Comments by "doveton sturdee" (@dovetonsturdee7033) on "Gavin wasn't to blame? 'New' evidence on Operation Market Garden's failure?" video.
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Brian Urquhart, the officer wrongly portrayed in the movie as showing photos. of Tiger IIs to Browning and being told 'not to worry about them' actually never spoke to him. The most senior officer he spoke to was a Brigadier. Furthermore, Urquhart was Ultra cleared, but could not disclose the source of his intelligence because others were not. In fact, the only armour with the SS units in the area were elderly training vehicles. The first one destroyed by 1st Airborne was a French Char B1, by the way. Urquhart was more concerned about the number of experienced German officers in the area, who were likely to (and did) react quickly to a crisis. There is a long interview on another site which makes all this clear.
He apparently explained all this to Attenborough when 'A Bridge Too Far' was in production, and it was Attenborough who had the (false) photos. of the Tiger IIs added, even telling Urquhart that they would play better with the American audience at which the movie was aimed. The 'Tea Drinking' scene featuring the heroic Robert Redford was, similarly, false, but added for effect.
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@johnburns4017 Well, here is the article recently written by Urquhart's great nephew:-
My great-uncle, Major Brian Urquhart, died at the age of 101 on 3rd January 2021, in America where he retired after a long post-war career with the United Nations.
Immediately after the battle he was promoted and given command of one of the Nazi-scientist hunting teams. He then became one of the first under-secretaries establishing the UN as we know it today.
He never liked his association with Arnhem, it was but one battle in a long career. I asked him once about a soldier’s life, which I was then contemplating. The story he told concerned his orders to arrange the repatriation of Cossacks to Russia on special trains.
He had his men seal the windows shut with barbed wire and watched as the first were hung from trees by the NKVD before the last were disembarked. Women and children among them, who tried to cut their throats on the barbed wire he had insisted on. He became very bitter after that. He asked if I could handle orders like those.
The majority of his career was as a diplomat who firmly believed the UN should be the only holder of nuclear weapons, controlled by an internationalist military force whose mission was to preserve humanity. A life in peace and war : Brian Urquhart For the man who unlocked the gates at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp it’s not hard to connect with his idealism. Or decipher his contempt for Generals.
It’s also worth pointing out the inaccuracies in his portrayal in many of the books and films. He didn’t get into an argument with Lt General Browning about tanks at Arnhem - Majors don't argue with Lt Generals he told me - he informed the chief of staff- a brigadier - and a few of the brigade majors, that he believed German panzer units had been positioned nearby.
Brian got this information from Enigma code breaking, he was the only ULTRA* cleared officer on the Airborne staff - the main reason he didn’t fly in with Corps headquarters. That information probably included how few tanks there were - but also how many veteran troops and battle-hardened commanders were stationed nearby.
In 1944 he couldn't tell the brigadier, his colleagues or Browning even, where he got his information or its provenance. It’s possible he exaggerated resistance reports and tertiary aerial photos to make his case. Photos like we see in the films have never been found. So it wasn’t quite as clear cut.
When he was interviewed by historians after the war, he had to continue the cover story for ULTRA. When Cornelius Ryan interviewed him for a Bridge too Far in the late 50s, ULTRA was still top secret. Ryan printed Brian’s cover story of aerial photos and Attenborough conflated them with the Tiger II’s - that turned up days later from the Czech border.
The final assessment, that these panzer divisions weren’t fully operational, and the tanks, if any, were junk, was actually the correct one. 1st Airborne would only meet one SP Gun on Day 1, a few partially armed training tanks, armoured cars and half tracks before day 3. They destroyed most of them.
This is a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem. The first tank encountered by 1st Airborne and was destroyed by a 17pdr before it did any damage. It was a French Char B1 used by a German training unit near Arnhem.
It was the proximity of command staff and their brilliance in improvisation and counter attack that ruined the mission. Foot infantry with MG42 and 81mm mortar stopped 1st Airborne getting to the bridges not panzers.
The real threat of panzers at Arnhem was more obvious and a bit further away.
Another great uncle, Colonel William Conran RE, was an engineer on XXX Corps staff. He had been sent there to maintain the roads leading to Arnhem. He and Brian separately pointed out the biggest issue with Arnhem.
