What went wrong with Operation Market Garden?

Incorrect.
It is possible to say 'Montgomery got this wrong.....' or 'Montgomery made a mistake here'.......... and that can be debated.
However claiming 'Montgomery was a bad general and he never got anything right. He only won because he outnumbered his enemy. He failed at Alamein, failed in Sicily and failed at Caen, failed ay Arnhem, tried to grab the credit for the Bulge, was vain and vindictive ,.........slow...........whiney.....crying.......blah, blah, blah' is a patently absurd argument that will be countered as robustly as it is promoted.
If you have facts to back an individual claim of incompetence then post them.
Rambling diatribes or shopping lists of examples of Montgomery's 'ineptitiude' culled from the film 'Patton' will be derided!

 

On page 14 of "operation market garden:case study for analyzing senior leader responsabilities",I read on P14 the following:
"against a defeated and demoralized enemy,almost any responsible risk is justified and the success attained by the victor will ordinarily measured in the boldness ,almost foolhardness of his movements ."
author is D.Eisenhower (Crusade in Europe PP289/29O)
Nothing wrong in this sentence,unless that on 17 september,the enemy was no more defeated/demoralized.

 

That, we now know, was quite true. Again, SHAEF believed the enemy to be on the verge of collapse ( as did the Wehrmacht with Russia in 1941...)

 

Hey guys,Was there any Guerilla operations by the Dutch underground at this time? Destruction of trains ,attacks on German troops etc.Cheers.

 

This would be unwise:the German reprisals would be very harsh,as happened when Rauter (SS and police chief was severely wounded by mistake)
There was a srike by the railways,which hurt mainly the civilians .

 

Not to my knowlegde (I'm dutch), at the last months of the war the Dutch resitance was fully active, more then earlier in the war. To my knowlegde the Dutch Resistance was gathering intell for the allied.

Even before the operations start the Dutch warned the Allies that there were elements of panzer troops (Bittrich's) and Model's troops were in the area, which was ignored or take too lightly by British intelligence.

 

I've recently read (yet again) Cornelius Ryan's book on the subject. I know much information has been unearthed since that book was published, but one of the things that keep jumping out at me is how 1st Para completely disregarded all information and assistance offered to them by the Dutch Resistance. For example, the Driel ferry continued to operate through the first days of the battle and even after it stopped working, it lay moored there on the north shore where they could have used it at any time to cross the river and attack the bridge from the south end. It was only very late in the battle that somebody went to look at it and by then, the cable had been cut by artillery fire and it had drifted away.
The other thing that I find astounding (considering the complete failure of communications) is that they would not listen to the Dutch regarding the telephone system. The phones continued to work in most areas throughout the battle. 1st Para could not only have contacted Frost at the bridge (at least in the first days), but could have talked to XXX Corps. The Dutch were talking to other members all along the route from Arnhem to Eindhoven through links they had established with members in the phone exchanges, and the 82nd and 101st used the same secret phone links at various times to communicate up and down the corridor. The British politely ignored all such advice.

Ryan attributes this to general distrust of the Dutch resistance which was widely thought to be compromised. I think it may be more of matter of tunnel vision since 1st Para never really had a chance to catch its breath. With Urquhart missing in the first vital day and a half and the awful situation by the time he got back, they just never could do anything but react to what the Germans were doing. Information brought to them by the Dutch just never penetrated...

 

Further thoughts after digesting some of the earlier comments.

1. Monty was correct in his estimate of German forces in Holland. The 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions were only Divisions on paper. They had almost no armor and what little they had was trackless, gunless, and in transit to Germany by rail. It is only after some days had passed that German armor began flowing into Holland. So, if the timetable had been met, or even doubled - say, XXX Corps had reached Arnhem on the 4th day - they still would have had little armor to contend with.

The forces that met 1st Airborne on that first critical day were indeed a mixed bag of German troops thrown together from a variety of forces. Still, that ad hoc bunch were able to largely stop the British in an urban area that favored the defenders.

2. Gavin's failure (and it was a failure) to secure the bridges at Nijmegen made no difference at all. After the bridges were secured, it still took the 43rd Wessex an additional 18 hours to reach Nijmegen and XXX Corps couldn't advance in the more exposed terrain north of Nijmegen without them. That is likely Horrock's fault, though blame tends to fall on the 43rd Wessex for not keeping up.

I think the Market Garden plan was sound. It was failures in the execution of that plan that made it fall apart.

