What went wrong with Operation Market Garden?

Could you possibly pick out the relevant pages or at least chapters, like usual referencing works? I can't exactly read through 9 texts within a reasonable amount of time.

I mean I can easily pick out an opinionated sources that I have about Monty that proves him a military genius and a hero of the British Army:
Monty: Master of the battlefield 1942-1944 -Nigel Hamilton

But if you get a tape measure, that book is around 9cm thick and 17cm tall.

 

I have rewritten the entire post and included references. I hope this will provide sufficient information on my point of view.

Operation Market Garden.

The seeds of failure were sown long before the Operation Market Garden was launched. Discord and disagreement had festered between the allied commanders Montgomery, Bradley and Patton since the campaign in North Africa.

North Africa was never anything but a sideshow to the Germans. They got involved there because Mussolini needed help to keep his pants up after being beaten by the British.
On 19 March 1941 Rommel flew to Berlin to ask for two more Panzer corps. General Franz Halder, chief of the General Staff, told Rommel politely that his request was ‘impracticable’. He knew, as Rommel did not, that Hitler was soon to invade Russia and that all available Panzer corps would be required in the east. Rommel was told to hold his position and not to attack. By the beginning of November 1941, less than half of the troop reinforcements required by Rommel had arrived.
(Masters of Battle. Monty, Patton and Rommel at War. By Terry Brighton, pages 105,113.)

The difficulties of shipping supplies to North Africa plagued the Axis during the entire campaign. Germany was short both on transport vessels and escorts. 35% of the supplies were lost due to enemy activity.
(The Bitter Sea. The Struggle for Mastery in The Mediterranean 1939-1945. by Simon Ball. Page 147.)

During the fall of 1942 things turned bad on the Eastern Front. In Hitler’s mind North Africa was already written off, and the Germans left Africa.
Montgomery failed to realize these facts; instead he gave himself credit for being a great field commander, having chased the Axis out of Africa.

Neither the Americans nor the Germans considered Monty to be a commander of any great ability; he was probably the most overrated allied commander during WWII. The Americans found him arrogant to the point of bumptiousness, bad mannered and ungraceful, what one American called ‘his sharp beagle nose, the small grey eyes that dart about quickly like rabbits in a Thurber cartoon.’
General Omar Bradley stated waspisly at one occasion:
‘Montgomery was a third-rate general and he never did anything or won any battle that any other general could not have won as well or better.’
(Eisenhower - Soldier, General, President Elect 1890-1952. By Stephen E. Ambrose, page 315)

Returning from North Africa with an inflated ego after the comparatively easy defeat of the German Africa Corps, he considered himself to be the greatest commander ever. Later information has revealed that he inflated the number of German casualties to improve his image.
At El Alamein he claimed that there were more German casualties than there were German troops all together on the actual front!
(Das Deutsches Afrika-korps: Siege und Niederlage. By Hanns-Gert von Esebeck, page 188.)

When Allied troops hit the ground in Normandy, Monty’s inflated image hit reality. After the invasion in Normandy Montgomery had promised to take Caen the first day, but had not done so even by the end of June.
Monty’s slow progress on the battlefield did not help him.
Finding himself overshadowed and sidelined by the flamboyant, gun-toting Ol’ Blood 'n Guts George Patton was more than he could stand, so he went to Eisenhower and demanded his ‘own’ operation.
Tact was never a prominent feature of Monty’s character and he made no attempt to conceal his disregard of Eisenhower’s broad front policy, constantly criticizing it and demanding additional resources of troops and supplies for his own purposes.

He wanted Patton stopped where he was; he wanted the Airborne Army and First Army assigned to him; he wanted all available supplies, he wanted a directive that would send him through the Pas de Calais, on to Antwerp and Brussels, and beyond the Ruhr.
He failed to realize that two out of three troops on the ground were American, and that the Americans intended to remain in charge of the offensive.

On September 7 Monty requested a meeting with Eisenhower. On the afternoon of September 10 they met in Eisenhower’s plane in Brussels. Pulling Eisenhower’s latest directive out of his pocket, waving his arms, Montgomery damned the plan in extreme language, accused the Supreme Commander of double-crossing him, implied that Patton, not Eisenhower, was running the war, and demanded that control of the land battle was handed over to him, and asserted that the double thrust would result in certain failure. As the tirade gathered in fury Eisenhower sat silent. At the first pause for breath, he leaned forward, put his hand on Monty’s knee and said: ‘Steady, Monty! You can’t speak to me like that. I’m your boss!’
Montgomery insisted that it could be done if he got all the supplies, but Eisenhower refused even to consider the possibility. As Eisenhower put it in his office diary later, ‘Monty’s suggestion is simple, give him everything, which is crazy.’
(Eisenhower - Soldier, General, President Elect 1890-1952. By Stephen E. Ambrose, Chapter 17.)