It was sold as a strategic location from where a quick right turn took you into the Ruhr valley with all its factories. Both pointed out it was therefore only a quick left turn from the Ruhr to Arnhem, and being the centre of German war production, there had to be tanks and materiel hanging about there.
This was the reason for the three day time limit on reaching Arnhem, any longer and they would be facing extermination by Panzer, mortar and artillery bought in from the Ruhr. Which is exactly what happened, the main armoured threat came days later and was mainly STuG assault guns, the perimeter was assaulted more by mortar fire than anything.
If a Major Royal Engineers could work out the threat to Arnhem from a Michelin guide it wasn’t Brian’s failure to convince the Airborne staff that led to disaster.
Dirk Bogarde, who played Browning in the film, was also on staff at 2nd Army at the time and always said he thought Browning received undue criticism. I think Ryan agreed but needed US heroes to sell his book to Hollywood, while Eisenhower was in the White House and Ridgeway was Chief of Staff.
It could be why he gave Browning the famous, possibly apocryphal, line ‘we may have gone a bridge too far!’
One last titbit of truth came from both Uncle Bill and Brian. The mission had to go ahead regardless of the threat, and was a success.
The number one problem for SHAEF in September 1944 was opening up the approaches to Antwerp. The logistics issue.
To use Antwerp and control the approaches you needed to control everything up to the south bank of the lower Rhine at Nijmegen. I remember Uncle Bill showing me on a map. He drove his bladed hand up the single road to Nijmegen, with the back of his hand against the German border and Siegfried line. He then spread his fingers along the various rivers into the the estuaries of Scheldt, Zeeland and South Holland, as if to grab the land between.
Those low-lying lands and boggy ground between Arnhem and Nijmegen make a perfect geographical feature to stop behind and prepare a defence of Antwerp. Without control of Noord Brabant, German forces would have been in artillery and strike range of the Allies primary logistics hub.
Monty and Eisenhower had had a blazing row about how to achieve that, only the week before Market Garden, about his failure to take the Scheldt estuary, which turned into a row about the narrow front vs wide front approach into Germany. It nearly cost Monty his job. No allied forces were going forward that autumn without opening up Antwerp. Air Marshall Tedder and Admiral Ramsay both told Eisenhower to sack Monty after his outburst.
Market Garden was the very next offensive to be launched and had to solve the Antwerp problem. Monty’s decision to push on to Arnhem may have been one last attempt at his single front argument.
You only needed Arnhem if you wanted to springboard into Germany, but you needed everything up to Nijmegen if you wanted to do anything at all. That’s why Monty got all those resources for Market Garden, it contained a vital mission for everyone.
Two majors on staff admitted as much to me. The sacrifice of two light infantry brigades at Arnhem was probably not necessary - but a small price to pay for Noord Brabant, which was vital and accomplished. Without the Arnhem operation all those tanks and mortars and infantry would have gone to Nijmegen, which was I believe the most important bridge - up or down.
I would bet, If Arnhem had been captured and held that Eisenhower would have cut off Monty’s supplies right then and established himself strongly in Noord Brabant. But it never got that far because Ridgeway’s US Airborne forces failed to grab their bridges in time and isolated the 1st Airborne for too long.
I wasn’t clear. Cornelius Ryan’s first book was ‘The Longest Day’ published in 1959, with Eisenhower’s close support. They had known each other a bit during the war and Ike and Ridgeway (then US Army Chief of Staff) introduced him to the major players for interview.
Longest Day almost immediately went into Hollywood on publication, and both books are clearly written with a screenplay in mind.
Many of the interviews on which he based Bridge Too Far were done with Ike’s patronage in the late 50s early 60s. Ryan was dying of cancer for most of the early 70s when he struggled to finish Bridge Too Far.
The book had a very long gestation and a screenplay was knocking around Hollywood when John Wayne was slated to reprise his 1962 role from The Longest Day.
Interestingly the book was only published after Browning had died. I do not know of any major attempts at litigation between Browning and Ryan but I do know many felt there should have been.
( The original article, by the way, includes a photo. of the Char B1.)
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