Operation Market Garden Reconsidered
By Lloyd Clark

World War II  | 2 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

“I told my staff that General Eisenhower wants the airborne army used in mass,” Brereton later said. “He believes that if it is used that way the effect on morale of the Germans would be devastating.” But that vision proved impossible to fulfill. Although fifteen hundred transports and five hundred tug-glider combinations were available, that was less than half the number required to move all the troops in one operation. Maj. Gen. Paul Williams, head of the American IX Troop Carrier Command, quickly determined that the airborne divisions would have to be inserted in three lifts spread over three days.

This decision had massive ramifications for Browning’s lightly armed troops because it meant it would dilute the attacking forces, a situation exacerbated by the need for some of the first arriving troops to defend the drop zones and landing zones for subsequent lifts. To make matters worse, with so much air traffic rumbling over the battlefield on both resupply missions and ongoing airlifts, no ground-attack missions could be flown during these times for fear of aerial collision. Williams also vetoed any drop zones or landing zones that he believed would put his aircraft in “unnecessary” danger of being engaged by enemy antiaircraft fire. This led, in the worst case, to the British 1st Airborne Division’s being forced to land between six and eight miles from its main objective.

The unintended net result of the air plan, therefore, was the destruction of the primary advantage of speed and surprise an airborne operation offered, while giving the Germans and the weather greater opportunity to undermine it. (Indeed, the situation would worsen two days into the operation, when inclement weather spread the airlifts from three days to five.)

“They used to make a beautiful airborne plan,” Brigadier John “Shan” Hackett, commander of the British 4th Parachute Brigade, sardonically observed after the war, “and then add the fighting-the-Germans bit afterwards.”

Browning’s divisional commanders had concerns about the plan from the outset. But they recognized that airborne warfare was inherently risky and felt confident their superiors would not let them down. Even so, they could not help ruminating on the potential for a strong German reaction to the landings. The bridge at Arnhem spanned what was to Germany a psychological as well as a physical barrier—the Rhine. Sosabowski in particular feared a flexible, speedy, and strong response, saying, “The British are not only grossly underestimating German strength in the Arnhem area, but they seem ignorant of the significance Arnhem has for the Fatherland.”

The mission planners consistently put the best possible interpretation on disturbing intelligence coming from both the Dutch underground and Ultra decrypts of German communications. When Maj. Brian Urquhart, chief intelligence officer at Browning’s headquarters, presented photographic evidence of enemy armor in the Arnhem area, Browning reassured Urquhart that he “should not worry unduly, that the reports were probably wrong, and that in any case the Germans troops were refitting and not up to much fighting.”

Even so, divisional commanders were aware of the quantity of German troops and armored vehicles they were likely to face on landing, contrary to conventional historical views. But they were not told vital details about the quality of those troops, nor were they told to expect their rapid reinforcement. Maj. Gen. Roy Urquhart, for example, was accurately told that in his sector it was unlikely that “any [enemy] mobile force larger than a brigade group with very few tanks and guns could be concentrated against the airborne troops before relief by the ground forces.” But because he was not entitled to receive detailed Ultra intelligence, he was not told what his superiors did know: that a significant part of this force was from Lt. Gen. Willi Bittrich’s professional and experienced II SS Panzer Corps.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Airborne Operations, Historical Conflicts, World War II

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