Montgomery’s doomed plan to bring Second World War to an early end

Arnhem formed part of an operation codenamed Market Garden, an ambitious two-part operation whereby three airborne divisions were to seize key bridges in the Netherlands, to cross the Rhine, to advance into Germany before the winter of 1944 and to bring the war to an early conclusion.

Market Garden was the brainchild of Bernard Law Montgomery, the victor of the second battle of El Alamein, and required a greater level of risk-taking than one would associate with the normally careful and cautious Montgomery. Indeed it was so completely out of character, that Omar Bradley observed in his memoirs published in 1961: ‘Had the pious teetotaling Montgomery wobbled into SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces] with a hangover I could scarcely have been more astonished than I was with the daring adventure he proposed.’

Considerations were at play which should have played no part in shaping the operation. The Allies had expended a great deal and effort in creating an Airborne Division and there was a desire to use it to justify its existence. An even more disastrous factor was Montgomery’s ferocious rivalry with Generals George Patton and Omar Bradley, the commanders of US forces to the south, and his ambition to outshine them. The historian Andrew Roberts has suggested that ‘squabbling schoolgirls could hardly have been so petty and bitchy as these senior Allied commanders’.

Success would have depended on surprise, good intelligence and a highly flexible plan. All of these were in short supply.

For those seeking reasons for failure there is no shortage. Among those highlighted by Antony Beevor in ‘Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges’ are overconfidence, bad or deliberately over-skewed intelligence, a last-minute reduction in the forces committed, delays to the later parachute drops (partly because of the weather) and non-existent radio communication.

Major General Kenneth Strong, a Scot who was chief intelligence officer to General Eisenhower, focused on three elements:

‘General Eisenhower said that Arnhem failed because of the bad weather, but I think it failed because we hadn’t taken sufficient account of the German resistance. At that time people were convinced the end of the war was near, that the Germans were demoralised, but it wasn’t actually true; it may have been somewhere, but not all. As regards German resistance three things happened which were unfortunate for us. One was that just before Arnhem we discovered that there were elements of German armoured divisions refitting and getting new tanks not far from Arnhem. The second was that a copy of our plans was captured with one of the first officers who landed among the parachutists and this was whisked off to the German commander on the spot and from then he had all the information of what we were trying to do. And the third, and this is the most important, was that the local commander was Field Marshal Walter Model.’

In his memoir ‘War and Shadow’ (2002), General Sir David Fraser, vice-chief of the general staff in the early 1970s, concluded Operation Market Garden was ‘a thoroughly bad idea, badly planned and only tragically redeemed by the outstanding courage of those who executed it’.

Colonel John Frost was the commander of the 2nd Parachute Battalion. He led about 745 lightly armed men who landed near Oosterbeek to Arnhem. Frost and his men captured the northern end of the bridge but found themselves surrounded by a SS-Panzerkorps and cut off from the rest of 1st Airborne.

For four days the Germans poured artillery fire onto Frost’s paras, and sent tanks and infantry against them in some of the most vicious fighting of the war. The Germans were incredulous at the refusal of the paras to surrender and their continuous counterattacks. After a short truce on the third day, when 250 wounded were evacuated, the battle continued until the remaining paras had run out of ammunition. There were around 100 left.

As a result of this action, in which he was wounded by shrapnel in both feet, Frost became a legend. Following his capture, Frost was held as a PoW at Spangenberg. After the war Frost was awarded a Bar to his DSO for his leadership at Arnhem.

Educated at Masonic Boys School and TCD, Alan Buchanan, who had been born in Fintona in 1905, was ordained in 1931. Serving as a chaplain, he was attached to the 2nd Battalion of the South Staffordshire Regiment at Arnhem. Time and again Buchanan entered the line of fire to help the wounded and the dying and was mentioned in despatches for his actions. By staying with the wounded, he became a PoW. In 1958 he became Bishop of Clogher before being translated to the Archbishopric of Dublin in 1969.

A profoundly shameful aspect of Market Garden was the scapegoating of Major-General Stanisław Sosabowski, of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade for the failure of the operation. As professor of logistics at the Polish Military Academy in Warsaw, he correctly identified many of the flaws in the planning of the operation. In particular, he expressed his concerns at poor choice of drop zones at Arnhem, the long distances between the landing zones and Arnhem Bridge (thereby losing the element of surprise) and the disregard by the planners of intelligence from the Dutch Resistance that there were two SS Panzer Divisions in close proximity.

After the war Sosabowski did not return to Poland but found a job in a factory in Acton. At his funeral in London in 1967, his English friends and workmates were astonished when his rank and military achievements were enumerated.

A tragic consequence of the operation’s failure was the ‘Hongerwinter’ of 1944-45. The Dutch government-in-exile in London had instructed Dutch railwaymen to go on strike to assist the Allies. In retaliation the Germans prohibited the transportation of food within the Netherlands, resulting in the deaths of more than 20,000 Dutch civilians from starvation between September 1944 and the liberation. The Dutch paid a heavy price for our failure at Arnhem but they are a very kind and forgiving people.