What we see here is a man without touch with reality. Although ‘Market Garden’ was launched on September 17, it was already by then too late. The opportunity to drive north through a disorganized and retreating enemy had been lost. The operation was plagued by errors and miscalculations from the start: Montgomery ignored intelligence reports that SS Panzer divisions were in the area; the British 1st Airborne Division was dropped miles from its objective – and discovered that their radios did not work!
(World War II Companion. By Margaret E. Wagner, Linda B. Osborne and Susan Reyburn. The Library of Congress, page 592)

The result, as we have seen, was the launching of an operation that has attained the unenviable reputation of being one of the most flawed in history. Tom Hoare, who fought with the 3rd Para at Arnhem, may be said to reflect a commonly held perception of OMG, (or Field Marshall Montgomery’s fiasco, as he calls it) when he writes:

‘It is my opinion that Monty was a great soldier, but he had a even greater ego. When victory was in sight for the Allies, he degenerated into nothing more than a glory seeker. With little regard for the welfare or indeed the lives of his men of the British 1st Airborne Division, he threw the division away in an insane attempt to go down in history as the greatest military leader of the Second World War.’
(Arnhem. Jumping the Rhine in 1944 and 1945. By Lloyd Clark, page 333.)

Like the British General Sir Brian Horrocks put it:
‘We had made the cardinal mistake of underestimating our enemy – a very dangerous thing to do when fighting the Germans, who are among the best soldiers in the world. Their recovery after the disaster in Normandy was little short of miraculous.’
(Arnhem: A Tragedy of Errors. By Peter Harclerode, page 30.)

There are no problems finding praises for Montgomery, also among his adversaries. Officers are also gentlemen, at least in public. Behind the scene they tend to be more honest.
In his official report Eisenhower described Monty as ‘a decisive type who appears to be extremely energetic and able.’
However, after one meeting with Monty, Kay Summersby, his driver, heard him talking in the back of his car to General Mark Clark: ‘His voice turned harsh. I heard something about ‘‘that son-of-a-bitch.’’ He meant Monty, he was furious – really steaming mad. I sneaked a look in the rear-view mirror. His face was flaming red and the veins in his forehead looked like worms.’
(Masters of Battle. Monty, Patton and Romml at War. By Terry Brighton, page 118)

All in all he appears to have been a mediocre military commander.
It is also interesting to see that in Montgomery’s book ‘A History of Warfare’, George Rainbird Ltd, London 1968, the Operation Market Garden is mentioned in one - 1 - sentence in 570 pages!!

 

Hello,

For me, it started with a question and it resulted in a revealing and detailed manuscript about the American 82nd Airborne Division, during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. This division should have captured the important Nijmegen Bridge in time, but it failed to do so. World War II could have ended before Christmas 1944, but sadly, it lasted until May 1945.

Until now the British are blamed for the failure and the role of the Americans minimized and never really investigated, not even in the book "A Bridge too far" by Cornelius Ryan.

My argument is (based on a lot of declassified documents, new archive material and analyzing/combining information) that General Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne, is responsible for the failure of Operation Market Garden. During the operation the general was preoccupied with the defence of the landing zones, complacent and lacked initiative. After the war the general claimed (and intended this as an excuse) that he issued verbal pre-jump orders, instructing a colonel "to capture the Nijmegen Bridge immediately" and that the colonel "misunderstood" these orders. But, he did not issue such orders. I have a lot of new material that supports my argument.

In view of this, Montgomery's Operation Market Garden and the British ground forces cannot seriously be blamed anymore. But until now, history still puts the blame on both of them.

But - supprisingly - I cannot find a publisher, not even in the UK.

Any suggestions?

 

"should have" has a number of connotations what exactly are you tring to say.

Highly unlikly now if they had cleared the approaches to Antwerp instead perhaps but even then it's pushing things.

I'd suggest that's putting way too much on his sholders. There were numerous problems that plagued Market Garden that he had absolutly nothing to do with and about which he could have done nothing. Even if he does take the bridge it's far from clear the Operation succeeds or has any huge impact even if it succeeds.

 

As Lwd says - lots of blame to share around if you think that's necessary, and success of Market Garden doesn't necessarily lead to an earlier finish to the war, especially by as much as you say. Even if all the roads and Bridges had been captured as planned, supplying a whole assault into Germany along them without winning the Antwerp approaches would have been impossible.

It was Monty's plan and his alone, probably entered into for the wrong reasons, and it didn't succeed. Final blame has to rest with him as it traditionally does.

 

Id say that general Gavin ensured that Market-Garden WOULD fail. had he done his planning correctly, M-G could still have succeeded.

 

IMHO. If it had succeeded, the reward would have been great, but Market Garden was mortally wounded from it's inception by two factors: Montgomery's overwhelmingly huge ego, and the lack of trust the allies had in dutch resistance reports of german troop movements.