 

On paper the plan was sound, But realistically the terrain was not suited for the lightning victory they wanted. They knew the terrain was difficult for armor and that there where so few roads, Going into battle knowing that and expecting it to be a walk over is just plain crazy. Hell it was the perfect scenario where an ill equipped force could be given the upper hand.

 

It should have worked. Why was the bridging equipment so far back in the column when it was inevitable they'd need it at some point? Why was the 43rd Wessex at the rear of the column when they knew they were absolutely essential for the exposed leap from Nijmegen to Arnhem?

They figured that under perfect circumstances they could make it in two days. Browning thought it might take four days and in fact they were in Nijmegen in four days, but without the infantry they needed for the final push.

 

I disagree. Gavins plan of action to seize the Nijmegen bridges was poorly thought through, and deserves to be roundly criticized.

If he had seized them at the opening moments of the battle, the British would have had the impetus to move quicker. You cant say Gavins mistakes were sole reason the operation failed. But you can sure say it was one of the bigger contributors to it.

 

They moved as quickly as they could, considering the lost bridge at Son and various German strong points and attacks along the route. The plan called for the infantry to flank the road after Nijmegen because the terrain was much more open on that final stretch, yet the infantry was at the rear of the column when it was supposed to be near the front as they approached that final bridge. It took another day (two really) for them to reach the head of the column. Even if the bridge had been captured, XXX Corps would still have had to halt at that point because they had no infantry.
The infantry (43rd Wessex) gets blamed for that, but it's hard to imagine how their trucks could have got there any quicker considering the jammed roads. They were simply too far back in the column.

 

The OP is wrong :there was NOTHING that went wrong with MG,UNLESS the Germans.No need to lool for a scape-goat

 

I don't think there is a scapegoat, at least not a single scapegoat. I'm only making the point that if the plan would have come off anywhere close to the timetable envisioned, the Germans were not strong enough to counter it. The armored forces the allies encountered came in late in the game, from Germany, and that was only possible because of delays due to planning.

Those delays were not Montgomery's fault because (in my opinion, for what that's worth...), the plan was sound. But each element was allowed to plan their part of the assault and almost everyone made blunders. Urquhart screwed up in several ways - most importantly the distant drop zone. Gavin screwed up - the Nijmegen bridge. Horrocks screwed up for not laying out his column in a sensible way so that required elements could be where needed, when needed.

After the battle it was pointed out that the very same exercise had been conducted by the Dutch prior to the war and that it was found necessary to hook left at Nijmegen, cross the Rhine at different points and attack Arnhem from the North bank. And in fact, light units did hook left and reached the Poles at Driel quite easily. One wonders why Horrocks didn't send stronger forces along that route instead of waiting for the infantry at Nijmegen?

It's a fascinating piece of history. I just think Montgomery gets a bad rap for the plan.

 

I think that the entire operation was a tall order at best. Everything had to go just right for the next step to succeed. And those pesky Germans didn't know they were beat and just wouldn't give way.

 

IMHO,everything depended on the Germans,possible mistakes by the allies had only a very marginal influence on the outcome.
BTW:the role of the German armoured forces is very exaggerated

 

I disagree. Seizing the bridges at the outset would in all probability have made the operation successful, regardless of the Germans' efforts. The bridges were obvious objectives, vital to both sides' operations; if the Germans were anything other than completely incapable, attacking them several hours after the initial landing was asking for trouble.

By "successful" I mean that M-G could have secured the planned corridor leading to a bridgehead across the Rhine at Arnhem - I don't believe that would have won the whole war or anything close to it. The Allied advance would eventually stall just as it did historically, but at least the airborne division would not have been sacrified.

 

Regardless of whether MG would have been the "dagger into the heart of Berlin" that Monty rhapsodized about, look at a map of western Europe. That operation would have extended the German defensive line by approximately 25%. They would now have to shift forces north to protect Bremen and Hamburg. In September, the 6th army group was poised opposite the Saar. The 12th Army group was in Luxembourg a hundred miles north. And now (if successful) the British would be on the border in extreme northern Germany opposite Bremen and Hamburg.

The failure gave Germany the breathing space to put together a defense. I suspect (though, it goes into the realm of alternate history) that there would have been no Operation Wacht am Rhein because the new front would have used up all reserves just to cover the defense of northern Germany.

 

The Allied line would have been equally as long, and one of the reason's Op Wacht am Rhein got as far as it did was that the Allies could not effectively man the entire line and keep much of a reserve or preserve their original mandate. Defeat Germany.

A "Successfull" Market Garden might have simply left both side's in a WW I like stalemate.