planned and it does really stem from the fact that there was simply not enough time to cover every aspect. I've spent a week on an Arnhem field-trip with former Army officers studying the 'what went wrong?' question and having revisited everything eg 'It was Nijmegen / It was the road / It was the Recce Jeeps at Wolfheze / It was the two SS Panzer Divisions etc etc' the final conclusion was - 'It was the Plan'.

Not enough contingency and some glaring errors and omissions ( especially close air support ).

I have never seen references to Montgomery overlooking the planning due to a fit of pique. But what IS very odd is that Monty seemed disengaged during the Operation itself. Very strange given his usual close attention to operational matters and if it were down to disappointment over the command structure - doubly odd as he had 'got his way' over Market-Garden......

 

I believe that the funk makes sense considering that Browning did so much of the planning. I have not heard any other plausable explanation for the lack of attention Monty seems to have paid to the operation. To me the number one problem is that too many things had to go right and there were no alternates for failures, since one failing cascaded into more failures.

 

The whole discussion is only proving that a lot of people still are refusing to admit (68 years after the events) that the allied forces (of course every one is forgetting that 2 US and only ONE British airborne divisions were committed in MG)were defeated by the Germans .
The principal reasons for the failure of MG are
1)the swift decisive actions by the German commanders
2)the efficiency of the ad hoc German formations (the 2 SS PzD are an invention)
The defects of the allied planning and execution have only a secundary role in the failure of MG,unless.....some one can prove that without these shortcomings,MG would succeed .
IMHO,it is thus a waste of time (and only a jingoistic attitude) to search for scape-goats on allied side .This only will result in the usual attacks on Monty coming from the other side of the ocean,and the usual defence of Monthomery coming from the UK.
Nobody has been able to prove that ,without Monty,MG could succeed.Thus,please,stop the attacks on Monty.
If one wants a responsible :it is Model.

 

I did pay attention and asked a simple question.
Why concentrate on Montgomery claiming he could 'win the war' with a thrust by his army when all the other Generals made the same claims?

You are being too modest.
You made several critical comments.
In fact you never miss any chance to include a swipe at Montgomery.

examples:

'Pouting'?
'Crying'?
'Whining'?

Claiming you are unbiased is not the same as being unbiased.
You always temper your 'praise' with sneering comments about Montgomery.

I ignored nothing and saw the real thrust of the argument.

Anyway do not let this stop the rush to disparage Montgomery.

I realise my pointing out this prejudice will not be well recieved so feel free to castigate me for claiming Monty was the world's most perfect General was free from any errror or character flaws...............

 

Nobody can "prove" a hypothetical, but there's a strong case to be made that the operation would have succeeded had the key bridges been seized at the outset. The idea of attacking such obvious objectives several hours after landing was the fatal flaw, and it falls entirely on the Allied planners. Colonel Chatterton, commander of the Glider Pilot Regiment, proposed and offered to lead a Pegasus Bridge type attack on Arnhem bridge but was turned down. The one direct assault on a bridge, by a company of 82nd paratroopers at Grave, was successful.

Had all the bridges been taken, using historical travel times, Guards Armoured would have attacked north from Nijmegen early on the morning of September 19, the third day, and would have reached Arnhem shortly thereafter. There were still few German troops or armor in "the island" at that point, and some of them, such as Grabner's reconnaissance battalion, had only gotten there by crossing Arnhem bridge - five hours after the initial Allied landings!

 

That's something of a strawman. I think the general contention is that wihout Monty they wouldn't even have tried it and might possibly have tried something more worthwhile with a greater chance of success. Of course in that case if it had failed we'd be blaming someone else....

 

LJAd makes very fair point IMPO re the swift and efficient German response ( even though many of the troops involved were 'second line' and units were hastily assembled ). Which brings us full circle to a point which has been discussed on this Forum more than once before - to a certain extent the whole of SHAEF ( with one or two exceptions notably Brian Urqhart ) were far too overconfident and considerably underestimated their enemy ( given the context of time, if not excusable then possibly understandable following Falaise and the headlong retreat through Northern France and Belgium ).

 

Considering the fact that the Germans had lost their heavy equipment twice in the west running towards the Reich from Normandy ( 1.Falaise, 2.not able to take equipment over rivers to North ) and losing some 1 million men in the west and east altogether by Aug-Sept 1944, I would be willing to see in early autumn 1944 that Germany was pretty much in deep trouble and could not respond to offensives with force but would be running further inland. However, Rundstedt was able to scrape troops to make some kinda line in the west, and things did go differently as planned by the Allied. One must also remember there was the "peace by Xmas" mentality which probably was there influencing decisions.