 

All this talk of Gavin concentrating his efforts on defending his drop zones at the expense of what? Attacking 10th SS-Panzer without XXX Corps armor? Or taking the road bridge over the Waal on Day One. You'd think Willi Bittrich and II SS Panzerkorp had nothing to say in the matter.

As it was the Nijmegen bridge was captured late in the afternoon of Day Four, and they still had to wait until the following day for reinforcements. The movie has Robert Redford as Maj. Julian Cook engage in some absurd histrionics with a Coldstream Guards officer about charging up the road to the rescue. (Redford must have written his own dialog, or maybe it was Attenborough's fault. He was never one for letting history spoil a good scene) The plain military fact is 1 well-chewed PI regiment and 5 Guards Div tanks does not a rescue force make.

I suggest your source is obscure because it is devoid of supportable arguments.

Market-Garden was worth a try, but it failed for one simple reason: hubris. Allied commanders (with the notable expect of Patton) consistently failed to appreciate the phenomenal ability of the German Army to recover from disaster. The plain fact is planning and preparation of M-G took longer than the window of opportunity was open. By the time those 1st Allied Airborne Army boys took off the odds were strictly against them.

 

Well said CPL P, although there is the issue that plagued most of the Allies all through the war that they in almost every operation failed to properly identify the vital ground, and often spent much time and resources attacking or defending bits of real estate they didn't really need.

- Gavin's decision to stick with his drop zones longer than he needed could have been due to inflexible orders, and he couldn't as you say have gone out and won the war on his own, but he could perhaps have made different choices based on being an infantry unit on the ground rather than an airborne unit still waiting for aerial reinforcement. It's a switch that the British failed to make well at Arnhem also, and the only airborne assault of any size that managed to transition well was IMO the Germans in Crete, and their casualties were so high that it could be said Gavin knew what the risks were and played it safe, which wasn't necessarily the wrong choice.

 

Such as Cherbourg, for example? I don't think that siege paid much of a dividend.

 

The examples are endless - for the Brits North Africa provides a long enough list of examples for anyone, even at a sub-unit level when you are only talking which mound or hill is important and which isn't - at the theatre or strategic level, they did it every time - The Russians were the same early war, although they got better.

I forget exactly who said it, I suspect Model (based on his incredulity that anyone would attack Arnhem) although it may have been a post war interview with another German commander, but it was said that the only reason the Allies managed to capture anything was that they tried to capture ground the Germans didn't want, and the Germans never managed to not be surprised by this. (or words to that effect).

Cherbourg, not so sure - they did need the port for sure - maybe there were better ways to get it?.

 

Doesn't sound like Model wanted to give the Allies much credit for winning. "You didn't lick us! We f*cked up!"

Jodel and the other staff officers at OKW were always puzzled by Eisenhower's "wide front" strategy. He said to his interrogators something like "If you had come on through the Saarland in October of '44, then Hitler would have been finished before Christmas."

True, perhaps, but that assumes perfect intel on SHAEF's part. The wide front was best.

Patton saw the opportunity, or at least he claimed he did. But Bedell Smith, Patton's gadfly, said he was just angling for a bigger share of the limited fuel supply. Patton was relying on his instinctive "read" of the German Army, so he couldn't back up his claims with evidence.

 

I can't remember for sure the guy who said it, but from a tactical point of view it was so often true - from Poland through France and Barbarossa and all the bits in between before Hitler started interfering. It's a simplification, but basically the Germans almost always identified which ground was tactically important, and set that as their main effort, defending it after capturing it if need be and then moving on.

Incidentally the same tactical idea was only introduced in the British Army in 1989, and even then as a 'suggested' tactic rather than a set doctrine and only then because of all the disasters in the Falklands.

 

One must remember that the most significant factor limiting Operation Market-Garden was TIME in relation to SUPPLY.

The failure to secure Antwerp and it's port facility in time had restricted the ability of Eisenhower to successfully distribute supplies to every commander that wanted to be given their full allocation to enable them to operate on an independant axis of advance from everyone else. This restriction meant that for this period of Overlord it was impossible for all the corps to be supplied equally. Decisions had to be made as to who would recieve supply, and who was to go short. Monty was operating on a limited time basis for allocation of the level of supply needed to sustain an offensive into Germany itself. His concept for the operation also included the airborne element, who suffered from "GO fever" after having 11 straight combat drops cancelled for various reasons since D-Day. Add to this a selective interpretation of intelligence information, reading into it what they wanted to see, rather than accepting the available intelligence information at face value.

Monty was given a limited window of opportunity to make his strategic concept a reality, and he ran out of time to implement it. Other sectors needed to be supplied as well, so Monty ran out of time before his supply priority became secondary to other sectors of the theater.

