Comments by "Kamper Foelie" (@TheKamperfoelie) on "Montgomery vs Eisenhower on Operation Market Garden's True Purpose | History Debate" video.

  1. The Scheldt estuary was taken, but at a high cost, and still after 2 months, while the western Allies were needing Antwerps port useable asap. Like, today. Fuel among others was taken in by Mulberry and the small part of French Normandy and Brittany ports that were usable, then driven by trucks all the way through northern France and Belgium. There was only supply enough for a single army to do a decent offensive operation. So market garden is considered a loss because it didn’t deliver, whatever the reasoning afterwards. Market Garden even DELAYED the clearing of the Scheldt estuary, because it got prioritized over the Scheldt, while little to show for. Don’t get me wrong, operational successes were sometimes spectacular, and certainly heroic, but Arnhem was just heroic, it was ultimately not taken. So there was no bridge over the Rhine, and no push to either the IJsselmeer (it was no longer the Zuiderzee at that time) to cut off supplies to the 15th Army defending western Holland, to facilitate an easier attack on the Zeeland Isles and peninsulas, gaining the use of the bulk port of Antwerp, or even Rotterdam. In every which way you look at it, Market Garden took the supplies bulk at the time, delaying everything else. It then did not deliver on anything called decisive. It did not outflank the Siegfried line, it gave no easier route than the Hurtgen Forest or the Siegfried line into Germany. It did not even free Holland apart from the provinces below the Rhine. The river delta of this area is low lying, wet ground, often sodden. Even if you get across the Rhine, it is not ideal ground to conduct a major offensive from using armored units, or even motorized, making having to cross the Rhine in the Netherlands the least desirable option. Apart from that, in the area east of Nijmegen! Next to the Groesbeek Heights lies the Reichswald and even more Rhine river. Not ideal. It makes no sense to prioritize an operation that does not deliver either an easier or swifter move into Germany itself (if not the Ruhr or Berlin, hell, even Hamburg would be nice), does not really speed up the use of Antwerp (surely it will have had an effect on 15 th army effectiveness, but it delayed the Battle of the Scheldt, and according to some, maybe many historians, made the battle considerably costlier and longer). Market Garden took place roughly 3 months after the initial landing in Normandy. After the Falaise pocket (21th aug) Germans were in full retreat. Market Garden gave the Germans a few extra weeks to prepare the defense of the Scheldt estuary. Imagine what an airborne division may have accomplished if it was used there. No more insane than dropping them at Oosterbeek. Freeing Holland was not a real goal, but if it was it was limited to the lower provinces. Tik mentions here that if 15 th Army was cut of, north eastern netherlands was still occupied. BUT, as with the southern provinces, the northeast is largely agricultural and less populated than the west. So the Hongerwinter would have had a far smaller impact, if western holland (actually the provinces of North and South Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht) had been freed. I think the real sting in this story is the question as follows: why do commanders at that level disagree, or even be ambiguous about what the aim of this operation was? Following Falaise things were fluid, not solidified as much as a few weeks later when the Germans were better dug in and ready. So making a gamble was reasonable, logical, worth a shot. A gamble was made, and it failed. Yes it took ground (thankfully. My parents were born in 1944 and 1945, in the Netherlands, below the Rhine. So already free, no Hongerwinter for them), but did not deliver a decisive push for considerable losses and delays in vital alternatives.
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