And yes, British and American underestimation of the capacity for the German army to recover from a defeat was found wanting, a mistake that the Polish General (Sozaboski) always maintained should not have been made at this point of the war, given the over-all level of operational intelligence gathering enjoyed by the Allies during this period of the conflict.

Furthermore, lets not put Walter Model up on a pedestal either. The real brains behind this victory was the command performance of SS General Wilhelm BITTRICH. Bittrich also visited the survivors of the 1st Airborne in the Lufwaffe prison camp they were sent to, (Oflag IVb, I believe). He remains the only German General to ever do this, riding into the camp in a train of Mercedes cars, with a crimson cloak and highly polished boots, he circulated amongst the still filthy and battleshocked Paras, chatting and laughing with these men, and without even bothering to glance at the thousands of other prisoners present. The First Airborne acquired a fearsome reputation amongst their enemies for their tenacity and sheer stubborness at Arnhem, leading the author of the account who saw this amazing display by Bittrich to quip....

"Perhaps there IS some glory in war after all."

 

What would Market-Garden have achieved, would in my opinion be a more correct question. It certainly would not have shortened the war. Given the strained logistical situation, the Allied forces would not have been able to conduct a major offensive into the heart of Germany, even if they had taken the bridge at Arnhem. They merely would have created another bridgehead to nowhere north of Arnhem, much like the Nijmegen bridgehead that remained after the Arnhem debacle. It would have been far more effective if the Allied command had focused on the Scheldt Estuary in early September. By clearing the Scheldt Estuary, and so opening the approaches to the vital port of Antwerp, they not only would have solved the logistical problems, but also might have trapped and eliminate a substantial part of the German 15th Army. If anything, this would probably have shortened the war. So mistakes were made at the strategical level (SHAEF). IMO this was the lost opportunity of the campaign in late summer of 1944.

 

Had OMG succeeeded, the Allies could have swung north to the Ijsselmeer to cut off German forces in Holland. Without the ability to supply the 15th Army through Holland the Allied situation is vastly improved, the Scheldt operation could have gone quicker.
Had Eiesenhower & SHAEF planned a little better they could have inserted a couple of US divisions by air, instead they had at least 3 divisions idle in Normandy because they lacked enough trucks & fuel to move them

 

An allied advance to the Ysselmeer would NOT cut off the German forces in Holland,only the German forces in Western Holland,and these could be supplied by the Ysselmeer,unless the allies were advancing to Leeuwarden (much to the north).
If there were 3 divisions (which ones?) idle in Normandy,they could not be transported by air:
1 there were not enough transport aircraft to transport 50000 men,there were even not enough transport aircraft for MG.
2 infantry or armoured divisions can not be transported by air .

 

About Antwerp and its port facilities :they were secured in time,but not the approaches,and when the approches were secured,the Scheldt had to be cleared from the mines .

 

No not exactly.

I used the term "Holland", not "Netherlands" as I did mean Holland to be specific (ie the triangle of land between Hoek van Holland, Utrecht, and Den Oever)
If the Allies had reached the south shore of the Ijsselmeer, they would have cut off the direct route to Germany, and the Axis would have been forced to use the Afsluitdijk causeway or else by ship across the Ijsselmeer/Waddenzee.
Both of these options would have been very vulnerable to Allied interdiction.

The 26th, 95th & 104th US inf divisions, newly arrived on the continent.

From "Hyperwar" p284 http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Supreme/USA-E-Supreme-16.html

There were not enough transport aircraft to lift all the paras & gliders during the first few days of Market Garden, but after this there certainly were transport aircraft available. The original plan was to have the British 52nd division (mountain) inserted at Deleen airfield (7 miles north of Arnhem) exactly by this means. You obviously don't have to fly in 50,000 men at once, you can bring them in one regiment or battalion at a time

Oh they most certainly can, as mentioned above the British 52nd was to do exactly that.

The US also has the 17th airborne div available, along with 3 extra para or glider regiments.
Probably the best course of action would be to land the 17th HQ, along with the airborne support battalions (artillery etc) and drop in US inf regiments.
Obviously not as tough as the veteran, well equipped regular US divisions, but they would certainly be able to hold the perimeter against the poorly equipped ad-hoc German units to the west of the drop.

 

1)the available transport aircraft were claimed by MG ,even after the first day :transport of reinforcements and supply.To transport a few battalions some days later would not help much .
2)the 52 division was not transported,probably because it was impossible
3)about the divisions in Normandy :if they were transported,it would be without heavy weapons,the distance would be a very big problem :Normandy -Arnhem :600km,and,were there enough airfields in Normandy ?The available aircraft would have to go from south England to Normandy.And,what about the airfields in Arnhem? To transport ONE batallion,some 30 aircraft were needed,these had to land and ...as quickly as possible to leave ....to England .What was the radius of action of these aircraft ?